Why Pakistan's Decline Is Almost Inevitable

[fatman17]

Why Pakistan's Decline Is Almost Inevitable

Huffpost.

Benazir Bhutto's niece, Fatima Bhutto, lays out the reasons for decline as succinctly as anyone I've read:

The Taliban and their ilk, on the other hand, are able to seat themselves in towns and villages across Pakistan without much difficulty largely because they do not come empty-handed. In a country that has a literacy rate of around 30 percent, the Islamists set up madrassas and educate local children for free. In districts where government hospitals are not fit for animals, they set up medical camps--in fact, they've been doing medical relief work since the 2005 earthquake hit Northern Pakistan. Where there is no electricity, because the local government officials have placed their friends and relatives in charge of local electrical plants, the Islamists bring generators. In short, they fill a vacuum that the state, through political negligence and gross graft, has created.

To combat the Taliban's incursions further into poverty-stricken parts of the country, Pakistan's government only has to do its job less leisurely. That's the frightening truth.


Napoleon once said that the moral is to the physical as ten is to one. My simple rule of thumb for determining who will win civil and guerilla wars is "who is the government?" Now if I were to ask 100 people who the government of northwest Pakistan is, 99 would probably say "the government of Pakistan".

No. Government is what government does. The organization which supplies security, social services and law is the government, and it doesn't matter who is recognized by foreign powers. This is a mistake which the West makes over and over and over again, most recently in Somalia when the US greenlighted and aided in the destruction of Somalia incipient government, the Islamic Courts Union, plunging the country back into even worse anarchy than before, and pretending that the foreign chosen "interim government", which had no popular support, was actually a government.

Now Napoleon didn't say the moral is to the physical as infinity to one. If you're badly enough outgunned and outnumbered, well, being the government may not be enough, especially if you've only been the government for a brief time.

This is why a lot of analysts believe that Pakistan can never "fall", because the Pakistani army is very powerful.

I am far less sanguine. The army has shown very little willingness or ability to fight the Pakistani Taliban. It is unclear to me that the Pakistani army is willing to fight the Taliban, at least all out and if ordered to do so that it would obey that order, either at the top level, or at the operational level. Which is to say, just because the "President" orders it to do something, doesn't mean it will, and even if the military took back over through another coup (quite likely) that officers and even line soldiers are willing to be used against the Taliban, when the Taliban is actually a more effective government than they one they ostensibly serve.

The legitimacy of a government comes from doing what a government does. The Pakistani "government" is less of a government to most of the country than the Pakistani Taliban. The danger is that it will continue to expand into places where the Islamabad government is not actually acting as a government, till it controls most of the countryside and some of the smaller cities. From there it will likely reach an accommodation with the army.

Although they aren't communists, this is classical Maoist style countryside to city guerrilla strategy. By the time the major cities fall, they will be all that is left, completely isolated from the rest of the country.

The Pakistani army is powerful, but it is only an army, not a government.

Government is as government does. If the current Pakistani government wants to stay in charge, Fatima is right, it needs to do its job. If it doesn't, those who are willing to do the job will take over.

Ian Welsh

 

[Zob]

This point i have been discussing consistently....that Taliban are being supported just like the Hezbollah in Lebanon....the reason is Taliban come with an agenda that adresses the genuine greivences of the people.....inorder to defeat the "ideology of the taliban" adress the issues of the poor and your taliban will never win.....kill the ideology you destroy the outfit!!

 

[ANDUBYLL]

Can the Taliban (if it is that good and pro people) can come out and establish a political party and work through democracy. Somewhat like FATAH and Hamas is Palestine ?
Or the word , democracy is anaethemic to the Taliban ! Why i ask, because , only elections can determine who the Pakistanis truly want to be their representatives.

 

[TopCat]

Talibans are armed and they need to be disarmed first then talk about what they are doing and not doing. There is no way on earth a country can function and eshtablish rule of law when people are carrying AK-47 on their shouldier and challenging the very fundamentals of state machinery.

 

[Elmo]

Ian Walsh's piece is another leaf in the doomsayers catalog

As for the Pakistan government, anything constructive, like this column, is hogwash for them... Don't expect change be it a storm a'comin.



P.S. Fatima Bhutto's bit refers to provision of electricity generators by the Taliban...where is this happening, haven't heard of this before.

 

[araz]

This point i have been discussing consistently....that Taliban are being supported just like the Hezbollah in Lebanon....the reason is Taliban come with an agenda that adresses the genuine greivences of the people.....inorder to defeat the "ideology of the taliban" adress the issues of the poor and your taliban will never win.....kill the ideology you destroy the outfit!!

