shaardula wrote:sorry. could not resist.
deputy speaker is a kundi and he said:
if tsp = gubo, the above quote might well have been kiyanahi to ameerkhan."What you are doing? I did not give you permission," Kundi said.
With bin Laden gone, now’s the time to push Pakistan
By Fareed Zakaria , Thursday, May 12, 5:17 AM
The killing of Osama bin Laden has produced new waves of commentary on the problem of Pakistan. We could all discuss again its selective policy toward terrorists, its complicated relationship with the United States and its mounting dysfunctions. But there is more to this opportunity than an opening for analysis. This is a time for action, to finally push the country toward moderation and genuine democracy.
So far, Pakistan’s military has approached this crisis as it has every one in the past, using its old tricks and hoping to ride out the storm. It is leaking stories to favored journalists, unleashing activists and politicians, all with the aim of stoking anti-Americanism. Having been caught in a situation that suggests either complicity with al-Qaeda or gross incompetence — and the reality is probably a bit of both — it is furiously trying to change the subject. Senior generals angrily denounce America for entering the country. “It’s like a person, caught in bed with another man’s wife, who is indignant that someone entered his house,”one Pakistani scholar, who preferred not to be named for fear of repercussions, told me. ………………….
Washington Post
Good points, Ananth. Pls recall also that when 9/11 was going down in NY and DC, a top PA jernail (was it DG, ISI?) was in DC at that time, perhaps to deflect blame, sow confusion, assess US reaction, influence it if possible etc. Gotta keep a lookout for top PA jernails heading to the khanate. Would give a clue regarding when a major attack is going down.Anantha wrote:Right now we have a very similar situation to 2001 in TSP with the whole nation facing worldwide humiliation. I fear something bad is going to happen in the next 6 months. What is it? A bio attack in India? A JDAM in Europe? a suitcase weapon in the US?
Kal kare so aaj kar, aaj kare so abb...There is only one policy left for the US and NATO to try out against Pakistan.
Its the Bomb Pakistan policy.
The US doesn't have to bomb them to stone age. Just target PA and bomb every ISI and PA and Airforce infrastructure that exists.
It will work 400% guaranteed. Nothing else will
Read more:The ISI, which is part of Pakistan's military, has a history of spawning and funding jihadi groups to fight India, in particular for the disputed territory of Kashmir. Pakistan's military relies heavily on these groups in the absence of the conventional might to take on India, said defense analyst Ayesha Siddiqua. For example, Pakistan has hosted training camps for militants and has sent them across the border into India, according to U.S. intelligence reports.
"How else do you fight?" Siddiqua asked. "It is the Pakistan version of private security guards."
Entitled "Next U.N. Secretary General predicted by UNHCR and EU Aid Commissioner," the cable describes Horent passing on the latest rumor he had picked up on the much anticipated race for U.N. Secretary General. Both Antonio Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for refugees, and Louis Michel, European Union Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, believe that the next United Nations Secretary will be Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, Pakistan's Foreign Minister," the cable noted. "Horent noted that both officials, who visited refugee camps in western Tanzani June 15, were certain of Kasuri's selection."
...
As for Kasuri, the name didn't come up
As per reports, Maj Gen Isfandiyar Ali Pataudi was appointed a deputy director-general of ISI a few weeks ago and he stands a good chance to be anointed Pasha’s successor.
Isfandiyar Ali Pataudi’s liberal moorings {where did that come from? musharraf?} and aristocratic background may work in his favour particularly at a time when Islamabad in under scrutiny for allowing a fundamentalist takeover of the intelligence agency.
Anantha, absolutely on the dot.Anantha wrote:I remember the years 1999-2001 distinctly well, for TSP. TSP was down on all fronts. Kargil attack, a military coup in 1999 and becoming a worldwide pariah nation. Economic situation was pretty bad with TSP living on IMF release from month to month. The morale of the nation was all time low with a economic collapse not too far. And then one fine 2001 morning Sep 11 happened and TSP was a winner for almost 7-8 years until everything caught up on the main players.
