Bharat Rakshak

shiv wrote:I think the news of McCain's discussion with Omar Abdulla about environment has got too much attention. It was clearly chai biskoot. The most urgent environmental issue for Kashmir is not the collected permafrost feces of 100 Indian soldiers in Siachen but frightening deforestation in Pakistan occupied Kashmir where the forests are being stripped faster than a stripper needing to pee urgently.

The topic had come up during last years floods in Pakhanastan
Here is one image - click on thumbnail to enlarge


This was, in fact the basis of RajeshA's chankian suggestion that we allow unrestricted import of furniture from Pakistan aiding the degradation of Paki environment and economy

Suppiah wrote:If TSP gives MFN to India we should encourage the import of furniture and rice and other vegetables from TSP. For one the furniture is of good quality as I have seen in shops in ME, the other it reduces TSP's tree cover. Importing rice is just importing water, only much easier to transport..we can divert to other crops that save water..

RajeshA wrote:X-Posted from TSP Thread

Pakistan's misery made worse by political failure by Penny Cole: A World To Win Blog

The Taliban were working with, or indeed WERE the “timber mafia” in the Malakand region where they were allowed to stay in control from 2007 to 2009. During that time more than 70 per cent of forests were cut down, contribuing to the present disaster.

But everywhere, local politicians, police and military are either powerless to stop the loggers and big landowners, or are in their pay – or both. Bribery, corruption, and complicity with terror go hand-in-hand to undermine any environmental protection.

The loss of forests transforms even a normal monsoon from a benefit to a curse. Forests absorbs water, and help refill aquifers. Without trees, flash floods run off into rivers, with no benefit for next year’s crops and without replenishing wells and springs. Fertile top soil is washed away.

o India should build the Afghan Parliament with intricate wood work, using lots of wood.
o May be Afghanistan can become a hub for creating fanciful furniture with Indian expertise from wood imported from Pakistan.

Disclaimer: Just jokin'!

Claiming that the army does not run Pakistan's foreign policy, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has said the military's intentions towards India have been "overrated" and there is a need to break away from this perception.

Foreign Ministry insiders have said that Khar was elevated from the post of minister of state to a full-fledged minister in July because the powerful military establishment perceived her as not being as independent-minded as her predecessor, Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

Qureshi was dropped from the post during a cabinet reshuffle earlier this year after he angered the military with his opposition to efforts to free CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who was arrested in Lahore after he shot and killed two men believed to be working for the ISI.

Call it what you will. But there’s certain chemistry between the people of Pakistan and their military that’s hard to be given a definite nomenclature. Some call it an infatuation. The people of Pakistan give their army a stature above any other institution of state. The aura of the men in uniform is simply dazzling for the common man. It massages the ego of those worshipping authority in what’s without doubt a feudal society to its boots. Others have a more logical label for this strange chemistry — the people of Pakistan have a love-hate relationship with their army.

They love the army when it stays in its barracks. By the same token, they hate their politicos, especially when those are corrupt and in power. The more the politicos wallow in corruption the more the people pine for the army to intervene and cleanse the Augean Stables of political corruption. The army-is-the-saviour-syndrome works like a magic on the people and the army just loves this title: The ‘saviours’ and defenders of the country’s physical as well as ideological frontiers. They ride into the melee like knights in shining armour and send the politicos packing with glee.

However, power corrupts the men in uniform just as well; in fact more because they enjoy absolute power. They invariably tend to over-stay their welcome; the euphoria soon dies down; the honeymoon doesn’t last very long. And then the people start yearning for the return of political parties, or something closely resembling it because democracy in its real sense hasn’t taken roots in Pakistan the way it has in India.

The canny politicos of Pakistan — no democrats, for sure, but feudals wrapped in sham cloaks of democracy — work on the people’s discontent with military rule and present themselves as ‘deliverers’ from the clutches of the generals and their cronies, who are for sure mostly feudals. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the first Pakistani politician to tout his credentials as the man who could lead his people — like Moses did the Israelis — to the promised land of political salvation although he, himself, was a product of the military rule under General Ayub Khan.

This game of musical chairs between the politicians and the generals — whom Bhutto savaged as ‘Bonapartes’ — has gone on forever. From October 1958 — when Ayub clamped down the first military rule over Pakistan — to date, there has been no letup in the hide-and-seek between politicians and generals, with the people of Pakistan just standing by as sometime-amused and sometime-bemused spectators. Such a game is once again on in Pakistan.

