I think it is important not to confuse the army and establishment with all Pakis. It is nice and funny to talk as if they are all the same - but if we have to make any progress in Pakistan we have to separate some groups and some people from others. There is already a lot of official and unofficial trade and it is weighed in Indias favor. We must to try to be too chankian here an say "Ha ha we will jack up this and screw Pakis" - because typically someone else - say Bangladesh ot China will buy our cotton cheap and sell it to Pakis at a higher price. Market forces are market forces and businessmen are typically not morons. they may be cheats - but not morons.krisna wrote:^^^^
1) will the raw cotton go as Indian aid to pakistan thru' UNO or is it separate. either way wont the labels be made in sdres land. Dont the pawkis know that only yindia can supply that.
2) will the yeevil sdres not jack up the prices of raw cotton if it is pawki exported
3) why does not pawki RAPEs make noises about not accepting yeevil sdre cotton as they did for Indian aid. I have not read any reports so far. when it hits their musharraf they gubo and shut their upper orifices.
Shiv, I agree with your post. No issues on that.I think it is important not to confuse the army and establishment with all Pakis. It is nice and funny to talk as if they are all the same - but if we have to make any progress in Pakistan we have to separate some groups and some people from others. There is already a lot of official and unofficial trade and it is weighed in Indias favor
India imposed restriction on cotton exports to keep domestic prices down.
Armed with a bumper crop after a good monsoon, Indian groups are expected to begin exporting to Pakistan from October.
Some mills are already calling for regulated exports however, fearing a spurt in demand from Pakistan could send prices soaring in India. Analysts warned that India should export only surplus
Cotton prices in India are at a peak for the year, up by 12 percent in August compared
...
Pakistan has been importing cotton from India for the past few years now and is one of the main importers of cotton from India, which is the second largest producer of the crop worldwide after China.
krisna wrote:Pakistan's political future questioned after the flood
article basically questions whether TSPA will take over or not.
"The stock of the government, which was not very high to begin with, has fallen pretty low. Fewer and fewer people are taking Zardari seriously,"The Army's profile is going up," Amir continues. "Its PR is going up. When Kayani undertakes a visit, it's much better choreographed, and that creates an impression that the Army is really much more efficient, although we have no tabulated figures on the relief effort taken by the Army or the impact on the overall situation."
He doesn't think the Army would step in. "I think they are pretty happy and pretty comfortable seeing the civilian process bleed like this," he says.And Kayani, regarded as a consummate professional, probably knows "what the limitations in any misadventure may be," and the international approbation Pakistan could face, particularly from Europe, if the democratically elected civilian government were thrown out.Dus percenti can safely take some cuts from the aid till election time.As evidence he cites Pakistan's ever-growing defense budget and the widely held view that the nation's defense and foreign policy come under the purview of the Army. "When they can get the same results behind the scenes," he says, "why come on the scene?"
shiv wrote:I think it is important not to confuse the army and establishment with all Pakis. It is nice and funny to talk as if they are all the same - but if we have to make any progress in Pakistan we have to separate some groups and some people from others. There is already a lot of official and unofficial trade and it is weighed in Indias favor. We must to try to be too chankian here an say "Ha ha we will jack up this and screw Pakis" - because typically someone else - say Bangladesh ot China will buy our cotton cheap and sell it to Pakis at a higher price. Market forces are market forces and businessmen are typically not morons. they may be cheats - but not morons.krisna wrote:^^^^
1) will the raw cotton go as Indian aid to pakistan thru' UNO or is it separate. either way wont the labels be made in sdres land. Dont the pawkis know that only yindia can supply that.
2) will the yeevil sdres not jack up the prices of raw cotton if it is pawki exported
3) why does not pawki RAPEs make noises about not accepting yeevil sdre cotton as they did for Indian aid. I have not read any reports so far. when it hits their musharraf they gubo and shut their upper orifices.
