Managing Pakistan's failure

[Lalmohan]

johann - thoughts not too well advanced, i think increasing pull from baluchistan first and then sindh second, not to mention pashtunistan. soon the PA will need to chose sides... full civil war, bangladesh redux

[KLNMurthy]

johann - thoughts not too well advanced, i think increasing pull from baluchistan first and then sindh second, not to mention pashtunistan. soon the PA will need to chose sides... full civil war, bangladesh redux

I would guess that Baluchistan and Sindh will simmer for a very long time without boiling over the way Bangladesh did. There are far fewer Balochis and Sindhis than Bengalis and there are also important cultural differences. Plus India is unlikely to abet this time around.

[Lalmohan]

the catalyst for change in baluchistan might be iran
or unkil
all depends on if unkil wants to cede it to china or not...

[Narad]

India should be more inclined in Sindh due to its cultural lineage with Indian mainland just like pakjab. However, pakjab is a hard nut to swallow even after TSP disintegration.

Any effort invested in this regard is likely to give rich dividends to India.

Baluchistan is more prone to Iranian influence in culture same like pakhtoon-kauwa is influenced by Afghanistan.

Iran and AFG would be seperately eyeing these soft targets and could lay claim after TSP disintegration.

[RajeshA]

Baluchistan is more prone to Iranian influence in culture same like pakhtoon-kauwa is influenced by Afghanistan.

How is this so?

The Iranian Baluchis are 'moderate' Sunnis in Iranian Sistan-Baluchestan Province, who want independence from Iran. So how come the Baluchis in Pakistan are prone to Iranian influence?

Baluchistan in Pakistan could be the most pro-Indian Pakistani province!

[Lalmohan]

i meant my iranian catalyst in a negative way, i.e. seccession from iran to form greater baluchistan - that would suit unkil too in the long run

[Narad]

I mean to point out that given the historical, geographical and ethnic and traditional similarities, Pak-baluchistan could be prone to a well-orchestrated propoganda campaign by Tehran to assimilate itself to the undivided balochistan, ie Iran.

It is not a surpise that even though being religiously different, Indian punjab almost ceded to TSP under the propoganda pretext of united punjab or khalistan, hadnt it been for some wise and gutsy decisions of Durga.

[RajeshA]

Iran would be extremely pleased if Baluchistan accedes to India. Just like a big nation like the Kurds has been neutralized by dividing it up between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, so too is Iran happy that the other part of Baluchistan is also under the Pakistanis.

One of the reasons, Iran would not support a break up of Pakistan, is because they fear that if Baluchistan becomes an independent entity, the Sisten-Baluchestan province of Iran too would fight to secede from Iran, and that has negative consequences for Iranian territorial integrity. The Iranians also fear that an independent Baluchistan would become another beachhead for America trying to unravel an hostile Iran.

So if India wants Iranian support for the unraveling of Pakistan, then we would have to give the Iranians an assurance that Baluchistan would not become independent, and would in fact be integrated into the Indian Union, and that India would not allow Baluchistan to be used as an American base of operations against Iran.

[brihaspati]

Iran would like to see the whole of Balochistan inside its own hands, and if that is not possible at least to have a partition with the other part still under the thumb of another power. Even a partial indepndence of non-Iranian part Balochis is a potential danger signal for them.

It is perhaps best to let the four parties fight it out. Encourage each of them, and keep the fifth party away. Promise help to US with their Iran containing efforts if they use Baloch territories to launcg a campaign against Iran (something they will not want to do unless the AFG front is no more). This brings the Balochis in a favourite fight against Iranians and Pakis on their shoulders. Pakis will have the dilemma of choosing between Iran, US and Balochis - theology and non-theology all aspects. Encourage Balochis to use US support to further their own struggle. Encourage WKK's to support Pakis in their effort to mainatin territorial integrity. Encourage Iran similarly. Prevent China from fishing here. Even then PRC can be hard pressed to take sides between Iran and Pak. Moreover not all of the Balochi's society are a society of saints. They match AFG brutalities and medieval retrogression in many aspects. That medievalism should also get a bit expended so that the semi-feudal tribal warlordism that plagues AFPAK - should also suffer in Balochistan.

India can move in then. We want not just the borders of British India along the Gulf - do we? We need the old Sindh kingdom, and a handle on the eastern coast of the Gulf.

[Theo_Fidel]

That will not happen without education. I don't know how long a window the world has to use its money and leverage to bring changes in education, but I don't think its indefinite. I think Western developmental work is going to be shut out by targeted violence as the US-Pakistani friction grows.

The complete neglect of education has always baffled me about the Baqui's.
Not least because much of the Middle East is essentially fully literate.
Even Saudi Arabia is 85% literate.

However the liberal values of the world must come first, before education.
There is no organization in Baqui land promoting tolerance, equality, women's liberation,
secular governance,freedom of thought, privacy, etc. These things don't happen automatically.
Every generation must expend blood and sweat promoting instilling these ideas into their children.

All societies can be measured by their liberation of women's critical thinking. This is because
women are the primary care givers. If they are empty heads their children will undoubtedly suffer.
All across the world the development of a people can be directly linked to the liberation of their women.
Even in India communities that have liberated their women are further along developmentally than others.
This is the prime reason for the relative advancement of the Southern states.

