Fatima Bhutto’s book is titled Songs of Blood and Sword and is a daughter’s memoir that offers a ringside view to the spectacle and tragedy that is the Bhutto family. Songs of Blood and Sword is a must read , the video clip below will tell you why:

The book is available worldwide via all good booksellers and is selling like hot cakes and I cannot wait to read a book written from a real Bhutto who has shunned the easy path of using the Bhutto brand and badge to live off past Bhutto glories. And for that reason, Fatima Bhutto is a hope of a better Pakistan, a Pakistan where even the mighty Bhuttos are judged on how they serve the nation, and not vice versa.

• Lets Refocus Kashmir, not Kabul by DOUG SAUNDERS
• Taking on the Taliban by STEVE COLL
• Home Truths by FATIMA BHUTTO

The first article is written by Doug Saunders, a Canadian Pultizer Award winning journalist. Saunders focus is all on the K word that can secure peace in South Asia, Kashmir and only Kashmir.

Lets Refocus Kashmir, not Kabul by Doug Saunders

Acting like an especially convivial nightclub manager, Pervez Musharraf storms the room and opens with a joke: “You should come to Pakistan – it’s the most happening place in the world, where there’s never a dull moment!”

There is nervous laughter. The man who was the military ruler of Pakistan for seven years would like to get back into politics, this time by election. “I’m no longer a military man,” he says, “so I cannot take over anything.” Even more nervous laughter. The generals, in Pakistan, are never far from power.

For decades, Pakistan has served the world as a large and obstreperous military force that inconveniently happens to have a nation attached. Nowadays, as far as the West is concerned, it mainly acts as the denominator in what the military calls “Af-Pak,” the war against the Taliban.

The week began with an exceptionally non-dull moment that confirmed this view, and showed what has changed since Mr. Musharraf’s departure in 2008. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency said that, with the help of the CIA, it had captured the Taliban’s second-ranking Afghan leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in northern Pakistan. This was considered a huge aid to the current Afghan military surge, in which Canada’s soldiers are playing a spearhead role, and a new phase in Pakistani-Western co-operation.

Throughout most of the Afghan war, Pakistan’s military and Mr. Musharraf had argued that, while it was worth using its soldiers to expel the Pakistan-based Taliban from places such as the Swat valley and North Waziristan, they weren’t interested in going after the Afghan Taliban leaders headquartered along the border in Pakistan.

Islamabad told the increasingly exasperated U.S. and NATO leaders that Pakistan wanted to stay friendly with the Afghan Taliban because it was worth maintaining influence over Afghan affairs. And, it said, the Pakistani army was too busy with other conflicts to risk opening another front against the Afghan forces. Those “other conflicts” are the root of everything that’s wrong with Pakistan, and everything that’s been wrong with the way we’ve treated this country.

Most Pakistani soldiers have never been deployed along the country’s northwest border with Afghanistan. They are overwhelmingly concentrated on the eastern border, preparing for a showdown with India that will never occur, at outrageous expense.

Mr. Musharraf drives this point home: After some perfunctory remarks about the Taliban, his talk is all about India’s plots, India’s intransigence, India’s dangerous meddling in Afghan affairs, India’s unwillingness to reason, India’s problem with Islamic extremism within its own borders, and even, heaven help us, India’s secret responsibility for fomenting Islamism within Pakistan. This is not just Mr. Musharraf’s view. The army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, said in a briefing this week that Pakistan’s No. 1 one threat remains India.

The Indian threat is a constant and popular trope in Pakistani politics. It is used by every elected leader to gain victory, and by every military dictator to justify seizing power. It’s a national obsession but one that kills. Pakistan officially spends 5 per cent of its national income on military-related expenses, compared with 0.7 per cent on health, according to Unicef. That makes Pakistan one of the biggest military spenders in the world, while having appalling infant-mortality rates, an average lifespan below 50, and education and literacy levels far below its neighbours.