If Pakistan needs 10,000 tons of cotton and they can get it cheapest and fastest from India it would hardly be clever to say "Balls we will jack up our prices so it makes it cheaper for Pakis to import from Australia". Our cotton will be left unsold and our farmers may suffer because there could be a glut in India. If the Paki mill wants Indian cotton at competitive prices and the Paki government prevents that from happening then there will be anger at the Paki government. But if we fail to make the sale then we are scoring an own goal.
There's failure and collapse. North Korea is a failed state by most measures, but the leadership and the state structure that supports it is in no danger of collapse. Their coercive capacity and willingness to use it keeps the population in line, and keeps foreign donors, even their enemies paying.shiv wrote:Cross post..
terrorism
flood
cricket scandal
terrorism
Part of the original country is Bangladesh
Parts in US control
Parts in Taliban control
Parts in Chinese control
Karachi under nobody's control
And the government wants to make war with India and capture kashmir or punish India in some way..
Folks - this is a nation in serious crisis. Don't call it failure if you don't like the word. But what is it?
There are different agencies in USA (military, CIA, Think-Tanks, Business, etc.) whose combined tendencies and sympathies go into the creation of a Pakistan policy. All these stakeholders have a small coterie who make the decisions.ramana wrote:If it werent for US glue right now TSP will become three parts: Balochistan, Sindh and Pakjab.
State and Army in Pakistan
How floods bring a harvest of gratitude
by Punyapriya Dasgupta
Of the two high-born Mirabeau brothers who lived through the French Revolution, the younger would have been quickly forgotten but for his legendary alcoholic prowess and one pithy observation he made: “Other states have their armies; in Prussia the army has a state.” Prussia no longer exists except in history books, but the truth in Mirabeau junior’s 12 words lives. In the immediate neighbourhood of India in the west an army has a State called Pakistan and in the east Myanmar (Burma) has been turned into a property of its army. The Myanmarese Generals’ grip on power is brutish. After refusing to abide by the electorate’s clear verdict two decades ago they are going to stage another election with preconditions tailored to their determination to hang on to ruthless oligarchic power. With its Nobel laureate leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the 14th year of house arrest and many of her party comrades in prison, the National League for Democracy (NLD), the winner of the 1990 election, will take no part in the contemplated bogus polls. In Pakistan, geopolitically a far more significant state in global politics, the current moves by the army are subtle and call for more attention.
After many doubts and fears about its genuineness Pakistan’s main political parties participated in the February 2008 general election and accepted the results as fair. The President Gen Pervez Musharraf went into exile and his successor as Army Chief Gen Ashfaque Kayani called all military officers heading civilian administrative units, including even dairy farms, back to the barracks. Pakistan today is trying to project an image of a civilian-ruled democracy. A low buzz of amusement mixed with incredulity inside the country as well as outside greeted the recent announcement in Islamabad that the Prime Minister had extended the tenure of General Kayani by three years.
The reality of the power equation in Pakistan had been demonstrated earlier. The civilian leaders of the government were made to realise that they must not venture into the army’s domains. The government of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was rapped on the knuckles when they ordered transfer of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) to the Ministry of Interior. Within a few hours the Gilani government issued a second statement saying that the notification placing the ISI under the Interior Ministry had been “misunderstood” which meant that the ISI remained with the Ministry of Defence — effectively with the army. In its scope and nature of operations the ISI resembles America’s CIA with the very important difference that in Pakistan it does not report to any civilian President.
In 33 of the 63 years since its creation Pakistan has been ruled by military Presidents. In the democratic interludes after the death of Gen Zia-ul-Haq the army got civilian Presidents to dismiss elected Prime Ministers — the late Benazir Bhutto twice, (in 1990 and 1996) and Mr Nawaz Sharif in 1993. Mr Sharif’s second ouster was directly by the army when he tried to sack the Army Chief, General Musharraf, and was himself thrown not only out of office but of the country as well. This chastisement of Mr Sharif was endorsed by the Supreme Court under the “doctrine of necessity”. After the make-believe restoration of democracy the shortsighted leaders of Pakistan’s main political parties vied among themselves in handing over the whip hand to the army.