The Zardari regime, in office since the spring of 2008, is anything but democratic. It is supposed to be a parliamentary system of governance in Pakistan, with a prime minister to lead it, but Zardari, as president, is all powerful and has been calling the shots with impunity. On top of it his regime is corrupt and looting to its toe-nails.

Zardari had the dubious distinction of being internationally known, as ‘Mr Ten Percent’ for his wholesale corruption. Ironically, it was Parvez Musharraf who’d smoothed the way for him to leapfrog to the highest office in the land.

Musharraf, who’d, as usual for a Pakistani Bonaparte, overstayed his welcome, thought he’d come up with an ace when he whitewashed all the sins of Zardari’s sordid past to make political office kosher for him. A tainted politician, Musharraf may have thought, would just be content to play second-fiddle to him. But Zardari had other ideas and played his cards with deft finesse to turn the tables on his mentor and send him into exile.

Corruption under Zardari has broken all previous records of loot and plunder. Mr Ten Percent has graduated to ‘Mr Cent Percent.’ And the people of Pakistan are fed up with him and the cabal of corrupt cronies he presides over.

This miasma of corruption caps off a state of almost total anarchy and lawlessness in the country beset by unprecedented violence, religious fanaticism, economic rot and, lately, cultural and linguistic tension generated by the regime to distract the people’s attention from its glaring acts of failure in every department of governance. Zardari’s own province, Sindh, is being consumed by an undeclared war between the local Sindhis and the Mohajirs.

So the people of Pakistan have started looking up to the army to step in to stem the rot. This time around, however, they don’t covet the army to be the sole deliverer from the depredations of a pseudo-democratic regime; they want the apex judiciary to share the honours with the army. Perhaps the only positive change in Pakistan’s moribund political culture in recent years has been the independence of the judiciary, which in the past had been known to collude with whatever regime happened to be in power. The people fought an epic battle against Zardari’s open unwillingness to restore the apex judiciary that had been ostracised by Musharraf; they now expect the judiciary to pay back.

Zardari and his cabal have been in open defiance of the orders and judgments passed by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. Most of these judgments relate to Zardari’s corruption and his politics of spoils shared with cronies. Pakistan’s 1973 Constitution gives the Supreme Court, under Article 190, the privilege to enlist the help of the army to force the government to yield to the court’s rulings, or go out of office. But it wouldn’t be a call to martial law if the apex court moves the armed forces to discharge their constitutional obligations.

Why Zardari is daring the court and the army to call his bluff is no brain-teaser to those au courant to the shenanigans of Pakistan’s cavalier politicians. The Pakistan People’s Party hijacked by Zardari has more than once come to power by presenting itself as a ‘martyr.’ Zardari owes his office to the sympathy vote PPP garnered after the murder of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. So the only card Zardari & Co can hope to wield, whenever they next go before the electorate, is the martyr one because otherwise they have nothing to show, but the plunder of Pakistan’s limited resources, during their current innings in office.

It’s a game of wits in Islamabad, and it’s keeping political pundits glued to their crystal balls. Who blinks first is anybody’s guess. But jaded pundits are at one that it’s no longer a question of ‘if’, given the country’s rapid slide into anarchy. It’s a matter of time only.

Karamatullah K Ghori is a former Pakistani diplomat.

SSridhar wrote:A Growing anti-Zardari Tide

Call it what you will. But there’s certain chemistry between the people of Pakistan and their military that’s hard to be given a definite nomenclature. Some call it an infatuation. Others have a more logical label for this strange chemistry — the people of Pakistan have a love-hate relationship with their army.

Muppalla wrote:I got is via email and I don't have a link

AMERICA’S NEW GAME PLAN FOR PAKISTAN

AN INTERESTING ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN AN URDU WEEKLY “NEW YORK AWAM” DATED AUGUST 5-11, 2011

America’s New Game Plan:
Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Should be under the Control of the United Nations.

According to American media, USA has obtained support of Russia, France, U.K. and China for this proposal. America desires that in the month of September, this plan should be initiated.

