What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

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ramana
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What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by ramana »

Oh, No! Not again! One more Pak thread!!!

Relax I want to summarize and discuss in this thread what makes Pakistan tick.

We have disparate threads on TSP :

1)STFUP thread

2)PAk Economic Stress watch

3) TSP Multimedia Thread

4)Look Back At Partition

5)Pak role in Global Terrorism

6) https://irp.fas.org/news/1993/terrorism_press.html Compliation of Pak terrorism reports

etc., etc.

You get the picture.

Here I want to discuss what does all that data mean? What picture does it paint of TSP?
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by Guddu »

"what makes Pakistan tick."

Haseena atum bun :mrgreen: no pun intended
ramana
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by ramana »

Example:

Breaking the curfew PartI

Breaking the Curfew by Emma Duncan(Excerpts)

April 10th, 2012 | 1 Comment



Emma Duncan is the Deputy Editor of The Economist. She is the magazine’s chief reporter, writer and editor on climate change. She has also held several other posts on the paper, including Britain Editor and Asia Editor.
In 1988-89, she wrote “Breaking the Curfew” (Michael Joseph), a book on politics, culture and society in the troubled state of Pakistan.
Following are a few excerpts from her wonderful book on Pakistan.

“Pakistan is a forty two year old country of about 100 million people between Iran, Afghanistan, China and India, with a coastline that stretches from just east of the Strait of Hormuz, the mouth of the Gulf, to India. It has a gross domestic product per head of $350, which puts it between Haiti and Lesotho, and $60 above India. It exports cotton, heroin, labor and a favorable geopolitical attitude to the West, which do not quite pay for its imports of consumer goods and machinery. It has four provinces, Punjab, Sind, the North western Frontier Province and Baluchistan, as well as some Tribal Areas, the Northern Areas and Free (Azad) Kashmir, from which Pakistani soldiers shoot at Indian soldiers in Occupied Kashmir.

No Briton is quite free of the romance of the Raj. Although India has acquired a monopoly on imperial nostalgia, at the time it was the area that is now Pakistan which stirred the British imagination and won their respect. Kipling represented a Raj prejudice, not just in favor of the pugnacious Muslims against the educated Hindu traders and lawyers but also for the hills and mountains of the north against the endless, dry plains of Central India and the soggy luxuriance of the south. His patch ran from Lahore, home of the Zam-zammah gun that Kim plays on as the story starts, and centre of the shady dealings that drive the book’s plot, to the northern borders where lonely, embattled political agents in his stories made war and friendships amongst the Pathan tribes. Real-life civil servants considered it a privilege to get one of those jobs-to be allowed to leave your wife and family and risk your life in the remotest, most dangerous part of the Empire.




Kipling’s admiration for the area is partly to do with the effect of hardship, danger and responsibility on the green young men who either grew up fast or died. But the root of his passion, it seems to me, is sensual. He loved the rich texture of the place, over-loaded with smells and colors and small dark mysteries glimpsed n veiled windows: India was a rich fruit-cake heavy with spices, to England’s bland Victorian sponge.
The country is hot, bright and intensely varied. I carry a mental album of images that give me pleasure. On Manora Island, Pakistan’s Brighton, the beach-donkeys are camels, laboring up and down the beach with their peculiar loping grace and permanent weary smiles, carrying whole families on their bright saddle-cloths embroidered with bells and bits of mirror. The water is pale turquoise, breaking into white near shore. Further out, rocks and seaweed are mapped in dark blue. The beach stretched away, turning as white as the waves with distance and disappearing round a corner, a couple of miles on.

Arid Baluchistan has oases with date palms to the south and orchards around Quetta where the cold sweetens the apples and apricots and hardens the nuts. But those are blobs of relief in a range of colors that varies from grey to sharp pale yellow to ochre to brown, flattened into desert or creased up into folds and ridges of chiseled mountains. In fertile Punjab there is a rich softness to the landscape that is best at evening when the sky has gone pale, the tractors have ground their way home down the straight tarmac roads, and smoke from the villages rests, in perfectly horizontal strands, over the cotton, the sugar-cane and the maize. Going north, hills harden into yellow mountains. Swat valley, its slopes striped with terraces of luminous rice and persimmon trees, is their soft centre. At the top of the northern areas, on the Chinese border, is the climax of Pakistan: K2, the second highest mountain in the world, a neat black and white marbled pyramid, dusted with thin cloud, set against the eye-wrinkling brightness of the blue.

History is central to the richness. In the interior of Sind, you drive past neglected tombs left by the Arab invaders in the eleventh century. The Hindu temples are mostly-nervously-tended. In Lahore, the Sikhs’ second holiest city after Amritsar, a gold-roofed Sikh shrine stands beside the Emperor’s mosque, whose three white marble domes are silk against the rough tweed of its red sandstone again, with green parrots streaking among the gardens and marble rooms and courtyards laid out on top of it. Lahore has looked after its Moghul wonders well; more surprisingly, the white neo-classical grandeur of the best the British built has been glisteningly restored.

The Buildings are old, but the country is new. Pakistan, like Israel, was an idea, born in the mind of an eccentric student at Cambridge, and taken up by a cold legal genius whose brilliant oratory turned the fear and confusion among Indian Muslims into a demand for land, and founded a country. That, to me, is its initial oddness. Where I come from, companies, social clubs, intellectual movements are founded; countries are the accidental results of rivers, seas, mountains and the squabbles of forgotten kings. Like families, nobody asks for them they’re just there-to be loved or ignored, defended or betrayed.

Pakistan’s strange origins have given it a tendency to national self-analysis which initially attracted me to the place. A country based on an ideal has an idea, however confused it may be; at least different people in it will have some sort of ideal that the place is supposed to be living up to. I have no ideal vision of Britain, so the country does not disappoint me; but too many Pakistanis I talked to seem disappointed. It was not just disappointment that they were not as rich as they should be or that their children were finding it difficult to get jobs; it was a wider sense of betrayal, of having been cheated on a grand scale. The Army blamed the politicians, the politicians the Army; the businessmen blamed the civil servants, the civil servants the politicians, everybody blamed the landlords and the foreigners, and the left and the religious fundamentalists blamed everybody except the masses.

More than anywhere I have been-much more than India-its people worry about the state of their country. They wonder what went wrong; they fear for the future. The condemn it; they pray for it. They are involved in the nation’s public life as passionately as in their small private dilemmas. I did a small experiment with an English friend who does not believe that politics matter much to people. A chatty hotel waiter sat down with us to share a bottle of local whisky. My friend asked him questions about his family; I, about the dead president. I won hands down. My friend got monosyllabic answers, and I got florid, threatening images of the vengeance which mistreated children wreak on a dictatorial father. To a political journalist, a politicized country is thrilling. You begin to believe what you are writing matters not just to a small coterie of heavy-lunching politicians and journalists but to everybody who lives there.”




Breaking the Curfew part II

Breaking the curfew by Emma Duncan (excerpts) part II

April 11th, 2012 | Add a Comment


Emma Duncan is the Deputy Editor of The Economist. She is the magazine’s chief reporter, writer and editor on climate change. She has also held several other posts on the paper, including Britain Editor and Asia Editor.

In 1988-89, she wrote “Breaking the Curfew” (Michael Joseph), a book on politics, culture and society in the troubled state of Pakistan.
Following are a few excerpts from her wonderful book on Pakistan.