Ms Benazir and Mr Sharif assiduously spread well-founded reports of their corruption and lobbied the army for the dethronement of whoever among them was in power at any time. In brutally frank words, neither of them was above prostituting Pakistan’s politics. In the current phase, politicians are trying to show themselves as more circumspect, but attempts at currying favour with the army leadership are evident. Pakistani commentators have interpreted the extension of the tenure of General Kayani as the Army Chief for three years as an insurance taken out for themselves by President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani.
As of now, no army sword overhangs the civilian regime. But a question has arisen about the relative importance of the civil and military authorities in the State of Pakistan. Mr Richard Holbrooke, a peripatetic American diplomat currently hopping in and out of Pakistan and Afghanistan, has revealed, perhaps inadvertently, to the embarrassment of the Gilani government that General Kayani “is an enormously powerful political factor” in Pakistan and “we have extensive discussions with him.” This is confirmation of what was unofficially known to all: that Pakistan’s foreign relations too are guided largely by the army. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi may be impolite to his Indian counterpart — as it happened the last time they met in Islamabad — but he has to be respectful to what the army says about the handling of his portfolio.
The cataclysmic floods in Pakistan have brought the army a huge harvest of gratitude from the people nobody could have foreseen. The Generals had for long been reviled for their suppression of democracy and turning the country into their fief. At the head of every profitable organisation of the government sat an officer of the armed forces. General Kayani ended this system and since mid-July he has been seen visiting the flood-hit areas time and again. By contrast, the misery of his people made no difference to President Zardari enjoying his visit to France and Britain. He would not forego even his scheduled visit to the 16th century chateau in Normandy which his late wife Benazir Bhutto’s family had acquired and now belongs to him.
At home Prime Minister Gilani found coping with the floods beyond the capacity of his government and confessed it. He thought this was good enough reason why government officials were not seen trying to help the distressed people. Mr Gilani was taken on a visit to one relief centre and this one turned out to be a fake. The armed forces have filled all the gaps left by the government and are extracting all the credit for it. Wherever they go to rescue people or provide relief they advertise it with the help of banners.
Journalists are on frequent flood surveys in military helicopters, and Pakistan’s TV networks are full of pictures of the army providing succour to the affected people. In some refugee centres cries — spontaneous or tutored — are heard: “Army zindabad”. For the first time in Pakistan the armed forces are scoring high in winning the hearts and minds of the people — a fact testified by respected newspaper columnists. This will help General Kayani to guide Pakistan to wherever he intends to take it.
Its sad he doesn't get what is happening in TSP. With deepening radicalization the more green/Islamists will kill the less pious. And per the Sunni doctrinairs Shias are not Muslims. Hence it doesnt matter that its Ramazan period. On the contrary it might even e considered more pious to do the dastardly acts.Pakistan: Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, aka the Pakistani Taliban) claimed responsibility for several suicide attacks on 1 September against a Shiite religious procession in Lahore, Punjab Province, that killed 33 people and wounded 150. According to an audio statement from spokesman Qari Hussain Mehsud, the group warned that more attacks would follow.
Comment: Neither Ramadan observances or a national emergency resulting from the floods seem to have any impact on the Pakistani Taliban other than to spur them to take advantage of others.
Directly to the south of the RUS lay the Associated Islamic
Republics, in a vast crescent from Morocco to Iran, abutting India
which was still officially the world's largest democratic nation;
unofficially a polyglot nation in the process of trading chaos for
Islam.
Since the 1960's, pundits had been predicting that India '… can't
keep this up much longer.' Some observers meant her
overpopulation; India's women, a miracle of dreadful fecundity,
steadily produced mouths that could not be fed, much less find
employment. Some referred to India's acceptance of fourteen
official languages. Still others indicated India's rejection of western
ties while fumbling away her parliamentary democracy.