Having interacted with several muslim groups I can say that their women are easily the biggest
bunch of empty heads there is. All they prattle about are recipies and clothes and gossip in great volume.
Even amongst their children they neglect the education of their girls, even in the US. You never see the
headscarfs in a library or literary event. Not at any festivals or multicultural activity. For some reason they like their women
to be empty heads.

The other great tragedy is that literacy in measured in Urdu with the Arabic script. You can count
the progressive literature in this medium on one hand. It is not a coincidence that as the masses have given up
their native vernacular they have turned more extreme not less.

Liberal values must come first or even the literate can be led into the Wahhabi wasteland.

[brihaspati]

Re: education - have we not discussed this before about the motivation behind not advancing "modern" education?

The fundamental basis of Islamist power is unquestioning submission to Islamic authority. The way "modern" education has proceeded is towards questioning and exploration, although even this history is a controversial one. The process of questioning was definitely started by a small subset in the west who used it to delegitimize or fight against those in "power" be it theological or secular. It was primarily a form of political protest when military protest was not yet possible, and its political nature is proved by the same individuals questioning only certain aspects while avoiding questions where their interests coincided with the "powers that be" (Luther on "peasant uprisings", Marx on colonial "benefits" for India etc). However, in time it tended to get out of hand and intra-elite factional fights opened up this "query" method further.

It was actually development, and internal dissent that fueled western "modernization" of education, and not education which changed society. The first explorers of knowledge were more interested in and were funded because of the drive to gain colonies and superior weapons and control over lucrative trade routes.

In that sense even the Paki's have behaved somewhat similarly - AQK for example, a prime example that even Pakis seek knowledge.

Islamism however faced the problem of factional infighting early on and realized from the experience of the iconodule-iconoclastic dissensions within Christianity, that untamed quest for knowledge that was not strictly confined to "war technology" could quickly lead to overthrow of theological absolutist control. From the 9th century onwards - Islam turned its back on "unrestricted quest".

Paki's could not have done otherwise. They needed a separate territory where islam would reign and rule all aspects of life so that this educational process could be controlled. If they had stayed among Hindus, they would find it difficult to insulate their flock from the flow of ideas. To maintain ideological control they needed state control over education. There is a theory that Moses deliberately wandered around in Sinai for decades so that the older generation that would be "contaminated" with Egyptian ideas of the undesirable type - would die out. [There are of course perfectly reasonable alternate hypothesis about the reason - and I am using the character of Moses as a metaphor only, since it may amount to blasphemy if I doubt his existence even though we have no archaelogical proof of his existence and any such proof of his association with the Sinai. Is it okay to talk about him this way for he is also a prophet of Islam as well as a patriarch of the Jews?!!]

[Sudip]

Having interacted with several muslim groups I can say that their women are easily the biggest
bunch of empty heads there is. All they prattle about are recipies and clothes and gossip in great volume.
Even amongst their children they neglect the education of their girls, even in the US. You never see the
headscarfs in a library or literary event. Not at any festivals or multicultural activity. For some reason they like their women
to be empty heads.

Although your theory on wimmen's critical thinking as a measure of society is plausible, judging it by how much women chatter/how many scarves you see in literary event/places doesnt hold strong.

I can show countless american women whose lives r spent away taking more loans to do some more shopping and get some more surgery or I am sure everybody here must have come across atleast one indian housewife who gossip about their neighbors (b it north or south india).

I can also show you many top ranking american universities where I have seen many scarf clad women doing research, classes etc specially from persia. Iran according to my observation has managed somehow to separate science education from theocratic religion atleast in some of their selected top universities.

[Theo_Fidel]

Although your theory on wimmen's critical thinking as a measure of society is plausible, judging it by how much women chatter/how many scarves you see in literary event/places doesnt hold strong.

I can show countless american women whose lives r spent away taking more loans to do some more shopping and get some more surgery or I am sure everybody here must have come across atleast one indian housewife who gossip about their neighbors (b it north or south india).

I can also show you many top ranking american universities where I have seen many scarf clad women doing research, classes etc specially from persia. Iran according to my observation has managed somehow to separate science education from theocratic religion atleast in some of their selected top universities.

First that was me who said that not Johann.
So I'm going to try and reply if you don't mind.

We are talking muslim women here WRT Baqui's. Why for you bring Indian women in there? And American women as well. And rebut using elite Iranian women of all things, without understanding just who those women are and why they are exiled in the US. Go look that up some time. And how many muslim women have you talked to? If you did you would understand exactly what I mean.

Women who grow up in a home or society lacking in critical thinking have a stamp placed on them that is very obvious. Did you know that the number one concern of muslim women in the UK is the lack of unity amongst the Islamic Countries. Or that the number one concern WRT their children is the availability of halal food. Forget about nutrition or diet or health.

http://www.fspublishers.org/ijab/past-i ... O_3/23.pdf
In Pakistan 75% of women strongly disagree that educating girls will help them with child upbringing.
25% of women believe educating girls will make it harder for them to get married.
50% of men believe educating girls will make it harder for them to get married.

What sort of society produces such mothers. No wonder they are circling the drain.

[Lalmohan]

as the flood ravaged remnants of the moth eathen state of paquistan splutter towards the exit door, unkil must have wargamed various nuke denial scenarios. including a pre-emptive conventional or nuclear strike against the key facilities. it occurs to me that the stories of mobile launchers and tunnels - if credible might be more of a defence from Unkil's prying eyes rather than Yindus.