“Sitting in a garden on a winter morning, drinking milky coffee and shading my eyes from the bright sun, I mentioned to the man I was talking to, one of the central figures in the country in the past couple of decades, that I found Pakistan a hypocritical place. I said it partly as a provocation, but he, to my surprise, agreed with me, and had a theory to explain it. I might not like his theory, he said, but I should be patient while he explained it.
There are two sorts of nations, he said-those rooted in the soil, and those rooted in the ideas. India belongs to the first category; it has grown gradually out of things that have happened to a particular bit of earth. When Nehru died, he asked for his ashes to be scattered over his native soil. Pakistan, on the other hand, was created by descendants of people who thundered into the area from Tashkent, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, with a sword in one hand, the Koran in the other, and an idea in their heads- an idea of conquest, expansion, or conversion.
India’s Muslims have always been susceptible to ideas. The Khilafat movement which brought Indian Muslims out on to the streets in revolt against the British in the 1920s was the result of the defeat of Turkey in the First World War, and the harsh terms imposed by Christian victors on the Muslim Loser. It wasn’t anything to do with Indians, yet the idea of the defense of the Ummah, shook the subcontinent.


At partition, the Muslims came from India to Pakistan in search of an idea of a homeland. The people who lived in Pakistan were not stirred by the cry; local grandees had mostly either supported the British or allied themselves with the Congress Party. Still, the locals were quite happy to get rid of the Hindus, because they could wipe out their debts to the money lenders and get hold of abandoned property. When Pakistan was almost a reality, they voiced their support. ‘It was a piggy-back ride’, said the theorist; ‘though you must not ever say so in this country.’


The fanfare of idealism that brought the new country into being did not change the nature of the place selected to make it a reality. Islamic morality and egalitarianism were laid over a tribal society with normal rural sexual and alcoholic habits and a rigid hierarchy or power. The old world persisted, paying lip service to the new.




‘And this’, said the theorist, ‘created a fundamental hypocrisy, or maybe an ability to kid ourselves, in Pakistan. Look at the way the country was set up. The idea of Islam was so strong that it seemed to us perfectly reasonable to have a country where the decision to build a culvert in Dhaka was made 2000 miles away across the width of India. The absurdity of it! Then, in 1971, after the war, Pakistan ceased to exist. East Pakistan became Bangladesh and West Pakistan…called itself Pakistan. We never talk about it. We pretend it didn’t happen. We’re masters at pretending that things aren’t happening.’

I liked his idea, but I wanted to throw in some more confusion. The British left their mark too, in all sorts of areas of life, from the legal and administrative systems and the language to the chicken cutlets and the Scotch. The country’s official language is still English; the upper classes speak to each other in confusing patois that slides between the two. London, not New York, is still the second home of the Rich Pakistanis, and they are only now beginning to shift their children to American Universities, as the British ones get too expensive.

Most important, the measures of how a country should be run come from Britain. These is still a lot of respect for their incorruptibility, for the railways and roads they built, and for the depth of the research they did into the languages and customs of a people strange to them. The legal system is British, and barristers win cases by drawing on centuries-old British precedents. Parliamentary procedures are-when there is a parliament- basically British. Political debate centers around the degree to which Pakistanis will be allowed British political freedoms.

The force of British ideas has its own contradictions: British writing taught the youth of the colonies a theory of politics which the rulers did not practice. Freedom of speech is central to the idea; yet during 1857 mutiny, Mr. Roberts, Commissioner of Lahore, wrote that ‘with the exception of…the summary execution of a Meerut butcher who…made a very dubious and threatening speech to the Bazaar Sergeant, nothing of moment occurred.’ British government played on tribal and religious divisions as ruthlessly as any subsequent set of rulers. Yet in the minds of many, time has whitened the behavior of the British, and the hold of their intellectual tradition remains strong.

The contradictions, the confusions, the hypocrisies seem to me to stem from the same root that makes Pakistan such an interesting place to observe. It has three sets of history, and three sets of standards. It has the baggage of ideas that go with Pakistan, Urdu and Islam; It has the British Package; it has the ancient local base of Punjabi, Sindhi, Baluch and Pathan culture. The different layers fit badly together; and when they contradict each other, people start telling lies to others and to themselves. That comes out in the gap between sexual morality and behavior; when government stick to the letter of the law and abuse its spirit; when civil servants take bribery and decry the country’s immorality.

For a foreigner, the place can seem shockingly deceptive. It welcomes the visitor with familiar ways, then shows an alien face to shatter the sense of easy intimacy. It presents itself neatly on paper, but a glimpse of the divergence between the official and un-official versions of the country invalidates the explanation. It draws the journalist into attractive generalizations and intellectually pleasing pattern-making, then contradicts itself and destroys the thesis.”
Breaking the Curfew Part III

Breaking the curfew by Emma Duncan (excerpts) part III

April 12th, 2012 | Add a Comment


Emma Duncan is the Deputy Editor of The Economist. She is the magazine’s chief reporter, writer and editor on climate change. She has also held several other posts on the paper, including Britain Editor and Asia Editor.
In 1988-89, she wrote “Breaking the Curfew” (Michael Joseph), a book on politics, culture and society in the troubled state of Pakistan.
Following are a few excerpts from her wonderful book on Pakistan.

“There are three stages of acquaintance with the place. At first, it is wholly mysterious. The visitor wanders through the narrow alleys of bazaars, his senses confused by the strangeness and excess of everything. There is too much noise, and greater variety of it than in developed-country cities; motorbikes, rickshaws with their silencers removed, horse-drawn Tongas, people shouting louder than they do in the west. The foreign nose, which has inured itself to the strong smells of spices and sweets, is suddenly assaulted by the odor from a row of old sheep heads staring out of a butcher’s shop. There is more color everywhere, partly because warmth opens doors and brings life to the streets, and partly because Pakistanis like their clothes, their buckets and their Lorries bright. A couple of hours of all this drives the newly-arrived foreigner, dazed with the heat and the oddness of it all, back o his hermetically-sealed room in the Lahore Hilton where they swear they boil the water.

The foreigner with a few contacts then embarks on the next stage. A telephone call to a friend of a friend usually produces a dinner invitation that night, where in London it might yield an offer of drinks a week next Thursday. The dinner is at a house in one of the more central suburbs-the continental equivalents of Hampstead or Keningston-furnished as the house of a much-travelled Londoner might be. There are four or five good Persian carpets, curious carved wooden antique chairs, some delicate geometrical Baluch embroidered shirt-fronts used as cushion covers, and maybe some Koranic Calligraphy framed on the wall next to the antique water colours of the Punjabi landscape.

There is quite a lot of whiskey to drink, or gin and lime-no tonic- and bowls of peanuts or spiced dried lentils. There are a couple of businessmen there with their wives-one of whom teaches in a nearby girls’ college in the university-a politician who is a nearby landowner, and a couple who are both civil servants. The civil servants were both at Cambridge, and the other men at American universities of varying qualities. The language is English, with occasional anecdotes and bits of reported speech in Urdu; the films, plays and books are all British, American or European. The humor and the conversations are familiar; the manners better. The edge of snobbery in the social gossip is slightly sharper than in London. The political gossip is odd only in that there is so much of it, and most of the guests seem to be related to some of the protagonists. The foreigner returns to his hotel room a little unsteadily, with a couple more invitations and a comforting sense of finding himself among fellows.

The third stage is the most uncomfortable. The visitor discovers that the politician, a sensible man with an economics degree and a vision about the development of his constituency, was elected mostly because he is a living saint. The businessman who was talking about the profitability of his ultra-modern textile mill is said to be one of country’s main heroin traders who is allowed to carry on his operations because he is in partnership with a general. Two bottles of the civil servant’s whiskey-at 1,000 rupees each-were drunk, his marble floor is covered in silk carpets and his son is at university in America, yet his official salary is 9000 Rupees(300 pounds) a month. His wife, with whom the visitor had a fascinating conversation about tradition and superstition and its oppressive effect on the women of Pakistan, has refused to allow her daughter to marry a boy who is not Sayyed, a direct descendant of the prophet. The man who proclaimed himself an atheist and despised the government’s fundamentalism beats himself in the Shia processions at Muharram. The visitor then feels duped: why do they pretend to be in twentieth-century Europe when they’re in seventh-century Asia? How can educated people justify benefiting from superstition and ignorance? Why do they complain about the state of their government and their laws when they are profiting from the anarchy? Why do they criticize the Army’s power when they’re working with the soldiers? He may choose to take the next plane out, or he may stay to watch how the people live and try to unravel the contradiction and the inconsistencies.