Cricket history buffs and those of my generation will recall that Pataudi was always known as the "Nawab of Pataudi". What I didn't know in the early 60s when I used to make me recite the names of the players in the Indian cricket team was that there were no more kingdoms and Nawabs in India and that "Pataudi" was the name of one of the 600 odd princely states that had acceded to India less than 20 years previously.pgbhat wrote:Pataudi’s cousin tipped as next ISI chief
Please recommend his name for Bharat Ratna award.Is our DDM for real??Isfandiyar Ali Pataudi’s liberal moorings and aristocratic background may work in his favour particularly at a time when Islamabad in under scrutiny for allowing a fundamentalist takeover of the intelligence agency.
Since the death of Osama bin Laden there have been calls, mostly from abroad, to make an outcast of Pakistan. I would like to suggest we take the opposite route.
That Osama was eliminated by the very nation that once sponsored his cause should surprise nobody. The Americans, like any power, have a beady eye and a blank menu. The states of the region, waiters all, must look on and hope to snaffle a chop. But what's in it for the man peering through the plate glass? I share my glimpse of the least practical way forward.
When the news broke I was at my mechanic's garage here in Dehra Dun. The man is a Muslim: he is a good mechanic who operates by instinct, a shrewd businessman who runs a tight if jerrybuilt ship, and a hopeful family man who does online surveys at night for extra money. Just another dweller in the subcontinent making his way. Good, he said. Good he's gone. Such people make, have made life difficult for every Muslim. He meant in this country and in Pakistan and throughout the world.
Kill him, my good friend of the dagar veena, master musician and another Muslim, felt obliged to say of another man whose fate we were discussing last year. He was speaking of Ajmal Kasab and the stay on the execution awaiting him for his part in the Mumbai attack.
What do these men from different walks of life share apart from their Muslim faith? A wish to get on with their lives wherever they happen to live so nobody can impute to them loyalties to the other side. Because they understand in a way that politicians and rabble-rousers alike do not that there is no other side.
Isolating Pakistan would simply harden the border and heighten the tension that complicates these two men's lives. And the lives of all of us who live here. By making those sides colourfast. Yes, we must uncover the terror links, the facilitation, but no, we must not sharpen the paranoia or confuse the state with the people, the great majority of the people. And we must not give up on dialogue by other means. Dialogue of any kind will be harder if al-Qaeda ever replace the present rulers of Pakistan. Time is short, and there's enough wounded pride about at the moment to sink a ship of state. Even in Chanakyan terms that's not what we want next door.
But I'm not here to be practical. Why not instead take a leaf out of my friend the musician's book? (Except he plays by ear, by tradition, by history, by instinct, by each moment of his being.) Push out an alap. Extemporize. Make overtures — and rebuffed, make more overtures — a whole barrage of them. Political overtures, of course, but equally I mean the hand of common friendship. A cultural barrage. Not just an arts offensive but a rapprochement in the widest sense of culture, everyday life. To be made now, at this difficult, at this impossible time.
Music, certainly. I have only to write the word and all our commonalities leap to my defence. Our defence, theirs and ours. These cross-border traditions are so well known I will say no more on the subject, and let my friend of the veena simply begin to play. When I heard him in Beijing last year I wept in my seat. Embarrassing, but what can you do? A Pakistani in my shoes would have done the same.
But also movies, television — theirs, ours, which both sides watch — theatre, all the performing arts. They wanted Madhuri in exchange for Kashmir, remember? Nice story, but it represents a real wish for something much more, something always unstated because it's in the realm of fantasy. Our tendency is to leave it there because we don't want to sound infantile, we're big boys now.
I wrote a little nursery rhyme once for a regional magazine on the Indo-Pak lesson. The editor didn't pay me, or paid me in kind, a year's subscription, while the other contributors would have got the usual fee for learned disquisitions on the border. I understand the poor man's plight. (I see a hasty editorial board consultation, a scratching of heads, and this compromise.) But the decision spells out an old prejudice against the mixing of poetry and politics.