Also, whilst it is increasingly clear that Afpak is now a proxy war between Unkil and Dragon (hate to say this, but i floated this hypothesis over a year ago and was largely ignored) it is remarkable that Unkil remains very quiet about the role of the Dragon.

Are we poised to see "Enter the Dragon" and "Fists of Fury"
or more of
"Crouching Unkil, hidden Dragon"?

[ramana]

Meanwhile TSP is exporting more of its Islamist terror to Thailand

Nightwatch 15 Oct., 2010

Thailand-Pakistan: The southern insurgency. Police have detained 15 Pakistanis on suspicion of being involved with a foreign terrorist group. A combined force of 30 soldiers and police yesterday raided Yala My House hotel in Muang District and took the 15 men, who had checked into four rooms, away for questioning.

Investigating inspector at Muang Yala station, Police Lieutenant Colonel Sujarit Wongsagade, said an employee at a local private bank told police he had noticed irregularities in transnational transactions conducted by a group of Pakistani customers. The banker said the men had transferred money from their accounts to someone who is officially listed in the bank's database as a person involved with a foreign terrorist organization.

Sujarit said the suspects claimed they had gone to Yala to raise money to help orphans and flood victims in their homeland.

Comment: Research indicates the Islamist insurgency in southern Thailand has had no outside backing, limited organization and no clear sense of identity that distinguishes it from banditry. It has no history of contacts with Pakistani Islamic extremists.

The arrival of Pakistani agents provocateur provides further confirmation that Pakistani Islamist leaders have decided to export their beliefs and terrorist actions. The new information is that their targets are not just Europe and the US, but anywhere a Muslim population resides. The 15 detained in Thailand should be a warning to regional security authorities.

The Indian government is acutely aware of the terrorist threat spawned from Pakistan. The Southeast Asian security leaders should be on the lookout for Pakistani troublemakers, often in the guise of mendicants or relief workers, among the Cham people of Cambodia, in Malaysia, Indonesia and in the southern Philippines.

Every newly Islamised country has tiored to export its awareness and spread the message. Islamised TSP is not doing anything new.

Also note the uage of the word mendicants = sufi preachers!

[brihaspati]

Paki occupiers of western India may actually look forward to the "chaos". Some of us here assume that Paki Islamists would abhorr "chaos" just like us - that is the fundamental fallacy of modeling "others" by what we expect of "ourselves". actually for Islamists, a chaos in Pak occupied territory can look to be a good way forward to bring the entire neighbourhood to chaos - and chaos actually facilitates Islamist expansion.

So it may just be so that export of Paki style Islamism to the neighbourhood, like Thailand is actually part of the same process that sees no danger in the onward descent to chaos in Paki heartland itself.

More chaos in traditional forms of the state where Muslims reside are actually seen to be good by Islamists now - it is the next stage in overthrowing non-Islamic systems after some degree of resources for the fight have been gathered by using those very systems.

[svinayak]

The complete neglect of education has always baffled me about the Baqui's.
Not least because much of the Middle East is essentially fully literate.
Even Saudi Arabia is 85% literate.

However the liberal values of the world must come first, before education.

Western education, liberal education is considered false education and fake modern concept which has disrupted their islamic value system and Islamic culture including law.
Islamic insecure countries like Pakistan show this tendency of extreme distilled version of Islam since the purpose of their society to remove non islamic trace of culture. They are willing to completely negate the liberal value of the world and human value to cling to Islamic purity.

[svinayak]

The complete neglect of education has always baffled me about the Baqui's.
Not least because much of the Middle East is essentially fully literate.
Even Saudi Arabia is 85% literate.

However the liberal values of the world must come first, before education.

Western education, liberal education is considered false education and fake modern concept which has disrupted their islamic value system and Islamic culture including law.
Islamic insecure countries like Pakistan show this tendency of extreme distilled version of Islam since the purpose of their society to remove non islamic trace of culture. They are willing to completely negate the liberal value of the world and human value to cling to Islamic purity.

[Theo_Fidel]

Western education, liberal education is considered false education and fake modern concept which has disrupted their islamic value system and Islamic culture including law.
Islamic insecure countries like Pakistan show this tendency of extreme distilled version of Islam since the purpose of their society to remove non islamic trace of culture. They are willing to completely negate the liberal value of the world and human value to cling to Islamic purity.

Western education and liberal education are two separate and very different things.

If you go to small towns in India you will see even the poorest people faithfully sending their children to school. Even cheap private schools. The school they receive includes a lot of reading, writing, math and a fairly modern scientific education. A lot of it is rote learning but at least the concepts involved are relatively modern and liberal.

Not in Baquistan. As has been repeatedly pointed out elsewhere notably here

http://www.sdpi.org/whats_new/reporton/ ... tBooks.pdf

The education is pure poison. Even a moderately literate person would be horrified by this stuff. The purpose of education is to create productive, hard working citizens who make your nation richer, wealthier and more powerful. How do they not get this. Even socialist Jhola wallahs understand this in India.

While it is easy to say they want Islamic warriors, etc. I don't think that can be the full explanation. Keep in mind this is the curriculum the people want and it is not imposed on them. They don't particularly resist it. The learn what they believe.

