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June 2011′s B-side looks within and without, starting with a continued focus on Pakistan-US relations via a commentary from a luminary no less than the former President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf. The second key focus is some much needed introspection that looks at the negative role of successive Pakistani military leaders in an article written by a B-side regular in Mohammed Hanif. The final article is written by Umar Cheema and reflects on the death of Saleem Shahzad and the role and responsibilities of the Pakistani media. June 2011’s B-side contents include:

1. Pakistan: A Reality Check Amid The Terror And Chaos by PERVEZ MUSHARRAF
2. Pakistan’s General Problem by MOHAMMED HANIF
3. Dying To Tell The Story by UMAR CHEEMA

The headache that is Pakistan-US relations is the focus of the first article written by the man who has left Pakistan in many a headache, Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistan: A Reality Check Amid The Terror And Chaos by Pervez Musharraf

The article is published by CNN and can be read here.

WASIM VIEW– For the sake of transparency and validity, it is important for me to state a few truths before I comment on the Musharraf article. Readers should know that many moons ago, I was a passionate supporter of Musharrraf, however regular OP readers will know that I saw the light eventually, moreover many will know of my vitriolic dislike for his policies and his person in posts that can be read via the tag Go Musharraf Go here.

Musharraf begins his article by referring to Pakistan being ‘in the eye of the terrorism storm’, conveniently forgetting that it was he who took Pakistan down this path of death and destruction a la the deadly Bush and Mush tango of two.

Musharraf’s article is right to remind readers of the historical context in which Pakistan finds itself namely the Cold War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. However he loses all credibility with a supreme blunder as per his brash nature by boasting of involving the Taliban during the Cold War. The commando has obviously lost his marbles when he said that Pakistan ‘inducted 25,000 to 30,000 Mujahedeen (holy warriors) from all over the Muslim world into Afghanistan and also pumped in Taliban from the tribal agencies of Pakistan after arming and training them’ given the Taliban as a political force did not exist during the so-called Afghan jihad.

Musharraf is however right to bemoan the American betrayal of Pakistan post the Cold War which continues to this day. However I was flabbergasted and nearly fell of my chair when Musharraf concluded that the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. the indiscriminate drone attacks and the violation of Pakistani sovereignty in the cross-border strike against Osama bin Laden were seen negatively by the people of Pakistan. It staggers belief that Musharraf has realised this now in the cold and comforting climes of London, given that it was he who personally allowed the US to do drone away and do as it pleases in Pakistan. Clearly the cold air in London has brought home the truth to macho Musharraf and that too whilst hiding in Londonistan.

Musharraf ends the article as he began it, full of bluster and brashness. The former khaki king reminds us all of his messianic leadership whilst denouncing all other Pakistani leaders and pronounces to the world that Pakistan must explain its inaction in North Waziristan against the Haqqani group and rid herself of extremist elements in the intelligence agencies. Such words are cheap given that Musharraf spectacularly failed to do either during his long stint of 9 years during which Musharraf rule reigned supreme as he was the all powerful army chief and President.

Musharraf the sage has more good advice to share in his joke of an article that includes the US giving drones to Pakistan and the respecting of our sovereignty. Musharraf is also keen to resolve the Kashmir dispute, and curtail India’s role in Afghanistan and raise 20 more wings of the Frontier Corps equipping them with more tanks and medium guns. Again Musharraf’s talk is cheap and getting cheaper since he was unable to achieve any such feats when he was in power and that even includes the non-controversial raising of 20 wings of the FC which should have been relatively easy to implement given his military background. In conclusion and if honest. friends and foes of Musharraf cannot be impressed with his article and should conclude that he is all talk, a megaphone of a man more and a paper tiger with no teeth.

The second article written by Mohammed Hanif is one of the very best I have read in a long time.

Pakistan’s General Problem by Mohammed Hanif

The article is published by Open Magazine and can be read here.

WASIM VIEW- Following Pervez Musharraf’s diatribe of an article, the Hanif article is different class. In it Mohammed Hanif traces the genesis of Pakistan’s ‘General Problem’ namely the unwanted influence of its khaki kings with special ire rightly reserved for General Zia.

Hanif is right to ridicule General Zia and bemoan his legacy of blood and bombs that has destroyed the Quaid’s Pakistan. Hanif is also right to point out that without publicly owning up to it, the Pakistan Army has continued Zia’s mission in open and in secret that has in Hanif’s words ‘turned the country into an international jihadi tourist resort’, creating a Frankenstein monster that keeps us all awake day and night.

Hanif’s article captures the dilemma of the Pakistani and the Pakistani state, which one hand prides itself on its Islamic credentials as it should for Pakistan was created to be the second Madina. Yet on the other hand, that Pakistan is under attack from the so-called followers of same Islam that created Pakistan thanks to the Pakistani Taliban and other groups. Consequently Pakistan is a confused nation that is left wondering whose Pakistan and which Islam is under attack and why and left even more confused daily. Hanif sums up our predicament in the following passage in his article:

The Pakistan Army’s biggest folly has been that under Zia it started outsourcing its basic job—soldiering—to these freelance militants. By blurring the line between a professional soldier—who, at least in theory, is always required to obey his officer, who in turn is governed by a set of laws—and a mujahid, who can pick and choose his cause and his commander depending on his mood, the Pakistan Army has caused immense confusion in its own ranks. Our soldiers are taught to shout Allah-o-Akbar when mocking an attack. In real life, they are ambushed by enemies who shout Allah-o-Akbar even louder. Can we blame them if they dither in their response? When the Pakistan Navy’s main aviation base in Karachi, PNS Mehran, was attacked, Navy Chief Admiral Nauman Bashir told us that the attackers were ‘very well trained’. We weren’t sure if he was giving us a lazy excuse or admiring the creation of his institution. When naval officials told journalists that the attackers were ‘as good as our own commandoes’ were they giving themselves a backhanded compliment?’

Hanif is right to criticise General Kiyani and his stellar leadership when he declared that the Pakistan army had broke the backs of the militancy and boasted of his promise that Pakistan will never bargain its honour for prosperity. Hanif puts Kayani right when he writes that ‘as things stand, most people in Pakistan have neither honour nor prosperity and will easily settle for their little world not blowing up every day, the question people really want to ask General Kiyani is that if he and his Army officer colleagues can have both honour and prosperity, why can’t we the people have a tiny bit of both?

Hanif’s article does not only focus on the role of General Zia, in fact later on he makes a brilliant assessment of Pervez Musharraf’s record as a general. Hanif’s description of the Kargil debacle and Musharraf’s macho arrogance since the fiasco is instructive of the mindset of the Pakistan army under Musharraf and the army leadership and is also an open indictment on his person and a riposte to his article earlier in the B-side in which he arrogantly lectures the world on how to win the peace.

Concluding Mohammed Hanif is right to introspect on the role of successive khaki kings in his brilliant article and it is hoped from me at least that such articles open the eyes of Pakistan’s military leadership to their follies so they correct their ways.

The final article is written by a respected Pakistani journalist in Umar Cheema and looks at the role of the Pakistani media.

Dying To Tell The Story by Umar Cheema

The article is published in The New York Times and can be read here.

WASIM VIEW- Umar Cheema’s heart-rending article includes an account of his torture which is difficult to read. Worse, it is the tragedy of Pakistan that Umar Cheema was lucky in only being tortured and not as unlucky as Saleem Shahzad was who paid the ultimate price for his investigative journalism.

Umar Cheema’s article is included in the B-side as it covers new ground for the B-side and looks at the pressure on the media in Pakistan. As a supporter of a vocal and independent media I agree with Cheema that ‘Pakistan is at a crossroads and so is its news media. In a situation of doom and gloom, Pakistani journalists offer a ray of hope to their fellow citizens and they have earned the people’s trust’.

