Max Pain
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and at times uncle sam got fixed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Debt we owe the Army & PAF
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and at times uncle sam got fixed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
fatman17
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The biggest lie: more democracy
Islamabad diary
Ayaz Amir
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
At least in our climate there is no bigger fantasy than this that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. In our kind of culture democracy means not democracy as understood elsewhere but licence: licence to do as you please, to drive as you please, to set up a khokha in every open space, to encroach where you can, to dodge the law wherever possible, to evade taxes and to steal whatever you can.
Bestow more democracy in such a climate and you get if not anarchy then drift and growing lawlessness. Faith we have in large quantities, often geared to the wrong objectives. Unity is a more problematic proposition. But discipline – the last of Jinnah’s guiding principles – we may have had a bit of it in the past but in the present it is a vanishing species in the broad spaces of the Republic, except for the ground occupied by the armed forces.
And thank God for that because it is the armed forces holding Pakistan together and not, as we like to believe in our fonder moments, anything like the 1973 constitution…or the political process. Enshrine more golden principles in the constitution, enact another Objectives Resolution and reiterate the idea that sovereignty belongs to the Almighty, but take away the army and air force from the present equation and Pakistan heads straight for Middle East anarchy.
I exaggerate. I am using too heavy and broad a brush. Unlike Arab kingdoms, sheikhdoms and even republics, Pakistan is an open and pluralistic society. This is the reason why, try as they might, religious movements have never been able to establish a popular presence here. The Ikhwan can flourish in Egypt because it was the only alternative to the Nasserite dictatorship, popular as Nasser was. Religious extremism flourishes where the door to popular participation in government is closed. That is why the Jamaat-e-Islami can try for another hundred years and hold as many ijtemahs as it likes but in Pakistan it will never be a popular party. Allah be praised for that.
Here then is the Pakistani paradox: democratic openness and the armed forces are the intertwined factors which make Pakistan what it is. Yes, religious extremism has established a deep presence here, its network of support spread far and wide. But this precisely is what makes the role of the armed forces so crucial: if it weren’t for them Pakistan would be overrun by the forces of religious extremism.
Pakistan would become the tribal areas. Pakistan would become like the two Waziristans. And if it hasn’t become that, it is not because of our political forces who were feeding themselves on fairy tales about negotiating with the Taliban, but the armed forces who, overriding civilian dithering and lack of courage, have taken the bit between their teeth and, at great sacrifice of blood and effort, have taken on the forces of religious militancy.
The political parties can hold their dharnas and rallies and the terrorism threat can abate – isn’t this visible to all or do we need night-vision goggles to see this? – only because the army is not shirking its duty. To Syed Munawwar Hasan of the Jamaat-e-Islami we should be grateful for at least being open about their brand of Islam. At the Lahore ijtemah (gathering) of his party he spoke glowingly of the idea of ‘qataal-fi-sabeel-Allah’ – the mass cutting of heads in the way of the Lord, or to serve the cause of righteousness – righteousness as understood by the likes of Syed Munawwar Hasan. This is exactly the philosophy of not just Al-Qaeda and the Taliban but of the Islamic State of the Most Revered Caliph Al-Baghdadi. Without ‘qataal-fi-sabeel-Allah’, said this mufti of Islam, there could be no Islamic revolution.
Democracy stands in the way of this thinking acquiring mass appeal in Pakistan. The army stands in the way of this thinking spreading its message, and acquiring power, through the gun. Democracy and the army thus are crucial for the defence, the preservation, of present-day Pakistan. They are essential for holding the line against extremism and preventing Pakistan from plunging further into the vortex of sectarianism – which is an offshoot, indeed the necessary corollary, of the doctrine of ‘qataal-fi-sabeel-Allah’. The beheading of Frontier Corps soldiers and the targeting of members of different Islamic sects derive their inspiration and justification from the same wellspring of ideology.
But indispensable as democracy is - -without it this would be a different place – the way it is worked here gives a boost to nothing so much as that national pastime, cynicism. Let me ask not the detractors of the PML-N but its diehard supporters, its drumbeaters in the press who sing the praises of the PML-N leadership every day, the prime minister meeting his brother, the Punjab chief minister, in the family home at Jati Umra every Sunday, is this anyone’s idea of news? Yet every Sunday a press handout goes out to the media that the two brothers met and discussed national issues and vowed not to be swayed from the path of development – or other high-minded stuff on the same lines. And loyalist newsmen, performing their duty, make this into headline news.