But the people who wrote this curriculum are all suited/booted western types. They knew better. Yet they do not care enough about their nation to resist this poisoning of their own well.

It is almost as if the people in the cities of Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad consider themselves a separate from the country. The people in the countryside are Nomads/Barbarians who need to be given their opium and kept at bay.

Which means when the time comes the 'Barbarians' will go for the cities first. The horde that will appear on our borders will be that unruly bunch.

[brihaspati]

^^^

Keep in mind this is the curriculum the people want and it is not imposed on them. They don't particularly resist it. The learn what they believe.

Why should they resist? You need to have an alternative available and accessible to compare benefits! They have never seen anything else. Moreover, if they are transitioning from generations who did not have anything else - they will have the generally observed "intellectual inertia" in all such societies. The key role in every such transition is played by sections of the elite - who see an advantage in promoting the change of educational thrust - either as a weapon to mobilize support in their own internal factional fight against other elite or because of personal dissent with their own social order.

But Paki elite were deliberately "going back" - to their supposed golden period in the past, and the main reason they wanted a separate land they could immunize against all modernizing influences ideologically. This is what I tried also to point out in a previous post. So Paki elite did not play the role that early Indian (and predominantly non-Muslim) educationists played or say even Peter I of Russia played - who is reputed to have even used troops in some cases to bring children away from their reluctant parents to school.

[Johann]

Pakistan, its educational system and its ideology should be treated like some unchanging monolith.

Both systematic studies, and the more anecdotal observations of both Pakistanis and foreigners have noted several of things

- The Zia era saw the replacement of humanities and social sciences in middle school with Islamic studies and "Pakistan Studies"; long on extremely reactionary and paranoid discourses, and short on almost everything else. The PA drove these curriculum changes, and their primary goal is to legitimise PA rule and PA policies, especially its share of resources, and its pursuit of jihad in Afghanistan and India. The PA has remained the kingmaker ever since, and has had no real change in its internal or external goals, and thus no reason to change educational policy.

- Pakistan's massive population growth has meant that the numbers of children who need to be educated, but state educational funding just hasn't kept pace. The military gets the first cut, debt servicing gets another, and civil corruption gets another, and then you have things like pensions. There's hardly anything left to expand educational capacity for the poor, who are the people who have the most children and are the least likely to be able to afford the mushrooming private schools. Their best option is the Deobandi madrasas which offer an even more extreme message, and even fewer modern subjects than the government curriculum.

- Pakistan's not inconsiderable middle classes do want education. That is why private schools and colleges have exploded in Pakistan in the last decade in a way that is not entirely unlike India. It is not just the rich who study abroad any more, because banks in Pakistan like banks in India make good money by financing educational loans. Of course many hope to use it as an emigration pathway, but just as many hope to work in a white collar job in the Gulf, or failing that back in Pakistan using a college education that's much better than what they could have received at home.

- Even in places like Mingora in the Swat Valley, locals have pooled their money to reopen girls schools destroyed by the Taliban. In fact they have turned a former local Pakiban leaders house in to their main girls school. Swat was a relatively progressive princely kingdom which had a fair amount of autonomy until full integration with Pakistani administration in 1969. One of the reasons the Pakiban couldn't hold on is that the locals were horrified enough by their barbarity, and resentful enough of the economic damage (especially to tourism) to be actually willing to fight them.

[shiv]

Some of us here assume that Paki Islamists would abhorr "chaos" just like us - that is the fundamental fallacy of modeling "others" by what we expect of "ourselves". actually for Islamists, a chaos in Pak occupied territory can look to be a good way forward to bring the entire neighbourhood to chaos - and chaos actually facilitates Islamist expansion.

<snip>

More chaos in traditional forms of the state where Muslims reside are actually seen to be good by Islamists now - it is the next stage in overthrowing non-Islamic systems after some degree of resources for the fight have been gathered by using those very systems.

This is absolutely correct. The greater the chaos the easier it is to impose sharia and say Islam is peace. Let me cross post a post I made in the China threat thread:
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 85#p951785

A conversation with an Islamist in Indonesia is described by Naipaul in his book "Among the believers".

Naipaul asks the man about all the restrictions that Islam places - Do this. Do that. Don't do this. Don't do that. And asks why people should not be free to say and do what they please.

The Islamist student points to a goat tied nearby and says (stating from memory) "Look at that goat. That goat is happy. He gets food and shelter and is protected against predators. In the same way humans who are tied to Islam are not restricted, They are protected and happier."

In a chaotic country, there is no stability, no peace, no sense of security that families and normal life demand. That is when Islamists clamp down and eliminate all opponents who oppose them as "enemies of Islam" and protect those who submit. That is how it works. Widespread chaos, terror etc are necessary tool for this. Is it any surprise that the man who spoke of the Islamic concept of war said exactly this?

It is best not to get into an argument about whether this is Islam or not. Political Islam works exactly like this. Is political Islam defined in the books? Perhaps not explicitly (I don't know) - but many of the actions taken to promote Islam were exactly this.

[dada]

http://www.amankiasha.com/detail_news.asp?id=294

A story published on the aman ki asha website about a south indian girl who marries a paki.