Women provide the oddest contradictions. You see few enough on the streets. Most of those are shrouded from head to foot: the more modern and the poorest show their faces. A horrified American in Peshawar said to me that the way the South Africans treated blacks had nothing on the way the Pakistanis treated their women. Many Pakistanis are disgusted, publicly as well as privately: a supreme court judge, for instance, published a long article in ‘The Nation’ in 1988 on ‘Crimes against women in Pakistan’ discussing not only common practices like cutting off the noses of women suspected of adultery, but also the new Islamic laws brought in by Zia which he considered both discriminatory and open to abuse. ‘It is said’ he began, ‘that most law suits are caused by women, money and land in Pakistan. This reduces the position of a woman to chattel and makes her a symbol of respectability and social status like money and land. These are the characteristics of a retrogressive, feudalistic, male-dominated society.’ His article ends up on Islam, as such discussions so often do: pious Pakistanis worry how it can be that a religion which is supposed to promote good for both sexes is abused and twisted to oppress one.”

A lot of schizophrenic behavior.
shiv
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by shiv »

Pakistan is an organized criminal enterprise that offers benefits to powerful people and nations to keep it going.

We tend to expect too much "normal" behaviour from Pakis perhaps because only normal behaviour is generally rewarded as far as we are concerned. When unethical or criminal behaviour pays dividends one can expect those behaviours to play a prominent role.

Another handicap we face wrt to Pakistan is the US. The US actually pretends to follow one standard but allows and accepts criminal behaviour among a subset of "friends" from whom they gain tangible benefits, or whose enmity they believe will hurt them. For many years even on BRF this obvious bias on the part of the US was explained away by some with a puffed up sense of vicarious pride "The US is a superpower and can do anything" - the implication being that others have to suck it up and swallow it down. Pakistan cannot be dealt with in isolation without deliberately hurting US interests as well. US interests can be hurt directly and blatantly by actions taken by nations like Russia or China, or they have to be hurt covertly. Every nation on earth, even Pakistan is in the business of hurting US interests because the US maintains interests far beyond its fair share (the definition of "fair share" is a separate discussion).

Pakistan has successfully managed the US by dividing itself up internally into "poor", "extremist" and "wealthy/modern", It is the wealthy modern group who deal with the US and blame extremism on the poor (and on external enemies like India). Pakistan promises to support US interests in exchange for aid and uses extremists as a "meter" that indicates whether US aid is sufficient or not. The US is actually overstretched and finds that funding a minority in Pakistan is the cheapest way for them.

To hurt Pakistan. we must make sure the US is hurt. This sounds like such an absurd statement that I can imagine people asking me to explain this. But 60 years is a long time and Pakistani power has been supported by abundant US aid for 60 years and no amount of opposition to Pakistan by anyone has caused the core model to fail. The "suffering of ordinary Pakistanis" is of no concern to anyone in the world and we should not bother about it either. It is the US supported criminal enterprise that needs to be dealt with.

As we have collectively observed time and again, Islam is our ally. Pakistan needs more and more and more islam. Pakistani Islam needs protection and US support against kafir India.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by member_22733 »

Shiv,
This is very very rudimentary thought process (but then I think I know a bit of how Unkil thinks so its an attempt from the American side of things):

Unkil, in general, is pretty ok with the greenest of the Islamic folks. ISIS and Barbaria. Bakistan going greener wont hurt Unkil, it will only make the Gernails life difficult. They will have to manage expectations of the pious and the massa. They have done pretty good so far.

IMVVHO, the only thing that unkil is really afraid of is what is being mentioned around in hushed tones these days and I believe that there is a major uneasiness and cognitive dissonance about it in FroggyBottom side of DC: Miniaturized Nukes.

Unkil will do whatever they can to prevent Bakis from making them. It is therefore, in our interest that Bakis make them.
shiv
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by shiv »

Lokesh no disagreement with that. But the US thinks it can ally with radical Islam even if radical Islam has nukes. I think we have no proof whether this is correct or not. The way to find out is to let radical Islam come to Pakistan and possess Paki nukes.

If pure, radical Islam is not coming to Pakistan we must wonder how Pakistan can be really Islamic. Are there "shades of Islam". Are there "varieties of Islam"? is there a special and correct Islam practised by the Pakistani army and supported by the USA? These are all important civilizational questions that demand answers.

In a trice the US will ally itself with nuclear armed Islamists if that is necessary. But we need to get them to be nuclear armed first no? The fight for purity of Islam needs to be fought in Pakistan, with the Pakistani army and the US on the side of freedom and liberal Islam and TTP, ISIS etc on the dark side. I look to Pakistan and America to answer the question "Will the real Islam please stand up?"
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by dada »

Please check the following link for a 5 part series on how the West groomed radical islam.
It should help us see the much larger geo-political context.
http://www.hinduhumanrights.info/the-we ... am-part-1/


Past History has shown that the Non-nuclearised(before 1945)/nuclearised West(UK,USA...) allied with/used Radical islam in its century old geo-political game !

The Question is whether this pretentious alliance will continue after radical islam acquires nuclear weapons(especially miniaturised WMDs) remains to be seen/proved. Let radical islam(iran included) acquire/stock these weapons as quickly as possible.

Both parties aspire for perpetual global dominance. But 2 swords cannot be accomodated in the same sheath. Maybe a WW3 will resolve that issue for us all. Changing demographics in the West, Refugees/Immigration policy of the West, Petro-dollar dynamics, Russia/China alliance & how the ruling elite in islamic countries manage their masses will the critical issues to watch out! Times are really interesting !
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by SSridhar »

LokeshC wrote:IMVVHO, the only thing that unkil is really afraid of is what is being mentioned around in hushed tones these days and I believe that there is a major uneasiness and cognitive dissonance about it in FroggyBottom side of DC: Miniaturized Nukes.
I agree. If we look at that Atlantic Council video on 'Nuclear Cooperation with Pakistan' or Ms. C.Fair's article or a number of other analyses pouring forth from the US these days, they are all talking about TNWs as though if only TNWs are removed from the Pakistani armoury, everything will be all right immediately!! The US has some arrow in its quiver for each country, 'lack of religious freedom', 'poor labour laws','lack of democracy','human rights' etc. which it uses at appropriate times as the situation demands. The TNWs seem to be the latest in that list. I am not even sure if the TNW issue is directed at Pakistan or at India ! So far, we have seen the US analysts talk about how destabilizing the TNW is and soon they would blame India for that because they find the 'security paradigm' of Pakistan very convenient for their geostrategic/geopolitical manipulations. I think a subtle hint to that effect was thrown by Toby Dalton at the Atlantic Council discussion.

Anyway, the topic here is 'What makes Pakistan tick?'. TNWs are only the latest manifestation of a disease. If not TNWs, something else will crop up later. It is paradoxically the 'disease' that makes Pakistan tick. If the disease is cured, Pakistan will die. The 3½ Friends are ensuring that the patient is not treated for the disease at all, while India wants to treat the very root cause. The 3½ Friends derive huge benefits from an as-is Pakistan. Pakistan is completely aware that if it tries to look at the very root cause, there won't be any Pakistan left. So, it wants to avoid that approach which puts it in sync with the West immediately and makes them dance to their tunes and vice versa too. It is a perfect tango. If 9/11 or 7/7 cannot break it, I don't know what else will.