Far too many journalists have perished in Pakistan and I agree with Cheema that the impunity afforded to the ISI must end. In this regard I am encouraged by the recently announced Saleem Shahzad commission headed by the future Chief Justice in Justice Mian Saqib Nisar of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and hope and pray it will provide justice.

The silencing of Saleem Shahzad’s see here upset me and many Pakistanis from those in the journalist community to politicians including former PM Nawaz Sharif as the recent dharna proved. One and all now look to that bastion of hope, the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the on/off judicial commissions to investigate his brutal murder and to provide justice.

I noted today that the army’s media wing the ISPR welcomed the decision to appoint a commission for the reasons shared below:

Rawalpindi – June 17, 2011: A spokesperson of ISPR voiced concern on unfounded and baseless insinuation’s being voiced in a section of print and electronic media against ISI in regard to murder of Journalist Saleem Shahzad. Such negative aspersions and accusations were also voiced against ISI in some previous cases but investigations proved those wrong.

The spokesperson strongly supported formation of a Commission to investigate the murder of Journalist Saleem Shahzad. The case must be investigated thoroughly and facts made known to the people, the spokesperson concluded.

The above press release has pleased me for it shows the ISI and the army willing to answer the myriad of allegations and questions against them vis a vis Saleem Shahzad. To this end, I wish to endorse the probing questions written in an open letter to General Shuja Pasha, head of the ISI on Saleem Shahzad written by Ejaz Haider in the Express Tribune as shared below:

An Open Letter To General Pasha by Ejaz Haider

Dear General Pasha,

I write this letter to you in the wake of the gruesome and gratuitous murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, friend to many, including myself.

The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, the agency you head, is being accused of Saleem’s murder. You must also know that the ISI is widely reviled and dreaded at home. For an agency that was set up primarily for strategic intelligence, this is quite an achievement. It is accused of driving in its own lane, monitoring the media, kidnapping, torturing and sometimes killing dissenters, political and otherwise, determining, arbitrarily, what Pakistan’s national interest is and how best we should go about pursuing it.

You must also know that some former officers have not only admitted to electoral fraud, rigging, making and breaking of political alliances, buying people through a mix of carrots and sticks, and browbeating the media, but consider having done so as part of their remit and in the best national interest. Perish the thought that any one of them would say peccavi, since some actually boast about it.

Whispers there always have been. But now much is being said aloud. The ISI is not accountable to anyone; it is all-powerful; it can kill mercilessly and, in this case, it has killed Saleem, so go these whispers. What would you say to this? Shrug and move on, as if it makes no difference, that this is about a few flies buzzing around, a minor nuisance at worst? The man, who now lies buried after being tortured to death, leaves behind three children and a wife. To me this does not look like anything minor.

And what has the agency you head done so far? Nothing, beyond getting an unnamed official to say that while the “unfortunate and tragic death of Syed Saleem Shahzad is a source of concern for the entire nation”, “the incident should not be used to target and malign the country’s security agencies”. Well, sir, to me this is totally unacceptable. What makes the security agencies exempt from criticism or accountability, especially if they are considered enemies by the very people they are supposed to protect?

I believe in giving everyone a fair hearing but the ISI has to do much more than get an unnamed official to issue a feeble condolence and follow it up with a veiled threat to the media to deserve such a hearing. And as far as maligning the agency is concerned or knowing what national interest is, this being no time for mincing words, let me assure you that I understand the theoretical and practical dimensions of statecraft better and more deeply than your entire agency. And I am not the only one.

Now, for a moment, let’s assume that the ISI has not killed Saleem. Let’s also assume that much of what is being said about the ISI is the product of a heat-oppressed civilian brain, not a reality. Perhaps you would still like to know why people think such things of the ISI. So, here goes.

Nation-states are not biological entities; they are, to use the cliché, ‘imagined communities’. This, as the starting point, should give you some idea about how easily the concept of the state and its interest can be problematised. Democratic states garner the loyalties of their people through a sense of sharing and participation, through constitutionalism. In comparison, totalitarian and oppressive states use fear to keep the flock together. History shows that the latter break up at some point. No amount of oppression can keep the people chained; it is only a matter of time. Instead, oppression begets violence and deep turmoil. The problem with oppression is thus that it attracts what it sets out to avoid. Therein lies both the irony and the paradox.

Allied with this point is the idea of civilian supremacy, the fact that while the state becomes overarching, those representing it at any point of time have to operate on the basis of accepted and acceptable rules of the game. They are all accountable through two levels of agency. The first and primary level of agency is granted by the people through elections to their representatives; the second, a much more restrictive level of agency, is accorded by the peoples’ representatives to bureaucratic institutions, including the military and its intelligence agencies.

You, sir, are therefore a servant twice over, as are all your officers and other personnel. You are answerable to our representatives and those representatives are answerable to us.

Obviously, theory does not match fact in Pakistan and it is this anomaly which has brought the country to the brink of disaster. I have said this before and I will say it again: The military-ISI combine has no business defining Pakistan’s interest. That is our job and we, the civilians, will do it through our representatives. Your job is to implement, not formulate, policies.

Since it is your job to identify threats, you must understand the deep fault lines developing in this state. Today’s disarray is the product of flawed policies and even more flawed attempts at nation-building. Strategic vision, like charity, begins at home. If the people of this country feel proud to be Pakistanis, you will have that strength at your back. If they don’t, that makes you very weak too. And you can’t beat people into submission; nor kill them and expect all will be hunky-dory.

It is all about the fundamentals. Unless you get the fundamentals right, no amount of cloak-and-dagger stuff will reduce the threats the country faces. In fact, given what the people think about the agency you head, one of the biggest evolving threats appears to emanate from an organisation whose very reason for existence is to identify and evaluate threats to this state. Could there be a deeper irony than this?

I met you the first time in November 2007 when you were director-general military operations. I know you to be a straight-talking soldier. I would expect that you would do everything to prove that Saleem was not murdered by the ISI. Conversely, if the spoor is traced back to your agency, that you would ensure that whoever is responsible for it, no matter how highly placed, would face the law as a common murderer. That is the only honourable thing to do and nothing less would do, or be acceptable. That is also the only way you can save this country.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 8th, 2011.

Ejaz Haider’s open letter is bold and brave and asks many pertinent questions that the ISI chief and khaki king Kayani must answer for the dark forces that silenced Saleem Shahzad must face justice.

The Express Tribune has reported today that the slain journalist, Saleem Shazad has had his phone records erased. Such a feat is not the work of an ordinary criminal and adds more fuel to the fire that Shahzad was murdered by dark forces within Pakistan’s security establishment namely the ISI

As a reader of Saleem Shahzad’s investigative reports on Asia Times, I mourn his loss he was a journalist par excellence. I particularly mourn his passing for he is one more voice silenced in the endless rising crescendo of screams that is the madness that is modern-day Pakistan.

The ISI remains for me and every other proud Pakistani, a defender of Pakistan. It thus pains me no end to see it being ridiculed for it seems insistent to never learn lessons from its mistakes with the most recent being the alleged murder of Saleem Shahzad.

The chief allegation against the ISI being that they killed Shahzad as they were upset at his most recent Asia Times report shared here in which he alleged links between staff at the Pakistan Navy and Al Qaeda in the recent PNS Mehran attack. The ISI is thus blamed for killing Shahzad so to send a message to other journalists who dare to spread so-called anti-state stories which are often only the other side to a story and at times the truth.

The ISI and the Pakistan Armed Forces must wake up (in Abbottabad and elsewhere) to the fact that journalists like Saleem Shahzad report the news and nothing more. At times such news may be critical, however patriotism does not mean that journalists nor the Pakistani people should turn a blind eye to the mistakes like the Osama fiasco and PNS Mehran which go on to lead to national shame.