"Not only did uma make colossal sacrifices -- she gave up her family, religion, country and nationality -- but she blended in beautifully with her new family. She took great care of my uncle and aunt, was the ideal daughter-in-law and sister-in-law; she has brought up her two beautiful children ** & ** according to strict Muslim norms and culture"

I am not sure whether this can be generalised for all non-muslim girls who get married into the muslim family/community. What is particularly notable is that the muslim community makes its new nonmuslim entrant completely abandon his/her past history/cultural heritage to get accepted ! I think the changeover is complete & permanent within 1/2 generations.

[RajeshA]

X-Posting from TSP Thread

26 killed & 52 injured in Karachi

The Indian government itself suffers from Americanitis - or perhaps "internationalitis".

Pakistan is a seriously dysfunctional area of land. The west and China don't even blink when they speak of Pakistan merely as a "troubled nation" - a nation that is undergoing some temporary strife. Pakistan is not a functioning country at all. Which country would allow such barbarianism to continue without trying to put a halt to it? But India too toes the "international line" in referring to Pakistan as just another country.

We should be the first people off the mark pointing out that "Pakistan" is not a coherent nation. No wonder the "international world order" is going when Indians beg for things like UNSC seat. Indians are mental slaves. Until our slave buddhi goes we will not be able get anywhere beyond Pakistan in our own status.

X-Posting from Waging war for geopolitical gains

One thing to recall is that wars started for one reason can very easily "go wrong", escalate and end in disaster. So when one starts a war for some geopolitical end, it is best to plan some action, perform that action and call a cease fire and declare victory.

The sort of action that I would like to see is a short sharp strike against terrorist camps in Pakistan in response to a terrorist attack.

In order to make a case that Pakistan is not a functioning state anymore, India should go on the offensive on some issues:

1. Point out to the international community at every opportunity, about the human rights abuses in Pakistan and India's concerns about them - Baluchistan, Pushtunistan and Gilgit-Baltistan. They will do the same about India, but it doesn't matter. They do it anyway.
2. We should start using the word 'Pushtunistan' more frequently to refer to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA.
3. We should massively arm and finance all sorts of groups operating within Pakistan, so that the appearance of state collapse is obvious.

Once Pakistan is deligitimized, it will be far easier for India to send in troops to say liberate Baluchistan and Gilgit-Baltistan, etc and prepare them for their eventual merger into a democratic India.

[shiv]

The single thing that Indians have to get into their hitherto non functioning minds is that a nation that claims to exist only for Muslims or for any other religion alone does not deserve to exist. Whether Israel deserves to exist or not is none of our business and has no relevance to us. Pakistan cannot be allowed to exist and the idea that Pakistan might get support to expand the area under its bigoted control is something that needs to be condemned.

We Indians are too busy toeing the "International community line" that has been drawn by others for their own convenience. The so called International community" a cabal of current and former powerful nations have set up th strawman of the UN and have bestowed "nationhood" on all sorts of dubious characters. And we constantly play by those stupid rules. It's high time the legitimacy of Pakistan is derecognised. Let the buggers derecognise India in return. Who cares. India had to accept Pakistan under duress. Screw them now.

[shaardula]

Re: education - have we not discussed this before about the motivation behind not advancing "modern" education?

The fundamental basis of Islamist power is unquestioning submission to Islamic authority. The way "modern" education has proceeded is towards questioning and exploration, although even this history is a controversial one. The process of questioning was definitely started by a small subset in the west who used it to delegitimize or fight against those in "power" be it theological or secular. It was primarily a form of political protest when military protest was not yet possible, and its political nature is proved by the same individuals questioning only certain aspects while avoiding questions where their interests coincided with the "powers that be" (Luther on "peasant uprisings", Marx on colonial "benefits" for India etc). However, in time it tended to get out of hand and intra-elite factional fights opened up this "query" method further.

It was actually development, and internal dissent that fueled western "modernization" of education, and not education which changed society. The first explorers of knowledge were more interested in and were funded because of the drive to gain colonies and superior weapons and control over lucrative trade routes.

In that sense even the Paki's have behaved somewhat similarly - AQK for example, a prime example that even Pakis seek knowledge.

Islamism however faced the problem of factional infighting early on and realized from the experience of the iconodule-iconoclastic dissensions within Christianity, that untamed quest for knowledge that was not strictly confined to "war technology" could quickly lead to overthrow of theological absolutist control. From the 9th century onwards - Islam turned its back on "unrestricted quest".

Paki's could not have done otherwise. They needed a separate territory where islam would reign and rule all aspects of life so that this educational process could be controlled. If they had stayed among Hindus, they would find it difficult to insulate their flock from the flow of ideas. To maintain ideological control they needed state control over education. There is a theory that Moses deliberately wandered around in Sinai for decades so that the older generation that would be "contaminated" with Egyptian ideas of the undesirable type - would die out. [There are of course perfectly reasonable alternate hypothesis about the reason - and I am using the character of Moses as a metaphor only, since it may amount to blasphemy if I doubt his existence even though we have no archaelogical proof of his existence and any such proof of his association with the Sinai. Is it okay to talk about him this way for he is also a prophet of Islam as well as a patriarch of the Jews?!!]

^^^an example of this in iran.

The future of Iran’s largest academic institution is in question after the supreme leader stepped into a tug of war this week between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his rival Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was instrumental in vastly expanding and improving the university.

The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a ruling this week that Mr. Rafsanjani could not place the vast financial assets of the Islamic Azad University — which some estimates put at $250 billion — into a public religious trust. Doing so would have effectively prevented Mr. Ahmadinejad from seizing control of the institution.