As can be seen, there are some operational level dividends that would accrue to Pakistan by using Nasr though it will come at some strategic cost. Two possibilities emerge. The first is that the Pakistani military - true to its wont in being more sensitive to military as against political and strategic concerns - has perhaps focused overly on the operational gains as against strategic costs. Alternatively, given the inescapably obvious costs that it will incur, the military is sensitive to the contradictions. It is only milking Nasr as an information war opportunity.

The judgment here is in favour of the latter. Nasr can at best likely increase India’s natural restraint and operational caution. There is no particular harm in this for there is little case for nuclear haste and any additional operational caution can only energise prior preparation. In its employment, the Nasr is unlikely to halt India in its tracks. Instead, it will likely be employed in nuclear signalling, the most likely manner of which could be in a demonstration strike.

India can arrive at prudent answers, both at the conventional and nuclear levels, to deal with this issue. What might such an answer be? The suggestion here is that the employment of Nasr, even in a ‘green-field’ mode, must release India from NFU constraint. This does not imply default retaliation. Instead, it is for debate whether manipulating the threat of nuclear attack(s) will beget India more political and military dividends than indulging in them.

SSridhar wrote:A Growing anti-Zardari Tide

Call it what you will. But there’s certain chemistry between the people of Pakistan and their military that’s hard to be given a definite nomenclature. Some call it an infatuation. Others have a more logical label for this strange chemistry — the people of Pakistan have a love-hate relationship with their army.

Muppalla wrote:

shiv wrote: Sounds like something lifted out of Pakistan's Urdu press.

You are right. There is something like that though.

http://newyorkawam.org/

anupmisra wrote:AoA! Seventeen killed in Karachi including PPP’s Waja Karim

At least 17 people were killed including Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) ex-MNA and leader Waja Karim Dad in incidents of firing and grenade attacks in Karachi on Wednesday.

A wave of violence has hit the city of Karachi leaving 33 dead in a single day with many of the victims tortured, shot, stuffed in sacks and dumped on the streets.
The killings, which have sent shockwaves through Pakistan's most heavily populated city, have been blamed on rival gangs affiliated with its main political parties.
The government seems unable to stem the violence, as it grapples with a faltering economy and a raging Islamist insurgency.

Karachi has a long history of political, ethnic and sectarian violence, but the recent wave is high by historical standards. More than 300 people were killed in July alone.

Dilbu wrote:Score has reached 46 as per some reports.

Dilbu wrote:Score has reached 46 as per some reports.

Karachi is important on a national scale as well. President Zardari is continuously involved with Karachi political parties in evolving coalitions. On one side is Karachi’s largest party, the predominately ethnic Mohajir, Urdu-speaking Muttahida Quami Movement, which is based on Muslim refugees from India who reached Karachi after Partition; the party has recently dropped out of President Zardari’s governing coalition. On the other side are ethnic Pashtuns who have migrated from northwest Pakistan and organized themselves politically into the Awami National Party.The stakes are bigger than political and economic power in Karachi.
“We are not evolving into nationhood. We’re breaking up into ethnic groupings,” says Amber Alibhai, secretary-general of Shehri, a pressure group that campaigns against rampant land-grabbing in the city. “The social contract between the citizens among themselves and between the state has been destroyed.”The violence reflects a more fundamental struggle: a multi-sided war for control of votes, land and protection rackets. Shadowy alliances between power-brokers, slum landlords, drug barons and gun-runners sharpen its deadly edge. Killers do not always stop at murder. “They chop the bodies into pieces and put them in sacks and throw them in the street,” says Seemin Jamali, who manages the casualty ward at a Karachi hospital.
An important part of the cycle of violence is the impotence and disinterest shown by Pakistan’s police and politicians.With the state unable even to provide reliable electricity, expectations for justice are low. Outgunned and undermanned, the police are afraid to arrest assassins protected by powerful politicians. “We need the nod from the government to start looking for the people who are behind the targeted killings,” says a security official. “We’re not getting it.”
President Zardari is powerless to stop the violence while Interior Minister Rehman Malik made matters worse by suggesting that the vast majority of murders were committed “by angry girlfriends or wives.”

The Pakistan Taliban's third attack by a female suicide bomber in less than a year is raising fears as the new tactic to conceal deadly explosives under all-enveloping burqas presents a huge challenge for Pakistan's security agencies. The Taliban, training women's cells on both sides of the AfPak border, threaten to unleash more carnage.