Postcript: On a separate note but related to journalism I wish to publicly rescind my glowing support for Ansar Abbasi in one of my old posts titled Saluting Ansar Abbasi (Pakistan’s Robert Fisk) as shared here. I wish to retract my words which were shallow, amateurish and simplistic in nature for Ansar Abbasi is a respected journalist and never a Robert Fisk.

May 2011’s B-side is all about the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the fall-out from it in Pakistan. Three articles try to bring some sense and perspective beginning with the much ridiculed article penned by President Zardari. The other articles have not been subject to ridicule and are written by Babar Sattar and Mohammed Hanif respectively. May 2011’s B-side contents include:

• Pakistan Did Its Part by ASIF ALI ZARDARI
• Time For Heads To Roll by BABAR SATTAR
• Osama Bin Laden Death: No Mourning Or Celebration In Pakistan by MOHAMMED HANIF

The first article is written by none other than the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari.

Pakistan Did Its Part by President Asif Ali Zardari

Pakistan, perhaps the world’s greatest victim of terrorism, joins the other targets of al-Qaeda — the people of the United States, Britain, Spain, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Yemen, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria — in our satisfaction that the source of the greatest evil of the new millennium has been silenced, and his victims given justice. He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone.

Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world. And we in Pakistan take some satisfaction that our early assistance in identifying an al-Qaeda courier ultimately led to this day.

Let us be frank. Pakistan has paid an enormous price for its stand against terrorism. More of our soldiers have died than all of NATO’s casualties combined. Two thousand police officers, as many as 30,000 innocent civilians and a generation of social progress for our people have been lost. And for me, justice against bin Laden was not just political; it was also personal, as the terrorists murdered our greatest leader, the mother of my children. Twice he tried to assassinate my wife. In 1989 he poured $50 million into a no-confidence vote to topple her first government. She said that she was bin Laden’s worst nightmare — a democratically elected, progressive, moderate, pluralistic female leader. She was right, and she paid for it with her life.

Some in the U.S. press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing. Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn’t reflect fact. Pakistan had as much reason to despise al-Qaeda as any nation. The war on terrorism is as much Pakistan’s war as as it is America’s. And though it may have started with bin Laden, the forces of modernity and moderation remain under serious threat.

My government endorses the words of President Obama and appreciates the credit he gave us Sunday night for the successful operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa. We also applaud and endorse the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that we must “press forward, bolstering our partnerships, strengthening our networks, investing in a positive vision of peace and progress, and relentlessly pursuing the murderers who target innocent people.” We have not yet won this war, but we now clearly can see the beginning of the end, and the kind of South and Central Asia that lies in our future.

Only hours after bin Laden’s death, the Taliban reacted by blaming the government of Pakistan and calling for retribution against its leaders, and specifically against me as the nation’s president. We will not be intimidated. Pakistan has never been and never will be the hotbed of fanaticism that is often described by the media.

Radical religious parties have never received more than 11 percent of the vote. Recent polls showed that 85 percent of our people are strongly opposed to al-Qaeda. In 2009, when the Taliban briefly took over the Swat Valley, it demonstrated to the people of Pakistan what our future would look like under its rule — repressive politics, religious fanaticism, bigotry and discrimination against girls and women, closing of schools and burning of books. Those few months did more to unite the people of Pakistan around our moderate vision of the future than anything else possibly could.

A freely elected democratic government, with the support and mandate of the people, working with democracies all over the world, is determined to build a viable, economic prosperous Pakistan that is a model to the entire Islamic world on what can be accomplished in giving hope to our people and opportunity to our children. We can become everything that al-Qaeda and the Taliban most fear — a vision of a modern Islamic future. Our people, our government, our military, our intelligence agencies are very much united. Some abroad insist that this is not the case, but they are wrong. Pakistanis are united.

Together, our nations have suffered and sacrificed. We have fought bravely and with passion and commitment. Ultimately we will prevail. For, in the words of my martyred wife Benazir Bhutto, “truth, justice and the forces of history are on our side.”

Published in The Washington Post

WASIM VIEW- Before commenting on the 734-worded article I wish to recall a tweet on Twitter that asked of President Zardari’s above article which asked ‘was that Washington Post article an address to the nation by our President? #justwondering’. The question and hash tag although humorous are in fact an indictment of out President with the tweet doing justice to the feelings of the ordinary Pakistani who has been left bewildered and betrayed by their grinning President in a time of national crisis.

Readers will know that President Zardari has yet to move his lips in public and emit a sound on the May 2 operation that killed Bin Laden, save for penning an article on it. That said President Zardari’s article (or should I say Husain Haqqani’s article) is lucid and loud, the latter a quality he has lacked throughout his presidency and the former a quality he has in bucket loads.

The article seek to remind the Americans of Pakistan’s record on the so-called war on terror and charts Pakistan’s sacrifices. However I do take issue with the President Zardari when he wrote that he endorsed the words of Obama and Clinton vis a vis the 2nd of May, one must assume he also supported the actions that gave meaning to those very words and resulted in a unilateral and illegal attack on Pakistani soil.

In a defining moment for Pakistan, at a time of crisis President Zardari has personally been left found wanting. His article achieves nothing, even today he has not uttered a word about the US action in Abbottabad to his people in their language be it in Urdu, Balochi, Sindhi, Pashto or Punjabi. Such an act is unforgivable and nothing short of scandalous.

Even the PPP apologists and jiyalas will find it hard to defend their silent leader who has been rendered speechless after the 2nd of May. The PPP and President cannot blame anyone for their own failings in this regard, unless he wishes to blame Kayani and co for slashing his tongue, rendering him speechless. If the truth be told, Kayani could not even manage that feat for post 2nd May the khaki kings have been left disgraced, diminished and degraded and dethroned.

The second article is the best article ever featured on any B-side and is written by a brilliant Pakistani mind, Babar Sattar.

Time For Heads To Roll by Babar Sattar

Our military and intelligence agencies stand indicted for being complicit with terror groups and our best defence seems to be to plead incompetence.

Osama’s refuge in the shadows of the Pakistan Military Academy Kakul and his killing without the knowledge or permission of Pakistani authorities have not only raised piercing questions about the country’s willingness to function as a responsible state but also cast fundamental doubts on the ability of our national security apparatus to protect Pakistan against foreign intervention.

An ISPR release after Thursday’s corps commanders’ conference that broke the security establishment’s silence on the Osama operation is mostly gibberish.

While admitting “shortcomings in developing intelligence” on Osama’s presence in Pakistan, it goes on to blow the ISI’s trumpet for extraordinary achievement all around. The commanders feel betrayed by the CIA for not telling the ISI where Bin Laden was hiding.

The release doesn’t say why the military failed to detect foreign choppers and troops in our territory for an hour and 40 minutes. The air chief has now chimed in: the radars were working perfectly but enough of them are just not located on the western border. Did no one ever think we needed radar and air cover in the drone-infested part of Pakistan that has been an active war zone for a decade?

Can the-dog-ate-my-homework routine pacify a nation worried sick about having penetrable defences, no response readiness and being on the way to be branded a rogue? An inquiry into the facts of the Osama operation to determine the causes of the intelligence failure will not be sufficient.

We need to rationally approach the concept of sovereignty together with state responsibility to understand why the world views us suspiciously. We need a thorough re-examination of our existing national security doctrine to determine whether it is promoting or jeopardising our security. We need disclosure on the scope of our military relationship with the US and if the latter has been afforded air bases and the permission to house troops or intelligence operatives within Pakistan.