The proposed change raised “fundamental juridical and legal difficulties,” Ayatollah Khamenei wrote Monday in a letter addressed to both men. But he also disallowed some moves backed by Mr. Ahmadinejad to make changes that would extend government control over the university’s assets and appointments to its governing body. The struggle over the university is the latest skirmish in the high-stakes power struggle at the heart of Iran’s political elite.

[ramana]

I was watching History Channel about the Dark Ages in Europe. One nugget was about St. Benedict who founded the Benedictine order on monks. His rules of no talking in order to suppress free will etc looked to me like Islamist injunctions. His idea was everything is in the book and man shouldnt think with free will.

Modernism in Europe is to throw off the Christianism strait jacket on the mind.

It was only after that Europe started progressing in fine arts like literature etc. In a way Nobel prize for Literature is an incentive to free the European mind.
Now its being used for psy-ops on de-colonised people.

[Theo_Fidel]

- Pakistan's not inconsiderable middle classes do want education. That is why private schools and colleges have exploded in Pakistan in the last decade in a way that is not entirely unlike India. It is not just the rich who study abroad any more, because banks in Pakistan like banks in India make good money by financing educational loans. Of course many hope to use it as an emigration pathway, but just as many hope to work in a white collar job in the Gulf, or failing that back in Pakistan using a college education that's much better than what they could have received at home.

- Even in places like Mingora in the Swat Valley, locals have pooled their money to reopen girls schools destroyed by the Taliban. In fact they have turned a former local Pakiban leaders house in to their main girls school. Swat was a relatively progressive princely kingdom which had a fair amount of autonomy until full integration with Pakistani administration in 1969. One of the reasons the Pakiban couldn't hold on is that the locals were horrified enough by their barbarity, and resentful enough of the economic damage (especially to tourism) to be actually willing to fight them.

The question is what are they getting in this 'paid for' education. I've been reading up a lot more on these subjects. It is still confusing that the elite would push such poison, something their own children don't touch, out to the proles and that the proles would then accept it unquestioningly.

When you talk to the average Abdul he does not want chaos, he wants a good life preferably doing as little as possible. Most foreigners who visit TSP agree that despite the terror threats and the lack of women the countryside is relatively calm and undisturbed. True there are feudal s that exploit, decoits that prey on people and occasional racial violence but it has been this way for centuries. No real deterioration here. To think that you can cause chaos by destroying the education system is a little too fantastic to believe.

For the state to fail all levers of power, economic, political and social must fall into the hands of a small kleptocratic grouping. With no space left for others the social construct collapses.

Poisoning education does not directly increase the likely hood that TSP will fail, just that it will not be able to rise.

If the Baquis crave education so much how come every survey shows their intellectual infantilism growing not reducing.

[abhischekcc]

Western/european mind is singularly attracted to controlled structures and hierarchies, except when it applies to one's own self. Hence there is no dichotomy between seeking personal freedom and imposing control structures on others. The entire european history is a conflict - the product of this inherent contradiction in european psyche - personal freedom versus external control.

There is no universalism in european culture and ideals. While they are a perfect fit for western people and society, they are inapplicable on other continents - whether as liberalism or christianity

[RajeshA]

abhishekcc ji,

a very well formulated post with a lot of clarity, there!

[shiv]

If the Baquis crave education so much how come every survey shows their intellectual infantilism growing not reducing.

Theo imagine you spend 4 hours a day doing social service and 8 hours raping and murdering random women. After many years of this, if people count only your social service hours they will imagine that you are Mother Teresa.

Pakistan has a large enough population of people who want and can afford private education. But in the meantime the absolute numbers of people in Pakistan has become so huge that most are not touched by education.

Also the few who are educated are taught a subject called "Pakistan studies" which is a constructed history of grievance and hate Perhaps it is lucky that most Pakis don't get to study that.

[shaardula]

only obliquely related to the discussion here, but wanted to bring this to b's attention.

he took a fresh look and questioned, he got kicked out.

I showed them that during the American Revolution drunkards, laggards, prostitutes, and pirates pioneered many of the freedoms and pleasures we now cherish -- including non-marital sex, interracial socializing, dancing, shopping, divorce, and the weekend -- and that the Founding Fathers, in the name of democracy, opposed them. I argued not only that many white Americans envied slaves but also that they did so for good reason, since slave culture offered many liberating alternatives to the highly repressive, work-obsessed, anti-sex culture of the early United States. I demonstrated that prostitutes, not feminists, won virtually all the freedoms that were denied to women but are now taken for granted. By tracing the path of immigrants from arrival as "primitives" to assimilation as "civilized" citizens, I explained that white people lost their rhythm by becoming good Americans. I presented evidence that without organized crime, we might not have jazz, Hollywood, Las Vegas, legal alcohol, birth control, or gay rights, since only gangsters were willing to support those projects when respectable America shunned them.

My students were most troubled by the evidence that the "good" enemies of "bad" freedoms were not just traditional icons like presidents and business leaders, but that many of the most revered abolitionists, progressives, and leaders of the feminist, labor, civil rights, and gay rights movements worked to suppress the cultures of working-class women, immigrants, African Americans, and the flamboyant gays who brought homosexuality out of the closet.