Goebbels was Hitler’s Pervaiz Rashid but kahan (where) Goebbels and kahan (where) Pervaiz Rashid? For propaganda to be effective there must be some sophistication in it. Pervaiz Rashid comes up with something on Imran Khan every day. Does this have the slightest effect on public opinion? Imran Khan continues to address packed rallies everywhere, even in the most unlikely of places. Doesn’t this suggest that the information minister should either desist from what he is becoming a past master of or he should try something slightly more intelligent?
There are still some days left to November 30 but in an admission of panic the government has already started putting containers filled with earth around that blighted place called the Red Zone in Islamabad. (If we are not careful, the shipping container may become our national symbol.) And the interior minister blows hot one day and cold the next. And for fear of public reaction the government can’t make up its mind about the gas tariff. Once again there’s going to be no increase in it…and the information minister insists that the PTI protest campaign is having no effect. There’s nothing on the government’s mind except Imran Khan, and if this is no effect we can only imagine what effect will be like.
What the government should be doing, what it should have done, is to wrest the initiative from Imran Khan by (1) moving fast on the Model Town inquiry and letting the axe fall where it would; (2) announcing local elections; and (3) announcing electoral reforms. But movement requires life and vigour. From a patient dazed and stretched out there can be no such expectation.
On top of all this comes the special tribunal verdict in the Musharraf case, the judgement saying that the indictment is incomplete and should include former Chief Justice Dogar, ex PM Shaukat Aziz and Musharraf’s law minister, Zahid Hamid. (I used to sit with Zahid Hamid in the National Assembly and regard him highly.) Initiating the Musharraf treason trial, as subsequent events have amply demonstrated, was a needless ‘panga’, a tribute to the present leadership’s sense of vendetta than its judgement or sagacity. Now it is an albatross round the government’s neck.
When our ‘hidden forces’ moved against Geo network, the local cable operator in Chakwal got a call from someone from ‘khufia’, asking him whether Geo was being shown. He said yes. The next day he got another call and when he said it was still being shown, the caller asked, “tenun ajey bhi samajh naye aayi?” You still haven’t understood? He was quick to disconnect the network.
The same question can be put to the government regarding the Musharraf trial... “tuanoo hun bhi samajh nahi aaye?” You still haven’t understood?
The government says it has survived the opposition onslaught. If being buffeted by the winds from all sides is anyone’s idea of survival, what would extinction look like?
Email: winlust@yahoo.com
Islamabad diary
Ayaz Amir
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
At least in our climate there is no bigger fantasy than this that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. In our kind of culture democracy means not democracy as understood elsewhere but licence: licence to do as you please, to drive as you please, to set up a khokha in every open space, to encroach where you can, to dodge the law wherever possible, to evade taxes and to steal whatever you can.
Bestow more democracy in such a climate and you get if not anarchy then drift and growing lawlessness. Faith we have in large quantities, often geared to the wrong objectives. Unity is a more problematic proposition. But discipline – the last of Jinnah’s guiding principles – we may have had a bit of it in the past but in the present it is a vanishing species in the broad spaces of the Republic, except for the ground occupied by the armed forces.
And thank God for that because it is the armed forces holding Pakistan together and not, as we like to believe in our fonder moments, anything like the 1973 constitution…or the political process. Enshrine more golden principles in the constitution, enact another Objectives Resolution and reiterate the idea that sovereignty belongs to the Almighty, but take away the army and air force from the present equation and Pakistan heads straight for Middle East anarchy.
I exaggerate. I am using too heavy and broad a brush. Unlike Arab kingdoms, sheikhdoms and even republics, Pakistan is an open and pluralistic society. This is the reason why, try as they might, religious movements have never been able to establish a popular presence here. The Ikhwan can flourish in Egypt because it was the only alternative to the Nasserite dictatorship, popular as Nasser was. Religious extremism flourishes where the door to popular participation in government is closed. That is why the Jamaat-e-Islami can try for another hundred years and hold as many ijtemahs as it likes but in Pakistan it will never be a popular party. Allah be praised for that.
Here then is the Pakistani paradox: democratic openness and the armed forces are the intertwined factors which make Pakistan what it is. Yes, religious extremism has established a deep presence here, its network of support spread far and wide. But this precisely is what makes the role of the armed forces so crucial: if it weren’t for them Pakistan would be overrun by the forces of religious extremism.
Pakistan would become the tribal areas. Pakistan would become like the two Waziristans. And if it hasn’t become that, it is not because of our political forces who were feeding themselves on fairy tales about negotiating with the Taliban, but the armed forces who, overriding civilian dithering and lack of courage, have taken the bit between their teeth and, at great sacrifice of blood and effort, have taken on the forces of religious militancy.