We need to root the power and authority of the ISI within statutory law, provide for internal checks and performance audit, and subject the agency to effective parliamentary scrutiny. And we need to do away with our policy of deliberate hypocrisy reflected in our refusal to clearly articulate our security and foreign policy goals, especially vis-à-vis the future of Afghanistan.

This is keeping the jihadi project alive, confusing and polarising the nation and drawing a wedge between Pakistan and the world. But this won’t happen unless the responsibility for failing to detect Osama’s presence in Pakistan as well as the US military operation is ascribed to those in charge of national security.

It is unlikely that Osama was being hosted by Pakistan as a matter of policy. Shielding Afghan Taliban leaders or India-focused militant leaders, however misconceived, is still understandable as part of a warped strategy to promote our defined strategic interests. Hosting Bin Laden or other Al Qaeda leaders isn’t.

Further, the assumption that our military and the ISI must have known of Osama’s presence in Abbottabad is the product of a narrative that projects our national security establishment as extremely capable, effective and omnipresent. This narrative has been conjured up by the national security establishment itself and mercilessly fed to the nation.

The masses buy into it for lack of an alternative narrative and a misplaced sense of nationalism. The political class and the media buy into it because they remain subjects of the ISI’s intrusive gaze, being followed, wiretapped, photographed, interrogated, cajoled and coerced. But hard facts do not back this narrative. Without distorting history can one honestly applaud our military high command’s performance in any war? Have our military and its intelligence network succeeded in confronting the security threat emanating from within?

If the ISI and the MI are epitomes of excellence, what accounts for their inability to prevent terrorists from blowing up themselves, our soldiers, policemen, intelligence outfits and innocent civilians across Pakistan at will? What can possibly explain the ease with which a handful of terrorists broke into the GHQ, killed senior military officers and held others hostage for hours? Pakistan has lost more civilians and soldiers to terror since 9/11 than all other countries of the world put together.

Does this sacrifice not highlight the failure of our national security strategy?

Some days ago, army chief Gen Kayani declared that national honour shall not be traded for prosperity. A week before that he had boasted that we had broken the backbone of the militants. Air chief Rao Qamar Suleman had declared that the air force is capable of shooting down US Predator aircraft if asked to. The US Navy Seals then carried out a complex military operation in the heart of Pakistan with choppers and boots on the ground and all, and the air force and army slept right through it?

In a functional democracy, these gentlemen would be sacked after such a debacle. Unfortunately, national security related decisions in Pakistan fall within the exclusive domain of the military, which jealously guards its turf. But responsibility must accompany such power. And the responsibility for erosion of our international credibility and increased threat to security personnel and citizens from terror networks nestled within Pakistan rests squarely on the military’s shoulder.

Be it a rise in suicide bombing and terror incidents within Pakistan, an increase in US drone strikes in our territory, the Mumbai attacks or the Osama operation, the threat to Pakistan’s interests for being perceived as a pad for terrorist activity and to its citizens as targets of terror has proliferated under Gen Kayani’s watch. Is it not time for Gen Kayani to call it quits and take along with him the DG ISI and the air chief? Shouldn’t these heads roll to account for failing to do their jobs?

With them in the driving seat it might neither be possible to hold a transparent inquiry into the security breaches that led to the Osama operation and its execution without Pakistan’s knowledge nor engage in a rethink of our perverse national security mindset. Can we shed some baggage and create room for untainted faces and ideas?

The concept of sovereignty assumes control over the territory a state claims. We cannot continue to shirk responsibility for the men, material and money transiting in and out of Pakistan and simultaneously wail at the disregard for our sovereignty. It is time to publicly articulate our legitimate security interests linked to the future of Afghanistan and develop a regional consensus around it, instead of vying for the whole hog.

It is time to completely liquidate the jihadi project and cleanse our state machinery of those who believe in its virtue. And it is time to shun the delusions of grandeur and conspiracy that prevent us from realising our potential as a responsible and industrious nation.

Published in Dawn

WASIM VIEW- I agree with every word and heads must roll.

Babar Sattar’s article is the best article I have read post Osama and is so spot on, that it needs no commentary from me given that I agree with every word he has written. Sattar is right to call for the heads of Kayani, Pasha and Suleman, and I echo such a call; however I feel he must add to his call the names of Messrs Zardari and Gilani who are also responsible for our present ills.

The final article is written by the respected Pakistani author, Mohammed Hanif.

Osama Bin Laden Death: No Mourning Or Celebration In Pakistan by Mohammed Hanif

There were no celebrations. And there was no mourning. It didn’t occur to anyone to make an Obama effigy; no American flags were burnt. There were no heated debates about whether Osama was a martyr or not. The buses that were set ablaze in Karachi had nothing to do with the high drama in Abbotabad. The crowd in front of Karachi Press Club was a group of private bank employees wanting their jobs back. The little group at the gates of the electricity company offices was demanding nothing more than some good, clean electricity.

A hunger strike camp with young men’s posters was part of a campaign to recover young men who have nothing at to do with al-Qaida.

In fact, the reaction to the killing of Bin Laden was so subdued that a colleague noted that there weren’t even any text messages in circulation with conspiracy theories and inevitable jokes about Osama’s wives.

Pakistanis are not in denial. Just busy. They are busy fighting a hundred little battles that don’t involve US Navy Seals or helicopter crashes or Arab tycoons. These battles are as vicious as any that you have seen in the last 10 years but they don’t make good TV. How do you create high drama out of millions of industrial labourers being laid off because there is no electricity? How do you sex up the banal fact that every tenth child in the world who never sees the inside of a schoolroom is a Pakistani child?

So it fell to our TV pundits to prove that we were also part of this global soap opera. They raged against yet another invasion of our much-molested sovereignty. They demanded transparency from America. They wanted footage. How many hours of rolling news you can spin out of a single, bullet-riddled mugshot?

In the real world an educationist and chronic optimist tried to fantasise. “So the party is over,” he enthused. “Americans will go home. Our boys will ask their jihadi boys to pack up, surely?”

Someone reminded him. “Have you been to a party lately, sir? Nobody goes home.”

Pakistan’s security establishment, of course, went into a sulky silence, and wasn’t around to reassure us. Were they protecting Osama bin Laden? Or were they so hopelessly inefficient that they couldn’t track the world’s most recognisable face when he was camped out practically at the edge of the Pakistan army’s most famous parade ground? As they are answerable only to their mistrusting partners and permanent paymasters in Washington, they didn’t feel like obliging us with any information.

But anyone who has lived through Pakistan’s three military dictatorships sponsored by Washington can tell you there is no need to be such a reductionist. Why can’t Pakistan’s security establishment do both? Why can’t they shelter him and then forget about the fact that they were sheltering him? Or why can’t they shelter him and then shop him at a later stage?

Pakistan’s army is often accused, mostly by their best friends in Washington, of double-dealing and fighting on both sides of this war. In its long role as rent-an-army to the US, it has been accused of becoming a mafia, a secretive clan and a corporation, all at the same time. But what does it feel like to live under this bloody delusion? It’s like watching a person whose one hand is hacking away at his other hand. There is blood, there are cries of pain, and there is the obvious sound of one hand hacking away at the other. The person keeps looking around trying to figure out, who is doing this to me? Military operations and house-to-house searches to look for the hidden hand end up where they started.

On Tuesday afternoon an official from the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence agency) did come up with a frank but not very reassuring explanation about that house in Abbottabad. It was embarrassing, he told the BBC World Service. And then went on to reminisce about their past victories, duly acknowledged and celebrated by their Washington counterparts. “We are good but not gods,” he said. What he really should have said is that we are gods, but not good.