So I was quite anxious when I was asked to present my work to colleagues in order to get a long-term contract and be moved into line for a shot at tenure. A friend in the history department told me that given my publishing record and popularity among students the talk would be "really just a formality." But I knew it would be trouble.

Several distinguished professors from Columbia showed up, since the university has final say on all tenure decisions at its sister college, Barnard. During my talk, a Columbia professor who had been named by a national magazine as the most important public intellectual in the United States, stared at me with what I took -- rightly, it turned out -- to be disgust. Another walked out before I finished. One of my graduate school advisors asked a series of hostile questions. Other colleagues told me after the talk that I was "courageous," that I was "wonderfully, relentlessly revisionist," and that I made some famous historians "look like dinosaurs."

But emails came into the hiring committee from "important places," I was told, calling my ideas "improper," "frightening," and "dangerous." They said my ideas had no place in the academy and insisted that I be terminated. It was simply not okay for me to describe the "oppressed" in the terms used by their oppressors -- "shiftless," "sexually unrestrained," "primitive," "uncivilized" -- even though my argument transformed those epithets into tributes.

[Theo_Fidel]

Shiv,

I'm talking about the educated class. This is the bunch we get to see on TV and who show up in all the interviews. The Imran Khan types. What kind of education are they receiving to spout the poison that they do with such uniformity and vehemence. If anyone is talking for peace and tolerance it is the poor uneducated in the countryside.As they get 'educated' their tolerance actually reduces.

No one IMO believes the 60% literacy rate the Baqui govmint puts out. Independent experts say it remains in the 30% range. 45% for men and 20% for women. The Baqui's themselves now miraculously claim a higher literacy rate than India. This is false.

Also don't look now but unicef claims 80% literacy for 15-24 age group! I guess this should be bad news for us.
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/pak ... cs.html#67

I am skeptical however. The net enrollment was 38% in 2004. In 2008 miraculous it becomes 74%. Education budget declined from 2.1% to 1.8% of GDP in this time. Looks like Shortcut Aziz strikes again.

[shiv]

Also don't look now but unicef claims 80% literacy for 15-24 age group! I guess this should be bad news for us.
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/pak ... cs.html#67

I am skeptical however. The net enrollment was 38% in 2004. In 2008 miraculous it becomes 74%. Education budget declined from 2.1% to 1.8% of GDP in this time. Looks like Shortcut Aziz strikes again.

You are right in being skeptical. A lot of stats from Pakistan are just plain lies. That abomination has not held a serious census in decades. It is fortunate that most Pakis do not get an education because education in Pakistan is designed to engender religious hatred - particularly of India.

You are saying it and I am saying it in 2010. Expect the "advanced countries" of the world - USA and Europe to discover this in 10 years from now.

Here is a quote from page 32 of my ebook on Pakistan from 2005

Even children who study in Pakistani state schools imbibe
a curriculum of discrimination and hate.
The real worry in having such a faulty educational system
that actively encourages hatred is that millions of
Pakistani children are growing up to be adults thinking
that India and Indians exist to subjugate Muslims and
should be hated for that. There seems to be no way in
which a child in Pakistan can grow up without fearing or
hating India in particular and non-Muslims in general.
This mindset cannot be wiped out overnight. The problem
is so serious that the Pakistani government must be
engaged and encouraged to change the curriculum in
Pakistani schools. It is surprising that faults in an
education system that may have such great an impact on
Indian-Pakistani relations in future are not being
addressed at all at the highest governmental level in
India.

[Johann]

I'm talking about the educated class. This is the bunch we get to see on TV and who show up in all the interviews. The Imran Khan types. What kind of education are they receiving to spout the poison that they do with such uniformity and vehemence. If anyone is talking for peace and tolerance it is the poor uneducated in the countryside.As they get 'educated' their tolerance actually reduces.

TF,

Can Imran Khan EVER reach (and hold on to!) the Prime Ministership without making the PA happy?

Will cutting military expenditure in favour of education make the PA happy?

So if you're politically ambitious what's the point in honestly pushing for improved education?

In any case the majority of the Pakistani (and especially the majority Pakjabis) public across the classes genuinely believes that the PA is their sword and their shield against all threats, whether internal or external. This is what happens in highly militarised societies - people would rather fault themselves or each other rather than question the wisdom and the motives of the armed forces that decide everything for them.

There is something different about Pakistan's militarism and some of the more famous examples however.

Imperial and then Nazi Germany funded and armed its militarism through one of the most advanced industrial and scientific establishments the world has ever seen. The same for the Soviet Union, although they eventually fell behind thanks to over-centralisation and over-militarisation of the economy. Imperial Japan was trying for the same thing. In all cases high quality education in terms of basic literacy as well as scientific literacy was seen as essential to national security. Of course mass education was also used to inculcate the right ideology to march off and die in the millions for the Kaiser/Fuhrer/Emperor/Party/Revolution.

That high quality education, and all of the human services built on its back allowed these countries to recover as productive economies even after militarism was purged from the political and educational system after defeat. Russia is still a transitional case but its too complicated to get in to here.

Pakistan's national security elite is a different kettle of fish - high quality universal primary and scientific education is not seen as the vital enabler for national security. They've always counted on Pakistani diplomatic maneuvers to bring in access to the weapons and funding they need. Pakistan only needs education for ideologically motivated cannon-fodder, not to build and maintain a world beating military industrial complex, or a vibrant developing economy to pay for it all.