I think thee are 2 aspects to this. Firstly what you have rightly mentioned and what Fatima Bhutto has so poignantly pointed out. The other element of this conundrum is to counter the religious card that the Taliban are playing by educating the masses in the real values that Islam inculcates in the Muslim. Unless the go hand in hand I am afraid the Taliban are still going to win.
My 2 paisas worth
Araz

 

[kidwaibhai]

if you look at what this guy does he is a social strategist and by the way he talks about pakistan has never actually visited our country. also this guy is a blogger that all he does so lets not lose sleep over what a over cafinated blog freak thinks. the main thing is that people everywhere hate the taliban no matter how much speedy justice they provide. the taliban have also banned cricket so i dont think that they will ever win.

 

[Jako]

if you look at what this guy does he is a social strategist and by the way he talks about pakistan has never actually visited our country. also this guy is a blogger that all he does so lets not lose sleep over what a over cafinated blog freak thinks. the main thing is that people everywhere hate the taliban no matter how much speedy justice they provide. the taliban have also banned cricket so i dont think that they will ever win.

whadda!! taliban has banned CRICKET?? They are gonna get some serious beating now..... Go get'em guys!!!

 

[Bane Blade]

The point on setting medical camps I am very proud to say that our army does that really well they have good strong controll of the ground area and I hope to god that the army will have more will to defeat these people that have lied openly and call themselves Muslims. We need to win the propaganda war.

 

[Elmo]

@Bane Blade: Actually the army was slow in reacting to the earthquake, as far as humanitarian relief work is concerned. It took 24 hours just to ensure that its installations and borders were safe and that there was no danger of invasion from its neighbour (probably selfish and smart but then that was a blow) — no one in the first 24 hours was even remotely aware of how catastrophic the quake was.
Jamaatud Dawa (which had a significant presence there) found the window and moved in — it provided relief when the government did not.
By the time the army moved in, the damage had been done. JuD (the new face of Lashkar-e-Taiba) had won the sympathies of the locals.
I am not trying to undermine the role of the army but that's how things had progressed then.
With the Balochistan floods, the army learnt it mistake from the 2005 earthquake and prevented local and international agencies from moving in and providing relief.

I'll try looking up reports from those days and post them.

 

[Xeric]

This point i have been discussing consistently....that Taliban are being supported just like the Hezbollah in Lebanon....the reason is Taliban come with an agenda that adresses the genuine greivences of the people.....inorder to defeat the "ideology of the taliban" adress the issues of the poor and your taliban will never win.....kill the ideology you destroy the outfit!!

Zob bro, isn't this what MQM does in Karachi????

@Bane Blade: Actually the army was slow in reacting to the earthquake, as far as humanitarian relief work is concerned. It took 24 hours just to ensure that its installations and borders were safe and that there was no danger of invasion from its neighbour (probably selfish and smart but then that was a blow) — no one in the first 24 hours was even remotely aware of how catastrophic the quake was.
Jamaatud Dawa (which had a significant presence there) found the window and moved in — it provided relief when the government did not.
By the time the army moved in, the damage had been done. JuD (the new face of Lashkar-e-Taiba) had won the sympathies of the locals.
I am not trying to undermine the role of the army but that's how things had progressed then.
With the Balochistan floods, the army learnt it mistake from the 2005 earthquake and prevented local and international agencies from moving in and providing relief.

I'll try looking up reports from those days and post them.

Well i 'll like to enlighten you in this. After the '05 earthquake the Army in those areas was itself affected equally as were the civilians, the figure goes in hundreds. The casualties, injured and the infrastructural damage was huge as was for the rest of the area.

Yes the most important thing was to re-aline the borders and get them safe first. You call it being Selfish, that's what you think, you call it smart, Thankyou!

i know a unit(no names ofcourse) that was the first one to respond after the earthquake. The entire unit was safe actually despite the remaining units in the brigade were throughly screwed. The reason for their safety was, at the time of the earthquake the entire unit was standing in the unit training area as the CO of the unit was delivering some instructions (or i must say baysti program) to the unit, when the earthquake stuck no one was inside a building so they were safe, and they responded just then. Strange and interesting indeed, i met an officer of the unit and he said: pehli dafa CO ki baysti nay jaan bacahai hai

Most of the manpower was itself stuck due to the earthquake, they had their own casualties and damages, (though still they were instructed to go out and help), you and i all know that the ground route was cut off, and guess what due to the shortage of manpower (because of the high number of deaths and injuries) the Army had to move units from Lahore and Multan!! And we dont have C-130s plying between these cities and the Northern areas!

Actually our favorite media never showed any military casualty, they never showed what the military itself had suffered, but yes they did show when a fauji was kicking someone who was snatching an atta bori from a kid to whom the food was issued, and portrayed as if the Army is again 'killing' more people there.
Masla Tv earns more money you know!

 

[Bane Blade]

We need to reason and make people reason or else we will keep on sinking on the pit the Taliban propaganda is making for us.

 

[Rajkumar]

whadda!! taliban has banned CRICKET?? They are gonna get some serious beating now..... Go get'em guys!!!