Published in The Guardian

WASIM VIEW- In choosing to include Mohammed Hanif’s article in this B-side I wished to move beyond Osama and remind myself and readers of the daily struggles of the ordinary Pakistani. Such struggles are obviously not sexy and so do not make good copy or headline news in Pakistan and elsewhere but they represent the harsh realities of Pakistan and its people as described by Hanif’s excellent article.

Hanif’s criticisms of the Pakistani army and the ISI are deserved and in particular I agree with his choice of words in describing the army as a rent-an-army for the US. After PNS Mehran and Abbottabad before it, Pakistan’s armed forces have clearly lost their mojo, for it stands today supremely humiliated before the world. As a proud Pakistani that hurts for the armed forces remains the guarantor of Pakistan’s defence.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating so goes the common catchphrase. This will indeed be the case for Pakistan’s parliament and her civilian and military leadership after their recent unanimous resolution regulating Pakistan-US relations post Osama and Abbottabad.

Personally I welcome the unanimous resolution passed by the joint sitting of the Parliament that lasted over 10 hours and hope that the much-celebrated Parliament will stand tall and give meaning to its words which are cheap on their own and share the resolution verbatim with readers via the Associated Press of Pakistan below:

“After an in-depth discussion, including presentations made on the relevant issues by the Director General, Inter-Services Intelligence, Director General (Military Operations) and Deputy Chief of Air Staff (Operations), the Joint Session of Parliament resolved as under:

1. Condemned the US unilateral action in Abbottabad, which constitutes a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.
2. Strongly asserted that unilateral actions, such as those conducted by the US forces in Abbottabad, as well as the continued drone attacks on the territory of Pakistan, are not only unacceptable but also constitute violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, international law and humanitarian norms and such drone attacks must be stopped forthwith, failing which the Government will be constrained to consider taking necessary steps including withdrawal of transit facility allowed to NATO/ISAF forces.
3. Expressed its deep distress on the campaign to malign Pakistan, launched by certain quarters in other countries without appreciating Pakistan’s determined efforts and immense sacrifices in combating terror and the fact that more than thirty thousand Pakistani innocent men, women and children and more than five thousand security and armed forces personnel had lost their lives, that is more than any other single country, in the fight against terror and the blowback emanating from actions of the NATO/ISAF forces in Afghanistan;
4. Called upon the Government to ensure that the principles of an independent foreign policy must be grounded in strict adherence to the principles of policy, as stated in Article 40 of the Constitution, the UN Charter, observance of international law and respect for the free will and aspirations of sovereign states and their peoples.
5. Further called upon the Government to re-visit and review its terms of engagement with the United States, with a view to ensuring that Pakistan’s national interests are fully respected and accommodated in pursuit of policies for countering terrorism and achieving reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan.
6. Affirmed the importance of international cooperation for eliminating international terrorism, which can only be carried forward on the basis of a true partnership approach, based on equality, mutual respect and mutual trust.
7. Affirmed also full confidence in the defence forces of Pakistan in safeguarding Pakistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and in overcoming any challenge to security, with the full support of the people and Government of Pakistan.
8. Reaffirmed the Resolution passed by the Joint Sitting of the Parliament on National Security held on 22 October 2008 and the detailed recommendations made by the Parliamentary Committee on National Security in April 2009.

The passing of the above resolution carries with it the power of Pakistan’s parliament and her power elite in khakis and in suits. Thus the real test will centre on how Pakistan can give meaning to the words above by ensuring to take one example that no drone attacks are allowed.

The Dattakhel drone attack over the weekend has not escaped my attention and neither has the response (read lack therof) of the Pakistani power elite. The pathetic and apathetic response has disappointed me greatly for the fanfare around the resolution indicated that this was a watershed moment for Pakistan-US relations.

That said I will refrain from final judgement and give the elected leadership of Pakistan and the much celebrated Parliament some time to give meaning to those words for actions must match the words. The taste of the Pakistani pudding is indeed in the eating and this will be test too for this resolution for it carries the will of the people.

Messrs Zardari, Gilani and Kayani must act in unison and give meaning to the words of the resolution, otherwise they will fail Pakistan and prove to the nation that Pakistan’s parliament and democracy are impotent and nothing but a talking shop and that her army is nothing even with a nuclear bomb except for a paper tiger and that too with no teeth.

Seen on the back of a rickshaw in Lahore: ‘Horn na bajao: Pak fauj so rahi hai’

For Sale: Obsolete #Pakistan army radar; can’t detect US ‘copters but can receive Star Plus; only Rs. 999″

I know my next door neighbour’s name. #BetterIntelThanTheISI ( Twitter hash tag)

Gen Kayani: Any Indian misadventure will be swiftly dealt with.. umm u expect a helicopter to crash and wake u up each time

The jokes shared above are being circulated online and in SMS messages across Pakistan and are a slap in the face for Pakistan’s leaders who have been left looking incompetent, impotent and irrelevant after Bin Laden’s killing. In particular, the Pakistan army leadership has come in for much deserved criticism for it has been revealed to one and all as nothing short of a joke under the so-called stellar leadership of General Kayani.

It saddens me to write that Pakistan is sneered at and has become world enemy number one and become ‘Despise-Stan’ after the killing of Bin Laden. Never before has Pakistan been so hated and humiliated before the world with its civilian and military leadership looking supremely incompetent and impotent. I will go further and say that the Osama situation is the biggest failure of Pakistan’s leadership and foreign policy and the biggest debacle of our army and intelligence agencies since 1971.

The reaction by the civilian and military leadership since has been apathetic and pathetic and tall claims by the kings in khakis and in suits have disappointed me and the nation. Thus as a Pakistani I demand that President Zardari, as the commander-in-chief and leader of the ruling party takes responsibility for the whole debacle and goes home. At the same time, Prime Minister Gilani should punish and sack the heads of the army and the ISI, General Kayani and General Pasha respectively. Last but not least the President should sack goofball Gilani as Prime Minister and all four buffoons must walk into the sunset and let Pakistan be.

As Wikileaks proved, the President and Prime Minister allowed the US the right to kill the Pakistani people via drone attacks and that on its own is more than enough excuse to send both gentlemen home. As the President, Asif Ali Zardari is on paper at least the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and so must take responsibility for its successes and superb failure in protecting Pakistan on the 2nd of May.

I feel no need to explain why General Kayani and Pasha should be sacked for the jokes at the start of the post say it all. I do wish to remind readers of the work of khaki king Kayani who was the DG ISI as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan rose to the fore, moreover on his watch the Swat Taliban took over the valley of Swat and Malakand. The subsequent military operations under Kayani as army chief in Swat and FATA were necessary and the product of his own failures as the ISI chief.

Looking forward, the only solution for the Pakistani people must be to become one and unite to resist US imperialism in the country. The nation cannot keep its silence for if it does it should prepare for even darker days given that Pakistan’s leaders in khakis and in suits have prostituted themselves for power, privilege. arms and cash.

The Pakistani people must understand that the US and other outsiders can and will exploit our internal weaknesses and obviously serve only their interests, thus Pakistan must put our own home in order.

The test case for Pakistan and our Pakistaniat must be the drone attacks, for the day that a drone attack in Waziristan hurts all Pakistanis equally from Bajaur Agency to Bahawalpur and beyond, on that day Pakistan can move forward. I for one hope that day is near and that the Pakistani people wake up and move the street peacefully to save Pakistan.

The killing of Osama Bin Laden in a sleepy and safe suburb in the garrison city of Abbottabad has made headline news across the world. From America to Australia, Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership has been lambasted for its incompetence and alleged collusion in hiding Bin Laden, with Pakistan’s army leadership and the ISI having much to answer to and for in the coming days and weeks.