That is what makes Pakistan tick, India.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by UlanBatori »

I am naat understanding this dhaga. OT1H, Pakistanis ARE "ticks", "lice" whatever.
OT2H, maybe you mean "thick"? OT3H, Pakistan does NOT 'tick'. These days soosai vests and vacuum bursts use digital technology where digit (finger) is used.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by A_Gupta »

That ticking sound is the ticking of a countdown clock for a bomb. That is what keeps Pakistan ticking.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by Viv S »

shiv wrote:Another handicap we face wrt to Pakistan is the US. The US actually pretends to follow one standard but allows and accepts criminal behaviour among a subset of "friends" from whom they gain tangible benefits, or whose enmity they believe will hurt them. For many years even on BRF this obvious bias on the part of the US was explained away by some with a puffed up sense of vicarious pride "The US is a superpower and can do anything" - the implication being that others have to suck it up and swallow it down. Pakistan cannot be dealt with in isolation without deliberately hurting US interests as well. US interests can be hurt directly and blatantly by actions taken by nations like Russia or China, or they have to be hurt covertly. Every nation on earth, even Pakistan is in the business of hurting US interests because the US maintains interests far beyond its fair share (the definition of "fair share" is a separate discussion).
Unfortunately you're trying to explain with standards, ideology and philosophy what is much more effectively explained by a simple rental agreement. And the problem with your theory is that fails to explain the 'breaks' in US support.

Why did military aid to Pakistan dry up in 1966 before abruptly beginning again in 1983? And having begun in 1983 why did it abruptly cease in 1990 (with economic aid following suit in 1992)? And having ceased in 1990, why did it abruptly restart in 2002?


Image
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by A_Gupta »

http://www.cgdev.org/page/aid-pakistan-numbers
Image


The graphic on that page (second link above) gives the reasons for the suspension of US military aid to Pakistan.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by shiv »

Viv S wrote:
shiv wrote:Another handicap we face wrt to Pakistan is the US. The US actually pretends to follow one standard but allows and accepts criminal behaviour among a subset of "friends" from whom they gain tangible benefits, or whose enmity they believe will hurt them. For many years even on BRF this obvious bias on the part of the US was explained away by some with a puffed up sense of vicarious pride "The US is a superpower and can do anything" - the implication being that others have to suck it up and swallow it down. Pakistan cannot be dealt with in isolation without deliberately hurting US interests as well. US interests can be hurt directly and blatantly by actions taken by nations like Russia or China, or they have to be hurt covertly. Every nation on earth, even Pakistan is in the business of hurting US interests because the US maintains interests far beyond its fair share (the definition of "fair share" is a separate discussion).
Unfortunately you're trying to explain with standards, ideology and philosophy what is much more effectively explained by a simple rental agreement. And the problem with your theory is that fails to explain the 'breaks' in US support.

Why did military aid to Pakistan dry up in 1966 before abruptly beginning again in 1983? And having begun in 1983 why did it abruptly cease in 1990 (with economic aid following suit in 1992)? And having ceased in 1990, why did it abruptly restart in 2002?


http://i.imgur.com/qwWqW2s.png
You are implying that because aid was zero on some years it shows that the US simply purchases Pakistani support whenever needed? That is no different from what i am saying. The US sees Pakistan as a friend, much as someone might drive solace and satisfaction from a prostitute who will perform services on and off. It is the US's prerogative to see Pakistan as a friend, and a lover if need be. The US has chosen to be forgiving of Pakistan's trespasses and has never done a U-turn on Pakistan they way they did U-turns on other nations - like Iran for example

However I am adding that it is necessary (if at all possible) to try and ensure that the US gets hurt by such friendship. The fact that Pakistan hurts the US (to some extent) does not bother the US because the benefits of friendship with Pakistan are seen as greater than the drawbacks. However there are some ways in which this great friendship between the great democracies of Pakistan and the US might get soured and I am hoping that Pakistan can be coaxed or forced into such a situation. That has been my position for a long long time and it is no different now.

I also say that if US power can be directly diminished in some way then Pakistan's power would automatically come down because Pakistan's power is linked to US power. This too is an old position that I have held for a long time. But I would rather see Pakistan itself damaging US power in some way - that would give me great satisfaction. One such thing would be the emergence of a nuclear armed ISIS or Taliban with Pakistani nuclear weapons and perhaps US derived targeting and delivery systems. It would not make India any safer, but it would make the US and Europe less safe and ensure that they really enjoy the benefits of their long term support for Pakistan
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by SBajwa »

Baki Army, Mullahs and 3.5 friends!
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by KLNMurthy »

Nothing like getting the answer in the subject's own words.

For me, the Life magazine interview with Jinnah still contains all the answers as to the nature, intent and motivation of Pakistan. It is the ur-text of core pakistaniat.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by ramana »

Viv S wrote:
Unfortunately you're trying to explain with standards, ideology and philosophy what is much more effectively explained by a simple rental agreement. And the problem with your theory is that fails to explain the 'breaks' in US support.

Why did military aid to Pakistan dry up in 1966 before abruptly beginning again in 1983? And having begun in 1983 why did it abruptly cease in 1990 (with economic aid following suit in 1992)? And having ceased in 1990, why did it abruptly restart in 2002?
From my understanding:

- Military aid to Pakistan stopped in aftermath of 1965 war. US did a war game of Indo-Pak war starting in Sept 1966, in early 1965 as reported in "Crisis Games' by Sidney Giffen. The game objectives were to change the Indian sub-continent characteristics. What shocked the US was the war game was implemented by Pakistan.
- Military aid resumed in 1983 just as Reagan decided to up the ante in Afghanistan against the Soviets. By the same token the PRC was given green signal to transfer nukes weapons to TSP for countering FSU in case of retaliation.
- Military aid ceased in 1990 due to the nuke test in Lop Nor which meant instead of transferred nukes TSP now has tested nukes of own manufacture. Its became a defacto nuke power and not a delegated nuke power. Pressler Amendent was invoked. Also Pak had threatened to use nukes on India in 1990. At that time India did not have any nukes. Economic aid was also cutoff.
- Military aid restarted in 2002 due to 9/11 and start of GOAT to get access to Afghanistan and as baksheesh to sell the Taliban down the river.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by ramana »

KLNMurthy wrote:Nothing like getting the answer in the subject's own words.

For me, the Life magazine interview with Jinnah still contains all the answers as to the nature, intent and motivation of Pakistan. It is the ur-text of core pakistaniat.

Yes I want to listen to them in their own words to understand what makes them tick? or so virulent against India.

Which is the exact quote you found in that interview?
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by VKumar »

USA, CHINA, KSA plus their own inability to overcome hypocrisy
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by deejay »

India.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by member_22733 »

Since we are doing one word answers:
Hindus.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by NRao »

What makes Pakistan tick?

Legalized, internationally accepted, swatted by India, in-their-DNA, shameless blackmail & crime.


{Ramana, you sure know how to get a new year started on the right foot.)
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by Prem »

LokeshC wrote:Since we are doing one word answers:
Hindus.
Paki Soul is Sick & it Ticks on Periodic Pin Prick to assure themselves they matter to India .
SCIS i.e Successful Civilisational Indian State . It will bury so many Ghosts ,Jinns and Sufie kanjars.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by A_Gupta »

Annotated:

The Messiah and The Promised Land
Margaret Bourke-White was a correspondent and photographer for LIFE magazine during the WW II years. In September 1947, White went to Pakistan. She met Jinnah and wrote about what she found and heard in her book Halfway to Freedom: A Report on the New India,Simon and Schuster, New York, 1949. The following are the excerpts:

Pakistan was one month old. Karachi was its mushrooming capital. On the sandy fringes of the city an enormous tent colony had grown up to house the influx of minor government officials. There was only one major government official, Mahomed Ali Jinnah, and there was no need for Jinnah to take to a tent. The huge marble and sandstone Government House, vacated by British officialdom, was waiting. The Quaid-i-Azam moved in, with his sister, Fatima, as hostess. Mr. Jinnah had put on what his critics called his "triple crown": he had made himself Governor-General; he was retaining the presidency of the Muslim League -- now Pakistan's only political party; and he was president of the country's lawmaking body, the Constituent Assembly. {This triple crown is a manifestation of Pakistaniyat}

"We never expected to get it so soon," Miss Fatima said when I called. "We never expected to get it in our lifetimes."