Are you kidding? they are the best. india do need taliban bcoz cricket has done lot of damage to other games

 

[Elmo]

Well i 'll like to enlighten you in this. After the '05 earthquake the Army in those areas was itself affected equally as were the civilians, the figure goes in hundreds. The casualties, injured and the infrastructural damage was huge as was for the rest of the area.

— Dear Mr Enigma947, I am not disputing this. Neither did anyone in reputable publications.

Yes the most important thing was to re-aline the borders and get them safe first.… they didn’t have C-130s… military itself had suffered,
Please read what I have found…

I met an officer of the unit and he said: pehli dafa CO ki baysti nay jaan bacahai hai
Ironic and funny… did they thank the CO for the baysti or treat him in turn?

But yes they did show when a fauji was kicking someone who was snatching an atta … Masala Tv earns more money you know!
Granted, especially when you have news channels and analysts dime a dozen — they need some fodder.


Following is Newsline’s cover story and its accompanying articles (November 2005 issue). The Herald had carried something similar but their articles aren’t available on the net. This will definitely seethe you but these guys (Zahid Hussain and Talat Hussain) are extremely credible — not into sensationalism (read Kamran Khan and Hamid Mir). Facts stand where they are. Once again I am not undermining the army.

This also for you Bane Blade, the last piece by Amir Mir will help you understand why the militants are favoured over the army in the quake-stricken areas.

(These are excerpts, I have provided links to the original)

Too Little, Too Late

Too Little, Too Late

By Zahid Hussain

The dire prospect of hundreds and thousands of earthquake survivors dying from hunger, diseases and cold has sparked mounting public discontent with the way the government has confronted the disaster. While civil society and the general public responded with unprecedented zeal, the state has miserably failed to fulfil its responsibility. Whatever credibility the government had was buried under the debris of the earthquake. Pakistan's greatest disaster has harshly exposed the weakness of state institutions.
For almost 72 hours the government remained in a state of inertia. The cabinet had no clue about the magnitude of the disaster and the military proved to be incapable of dealing with the crisis. It was shocking to see that it took so long to start rescue work even in the most heavily militarised zone of Azad Kashmir. In Bagh, one of the most devastated regions, there was no outside help available for two days.
People were in a state of shock when I arrived in Bagh on October 9. Dead bodies were littered on the streets and thousands of people were still trapped in the collapsed buildings. There were only a few able-bodied people who tried in vain to rescue those buried under tons of concrete with their bare hands. Army helicopters flew throughout the day to the army brigade headquarter to take out the injured soldiers. But none came to the rescue of the thousands of trapped civilians. That further fuelled the bitterness among the hapless people. "Why can't they come here?"questioned a young man. His anger was palpable: "We have fought for Pakistan, but they don't care for us." The same sentiments were reflected everywhere in Azad Kashmir. Timely rescue efforts could have saved thousands of lives, at least in towns like Muzaffarabad, Bagh and Balakot.

Relief efforts were also delayed. Relief agencies cite lack of coordination between the government and the aid organisations as the crucial reason for help not reaching many affected areas. "There are scores of organisations working in the affected areas, but there is no coordination," said Saad Yousuf, a spokesman for the NGO, Sungi.
A major reason for the slow relief process was that the entire operation was handed over to the army. The civil administration was nowhere in the picture, even in northern Pakistan where a local government is in place. Army troops can be more effective if they are deployed to assist the civil administration; they cannot be expected to manage the entire relief work operation.
Musharraf used the catastrophe to further tighten the military's grip on politics and undermine civil institutions. The army is controlling everything, from relief to foreign donations - and it is not accountable to anyone. The cabinet and the parliament were completely bypassed and there is no one to provide any central leadership to the unprecedented public mobilisation. While the government was slow to respond and the army failed to deliver, the void was filled by non-governmental organisations and radical Islamic groups. It was largely through the efforts of these organisations that relief reached the devastated areas.
The Islamic militant groups, with their vast network and well disciplined cadres, were most active in the affected areas, particularly in Kashmir. The Jamaat-ud-Daawa's camp, on a piece of sloping ground by the river Neelum in Muzaffarabad, illustrates their efficiency and organisation. Daawa, on the terror watch list, is the parent organisation of the Lashkar-i-Toiba, an outlawed militant group fighting the Indian forces in Kashmir. A cluster of almost a hundred tents provide shelter for displaced persons and house a mobile hospital where doctors from all over Pakistan and other countries perform surgery round-the-clock. Laying down their arms, hundreds of LeT fighters are now busy carrying relief goods, sometimes on their backs to those remote areas, which can only be reached by helicopters. Several other outlawed Kashmiri militant groups have also set up their own relief camps.
Just a couple of kilometers from the Daawa camp, is the newly set up American field hospital. "The Americans face tough competition from the radical Islamists in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Kashmiris," says Rifaqat Hussain, a local resident. The radical Islamists have already made an immense impact in the region. While the government has been able to do very little, the burden of relief work has been taken over by the Islamists.