As a Pakistani I wish to make two broad points in this short post for the Osama story will run and run and will be commented on for information is still sketchy and much of the narrative revelaed so far seems muddled and even suspect. First and foremost I shed no tears in the killing of bastard Bin Laden who was personally responsible for the murder of millions from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond.

The second point relates to Pakistan’s sovereignity and lack therof. For many Pakistani citizens, the unilateral US attack on Bin Laden in Abbottabad has brought home the slavish state of the nation. It seems that for too many a Pakistani, US actions in FATA are permissable and fine and well but not so in Abbottabad which is ‘real Pakistan’ as it resides in so-called mainland Pakistan.

Herein lies one of Pakistan’s major problems, the petty pursuit of personal and provincial interests over national interests. This has translated in a Pakistan as a state and as a people that is divided and become largerly indifferent to American drone attacks in the wider FATA region for it is unofficially seen as an inferior part of Pakistan, yet the same state and people vent their fury loudly vis a vis the US action in Abbottabad. Consequently it is obvious that a divided Pakistan is weak internally and more susceptible to external pressures from Uncle Sam and others.

In concluding, Pakistan is after 9/11, once again in the eye of the storm. During such times of national crisis, political unity, stellar leadership and sound judgement are needed. I am appalled that Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership has appeared muddled and confused thus far and have lacked any coherency from top to bottom. The khaki kings in GHQ look lost, the President and Prime Minister clueless and the opposition including a two-time former Prime Minister indifferent, need I say more?

April 2011′s B-side begins with deserved focus on one of the greatest Pakistanis to have graced the country, Abdul Sattar Edhi. The remainder of the B-side is devoted to that migraines of migraines, namely Pakistan-US relations. April 2011′s B-side contents include:

• The Day I Met Abdul Sattar Edhi, A Living Saint by PETER OBORNE

• Reclaiming Pakistan’s Lost Space by IMRAN KHAN

• Feeding Pakistan’s Paranoia by SHUJA NAWAZ

The first article is a tribute by a Western commentator of the one and only, Abdul Sattar Edhi.

The Day I Met Abdul Sattar Edhi, A Living Saint by Peter Oborne

In the course of my duties as a reporter, I have met presidents, prime ministers and reigning monarchs. Until meeting the Pakistani social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi, I had never met a saint. Within a few moments of shaking hands, I knew I was in the presence of moral and spiritual greatness.

Mr Edhi’s life story is awesome, as I learnt when I spent two weeks working at one of his ambulance centres in Karachi. The 82-year-old lives in the austerity that has been his hallmark all his life. He wears blue overalls and sports a Jinnah cap, so named because it was the head gear of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.

No Pakistani since Jinnah has commanded the same reverence, and our conversations were constantly interrupted as people came to pay their respects.

Mr Edhi told me that, 60 years ago, he stood on a street corner in Karachi and begged for money for an ambulance, raising enough to buy a battered old van. In it, he set out on countless life-saving missions. Gradually, Mr Edhi set up centres all over Pakistan. He diversified into orphanages, homes for the mentally ill, drug rehabilitation centres and hostels for abandoned women. He fed the poor and buried the dead. His compassion was boundless.

He was born in 1928, when the British Empire was at its height, in Gujarat in what is now western India. But he and his family were forced to flee for their lives in 1947 when the division of India and creation of Pakistan inspired terrible communal tensions: millions were killed in mob violence and ethnic cleansing.

This was the moment Mr Edhi, finding himself penniless on the streets of Karachi, set out on his life’s mission. Just 20 years old, he volunteered to join a charity run by the Memons, the Islamic religious community to which his family belonged. At first, Mr Edhi welcomed his duties; then he was appalled to discover that the charity’s compassion was confined to Memons. He confronted his employers, telling them that “humanitarian work loses its significance when you discriminate between the needy”.

So he set up a small medical centre of his own, sleeping on the cement bench outside his shop so that even those who came late at night could be served. But he also had to face the enmity of the Memons, and became convinced they were capable of having him killed. For safety, and in search of knowledge, he set out on an overland journey to Europe, begging all the way.

One morning, he awoke on a bench at Rome railway station to discover his shoes had been stolen. He was not bothered, considering them inessential. Nevertheless, the next day an elderly lady gave him a pair of gumboots, two sizes too large, and Mr Edhi wobbled about in them for the remainder of his journey. In London, he was a great admirer of the British welfare state, though he presciently noted its potential to encourage a culture of dependency. He was offered a job but refused, telling his benefactor: “I have to do something for the people in Pakistan.”

On return from Europe, his destiny was set. There was no welfare state in Fifties Pakistan: he would fill the gap. This was a difficult period in his life. Shabby, bearded and with no obvious prospects, seven women in rapid succession turned down his offers of marriage. He resigned himself to chastity and threw all of his energy into work.

He would hurtle round the province of Sindh in his poor man’s ambulance, collecting dead bodies, taking them to the police station, waiting for the death certificate and, if the bodies were not claimed, burying them himself.

Mr Edhi’s autobiography, published in 1996, records that he recovered these stinking cadavers “from rivers, from inside wells, from road sides, accident sites and hospitals… When families forsook them, and authorities threw them away, I picked them up… Then I bathed and cared for each and every victim of circumstance.”

There is a photograph of Mr Edhi from this formative time. It could be the face of a young revolutionary or poet: dark beard, piercing, passionate eyes. And it is indeed the case that parts of his profound and moving autobiography carry the same weight and integrity as great poetry or even scripture.

Mr Edhi discovered that many Pakistani women were killing their babies at birth, often because they were born outside marriage. One newborn child was stoned to death outside a mosque on the orders of religious leaders. A furious Mr Edhi responded: “Who can declare an infant guilty when there is no concept of punishing the innocent?”

So Mr Edhi placed a little cradle outside every Edhi centre, beneath a placard imploring: “Do not commit another sin: leave your baby in our care.” Mr Edhi has so far saved 35,000 babies and, in approximately half of these cases, found families to cherish them.

Once again, this practice brought him into conflict with religious leaders. They claimed that adopted children could not inherit their parents’ wealth. Mr Edhi told them their objections contradicted the supreme idea of religion, declaring: “Beware of those who attribute petty instructions to God.”

Over time, Mr Edhi came to exercise such a vast moral authority that Pakistan’s corrupt politicians had to pay court. In 1982, General Zia announced the establishment of a shura (advisory council) to determine matters of state according to Islamic principles. Mr Edhi was suspicious: “I represented the millions of downtrodden, and was aware that my presence gave the required credibility to an illegal rule.”

Travelling to Rawalpindi to speak at the national assembly, he delivered a passionate denunciation of politicl corruption, telling an audience of MPs, including Zia himself: “The people have been neglected long enough. “One day they shall rise like mad men and pull down these walls that keep their future captive. Mark my words and heed them before you find yourselves the prey instead of the predator.”

Mr Edhi did not distinguish between politicians and criminals, asking: “Why should I condemn a declared dacoit [bandit] and not condemn the respectable villain who enjoys his spoils as if he achieved them by some noble means?” This impartiality had its advantages. It meant that a truce would be declared when Mr Edhi and his ambulance arrived at the scene of gun battles between police and gangsters. “They would cease fire,” notes Mr Edhi in his autobiography, “until bodies were carried to the ambulance, the engine would start and shooting would resume.”

Mr Edhi eventually found a wife, Bilquis, but his personal austerity was all but incompatible with married life. When the family went on Hajj, a vast overland journey in the ambulance, he forbade Bilquis to bring extra clothes, because he was determined to fill the vehicle with medical supplies.

Reaching Quetta in northern Baluchistan, with the temperature plunging, he relented enough to allow her to buy a Russian soldier’s overcoat. Later on, when their children grew up, Mr Edhi would not find time to attend his daughter’s marriage.