Yet common people speak poetry, more poetry than they think, or perhaps they think more poetry than they speak. And they have their own notions of politics. They would be happy at the thought that the song and dance they love could bring about a change at this time, simply a juncture, like any other, but a moment fraught all the same with possibility. So, let there be Madhuri. (Where is she when they need her?) More Bollywood tie-ups, music festivals, film festivals, festivals of every kind, not more isolation. The very language of dialogue, of diplomacy, locked into the reigning discourse of the day, could do with some evolution, some freeing up. At any rate men and women in power (Madame Rao for example, addressing the French with a cool head yesterday) can surely be persuaded to smuggle some of these goods through in plain covers. And then there is the simple matter of information.
There is an immense hunger for knowledge of life across the border out there, and here is something newspapers can satisfy. Features on everyday life in a small Pak town would catch a reader's eye far more readily than your standard reportage on the latest skirmish. When my wife and daughter travelled by train and bus through Pakistan on their New Zealand passports they were besieged with questioners at every turn: what was India like, but really what was it like? With my Indian passport I would simply have hobbled them on their journey. But I have not forgotten the thrill of standing on Pak soil when conducted through the fence for a brief minute in the Rann of Kutch. After a half century lived in medieval ignorance of life across the border, I stood there not as a conqueror but as a marvelling citizen of undivided India. The ritual bluster of patriotism, the firecrackers in the street when a cricket match is won, drown out another voice, the voice of persistent and unassuaged curiosity. What are they like? Is it possible that the belligerence we assume on either side is overstated? More likely the majority are indifferent, and indifference is not impermeable. A single paragraph will do the job, a cunningly crafted column inch can breach the wall of mistrust.
Once curiosity is piqued it knows no limits. As in the lab so in the world. Look at recent redrawings of the political map. Imagine the no-longer-indifferent, the now-curious, the sick-of-hostility, the newly-awakened raising their voice in a growing chant, over against the growl of military menace and orchestrated distrust. A voice getting louder and harder to ignore every day till it becomes a presence massing at the sham border, a border made real by blood, the blood of real men and women from both sides, sent to their deaths in obedience to another music. Sometimes in my head I can hear this crescendo and see another outcome altogether to the history we're obliged to repeat.
Is it possible that rusty fence on that border can come down, the border itself disappear? (Who would have thought that of the Berlin Wall?) There is life after Osama. There will also be death, deaths. But what the hell. There could equally be union.
....
It's all very well for outsiders to plot our fate. The masters of war I can understand. Quite as keen but with no clearer mandate are opinion makers and fellow travellers in the diaspora. I remember the American Irish in the seventies, more Irish than the Irish in their support for the IRA, sending guns and money for the cause, flying the flag. Indian Americans will be up in arms too after Osama, and proxy warriors of every nation. But exiles never have to face the bullets. We are the ones who stand to gain or lose, everything in the case of a nuclear exchange, much in the case of another conventional war.
I will now shut up and hand over to the member from Realpolitik. But I have conquered my fear of naïveté. Trapped by this fear we surrender not just to the ISI and al- Qaeda but to the NATO whose jihad killed 600,000 in Iraq alone on the way to Abbottabad. Six hundred thousand. No, we should not be ashamed to speak our fantasies.
It's all talk. So let's ground it, airily. But air it on this ground.
Put your body where your mouth is.
Talk from here.
(Irwin Allan Sealy is the author of The Trotter-nama and other novels. He lives in Dehra Dun.)
Liberal == drinks whiskysum wrote:Is our DDM for real??Isfandiyar Ali Pataudi’s liberal moorings and aristocratic background may work in his favour particularly at a time when Islamabad in under scrutiny for allowing a fundamentalist takeover of the intelligence agency.
The Americans also believe this.KLNMurthy wrote:Liberal == drinks whisky
Our DDM actually believe this.
PESHAWAR: Five people were killed in a cross-border clash between Pakistani tribesmen and Afghan forces on Thursday.
Sources said that the clashes began after the Afghan National Army carried out unprovoked firing in the Lawa Mandi area on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Three of those killed are reported to local tribesmen and two Afghan army men, local security officials said.
There has been no official confirmation on why the clash erupted and authorities are trying to control the situation.
An insightful post Arjun well worthy of joining the gyan posts of the first post of the Packee thread.Arjun wrote:It is clear that Pakistan has for decades been honing its skills in deriving revenues for the state by acting as a 'pimp' in global geopolitics. I think I now truly understand the many many references in Pakistani media that have often talked of taking advantage of country's 'strategic geostrategic location'.