Anatomy of a Disaster

Anatomy of a Disaster

By Talat Hussain
The seeds of mismanagement were sown on the day that mountains shook and the earth opened, and villages upon villages were wiped out. The communication system broke down and all standard operating procedures of the feedback process simply melted away. The most stark example was Azad Jammu and Kashmir, where the entire frontline of the Pakistan army's deployment and infrastructure turned into dust in a matter of five minutes. The back-end support system too was badly hit and for the next 12 hours there was a frantic effort to assess the damage in these areas.
General Pervez Musharraf was informed of the severity of the earthquake in the first two hours; but there was little information available on the extent of damage.
The ISI's satellite imagery only told a partial story; while it showed visible evidence of landslides, broken roads and absent military deployments, its verticle view did not catch the damnation that hid beneath the tin roofs that had come down crushing the inmates. Even the dead and the injured piling up at the Qasim Base Rawalpindi, flown in from different areas, did not present the true picture. Helicopters were then sent up for a more detailed look: the news they brought back was unbelievable.
And this despite the fact that in the first twelve hours of the earthquake, TV and print journalists had made their way to every accessible nook and cranny of the disaster zone. Images were coming out and were flashed on television in abundance. Local journalists overcoming their own personal grief - over 70 mediamen have been badly affected by the earthquake, losing their homes or loved ones in the tragedy - were feverishly reporting and calling their contacts in the government to inform them of the magnitude of the calamity.
The night of the first day of the earthquake was a long one for General Musharraf and his close military and civilian aides. Their first instinct was to secure the now exposed frontier along the Line of Control. For the survivors of the earthquake, that first night was crucial and, for thousands, deadly. Desperate for immediate rescue and emergency aid supplies, they struggled for survival beneath the rubble, trapped inside collapsed structures, or sitting in the open looking for a government that had totally collapsed in Azad Kashmir, paralysed in the NWFP and moving at snail's pace in Islamabad.
Day two dawned with even more death and misery because the first 24 hours had passed without any substantive aid and relief reaching these areas. Some areas were cut off from the main roads, but others, like Muzaffarbad, Bagh and Balakot were still reachable. Yet except for random relief from the community-based organisations or wholly inadequate services from the government machinery, no systematic emergency operation was in place. The situation did not change much even two days later, when relief goods coming from all corners of Pakistan, were looted and plundered, in part by desperate men and in part by thugs and malcontents from neighbouring areas. Between the second and fourth day I witnessed near-complete anarchy in Bagh and Muzaffarbad, where no government agency had stepped in to take charge of these devastated towns, now soaked in the drying blood of the earthquake victims. Two relief goods trucks that I accompanied were looted, one at Dhirkot and the other in Muzaffarabad. Meanwhile, it took the President four days to address the nation.
The army's lack of visibility - considering that it is the only organised force that had the numbers and the logistics to fill the administrative vacuum - was arguably the most crucial factor defining, not just the relief and rescue operations, but also for restoring order and to direct and manage relief goods coming in from across the country. By the time the force was put in place, it was too late for the first victims of the tragedy. The severely injured had died, the homeless had begun to scatter and the relief effort, that had no centre for coordination, was not reaching the most needy and the desperate. The new relief commissioner took time to get going in his office; in the meanwhile foreign rescue teams of doctors, engineers and volunteers waited long hours at Chaklala Airport without any direction about their destination. The same happened to relief goods: these all piled up at the Chaklala air-base which soon began to look like a giant warehouse.


'Militant' Philanthropy

By Amir Mir
The October 8 earthquake that shook Pakistan has given a new lease of life to many of the banned Islamic militant groups operating from the Pakistani-administered side of Kashmir. The most prominent among them is Jamaat-ud-Daawa, led by Professor Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the former chief of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which is fighting Indian forces in Jammu & Kashmir.
The militant groups in the quake-stricken areas of Azad Kashmir are following the pattern set by radical Palestinian groups Hamas and Hezbollah, which eventually adopted a humanitarian agenda in order to penetrate the masses. In sharp contrast to the government relief agencies and the army troops, the jihadi groups demonstrated tremendous efficiency in undertaking rescue operations in affected regions.
Reportedly, they were the first to respond to the huge human catastrophe in the quake-stricken areas and, within hours of the tragedy, had begun to rescue those trapped under the debris of collapsed houses as well as provide emergency treatment to the injured.

 

[Elmo]

No intention to derail this thread.

The post is extremely long... couldn't help it.

Since Mr Enigma947 you don't like going over long posts, I have just highlighted (bold) bits that would give you the other side of the picture. The army is on the front line but not on fore for the people.