Mathai wrote:Now, back to lurker mode.

Lalmohan wrote:^^^ detroit is the murder capital of the US (and apparently worse than jo'burg)

Ambar wrote:What's baffling is how is Clifton and other upmarket locales of Karachi so safe despite the rest of the city in a state of civil war ?

Lalmohan wrote:^^^ detroit is the murder capital of the US (and apparently worse than jo'burg)

President Mohammad Ayub Khan, in his emotionally charged radio address to the nation, recited the kalma tayyaba to warn India that the kalma reciting Pakistani would not rest until the enemy’s guns were silenced.Through the 17-day war in 1965, the entire country reverberated to the vociferous chants of jihad against Hindu India. Jihad and Islam were formalised almost as a military doctrine. So much of this jihad-dominated propaganda poured into the media, both print and electronic, that an inconclusive war turned into a final victory.
Frontline troops, lieutenants, colonels and lower ranks followed the five-time prayers code strictly. A number of field officers even refused to have their pictures taken, calling it un-Islamic. For the field marshal and his army chief, General Musa, the reactive Islamic lore came as a godsend. The field marshal’s invocation of the kalma became the popular slogan ‘Pakistan ka matlab kia? Laillah illahla’ (what does Pakistan mean? There is only one God).
Comparisons with Badr and Uhud, led by the Prophet (PBUH) himself, were freely cited. Jihadism, post-1965, emerged as a powerful talisman and motivational force for senior commanders to motivate their men and young officers. General Musa’s post-war tours of the units, still in their battle locations, made a strange mix of the highest rhetoric for the Islamic Pakistan Army and the harshest references to India’s exemplary perfidy and rank cowardice.

Forty people were killed in a mosque bombing in northwest Pakistan, with 85 wounded

Warning that LeT has the ability to "severely disrupt already delicate" regional relations, the US has said the Pakistan-based terror outfit responsible for the 2008 Mumbai terror attack remained active in Kashmir and continued to target India along with groups like JeM and HuM.

The US state department, in its annual report on terrorism, voiced concern over continued presence of terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan.

"Despite international condemnation for its November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) continued to plan regional operations from within Pakistan. While the government of Pakistan has banned LeT, the United States continued to urge further action against this group and its front organisations," the State Department said.

"The potential for WMD trafficking and proliferation remained of concern in Pakistan due to the porous borders and the difficult security situation. Export Control and Related Border Security Assistance (EXBS) has enabled Pakistani officials to gain expertise in properly classifying items of proliferation concern and learn about export licensing best practices," it said.

The report also said that several outlawed Pakistan-based terror groups remained active in Kashmir and continued to target India and plan attacks on it.

Prominent among these terror groups are Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Harkat ul-Mujahideen (HuM), which are having hundreds of armed supporters in Kashmir.

LeT, designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in 2001, is one of the largest and most proficient of the traditionally Kashmir-focused militant groups. "It has the ability to severely disrupt already delicate regional relation," the report said.

The actual size of LeT is unknown, but it has several thousand members in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Pakistan's Punjab Pakistan and in India's southern Jammu, Kashmir and Doda regions, the state department report said.

"Most LeT members are Pakistanis or Afghans and/or veterans of the Afghan wars. The group uses assault rifles, light and heavy machine guns, mortars, explosives, and rocket-propelled grenades," it said.

LeT maintains a number of facilities, including training camps, schools, and medical clinics in Pakistan. It has global connections and a strong operational network throughout South Asia, the state department said.

Based in Muzaffarabad, Rawalpindi, and several other cities in Pakistan, Harkat ul-Mujahideen (HuM) conducts insurgent and terrorist operations primarily in Kashmir and Afghanistan. It trains its militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On JeM, which designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation in 2001, the report said it has at least several hundred armed supporters - including a large cadre of former HuM members - located in Pakistan, India's southern Kashmir and Doda regions and in the valley.

The report said that despite efforts by Pakistani security forces, al-Qaeda terrorists, Afghan militants, foreign insurgents and Pakistani militants continued to find safe haven in portions of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Khyber Paktunkhwa and Balochistan.

"Al-Qaeda and other groups such as the Haqqani Network used Pakistani safe havens to launch attacks in Afghanistan, plan operations worldwide, train, recruit, and disseminate propaganda," it said.