If Fatima's reaction was a glow of family pride, her brother's was a fever of ecstasy. Jinnah's deep-sunk eyes were pinpoints of excitement. His whole manner indicated that an almost overwhelming exaltation was racing through his veins. I had murmured some words of congratulation on his achievement in creating the world's largest Islamic nation.

"Oh, it's not just the largest Islamic nation. Pakistan is the fifth-largest nation in the world!"

The note of personal triumph was so unmistakable that I wondered how much thought he gave to the human cost: {Pakistaniyat} more Muslim lives had been sacrificed to create the new Muslim homeland than America, for example, had lost during the entire second World War. I hoped he had a constructive plan for the seventy million citizens of Pakistan. What kind of constitution did he intend to draw up?

"Of course it will be a democratic constitution; Islam is a democratic religion." {Pakistaniyat}

I ventured to suggest that the term "democracy" was often loosely used these days. Could he define what he had in mind?

"Democracy is not just a new thing we are learning," said Jinnah. "It is in our blood. We have always had our system of zakat -- our obligation to the poor."{Pakistaniyat}

This confusion of democracy with charity troubled me. I begged him to be more specific.

"Our Islamic ideas have been based on democracy and social justice since the thirteenth century."{Pakistaniyat}

This mention of the thirteenth century troubled me still more. Pakistan has other relics of the Middle Ages besides "social justice" -- the remnants of a feudal land system, for one. What would the new constitution do about that? .. "The land belongs to the God," says the Koran. This would need clarification in the constitution. Presumably Jinnah, the lawyer, would be just the person to correlate the "true Islamic principles" one heard so much about in Pakistan with the new nation's laws. But all he would tell me was that the constitution would be democratic because "the soil is perfectly fertile for democracy."

What plans did he have for the industrial development of the country? Did he hope to enlist technical or financial assistance from America?

"America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America," {Pakistaniyat}was Jinnah's reply. "Pakistan is the pivot of the world, {Pakistaniyat} as we are placed" -- he revolved his long forefinger in bony circles -- "the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves." He leaned toward me, dropping his voice to a confidential note. "Russia," confided Mr. Jinnah, "is not so very far away."

This had a familiar ring. In Jinnah's mind this brave new nation had no other claim on American friendship than this - that across a wild tumble of roadless mountain ranges lay the land of the Bolsheviks. I wondered whether the Quaid-i-Azam considered his new state only as an armored buffer between opposing major powers. He was stressing America's military interest in other parts of the world. "America is now awakened," he said with a satisfied smile. Since the United States was now bolstering up Greece and Turkey, she should be much more interested in pouring money and arms into Pakistan. "If Russia walks in here," he concluded, "the whole world is menaced."

In the weeks to come I was to hear the Quaid-i-Azam's thesis echoed by government officials throughout Pakistan. "Surely America will build up our army," they would say to me. "Surely America will give us loans to keep Russia from walking in." But when I asked whether there were any signs of Russian infiltration, they would reply almost sadly, as though sorry not to be able to make more of the argument. "No, Russia has shown no signs of being interested in Pakistan."

This hope of tapping the U. S. Treasury {Pakistaniyat}was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan's own uncertain position as a new political entity. Actually, I think, it was more nearly related to the even more significant bankruptcy of ideas in the new Muslim state -- a nation drawing its spurious warmth from the embers of an antique religious fanaticism, fanned into a new blaze.

Jinnah's most frequently used technique in the struggle for his new nation had been the playing of opponent against opponent.{Pakistaniyat} Evidently this technique was now to be extended into foreign policy. ....

No one would have been more astonished than Jinnah if he could have foreseen thirty or forty years earlier that anyone would ever speak of him as a "savior of Islam." In those days any talk of religion brought a cynical smile. He condemned those who talked in terms of religious rivalries, and in the stirring period when the crusade for freedom began sweeping the country he was hailed as "the embodied symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity." The gifted Congresswoman, Mrs. Naidu, one of Jinnah's closest friends, wrote poems extolling his role as the great unifier in the fight for independence. "Perchance it is written in the book of the future," ran one of her tributes, "that he, in some terrible crisis of our national struggle, will pass into immortality" as the hero of "the Indian liberation."

In the "terrible crisis," Mahomed Ali Jinnah was to pass into immortality, not as the ambassador of unity, but as the deliberate apostle of discord. What caused this spectacular renunciation of the concept of a united India, to which he had dedicated the greater part of his life? No one knows exactly. The immediate occasion for the break, in the mid-thirties, was his opposition to Gandhi's civil disobedience program. Nehru says that Jinnah "disliked the crowds of ill-dressed people who filled the Congress" {Pakistaniyat} and was not at home with the new spirit rising among the common people {Pakistaniyat} under Gandhi's magnetic leadership. Others say it was against his legal conscience to accept Gandhi's program. One thing is certain: the break with Gandhi, Nehru, and the other Congress leaders was not caused by any Hindu-Muslim issue.

In any case, Jinnah revived the moribund Muslim League in 1936 after it had dragged through an anemic thirty years' existence, and took to the religious soapbox. He began dinning into the ears of millions of Muslims the claim that they were downtrodden solely because of Hindu domination. {Pakistaniyat} During the years directly preceding this move on his part, an unprecedented degree of unity had developed between Muslims and Hindus in their struggle for independence from the British Raj. The British feared this unity, and used their divide-and-rule tactics to disrupt it. Certain highly placed Indians also feared unity, dreading a popular movement which would threaten their special position. Then another decisive factor arose. Although Hindus had always been ahead of Muslims in the industrial sphere, the great Muslim feudal landlords now had aspirations toward industry. From these wealthy Muslims, who resented the well-established Hindu competition, Jinnah drew his powerful supporters. One wonders whether Jinnah was fighting to free downtrodden Muslims from domination or merely to gain an earmarked area, free from competition, for this small and wealthy clan.

The trend of events in Pakistan would support the theory that Jinnah carried the banner of the Muslim landed aristocracy, rather than that of the Muslim masses he claimed to champion. There was no hint of personal material gain in this. Jinnah was known to be personally incorruptible, a virtue which gave him a great strength with both poor and rich. The drive for personal wealth played no part in his politics. It was a drive for power. ......

Less than three months after Pakistan became a nation, Jinnah's Olympian assurance had strangely withered. His altered condition was not made public. "The Quaid-i-Azam has a bad cold" was the answer given to inquiries.

Only those closest to him knew that the "cold" was accompanied by paralyzing inability to make even the smallest decisions, by sullen silences striped with outbursts of irritation, by a spiritual numbness concealing something close to panic underneath. I knew it only because I spent most of this trying period at Government House, attempting to take a new portrait of Jinnah for a Life cover.

The Quaid-i-Azam was still revered as a messiah and deliverer by most of his people. But the "Great Leader" himself could not fail to know that all was not well in his new creation, the nation; the nation that his critics referred to as the "House that Jinnah built." The separation from the main body of India had been in many ways an unrealistic one. Pakistan raised 75 per cent of the world's jute supply; the processing mills were all in India. Pakistan raised one third of the cotton of India, but it had only one thirtieth of the cotton mills. Although it produced the bulk of Indian skins and hides, all the leather tanneries were in South India. The new state had no paper mills, few iron foundries. Rail and road facilities, insufficient at best, were still choked with refugees. Pakistan has a superbly fertile soil, and its outstanding advantage is self-sufficiency in food, but this was threatened by the never-ending flood of refugees who continued pouring in long after the peak of the religious wars had passed.

With his burning devotion to his separate Islamic nation, Jinnah had taken all these formidable obstacles in his stride. But the blow that finally broke his spirit struck at the very name of Pakistan. While the literal meaning of the name is "Land of the Pure," the word is a compound of initial letters of the Muslim majority provinces which Jinnah had expected to incorporate: P for the Punjab, A for the Afghans' area on the Northwest Frontier, S for Sind, -tan for Baluchistan. But the K was missing.