I don't think there has ever been any other state that has perfected or even tried to act as an intermediary in geopolitics to the extent that TSP has...the 'international pimp' business model is fairly unique.
Since it produces nothing productive of any significance, the focus has been on pimping the worst and most dangerous troubles for other states that don't want to soil their hands directly with such dirt. Areas like terrorism, drugs, nuclear blackmail, relations with the most 'troubled' and failing states globally - these are the areas that Pakistan specializes in. Can this forum try and analyze the TSP business model and build a predictive model for all the areas that TSP can and has intermediated in, as well as those it may be trying out in the future?
Here's a list of TSP 'pimping' areas for starters-
- 'Intermediating' and directing the world's most dangerous terrorists both for their own purposes and for the purpose of any country that can pay them for the 'intermediation'
- Intermediating in the global drug trade since early eighties leveraging the heroin fields of Afghanistan and financed by BCCI before its collapse.
- Intermediating in the illegal nuclear trade (aka nuclear proliferation) and building relations with the world's leading pariah states
- Trying to become the 'gate keeper' in access to Afghanistan and Central Asia's mineral riches
- Directing the most extreme global financial money-laundering business (BCCI) to extract money from the world's worst dictators; before it was forced to close down by Western authorities
- Intermediation attempts between Muslim world and West
- Intermediation attempt between Muslim world and China
- Intermediating between West and China (assisted in bringing about Kissinger's visit to China in 70s) before it became unnecessary
The Bin Laden debacle has triggered a blizzard of uncomfortable questions, the sharpest come from Washington. How, President Barack Obama wondered aloud last Sunday, could Bin Laden shelter for years in a garrison town that is home to three regimental headquarters, the local version of Sandhurst, and thousands of soldiers? One retired US officer who has served in the region told me he had been mulling the same question. "All those times we drove up to Abbottabad, and we could have taken out our pistols and done the job ourselves," he said. The CIA chief Leon Panetta, meanwhile, says he didn't warn the ISI about the special forces raid because he feared word might leak to the al-Qaida leader. Behind the pointed statements lies an urgent question: was the ISI hiding Bin Laden?
I last saw Colonel Imam in January 2010 at his home in Rawalpindi. He joked about media articles describing him as the "father of the Taliban". Weeks later he set off for Waziristan with another former ISI man, Khawaja, and a British journalist, Asad Qureshi, who had been commissioned by Channel 4, to interview the Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud. But the Taliban took them hostage. After a few weeks Khawaja was executed, after confessing on video to being a "CIA spy". Qureshi was released in September after his family paid a hefty ransom. Then last January, a video of Imam surfaced showing him kneeling before a group of masked, armed men. Mehsud appeared, and said a few words. Then a Talib opened fire, pumped Imam with bullets.
"When you're Frankenstein, and you create a lot of baby monsters who are running round your ankles looking sort of cute, they eventually grow up to be recalcitrant adults," a US official tells me in Islamabad. "And you hope you can get them back into the fold so they become useful. But the Pakistanis can't control everything they create."
Yet the questions remain. How did Bin Laden avoid ISI surveillance in a military area, just a few hundred metres from a major military base, in a zone where military intelligence traditionally keeps a close eye? And what about the army major who recently built his house just behind Osama's? Did he not wonder about his neighbour with the barbed-wire fence and the security cameras perched on the wall? "I find it entirely implausible that the military and intelligence agencies knew nothing," says Dr Farzana Sheikh, author of Making Sense of Pakistan. "There must have been knowledge at the highest levels." But, along with so many other critics, she concedes "there is no proof". In a country where so many pressing mysteries remain unresolved – from the plane crash that killed General Zia ul-Haq in 1988, to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007 – few are holding their breath.