The Pakistani people trust the PA, which keeps them under-educated, which leads them to trust it more, etc, ad infinitum. The PA comes out ahead, the peoples of Pakistan suffer, and the cognitive dissonance that keeps the ball rolling is protected and perpetuated.

[abhischekcc]

>>The Pakistani people trust the PA, which keeps them under-educated, which leads them to trust it more, etc, ad infinitum.

I little OT here, but that process describes what is happening/has happened in West Bengal under communists.

[Narad]

http://sify.com/news/if-pakistan-splint ... icdii.html

Bharat Verma

The Chinese will suffer a major setback if dysfunctional Pakistan splinters in the near future.

This is the singular reason for the Chinese to move their troops into Gilgit Baltistan, the northern areas of PoK. The strategy is two-fold.

First, to occupy or gain influence over as much occupied Indian Territory as possible, in case Pakistan breaks up.

Second, to keep up the pressure on Indian borders since Pakistan is no position to do the same given its present internal disarray.

Further, China does not want India to be emboldened to mount an attack on Pakistan, which is already gasping for oxygen.

With the break-up of Pakistan, ISI activities like export of fake Indian currency and infiltration of terrorists through Nepal will cease. Anti-India rabble rousing by ISI inspired elements in Bangladesh will no longer be possible.

The Union of India's consolidation and integration as a nation will get a new fillip, as the distraction created by Pakistan in the name of religion is eliminated.

India then will be able to concentrate on the principal threat posed by China.

A Fragmented Pakistan will lessen the heavy financial burden placed on India's economy with drastic reduction in the security apparatus. This will enable young India to make rapid economic strides that can outpace ageing China in a short span of time.

However, if Pakistan falls apart, Sind, which has very strong democratic yearning, is certain to chart its own independent path, but in consonance with Indian value system.

Independent Baluchistan with its rich resources will be definitely against the Chinese, who are exploiting its resources in conjunction with Islamabad. Denial of Gwadar port will preclude Chinese navy from the warm waters of Indian Ocean and direct access to West Asia.

The biggest gain for the democracies will be that China's expanding authoritarian influence will be sharply curtailed. Also the Jihad fervor being orchestrated in this part of the world by the Punjabi Sunnis will die a natural death due to fatigue and lack of resources.

The spread of two authoritarian streams, Chinese communism and the Islamic fundamentalism, in combination or otherwise, threaten the survival of democracies in Asia.

If Pakistan splinters, one of the threats will be substantially neutralised.

This in turn will make Central Asia, where Pakistan aims to attain strategic depth with the help of Islamic fundamentalists, a safer place

If Pakistan splinters, Xinjiang in China will face renewed instability, and the Chinese flank in occupied Tibet will come under severe pressure.

With independent Sind and Baluchistan, the Chinese supply lines from Gwadar would also get blocked. This will force China to revert to 'peaceful rise' instead of laying claim on territory or islands of other nations.

The power of the Shias will increase, thus creating a balance with some of the Sunni sects that are mainly responsible for terrorist acts worldwide.

[abhischekcc]

Destruction of pakistan will set the emerging Sino-Jehadi alliance permanently on the back foot. pakistan is the reason why Arab countries and China are able to maintain a hostile stance towards India without fear of consequence. With pakistan gone, they will either have to face India directly or make peace with us. Since, maintaining hostility against us will be out of the question over the medium and long terms, they will have to tone down their hostility.

[RajeshA]

Destruction of pakistan will set the emerging Sino-Jehadi alliance permanently on the back foot. pakistan is the reason why Arab countries and China are able to maintain a hostile stance towards India without fear of consequence. With pakistan gone, they will either have to face India directly or make peace with us. Since, maintaining hostility against us will be out of the question over the medium and long terms, they will have to tone down their hostility.

Pakistan is the middle-man between the West and the Jihadis, between China and Islam. It is Pakistan that determines the mood of the Islamic World to the Chinese. It is Pakistan that prepares the wicket for China in the Islamic World. Why is Maldives suddenly so friendly with China? With Pakistan gone, the Chinese would lose a major buffer between themselves and Islam. Without Pakistan, China becomes a pork-eating Muslim-hating Kafir country occupying Muslim lands in East Turkestan.

In order to change the dynamic between Islam and China, Pakistani Army must fall.

[shiv]

Pakistan's national security elite is a different kettle of fish - high quality universal primary and scientific education is not seen as the vital enabler for national security. They've always counted on Pakistani diplomatic maneuvers to bring in access to the weapons and funding they need. Pakistan only needs education for ideologically motivated cannon-fodder, not to build and maintain a world beating military industrial complex, or a vibrant developing economy to pay for it all.

Absolutely Johann. Pakistan was like India in 1947. It had missed the industrial revolution by a century. Germany was right there in the middle of the scientific and industrial revolution and Japan was not going to be left behind. So the education, industry and culture related to that were all developed in the 19th century itself.

One only has to read about German technology in WW1 to see how Pakistan in 1947 cannot even be compared.

India has struggled to catch up with the industrial and tech revolution and still remains a tier 2 industrial power in many ways. Pakistanis have assumed that they are "equal to India" without actually putting in the effort and investment either in education or tech. That is how they still basically only offer value added agricultural products for export.