The political parties can hold their dharnas and rallies and the terrorism threat can abate – isn’t this visible to all or do we need night-vision goggles to see this? – only because the army is not shirking its duty. To Syed Munawwar Hasan of the Jamaat-e-Islami we should be grateful for at least being open about their brand of Islam. At the Lahore ijtemah (gathering) of his party he spoke glowingly of the idea of ‘qataal-fi-sabeel-Allah’ – the mass cutting of heads in the way of the Lord, or to serve the cause of righteousness – righteousness as understood by the likes of Syed Munawwar Hasan. This is exactly the philosophy of not just Al-Qaeda and the Taliban but of the Islamic State of the Most Revered Caliph Al-Baghdadi. Without ‘qataal-fi-sabeel-Allah’, said this mufti of Islam, there could be no Islamic revolution.
Democracy stands in the way of this thinking acquiring mass appeal in Pakistan. The army stands in the way of this thinking spreading its message, and acquiring power, through the gun. Democracy and the army thus are crucial for the defence, the preservation, of present-day Pakistan. They are essential for holding the line against extremism and preventing Pakistan from plunging further into the vortex of sectarianism – which is an offshoot, indeed the necessary corollary, of the doctrine of ‘qataal-fi-sabeel-Allah’. The beheading of Frontier Corps soldiers and the targeting of members of different Islamic sects derive their inspiration and justification from the same wellspring of ideology.
But indispensable as democracy is - -without it this would be a different place – the way it is worked here gives a boost to nothing so much as that national pastime, cynicism. Let me ask not the detractors of the PML-N but its diehard supporters, its drumbeaters in the press who sing the praises of the PML-N leadership every day, the prime minister meeting his brother, the Punjab chief minister, in the family home at Jati Umra every Sunday, is this anyone’s idea of news? Yet every Sunday a press handout goes out to the media that the two brothers met and discussed national issues and vowed not to be swayed from the path of development – or other high-minded stuff on the same lines. And loyalist newsmen, performing their duty, make this into headline news.
Goebbels was Hitler’s Pervaiz Rashid but kahan (where) Goebbels and kahan (where) Pervaiz Rashid? For propaganda to be effective there must be some sophistication in it. Pervaiz Rashid comes up with something on Imran Khan every day. Does this have the slightest effect on public opinion? Imran Khan continues to address packed rallies everywhere, even in the most unlikely of places. Doesn’t this suggest that the information minister should either desist from what he is becoming a past master of or he should try something slightly more intelligent?
There are still some days left to November 30 but in an admission of panic the government has already started putting containers filled with earth around that blighted place called the Red Zone in Islamabad. (If we are not careful, the shipping container may become our national symbol.) And the interior minister blows hot one day and cold the next. And for fear of public reaction the government can’t make up its mind about the gas tariff. Once again there’s going to be no increase in it…and the information minister insists that the PTI protest campaign is having no effect. There’s nothing on the government’s mind except Imran Khan, and if this is no effect we can only imagine what effect will be like.
What the government should be doing, what it should have done, is to wrest the initiative from Imran Khan by (1) moving fast on the Model Town inquiry and letting the axe fall where it would; (2) announcing local elections; and (3) announcing electoral reforms. But movement requires life and vigour. From a patient dazed and stretched out there can be no such expectation.
On top of all this comes the special tribunal verdict in the Musharraf case, the judgement saying that the indictment is incomplete and should include former Chief Justice Dogar, ex PM Shaukat Aziz and Musharraf’s law minister, Zahid Hamid. (I used to sit with Zahid Hamid in the National Assembly and regard him highly.) Initiating the Musharraf treason trial, as subsequent events have amply demonstrated, was a needless ‘panga’, a tribute to the present leadership’s sense of vendetta than its judgement or sagacity. Now it is an albatross round the government’s neck.
When our ‘hidden forces’ moved against Geo network, the local cable operator in Chakwal got a call from someone from ‘khufia’, asking him whether Geo was being shown. He said yes. The next day he got another call and when he said it was still being shown, the caller asked, “tenun ajey bhi samajh naye aayi?” You still haven’t understood? He was quick to disconnect the network.
The same question can be put to the government regarding the Musharraf trial... “tuanoo hun bhi samajh nahi aaye?” You still haven’t understood?
The government says it has survived the opposition onslaught. If being buffeted by the winds from all sides is anyone’s idea of survival, what would extinction look like?