But Mr Edhi’s epic achievement would not have been possible but for this inhuman single-mindedness. Today, the influence of the Edhi Foundation stretches far outside Pakistan and Mr Edhi has led relief missions across the Muslim world, providing aid at every international emergency from the Lebanon civil war in 1983 to the Bangladesh cyclone in 2007.

There are no horrors that Mr Edhi and his incredibly brave army of ambulance men have not witnessed, and the numerous lives they have saved. The story of Mr Edhi coincides with the history of the Pakistan state. More than any other living figure, he articulates Jinnah’s vision of a country which, while based on Islam, nevertheless offers a welcome for people of all faiths and sects. Indeed, the life of Mr Edhi provides a sad commentary on the betrayal of Jinnah’s Pakistan by a self-interested political class.

One evening, as the sun set over Karachi, I asked Mr Edhi what future he foresaw. “Unless things change,” he said, “I predict a revolution.”

Published in The Telegraph

WASIM VIEW- In his excellent article on the great Abdul Sattat Edhi, Peter Oborne has spoke for me and every living Pakistani, Indeed his article needs no comments for I am proud to own every single word Oborne wrote and echo all his sentiments on the great saint that is the one and only Abdul Sattar Edhi.

Abdul Sattar Edhi is for me the living embodiment of a true Muslim, and a true follower of the Mercy to the Universe. Edhi saab is by far the greatest living Pakistani alive today and one of the greatest of all time. At a personal level Edhi saab renews my faith in Pakistan through his selfless work, indeed because of him I feel proud of my roots and heritage for he represents and serves the Quaid’s Pakistan now long-disappeared from view as a land created to serve the poor masses.

Peter Oborne’s article is welcome although it is written at least two decades late for he and others in the western media have clearly ignored Edhi saab and more widely Pakistan’s impressive record in philanthropy. Thanks to Oborne’s article, western readers will know that an other Pakistan exists, and more specifically that the Edhi Foundation proves that Pakistan is much more than the perceived land of nuclear bombs, terrorism and cricket.

The second article is written by a great Pakistani icon on Pakistan-US relations, Imran Khan

Reclaiming Pakistan’s Lost Space by Imran Khan

It is amazing to see the glibness with which the rulers continue to lie to the nation about the drone attacks and the surrender of Pakistan’s sovereignty to the USA. Feigning anger and regret over the drone attacks which have multiplied yearly since the Zardari government came to power, the civil and military leadership continues to give access to the US to kill Pakistanis in Fata through these lethal drone attacks. Even a parliamentary resolution has failed to push the government into acting against these drones and moving to control the free-wheeling, gun-toting and murderous American Rambos in the guise of CIA operatives, US Special Forces and private US mercenaries, who have added to the murder of Pakistani civilians and security personnel. Instead, as the WikiLeaks revealed, Prime Minister Gilani informed the US government that they could continue with their operatives and drones in Pakistan while he made declaratory noises to the contrary for the Pakistani nation’s consumption! Much earlier, Bob Woodward, in his book Obama’s Wars, had put on record how President Zardari, in a revealing cavalier mindset, informed the US leaders that collateral damage in terms of Pakistani lives was of no concern to him. That Pakistani lives are simply irrelevant “collateral damage” shows the utter contempt the “democratic” rulers of Pakistan have for their people.

Meanwhile, despite skilful propaganda to the contrary from Western sources (both through NGOs and officials) and some of their embedded media personnel in Pakistan, the people of Fata are increasingly becoming more vocal and resentful of the drones and therefore more resentful towards the Pakistani state. Even PPP members from Fata have denounced the drone killings as primarily targeting civilians. While only a handful of militants have been known to have died in the drone attacks, the civilian death toll goes beyond 2,000 and includes large numbers of women and children. Beyond those killed, there are hundreds who have been physically disabled and an equal number that is suffering from shell-shock and trauma – with no provision of any medical care and assistance for the entire Fata region. The ratio of militants to civilians killed is around 1:10 – a figure reaffirmed by Gulabat Khan, a Malik from North Waziristan. Reflecting the mainstream tribal view in Fata, he also regretted that no one has bothered to inquire or offer assistance to the locals who have suffered human and material losses as a result of the drones. Worse still, the government has still not inquired into the killing of the 40 Maliks in the recent drone attack against a tribal jirga. Khan vowed revenge against the US and the Pakistani state which would go on for 500 years. Therefore, it is not surprising to find the tribes of Fata announcing a jihad against the US which means more radicalisation spreading to the rest of the country.

For Pakistan, the costs of this subservience to the US and surrender of national sovereignty has proven extremely costly and far outweighs any short term gains that may have been made – although that is itself a contentious issue. Terrorism has run riot across the country and President Zardari himself has declared that Pakistan has so far suffered with 33,500 casualties and a $68 billion loss to the economy; hundreds of thousands have been displaced far beyond Fata which has become a devastated region losing its tenuous connection with the rest of Pakistan since the people are now being compelled to acquire food and material from Afghanistan instead. This is how we have destroyed the Fata tribals who were in the forefront of supporting the creation of Pakistan and gave their lives for Kashmir in 1948.

Ironically, Pakistan has also become far more insecure as a result of becoming a surrogate for a US militaristic agenda that is rapidly slipping into a quagmire of confusion and hysteria. By opening up the whole country to the US, our rulers have also allowed all manner of external intruders into conducting low intensity operations in our sensitive areas not only of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but also of Balochistan. Add to this the bombings of shrines and mosques and the accentuating of Shia-Sunni and Deobandi-Barelvi divides, and the costs for Pakistan of the present alliance with the US rise even higher. Even Karachi and, increasingly, Punjab are becoming susceptible to militancy and violence as the provincial governments remain unresponsive to the needs of their people and the federal government remains preoccupied in appeasing the US and the destabilising IMF.

Not that the US has achieved anything from its military-centric approach to fighting terrorism. All that has happened is that a more conducive environment has been created for extremism and militancy post-9/11. The hope that Obama would bring more rationality to a trauma-ridden US policy-making elite was dashed very early on when the generals prevailed on him in connection with the militarist policies in Afghanistan; and just as the Zardari regime has pushed further the detrimental policies of Musharraf, so Obama has done the same in terms of accentuating the neocon militarism.

We feel it is time for all hues of the Pakistani nationalist leadership to put aside its other differences and come together on a singular platform of reclaiming Pakistan’s sovereignty and national dignity so that we can isolate and fight the militants and extremists in our midst more effectively through a strategy of space denial. Since Parliament has failed in pushing the government into taking the necessary steps to end drone attacks and delink from the deadly US militaristic agenda for this region, PTI has been compelled to bring people on to the streets and take direct action against this loss of sovereignty and drone killings. The PAF chief had declared over a year ago that Pakistan had the technical capability to bring down drones but the political decision was lacking.

The US public has to realise a number of points: One, that they have to extricate themselves from this so-called “war on terror” which is causing a loss of $140 billion a year in Afghanistan as well as undermining the US position in the region. Ann Paterson, the previous US ambassador to Pakistan, admitted the adverse impact on the US of the drone policy. Two, the US is violating its own humanitarian laws with the drone attacks by acting as judge, jury and executioner and incinerating the families and neighbours of suspects. Three, in the long term, the US “war on terror” has added to the radicalisation of Muslim youth in the US and Europe.