Kashmir, India's largest princely state, despite its 77 per cent Muslim population, had not fallen into the arms of Pakistan by the sheer weight of religious majority. Kashmir had acceded to India, and although it was now the scene of an undeclared war between the two nations, the fitting of the K into Pakistan was left in doubt. With the beginning of this torturing anxiety over Kashmir, the Quaid-i-Azam's siege of bad colds began, and then his dismaying withdrawal into himself. ....

Later, reflecting on what I had seen, I decided that this desperation was due to causes far deeper than anxiety over Pakistan's territorial and economic difficulties. I think that the tortured appearance of Mr. Jinnah was an indication that, in these final months of his life, he was adding up his own balance sheet. Analytical, brilliant, and no bigot, he knew what he had done. Like Doctor Faustus, he had made a bargain from which he could never be free. During the heat of the struggle he had been willing to call on all the devilish forces of superstition, and now that his new nation had been achieved the bigots were in the position of authority. {Pakistaniyat}The leaders of orthodoxy and a few "old families" had the final word and, to perpetuate their power, were seeing to it that the people were held in the deadening grip of religious superstition.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by member_22733 »

I think we all know the answer, and I think it cannot be put into a simple sentence or one single cause. I think there are many fathers of Bakistan, including the four fathers. There are many "reasons" on what make bakistan tick the way it does today. I try to outline it below (long post).

I think we can try to understand Bakistan by its various "Raisin Dieters" a phrase used frequently by the folk that inhabit places like SASSI (and would belong to a mental assylum in any dharmic country).

At the beginning of Bakistan there were the following Raisin Dieters:

Raisin Dieter for 1ball: Islamic Ummah.
Raisin Dieter for Djinnah: Being a Rent Seeking Quaid.
Raisin Dieter for Feudal Islamic Elite (shia/Ismaili/Ahmedia): Increase their Feudal clout
Raisin Dieter for Pious Islamic Elite (Sunni): Re-Establish Mughal Empire.

The above few dieters resulted in Kashmir Invasion and the subsequent mess in Kashmir. Giving rise to Future "Raisin Dieters":
The Admin Raisin Dieters:
Raisin Dieter for Ayub Khan: Cashmere and Nukes to subjugate Yindoos and start Fauji Inc.
Effect: 1965
Raisin Dieter for Bhutto: Revenge for Junagarh, Cashmere, Nucular weapons,1965
Aggravating Circumstance: Pakjabi theory of racial sup-e-riority against SDREs (including East Bakistanis).
Effect: 1971
Raisin Dieter for Zia: Revenge for 1971, 1965, Cashmere
Effect: More Islam and the fall of Bakistan to Sunni Islam.
Raisin Dieter for Benazir: Cashmere, 1971, 1965
Effect: Terrorism as a result of More Islam and as a result of willing to be sold out to the west.
Raisin Dieter for Mushy: Cashmere, 1971, 1965
Effect: Kargil.

The Islamic Raisin Dieters:
Shia Raisin Dieter: Hate the Kaffir Hindu next door
Ahmedia Raisin Dieter: Hate the Kaffir Hindu next door
Sunni Raisin Dieter: Try to establish Sunni Ummah by toppling Shia murtads from the seats of power.

The Sectarian Raisin Dieter:
Pakjabi Raisin Dieter: Keep Mughal colonial system alive by sucking up dry occupied territories of Bakistan
Effect: 1971, Balochistan genocide, Sindh Freedom movement
Sindh, Baloch Raisin Dieter: Run from bakistan.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by ShauryaT »

Ramana: If this is a serious thread, my answers are:

1. Geography
2. Punjab and associated Demographics
3. TFTA ness
4. Civilizational Indian ethos amongst the masses
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by member_22733 »

Point #4 above is really interesting. Did not think of it in that terms.

Adding one more
5) Large heartedness of Hindus towards Bakistanis. If this large heartedness was not there, we would have kicked the Baki mushes when they were down. Instead each time the Baki bent over forward and GUBOed to us, we let them go.

(This is not really isolated to the Bakis, after liberation of Goa from Portugese invaders, we let them go with all their money with little or no long term consequence.)
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by shiv »

LokeshC wrote:
Adding one more
5) Large heartedness of Hindus towards Bakistanis. If this large heartedness was not there, we would have kicked the Baki mushes when they were down. Instead each time the Baki bent over forward and GUBOed to us, we let them go.
Lokesh, interestngly this is the basis of Indian pseudosecular liberalism (Hindu fake Liberalism), Indian Liberals use pre-existing Hindu liberalism to protect and defend conservatism among Allah-bhakts and Christu-bhakts. Hindu fake dhimi liberals will freely criticize Hindus but balk and saying anything negative about Islam. I have tried to show that graphically as below

Long long ago when my thoughts were less clear I had generated these graphics of how Hindu fake liberals react to Hinduism and to Islam. In fact I suspect Pakistan ticks partly because Indian liberals have given Pakistan a stake in the well being of Muslims in India
Image
Image
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by Shreeman »

why does pakistan carry ticks?

Its from all that rolling in the bushes with the four fathers. Ticks are hard to get rid of.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by shiv »

Let me try and express something that I have tried to do on and off over the years:

Does the US have the right to intervene in Iraq or Afghanistan? I would answer that question with an ambiguous yes and no. Yes because might is right. No because international law allows the existence of nation states whose borders are supposedly sacrosanct and the UN exists to help maintain national sovereignty.

Does the Pakistani army have a right to intervene militarily in Pakistan occupied Kashmir, Baluchistan and Pakthun lands? The answer, according to "internationa(lol) law is YES because Pakistan with its existing borders has international recognition. So the Pakistani government of the day, be it a civilian government or the army has complete rights over what it does on its own territory as recognized by the UN.

Going by these rules, was the Indian action in East Pakistan in 1971 legal or illegal? Technically it was as illegal as the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. No one could do much about India, but Saddam was evicted from Kuwait.

That brings me to the point of this post: As long as Pakistan is an internationally recognized nation state trying to undermine that state is illegal under international law. But a nation can intervene (illegally) in Pakistan if it has the military and diplomatic clout to get away with it as the US regularly does and as India did on occasion. But the reverse is also true. If a nation is an internationally recognized state, another state can support this one even if the state itself is committing illegal acts within and outside its own territory. That is what Pakistan gets - support from its allies even as it commits illegal acts outside its own territories and violations of human rights within its own territories. If Pakistan did not have such support, particularly from the US, its ability to continue illegal acts would be greatly restricted.

Finally let me say that Pakistan has reached a phase with nuclear weapons where the biggest powers in the world are now unable to restrict Pakistan and they simply beat about the bush ineffectively when it comes to Pakistan. If a nation like the US is happy to see Pakistan aiming its nukes at India and not at its own allies, there is no reason why India should not similarly utilize Pakistan in the way the US does (i.e put up with some aggravation) if the end point ensures that Pakistan's allies like the US ad China are themselves threatened by Pakistani nukes. This is natural justice and it is essential that India acts in a manner that undermines the power of Pakistan's supporters, an act that will secondarily undermine Pakistani power.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by Kashi »

shiv wrote:If a nation like the US is happy to see Pakistan aiming its nukes at India and not at its own allies, there is no reason why India should not similarly utilize Pakistan in the way the US does (i.e put up with some aggravation) if the end point ensures that Pakistan's allies like the US ad China are themselves threatened by Pakistani nukes. This is natural justice and it is essential that India acts in a manner that undermines the power of Pakistan's supporters, an act that will secondarily undermine Pakistani power.
But the fact is the US allies (except Israel) and also Paki allies and there's little likelihood of them being threatened by Paki nukes. Pakistan gains nothing by threatening them with nukes, since many of them are equally if not more fanatic and capable of irrationality. Not to mention the backlash from the Ummah.