Email: winlust@yahoo.com
AgNoStiC MuSliM
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@fatman17 @Solomon2
Ayaz Amir and Kamran Shafi have both traditionally been very vocal and strong critics of the military, especially the Army. There has been a marked change in their views over the last year or so, with not just a lack of criticism, but a great deal of praise, for the Army.
Recent reports in the West quoting Pakistani military and intelligence sources explicitly confirmed, for the first time perhaps, that Haqqani/Gul Bahadur network fighters were targeted and killed in PAF airstrikes, and the COAS himself explicitly stated that the Haqqanis would be targeted in FATA, while in the US.
The Army is increasingly seeing its higher ranks filled with soldiers who have fought in FATA, soldiers who have seen fellow soldiers and men under their command bleed, die and be subjected to barbaric treatment at the hands of extremists in videos. If Raheel Sharif's comments about the TTP "playing football with the heads of my soldiers" at the Pakistani Embassy in the US are any indication, very few in this new generation of military leaders are going to "forgive and forget".
Ayaz Amir and Kamran Shafi have both traditionally been very vocal and strong critics of the military, especially the Army. There has been a marked change in their views over the last year or so, with not just a lack of criticism, but a great deal of praise, for the Army.
Recent reports in the West quoting Pakistani military and intelligence sources explicitly confirmed, for the first time perhaps, that Haqqani/Gul Bahadur network fighters were targeted and killed in PAF airstrikes, and the COAS himself explicitly stated that the Haqqanis would be targeted in FATA, while in the US.
The Army is increasingly seeing its higher ranks filled with soldiers who have fought in FATA, soldiers who have seen fellow soldiers and men under their command bleed, die and be subjected to barbaric treatment at the hands of extremists in videos. If Raheel Sharif's comments about the TTP "playing football with the heads of my soldiers" at the Pakistani Embassy in the US are any indication, very few in this new generation of military leaders are going to "forgive and forget".
gslv mk3
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I would believe it after you've got one.
mrrehan
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Cool down perhaps you need an ISI briefing to clarify your self. You never ever know what is behind "the truth". no matter which country you are with, always a parallel government is there to safeguard, no matter you except it or not.
AZADPAKISTAN2009
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Special Thanks to Soldiers who actually did a great national service by their Brave operations nation wide to protect lives and keep things in control
Really tremedous thank you for your efforts.
Every single moment you folks went out on Rescue mission , or an offensive missions to tackle enemies of Pakistan and people , really the amount of gratitue will not be enough
Thank you General Raheel Sharif and various other commanders for guiding the next generation of soldiers to perform their roles with distinction
Speaking of Present the same amount of Trust and gratitude for General Bajwa
Last but not least thank you to the Senior Memebers of Armed forces for their strategic depth and planning to stay 10 steps ahead of enemy allowing people to distribute endless amount of Burnol to Indians on daily basis.
The amount of Patriotism that is shown by the Military is just tremendous , without a doubt every single Officer and member of Armed forces is the True representative of The Pakistan we envisioned from Day 1
If we can transfer just 5% of that spirit of Patriotism and Honesty and valor , into the so called Parliments and members we might be the top 3 nation of world.
Really tremedous thank you for your efforts.
Every single moment you folks went out on Rescue mission , or an offensive missions to tackle enemies of Pakistan and people , really the amount of gratitue will not be enough
Thank you General Raheel Sharif and various other commanders for guiding the next generation of soldiers to perform their roles with distinction
Speaking of Present the same amount of Trust and gratitude for General Bajwa
- Successful Anti Terror Operations (Zarb-e Azab)
- Defangment of RAW operations in Karachi and end of Mafia gangs
- Capture of Gang members all the way from Dubai
- Offensive against enemy Terrorist
- Flush against Terrorist groups nation wide
- Anti Money Laundering campaigns
- Capture of RAW agent in Baluchistan (alive)
- Strategic Vision for CPEC since Musharaf, Kiani, Raheel Sharif time
Last but not least thank you to the Senior Memebers of Armed forces for their strategic depth and planning to stay 10 steps ahead of enemy allowing people to distribute endless amount of Burnol to Indians on daily basis.
The amount of Patriotism that is shown by the Military is just tremendous , without a doubt every single Officer and member of Armed forces is the True representative of The Pakistan we envisioned from Day 1
If we can transfer just 5% of that spirit of Patriotism and Honesty and valor , into the so called Parliments and members we might be the top 3 nation of world.
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