Underlying India's manifold ills was the central fact that, until recent
years, three-quarters of her citizens espoused caste restrictions in
some form of Hinduism. But recently, tens of millions
ofharijans—untouchables scorned by ruling castes—had become
literate, and at that point began an accelerating conversion to Islam
urged on by India's already prominent Moslem minority. One might
almost suggest certain parallels between the fast-rising conservative
religious movements of the two most populous democratic nations
on earth. By 1988 the Reformed Jan'ta party, a coalition of reform
groups, was led by Moslems. Amid these delicate adjustments
came the River War with Pakistan.
Moslem Pakistan had several times struggled to produce a
democracy, falling back on martial law each time. Thanks to her
draconian rule she lost her eastern half to India in 1971, and when
India annexed Bangladesh she welcomed more Moslems into
parliament. Still devoutly Moslem, still incapable of sustaining a
democracy, still wrangling with India and fumbling with nuclear
energy, Pakistan existed largely with western aid until 1988, when
she lost the River War.
The Sutlej River cascades from Himalayan headwaters, crossing
India's Punjab before entering Pakistan. Pakistan was well into her
project to irrigate fallow land with Sutlej water when India, with
desert property of her own, began to divert too much of the Sutlej.
Pakistan protested. India borrowed a smile from Buddha. And
while debate smouldered in the UN, Pakistan's agribiz choked on
dust. Pakistan gathered her American tanks and RUS
Kalashnikovs, and struck.
Twenty days later, Pakistan was only a memory. If India was poor
in fertilizer, it was because a full one-third of her national budget
was spent on arms. As her exports of steel, cement, and machinery
mushroomed, so did her imports of French helicopters. Profits
from her new shipyards funded her navy. Pakistan had suicidally
attacked a nation whose one prosperity lay in arms, a growing giant
with growing power.
India overflew Sukkur and Karachi in two waves. The first was a
horde of small choppers firing minicannon and homing missiles; the
second was a wave of larger choppers transporting whole infantry
companies. Pakistan surrendered, obtained recognition as the State
of Sulaiman, and was instantly absorbed by India as educated
Moslems everywhere gave thanks. It was thought possible that
India had deliberately provoked the River War. Perhaps 'possible'
was too weak a word.
Now, in 1996, the fifty million Moslems of Sulaiman formed a
gentle buffer as India's border with the AIR crescent. India was
now one-third Moslem; her Hindu majority found it easier to
accommodate Islam every day.
Some days back we had an interesting case where there was a quarrel between some Mehsud tribesmen and Usman Punjabi's men in Miranshah, North Waziristan, over the rich widow of a deceased militant, and it ended with Usman Punjabi's death.Johann wrote:The real question people have is whether failure in Pakistan will lead to NK like state, Yugoslav/Soviet style dissolution of union, Somali like total collapse, or perhaps even some sort of combination.
Gradually as the area under a minority religion in Pakistan increases, India can start emasculating the local Islamist Gangs, through inter-gang wars, through stopping aid to a previously supported gang, through effecting betrayals in their ranks, through aerial bombing, through decapitating, through fighting them out, etc.Philip wrote:The Paki elite imagine themselves as being a combination of the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt,the Moghul rulers of the subcontinent and as the present day Caliphate of the Ummah,successors to the last Caliphate of the Ottoman dynasty.With this divine sanction,
Pakistan: During a tour of the devastation from the floods, Prime Minister Gilani said, "Pakistan is passing through a critical phase... we are literally in troubled waters. No country alone can tackle this kind of disaster." He described the effects of the flooding as even exceeding the destruction from the 2005 earthquake.
Comment: Leveraging its status as a nuclear weapons state, Pakistani leaders are engaging in a subtle form of extortion. Gilani almost is demanding that the community of nations bail out Pakistan, without vocalizing the obviously implied, "or else."
Gilani also is not wrong in describing the situation as critical. Farmland and herds are wiped out. The floods have affected one in eight Pakistanis, according to Gilani. The government has not begun to assess the damage to infrastructure.
The situation also is politically critical because the government's military relief efforts have generated more favorable support than the government's civilian efforts. The difference is the military gets popular gratitude and the government gets criticized.