US itself is unlikely to be threatened by Paki nukes because of distance and geography. Likewise for China, their major population and economic centres are far away from Pakistan, beyond the reach of Paki delivery systems. The Paki delivery systems (and nukes) themselves were supplied by US and China, so they would have a better idea than most on how to handle them when it becomes necessary.

The only country that faces a legitimate threat from Paki nukes is India. The forefathers, their allies and their subordinates know that and they intend to see that it stays that way. Which is why, we are unlikely to see any serious attempts to cap/curb the Paki nuclear weapons programme. However, they WILL make sure that India can do nothing about it.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by member_22733 »

Kashi sir,

Bakistani Gernails have absolutely nothing to achieve by threatening their own massas. But Bakistan is not its Gernails. Once they miniaturize the nukes and if one Unkil hating jeeehardi "non-state-guy" (among the millions) gets his hands on it, EU and Americans (in Army bases in EU) are in deep doodoo.

Thats why there is a sense of panic. The Gernails smell a bizziness opportunity and will be stupid enough to threaten unkil with it (which they have been). I do hope they are stupid enough to manufacture them.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by shiv »

Kashi wrote: But the fact is the US allies (except Israel) and also Paki allies and there's little likelihood of them being threatened by Paki nukes. Pakistan gains nothing by threatening them with nukes, since many of them are equally if not more fanatic and capable of irrationality. Not to mention the backlash from the Ummah.

US itself is unlikely to be threatened by Paki nukes because of distance and geography. Likewise for China, their major population and economic centres are far away from Pakistan, beyond the reach of Paki delivery systems. The Paki delivery systems (and nukes) themselves were supplied by US and China, so they would have a better idea than most on how to handle them when it becomes necessary.

The only country that faces a legitimate threat from Paki nukes is India. The forefathers, their allies and their subordinates know that and they intend to see that it stays that way. Which is why, we are unlikely to see any serious attempts to cap/curb the Paki nuclear weapons programme. However, they WILL make sure that India can do nothing about it.
These are known facts.

It has been my position all along that there are anti-west elements inside Pakistan. These people need to be empowered. How that might be achieved is a different issue.

The US pays off the Pakistani army to fight the anti-west elements which it promptly does. What can we do to ensure that the anti West elements gain popularity and support in Pakistan?
There are several options short of funding the TTP and ISIS
1. Ensure that the Pakistani army remains weak and threatened existentially vis a vis India no matter how much support they get from the west
2. Identify the ideology of the anti west elements and ensure that those elements take on their own opponents within Pakistan. For example if pure Islamists are being hammered by the "moderate" Pakistani army, we need to ensure that the pure Muslims get the moral and diplomatic support to hammer the Pakistani army back
3. Do not lift a finger to implement any US plans that strengthens the Pakistani army, even if the US continues to unilaterally bolster the Pakistani army
4. Make public declarations about how the US has let down Islam and Pakistan and make the slavery of the Pakistani army to Americans known to the public in Islamic nations at large.

None of these measures will bring peace to India, but it wiil not get Pakistan peace or prosperity either and the mythical stability and balance that some powers may desire will never happen. We simply spoil what does not suit us and absorb whatever hits come our way en route. Everyone does that - so why not us? Why must we hanker for some extra special peace and stability? Instability is the law. Constant competition with the most powerful world powers is essential for our own future.

None of these plans has any guarantees of success, but having said that, if anyone is looking for guarantees, the US gets no guarantee that it's plan will get carried out by the Paki army and the Paki army gets no guarantee that it will not get kicked by India. So let us not go down the guarantee route. Everything is relative to something else leaving everything open.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by Shreeman »

Why is pakistan rolling in the grass so it gets ticks?

Well, not everyone can have such five-star opulent dinner without four fathers! If you have it, flaunt it. Who else is going to eat it?
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by Kashi »

LokeshC wrote:Bakistani Gernails have absolutely nothing to achieve by threatening their own massas. But Bakistan is not its Gernails. Once they miniaturize the nukes and if one Unkil hating jeeehardi "non-state-guy" (among the millions) gets his hands on it, EU and Americans (in Army bases in EU) are in deep doodoo.

Thats why there is a sense of panic. The Gernails smell a bizziness opportunity and will be stupid enough to threaten unkil with it (which they have been). I do hope they are stupid enough to manufacture them.
I agree, but the Baki gernail and the Unkil-hating Jeehardi have one thing in common. They both hate India and Hindus to the core. So if a Paki NSA (non-state actor) DOES get his/her hands on a miniaturised nuke, the first place they'll turn to for a test drive will be India. Why expend energy to travel "saat samundar paar", when there are plenty of kuffar to be killed next door?Of course, once it works, it can be used to extract more baksheesh from the West, accompanied by a hearty dose of "Atta boy".
shiv wrote:It has been my position all along that there are anti-west elements inside Pakistan. These people need to be empowered. How that might be achieved is a different issue.
Therein lies the rub, they are not just anti-west. They are equally if not more virulent in their hatred of India and Hindus. We empower them and we are empowering our enemies. I would not put it past them to take all our assistance, make a temporary alliance with TSPA to take on the Kuffar next door and then resume their "bilateral engagements" or move on to plotting the downfall of the West.
shiv wrote:The US pays off the Pakistani army to fight the anti-west elements which it promptly does. What can we do to ensure that the anti West elements gain popularity and support in Pakistan?
The US paid the Pakis to channel anti-Soviet elements to Afghanistan. Pakis gleefully took the money and used it against us. Then those anti-Soviets became anti-West. Once again, US paid off the TSPA to fight them. In return, TSPA teamed up with the very elements they were paid to fight to kill US and NATO troops and citizens. Yet, the US continues to pay them.
shiv wrote:There are several options short of funding the TTP and ISIS
1. Ensure that the Pakistani army remains weak and threatened existentially vis a vis India no matter how much support they get from the west
How? Our border deployments and aggressive postures on LoC will have limited affect.
shiv wrote:2. Identify the ideology of the anti west elements and ensure that those elements take on their own opponents within Pakistan. For example if pure Islamists are being hammered by the "moderate" Pakistani army, we need to ensure that the pure Muslims get the moral and diplomatic support to hammer the Pakistani army back
The ideology is hatred of the Kuffar and they hate us even more that they probably hate TSPA. Their war against TSPA is one of supremacy and political dominance. Their hatred for us runs much deeper.
shiv wrote:3. Do not lift a finger to implement any US plans that strengthens the Pakistani army, even if the US continues to unilaterally bolster the Pakistani army
I am not sure I quite understand. Do you mean we should not buy US military equipment that will be used to fund Paki army?
shiv wrote:4. Make public declarations about how the US has let down Islam and Pakistan and make the slavery of the Pakistani army to Americans known to the public in Islamic nations at large.
The Islamic nations (except Iran) are themselves enslaved to the US with all the military bases and US companies based there. The biggest one of them- KSA, is the biggest slave of them all. There people are well aware of the fact, they do not need the Paki example to make them see the reality. And of course there's the elephant in the room. Our vast homegrown "peaceful" population. If we invoke Islam in any form, there's no way we escape the repercussions on our own citizens of that faith.
shiv wrote:None of these measures will bring peace to India, but it wiil not get Pakistan peace or prosperity either and the mythical stability and balance that some powers may desire will never happen. We simply spoil what does not suit us and absorb whatever hits come our way en route. Everyone does that - so why not us? Why must we hanker for some extra special peace and stability? Instability is the law. Constant competition with the most powerful world powers is essential for our own future.

None of these plans has any guarantees of success, but having said that, if anyone is looking for guarantees, the US gets no guarantee that it's plan will get carried out by the Paki army and the Paki army gets no guarantee that it will not get kicked by India. So let us not go down the guarantee route. Everything is relative to something else leaving everything open.
Food for thought.
ramana
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by ramana »

LokeshC, You have the answer to need to expand on why it is. :)

Essentially what I see is collection what we think makes them tick.

I would also ask you to think what they think makes them tick?