Probably the tone of the author (Declan Walsh) is very harsh and I doubt he is Shivagari Ekalavya shisya and article is worth reading in full. Lots of bad media coverage for Papis and do not want how they can pull a genie and save their own a$$.American popular opinion may be less nuanced. The forthcoming trial of David Headley, an American jihadi accused of helping Lashkar-e-Taiba carry out the Mumbai attacks, is likely to bring fresh accusations of ISI "double-game". And movie culture is likely to have a strong influence. Even before Bin Laden died an action thriller called tentatively "Kill Bin Laden", by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, was in the works. Now many more will surely follow. In the coming months, casting directors will start seeking actors to play macho navy Seals, a tense American president and an elusive Saudi fugitive. And, almost certainly, they will be looking for a clutch of double-dealing Pakistani spies. In the ISI, Hollywood may have found a new bad guy.
The Intelligence Bureau has now prepared a fresh dossier on the underworld don -- the mastermind of the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai [ Images ] -- and handed it over to the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is reportedly tracking the underworld don, who has 23 aliases.
According to IB sources, the Pakistan government is unlikely to give up the whereabouts of Dawood as he is a major source of funds for terrorist activities.
According to India's dossier, Dawood's address is 'White House, Near Saudi Mosque, Clifton, House No 37, 30th Street, Defence Housing Authority, Karachi, Pakistan'. This address has been confirmed during the interrogation of terrorists arrested in India.
They have told the intelligence agencies that Dawood's residence in Karachi is guarded like a fortress by members of the Pakistan army [ Images ] and the Inter Services Intelligence.
Getting hold of Dawood is not an easy task, say IB sources, as the ISI is likely to whisk him off to safe place whenever the pressure is on to track him.
In 2006, under immense pressure to find Dawood, ISI officials had moved him to Waziristan from Karachi. With the focus back on finding Dawood, the Pakistan government may be buying time to move him out, say IB sources.
Alerts have been sounded and Indian intelligence agencies are keeping a watch on Jeddah [ Images ], where Dawood has a safe house, according to IB sources.
Dawood not only enjoys close ties with the ISI, he also has strong connections in Singapore, Bangkok and Malaysia. According to security agencies, it will not be difficult for Dawood to find shelter in any of these places.
Currently, Dawood's each and every move is being closely monitored by intelligence agencies across the world. IB sources say that he continues to hide in Pakistan, though the neighbouring nation has denied these charges.
IB officials claim that there is enough proof about Dawood's existence in Pakistan, pointing out that his current passport was issued by an office in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. According to the latest information, his passport details have not been updated, indicating that he is still in Pakistan.
The ISI and the Pakistani establishment have enough reasons to protect Dawood, believe Indian intelligence agencies. The underworld don brings in funds for covert terror operations through his drug trade and fake currency racket. The routes chalked out for his trade in Nepal, Bangkok, India, Malaysia, Kenya and Singapore are now used by terror groups to transport arms and ammunition.
A source in the Indian wing of Interpol says that catching Dawood Ibrahim alive is crucial as he would be an invaluable source of information on terror activities. He would be able to provide information on the ISI's covert operations and his links in India.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Thursday inaugurated a 330-megawatt nuclear power plant built with Chinese assistance.
The plant is at Chashma in central Punjab province, where a Chinese-aided power plant of similar capacity is already operational.
"Today is a proud day for Pakistan and for Pakistan's civil nuclear energy programme," Gilani said as he commissioned the second unit.
"It is yet another illustrious example of the Pakistan-China cooperation in the field of nuclear science and technology," he said.
State actor == the one who begs for money while wearing $20000 suits with a glass of pinot in his handsshaardula wrote:i'm yet to get a hang of state actor - non-state actor classification.
And, Gilani is in China. Who's visiting Saudi Arabia? All within a week of Abort-a-bad. What's up?Gagan wrote:Meanwhile Zardari is on a visit to Russia.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... -3,00.htmlWhat Gilani really wants is some love. Washington, he told TIME, needs to provide his people with a visible demonstration of support if it hopes to rebuild trust. The U.S., the Prime Minister says, "should do something for the public which will persuade them that it is supportive of Pakistan." As an example, he cites — of course — the U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement of 2008. "It's our public that's dying, but the deal is happening there," he says in a wounded tone. "You claim there's a strategic partnership? That we're best friends?"