The speed and extent of flood relief, crisis stabilization and recovery will determine whether elected government will survive or be replaced by another military regime. Gilani's implied message to the community of nations is that if the community supports democracy in Pakistan, give now.
What is the "Chandrasekhar limit?"Johann wrote:
There's failure and collapse. ...
The real question people have is whether failure in Pakistan will lead to NK like state, Yugoslav/Soviet style dissolution of union, Somali like total collapse, or perhaps even some sort of combination.
brihaspati garu,brihaspati wrote:I would be rather cautious about letting islamist stewing go to extreme lengths.
Pakistan is already 96% Muslim. That figure can move only higher.brihaspati wrote:There is not a single country or region that has any precedence of such stewing leading to turning away from Islamism.
It would be possible to change form there - but there has been only one unambiguous example - that of the Reconquista in Spain. The longer time you let a region stew in Islamism, the harder and more brutal are the techniques needed to get rid of the roots later and the process does not take place automatically. We can ponder Iran, Arabia, Iraq, Malaysia, Turkey, Indonesia, and the sub-Saharan African Muslim dominated countries, including the classic case of Somalia - none, absolutely none changed from within or broke up after long and hard stewing.
The trick is to corrupt all Islamist groups to such an extent, that they remain Islamist only in name. The trick is to have the Jihadis spill so much blood and fill the newspapers with stories of their blood-thirst, that man loses all faith in their religion. What India would need to provide is simply a bridge to the land of sanity, where there is value of human life.brihaspati wrote:That is alright if future Indians do not feel nauseous and squeamish about what then they will have to do to carry out the clean-up. If we cannot be sure about such ruthlessness, then it is better to intervene before extreme stewing and actively break up Pak and of course China's bloated empire.
Johann,Johann wrote:Pakistani Islamic Nationalism does not seek confrontation with the Global Jihad, but rather seeks to harness it as a mobilising agent and force multiplier as it did in the 1980s and 90s. Unfortunately Global Jihad's ideology takfir, which means they are ready to condemn anyone who deviates even slightly from their line as kaffirs and traitors deserving of death.RajeshG wrote:... "Islamic Nationalism" is just brilliant stuff. Just the term itself explains the junoon and the contradictions that go with it in a very precise way.
Your pitting of islamic-nationalism and global-jihad as 2 opposing forces is something i dont agree-with/understand. The other thing i have a hard time agreeing with is the usage of personalities/events/dates as a reason of the mess. I will post if i can articulate these objections in some sensible way.
Thanks.
Shehz wrote:Yesterday was East Pakistan, and today it may be Balauchistan.
Tomorrow, if Indian Govt, gives US $ 1 Bil to AZ for a signature, 1 Bil for senators and national assembly ministers (to be distributed amongst them), and another 1 Bil to NS for not opposing, Kashmir will be gifted to them in a heartbeat.
There are ways of course to neutralize Saudi participation in the bidding. They need to be kept busy elsewhere.brihaspati wrote:I do think your suggestion has good merit. Only thing I am worried about is that some other entities, like the Saudis may have a lot of petro-cash to extend the auction process interminably. Where they will be weaker is of course the military side. So we may need a combination of both and not rely only on one.
There is plenty of evidence to support the contention that India saw Pakistan
in 1947 as a temporary aberration of the political map. In accepting the plan for
partition, Congress issued a most blatant geographical and ideological statement:
Geography and the mountains and the seas fashioned India as she is, and no human
agency can change that shape or come in the way of her final destiny.... [w]hen the
present passions have subsided, India’s problems will be viewed from their proper
perspective and the false doctrine of two nations in India will be discredited and
discarded by all. (cited in Mansergh 1978)
Prem ji,Prem wrote:Rajesh Ji,
Add 20-250k Afghan Army putting preassure on Poakjoabs along with above scenario posted by you and they got to put price stickers on their forehead fatser than tey can sya AOA. Its automatic collapse or whosale/ thoak bazari once they become 50B a year prpblem for 3.5 boyfriends.