Shaurya Its serious thread.
shiv
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by shiv »

Kashi wrote: Therein lies the rub, they are not just anti-west. They are equally if not more virulent in their hatred of India and Hindus. We empower them and we are empowering our enemies. I would not put it past them to take all our assistance, make a temporary alliance with TSPA to take on the Kuffar next door and then resume their "bilateral engagements" or move on to plotting the downfall of the West.
Two points
1. I believe that you are assuming that they hate India more than the west without understanding or choosing to ignore the reason why Islamists hate anyone. In fact their modus operandi is to first attack the people who are their opponents closest to them - in this case the Paki army
2. You are also forgetting or choosing to ignore that it was the Paki army that first tried to coopt Islamists to fight India alone and not the west and the Islamists have now broken free and are fighting the Paki army and the west. How are you able to say that they will turn the clock back when everything suggests that the clock is not going to turn back to the good old days when the Paki army (and presumably the US) thought Islamists would restrict themselves to attacking India?

Kashi wrote: The US paid the Pakis to channel anti-Soviet elements to Afghanistan. Pakis gleefully took the money and used it against us. Then those anti-Soviets became anti-West. Once again, US paid off the TSPA to fight them. In return, TSPA teamed up with the very elements they were paid to fight to kill US and NATO troops and citizens. Yet, the US continues to pay them.
Gradually - looking at events from the 60s until 2015 - you find that the US has increasingly come under attack while the intensity of attacks on India has been constant with some variation. What has changed is the increase in attacks on the west, which must be encouraged. We must be doing something right. I have some idea what we are doing right but I will not digress into that now

Kashi wrote: How? Our border deployments and aggressive postures on LoC will have limited affect
.
I believe that this is an off the cuff statement that you are making without looking at what effect our border deployments have had both on the Pakistan army and the Pakistan-India-US relations. Have you missed the dozens of posts and pointers on this thread on that subject? I can write more detail but you have to show that you are interested after having missed so much
Kashi wrote: The ideology is hatred of the Kuffar and they hate us even more that they probably hate TSPA. Their war against TSPA is one of supremacy and political dominance. Their hatred for us runs much deeper.
I disagree with this. You are confusing Pakistaniyat with Islamiyat. Pakistan used Islamiyat as Pakistaniyat - trying to bend Islam to lick western ass while attacking India. Islam has no intention of selective ass licking like the Pakistani army


Kashi wrote:
shiv wrote:3. Do not lift a finger to implement any US plans that strengthens the Pakistani army, even if the US continues to unilaterally bolster the Pakistani army
I am not sure I quite understand. Do you mean we should not buy US military equipment that will be used to fund Paki army?
No we buy what we want constrained by what we get. We simply work in our own interests. For example, if the Pakistani army is attacking someone along their Afghan border based on US pressure we do not cooperate with the US reducing pressure on the Indian border if there are attacks on this side. We threaten them and over stretch them. Have you or have you not been reading reports, discussed frequently on this thread and in the Pak Mil thread of the military forum of Pakistani army deployments and morale?

Kashi wrote: The Islamic nations (except Iran) are themselves enslaved to the US with all the military bases and US companies based there. The biggest one of them- KSA, is the biggest slave of them all. There people are well aware of the fact, they do not need the Paki example to make them see the reality. And of course there's the elephant in the room. Our vast homegrown "peaceful" population. If we invoke Islam in any form, there's no way we escape the repercussions on our own citizens of that faith.
Excuses must never deflect us from doing and saying what we must.
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by Kashi »

shiv wrote:Two points
1. I believe that you are assuming that they hate India more than the west without understanding or choosing to ignore the reason why Islamists hate anyone. In fact their modus operandi is to first attack the people who are their opponents closest to them - in this case the Paki army
2. You are also forgetting or choosing to ignore that it was the Paki army that first tried to coopt Islamists to fight India alone and not the west and the Islamists have now broken free and are fighting the Paki army and the west. How are you able to say that they will turn the clock back when everything suggests that the clock is not going to turn back to the good old days when the Paki army (and presumably the US) thought Islamists would restrict themselves to attacking India?
I have not chosen to ignore those aspects, it's just that I do not have the depth of understanding that you possess. What I have gathered is that the Islamists and Pakis, if anything are both predictable and unpredictable in near about equal measures. I get your point that our aim should be to ensure that the Islamists and Pakis keep fighting each other. the only question is how do we do that without getting ensnared in the snake pit ourselves.
shiv wrote:Gradually - looking at events from the 60s until 2015 - you find that the US has increasingly come under attack while the intensity of attacks on India has been constant with some variation. What has changed is the increase in attacks on the west, which must be encouraged. We must be doing something right. I have some idea what we are doing right but I will not digress into that now
Oh that I agree.
shiv wrote: I believe that this is an off the cuff statement that you are making without looking at what effect our border deployments have had both on the Pakistan army and the Pakistan-India-US relations. Have you missed the dozens of posts and pointers on this thread on that subject? I can write more detail but you have to show that you are interested after having missed so much
I may have missed this. I can understand that our border deployments and enhanced security posture makes it difficult for Pakis to slip in jihadis into India. Of course, it has been observed that some of them in frustration have turned on Paki army itself. But is that enough in itself to destabilise the Paki army? The closest that Paki army came to being fully destabilised was when the "Bad taliban" attacks were at their peak and before that when they suffered the ignominy of 1971. One may argue Kargil as well, but it was Badmash who ended up getting the brickbats for the fiasco, while the army gleefully conducted another coup to a rapturous welcome from the aam abdul.
shiv wrote:I disagree with this. You are confusing Pakistaniyat with Islamiyat. Pakistan used Islamiyat as Pakistaniyat - trying to bend Islam to lick western ass while attacking India. Islam has no intention of selective ass licking like the Pakistani army
I agree, but Islamiyat is closely linked with Arab beliefs and the Arab custom of Me and my brother against my father, Us against my cousin, Family against tribe and tribe against the world is strongly ingrained in Islamiyat as per my understanding. So while there may not be any selective ass-licking, they are not averse to joining hands and changing sides in a jiffy. This is where the unpredictability comes in. So how do we ensure that the chasm between the TSPA and their Islamist opponents remains "untraversable"?
shiv wrote: No we buy what we want constrained by what we get. We simply work in our own interests. For example, if the Pakistani army is attacking someone along their Afghan border based on US pressure we do not cooperate with the US reducing pressure on the Indian border if there are attacks on this side. We threaten them and over stretch them. Have you or have you not been reading reports, discussed frequently on this thread and in the Pak Mil thread of the military forum of Pakistani army deployments and morale?
I have read them and I agree.
shiv wrote: Excuses must never deflect us from doing and saying what we must.
How is it an excuse, when it's akin to trying to convince the inmates of a whorehouse that person across the street is a whore and that's a bad thing?
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by schinnas »

Pakistan is an idealogical state. It was formed on the basis that muslims cannot live with practitioners of other religions and that conversely, Islam is an unifying force that supercedes ethnic, linguistic and regional identities.

The past 60 years have proven that the ideaology behind Pakistan is flawed as a result of which Pakistan lost Bangladesh and is facing seccessionist movements of various ethnic groups.

3.5 forefathers or not, for Pakistan to fully lose its current identity, its ideology should be fully proven to be false. Indian liberals and 3.5 fathers can only prolong the inevitable.

Ideological states live and die by the ideology. As Pakistan's existence becomes difficult with each passing day, greener and greener forms of Islam will sweep that excuse of a nation in order to give its Islamic ideology a fighting chance. We are witnessing its very unfolding over past several years.
member_22733
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by member_22733 »

If Bakistan was truly an ideological state, we would have been nuked by now.

Part of Bakistan is ideological, part of it is not.
schinnas
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Re: What Makes Pakistan tick? Discussion thread

Post by schinnas »

In practical, superficial level that would be true. However, it is the idealogical part that is still holding it together. If you remove that, there is no rationale for its existence and it should collapse sooner or later.
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