Then, casting his eyes up at his chandeliered ceiling, Pakistan's Prime Minister reaches for a verse. "When we passed each other, she didn't deign to even say hello," he intones, quoting the Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib. "How, then, can I believe that our parting caused her any tears?"
...if the military were to dedicate its army to combatting militants on its western border, it would risk leaving its eastern flank vulnerable to attack from India.
Given Pakistan's fear of India, that is a lot to ask. That fear may have been fanned by a military establishment attempting to justify its outsize expenditures, but India has done little to assuage the paranoia. Indeed it contributes, massing troops on the border and, according to Western diplomats in Islamabad, sending agents into Baluchistan province, where a long-simmering ethnic separatist movement invites memories of Bangladesh. And it is India — not Pakistan — that has a deal with the U.S. for the peaceful exploitation of civilian nuclear power. "From the Pakistani point of view, we are the ones playing a double game," says Pakistan expert Fair. "We reject their security concerns, saying they are not relevant. Then we ask them to move their entire military in order to wage a deeply unpopular war, and meanwhile we give India a nuclear deal. No wonder they don't trust us."
Islamabad, Pakistan. Frustrated with international community, which has been consistently blaming Pakistan for the deeds of “non-state actors”, Pakistan has officially released a list of “state actors” that contains names of 5 individuals. Pakistan has clarified that anyone not listed will henceforth be a “non-state actor” and Pakistani state won’t be responsible for the deeds those folks. The list contains the names of the President, the Prime Minister, the Army Chief, and two nominated members that the President would choose from his discretion.
President Zardari showing a non-state actor
“Except for the actions of these five, please stop blaming Pakistan for any bullshit any other person commits in public life,” President Asif Ali Zardari declared to the international community. Zardari has nominated a retired havildar of Karachi and his chartered accountant to be the on the list of “state actors”.
With no cricketer, any member of the judiciary, or Veena Malik on the list, many people in Pakistan have expressed shock and surprise over the development, but the list has been largely welcomed by the intelligentsia.
“Given the kind of resources that we have, I guess monitoring more than five persons could have been tricky. I’m happy that the government didn’t go all gung ho and released a list containing the whole ISI machinery and the identities of the secret intelligence agents,” Nadeem, a Pakistani journalist said.
That is unfair, Mr. Gilani. Everytime you pine, the Americans have given you love. Why are you complaining ?jrjrao wrote:Groping Gilly says he is pining for some love:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... -3,00.html
my guess is she did not say 'hello' because she knows you are a serial cheater and have gonorrhea? women cry for a lot of reasons. she cried for having wasted her love, wiped her tears and vowed 'hell no'.jrjrao wrote:Groping Gilly says he is pining for some love:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... -3,00.htmlWhat Gilani really wants is some love. Washington, he told TIME, needs to provide his people with a visible demonstration of support if it hopes to rebuild trust. The U.S., the Prime Minister says, "should do something for the public which will persuade them that it is supportive of Pakistan." As an example, he cites — of course — the U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement of 2008. "It's our public that's dying, but the deal is happening there," he says in a wounded tone. "You claim there's a strategic partnership? That we're best friends?"
Then, casting his eyes up at his chandeliered ceiling, Pakistan's Prime Minister reaches for a verse. "When we passed each other, she didn't deign to even say hello," he intones, quoting the Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib. "How, then, can I believe that our parting caused her any tears?"
Man, thats a good one. It should throw TSP into a frenzied tizzy even as Fiar baby will cite this as yet another example of India having no vision for "South Asia" stability.abhishek_sharma wrote:Can do an Abbottabad, but it is against our values: Saraswat
You see for the lazy, colonial dorks in DC, this kind of truthful analysis of TSP won't surface becasue either they are a bunch of programmed robots repeating what Pentagon/state dept/CIA tells them, or a bunch of liars, or a bit of both. Instead of this, as that TIME crap shows, India will be brought into the picture to explain away TSP's behavior.shaardula wrote: more seriously, what chutzpah! if they had been upright and did good they may have had a case. but between creating proxies and trying to control somebody else's country, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, to using terror as a state policy, official sanction for religious bigotry, and so on... they have violated every single norm of modern civilized people. and they want the world to say hello??