Today we Pakistanis of all shades and convictions need to come together to support our Fata brethren and protest their killing and displacement. We have to show by actions that they are one of us and we will not allow the US, Nato or our own misguided rulers to continue their military policies against the people of Fata. We also want to show that we are sensitive to their developmental needs and the urgency with which Fata needs to be brought into the mainstream of Pakistan. It is not enough to simply issue statements against US policies and drone killings; we need to act so that the voice of the people becomes a force for the rulers to reckon with. Unless we stand up for our rights no one will protect us. As we gather together the multiple strands of the Pakistani nation to reclaim our territorial integrity, sovereignty and national dignity, the message will go out to the rulers and their foreign masters that they are nothing without the support of their own nation.

Published in The News

WASIM VIEW- Imran Khan is the man of the moment at present in Pakistan after his historic dharna against US drone attacks. My views on drone attacks and the dharna can be read here and are well-known and like the author I too bemoan the fact that the Pakistani leadership in khakis and in suits lie to the nation about the drone attacks they have approved behind closed doors. I am glad that Imran Khan has targeted his ire at the civil and military leadership of Zardari, Gilani and Kayani in his article for their abject surrender of Pakistan’s sovereignty to the US.

Imran Khan is right to disapprove of the over-bearing US embrace after 9/11 which has cost Pakistan dearly. One paragraph in Khan’s article does enough to state this truth and I repeat it here; ‘ For Pakistan, the costs of this subservience to the US and surrender of national sovereignty has proven extremely costly and far outweighs any short term gains that may have been made – although that is itself a contentious issue. Terrorism has run riot across the country and President Zardari himself has declared that Pakistan has so far suffered with 33,500 casualties and a $68 billion loss to the economy; hundreds of thousands have been displaced far beyond Fata which has become a devastated region losing its tenuous connection with the rest of Pakistan since the people are now being compelled to acquire food and material from Afghanistan instead. This is how we have destroyed the Fata tribals who were in the forefront of supporting the creation of Pakistan and gave their lives for Kashmir in 1948’.

The facts above speak for themselves and need no explanation, analysis or evaluation. Later on in the article Imran Khan is rather timid in condemning President Obama for approving the increased drone attacks, instead blaming it on a neo-con agenda within the US military which personally does not wash with me. In ending the article, Imran Khan is right to call on all Pakistanis to put aside their differences and come together on a singular platform of reclaiming Pakistan’s sovereignty and national dignity and I quote him ‘so that Pakistan can isolate and fight the militants and extremists in our midst more effectively through a strategy of space denial’. I echo such sentiments and I for one will heed his call and urge all Pakistanis to do likewise.

The final article includes another perpsective by Shuja Nawaz on Pakistan-US relations.

Feeding Pakistan’s Paranoia by Shuja Nawaz

Behind all the talk of a strategic dialogue and strategic partnership between the United States and Pakistan lurks the reality of a persistent transactional relationship, based on short-term objectives that intrude rudely into the limelight every time a drone attack kills civilians inside Pakistan or in the instance when an American “operative” is caught by the Pakistanis after killing two people on the streets of Lahore.

In “Paranoidistan,” as the historian Ayesha Jalal has called Pakistan, the public and the authorities are prepared to believe the worst. Conspiracy theories abound, involving the C.I.A., Israel and India, in various permutations.

So, it is not surprising that the Raymond Davis case has left mistrust in its wake. Unanswered questions abound: What was he doing driving alone in an unmarked car in the heart of Lahore’s bazaar district? Why did he shoot to kill two youths, and then step outside his car to finish them off, and photograph them again? And why was he photographing religious seminaries and bunkers, as leaked Pakistani information indicates?

Apart from allowing the extremist Pakistani right-wingers to capture the public space with their anti-American propaganda, this case left the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate embarrassed and angry. And it has sent friends of the United States into sullen silence. Then, as soon as Davis was released in a shadowy deal involving “blood money,” came the drone attack on Datta Khel in the border region of Pakistan that killed some 40 people.

Senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials maintain this was a “normal” jirga of peaceful tribesmen. U.S. officials say that it was designed to fool the C.I.A. and that the real purpose of the open-air gathering was to conduct business harmful to the coalition’s interests in Afghanistan. Regardless, the Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, cut whole categories of U.S. military personnel based in Pakistan and privately warned the U.S. that he will “react” if the attacks continue. His intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, recently in Washington to discuss the issue with his C.I.A. counterpart, echoed that hard line. Hence, the report of a senior military official raising the possibility of shooting down the drones.

The Pakistani military and government do cooperate with the C.I.A. and U.S. military in the border region, but they will not acknowledge this openly. Both countries need to address their concerns frankly and in detail rather than continue a charade that misinforms their own people about what they are doing and why.

The United States needs to stop paying the Pakistan army with coalition support funds to fight in the border region and instead provide it adequate military aid in kind, as part of a carefully structured cooperative program to build its mobility and firepower against the militants.

Money cannot buy love. It is more likely to generate contempt among the rank and file of the Pakistani military. If the ultimate objective is to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan, then economic and peaceful political means, and talks with the militants to bring them into the fold of normal political discourse, are also needed. Not drone attacks. Nor trigger-happy cowboys in the heartland of Pakistan.

Published by The Atlantic Council

WASIM VIEW- Shuja Nawaz is a respected foreign policy analyst and the brother of the former chief of army staff, Gen Asif Nawaz. His article is a good one for it rightly opines that Raymond Davis or not, drones or not, the Pakistan-US relationship is in his words ‘a persistent transactional relationship’. The US pressure (bullying more like) on the Raymond Davis issue proved if any evidence was ever needed of how false the tall claims of Pakistan-US friendship and the like is.

Nawaz does not absolve the Pakistani leadership for our ills and is right to criticise the fact that Pakistan’s military and government hide their co-operation with the US on its covert CIA presence and drone strikes. Nawaz attempts to offer some solutions to the present strained relations and is right in calling for an Afghanistan end-game strategy that allows for a political discourse and in the end, a lasting political settlement.

This short post simply wishes to praise Imran Khan for his historic dharna against US drone attacks this past weekend. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has given meaning to the all too easy words of condemnation against drone attacks by its sit-in that suspended the NATO supply line to Afghanistan.

The crowds who attended the sit-in deserve praise, although the number of people attending did disappoint me as this was a national cause that should have motivated left and right, liberal and conservative alike. It is a shame that the PPP, PMLN, PMLQ, ,MQM, ANP and others did not support the sit-in as this was not a PTI-rally but a national cause that should have brought all together under one roof, on the basis that drone attacks kill Pakistanis, and that has to be the be all and end all of it.

The support for the sit-in by principled politicans like Javed Hashmi and young activists like Marvi Memon pleased me as it showed that Pakistanis can see beyond the petty political divide. Indeed it is hoped that the other political parties will follow Imran Khan’s lead and move forward either together or on their own by matching their words of condemnation with actions such as sit-ins and peaceful civil disobediance if necessary to pressure the coalescing Pakistani government to force the end of US drone attacks.

I remain hopeful of such a reaction as Pakistan needs to be rid of both American imperialism and the vile Taliban. I for one wish good riddance to both  Osama and Obama and wish to finish the post with some clips of the dharna:

Imran Khan Zindabad.

Today is a sad day for Pakistan as the pride of Pakistan, the one and only Moin Akhtar is no more.

Pakistan has lost a legend and an icon in the great Moin Akhtar. He was brilliant in all that he did from comedy or drama, to acting or directing, but above all he was a good man who loved his country and his people.

As a fan I feel his loss personally as do millions of Pakistanis inside and outside of Pakistan. For me Moin Akhtar was more than a great comedian, he was a proud Pakistani and a true son of the Quaid who gave his all for his country as the following video shows:

Moin Akhter words in the interview are inspiring and his message to the nation to wake up from its comatose state. Moin Akhter was a giant amongst men in character and in acting and he cannot die. Moin Akhter will live on and on for his is a star that will forever shine from Sibi to Skardu and beyond.