While there’s no real danger of the Taliban’s taking over Pakistan, electorally or militarily, there’s a danger of Pakistanis becoming destitute and hospitable to terrible ideas – largely because we’ve turned the country into an anti-India military force.

The two nuclear powers came very close to resolving their Kashmir conflict in 2008. But the Mumbai terror attacks (carried out by Pakistanis) made such talks politically impossible until after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had got a national election out of the way, and that occurred last year.

On Thursday, there was an even more important non-dull moment: India said it will resume talks to try to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Mr. Singh acknowledged that India’s impressive economic and human-development progress was being jeopardized by this simmering, expensive conflict. For India, resolution is worth a loss of face. For Pakistan, it never will be.

Never mind Af-Pak: The world urgently needs to fix Kash-Pak. We must do everything we can to make these peace talks work, for everything, including the Afghan conflict and the lives of hundreds of millions of people, depends on Pakistan’s generals being proved wrong.

Published in The Globe and Mail

WASIM VIEW- Saunders article makes eminent sense only in the end with his conclusion that Kashmir and not Kabul should be the focal point for all peace efforts in South Asia. Other than this point, Saunders uses the majority of his article to scold Pakistan and its army in particular for its India-centric focus scoffing with a degree of unprofessionalism Pakistan’s reasons for suspecting her eastern neighbour.

Yet Saunders and other commentators know only too well or conveniently choose to forget the role India has played in sabotaging Pakistan’s progress since 1947.  Most of the article is wasted on pilloring the Pakistani army and the Pakistani position on India, with Saunders hoping that with Kashmir resolved the Pakistani generals can sleep easy and make peace with India. I too hope for the same as does the Pakistani nation.

India is again discussed in Steve Coll’s article which focuses mainly on the recent arrest of senior Taliban leaders in Pakistan.

Taking on the Taliban by Steve Coll

The Taliban’s jihad, like rock and roll, has passed from youthful vigor into a maturity marked by the appearance of nostalgic memoirs. Back in the day, Abdul Salam Zaeef belonged to the search committee that recruited Mullah Omar as the movement’s commander; after the rebels took power in Kabul, he served as ambassador to Pakistan. “My Life with the Taliban,” published this winter, announces Zaeef’s début in militant letters. The volume contains many sources of fascination, but none are more timely than the author’s account of his high-level relations with Pakistani intelligence.

While in office, Zaeef found that he “couldn’t entirely avoid” the influence of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Its officers volunteered money and political support. Late in 2001, as the United States prepared to attack Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the I.S.I.’s then commanding general, Mahmud Ahmad, visited Zaeef’s home in Islamabad, wept in solidarity, and promised, “We want to assure you that you will not be alone in this jihad against America. We will be with you.” And yet Zaeef never trusted his I.S.I. patrons. He sought to protect the Taliban’s independence: “I tried to be not so sweet that I would be eaten whole, and not so bitter that I would be spat out.”

Earlier this month, outside Karachi, Pakistani security services, reportedly accompanied by C.I.A. officers, arrested the Afghan Taliban’s top military commander, Abdul Ghani Baradar, an action that has revived questions about the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban. The Taliban rose to power with extensive aid from the I.S.I.; the collaboration persisted, if less robustly, after September 11th. More lately, the Pakistani military, of which the I.S.I. is a component, has seemed to waver, striking against some Taliban factions in Pakistan but tolerating or helping others. (As recently as December, U.S. intelligence was collecting evidence of mid-level contacts between the I.S.I. and Taliban factions fighting in Afghanistan.) Mullah Baradar’s arrest, which was followed, last week, by the arrests, in Pakistan, of two other significant Taliban leaders, suggests that the I.S.I. may be further reviewing its calculations. In any event, there are few strategic issues of greater importance to the outcome of President Obama’s Afghan war.

Why might Pakistan consider modifying its strategy? In 2009, Islamist militants, mainly Taliban, carried out eighty-seven suicide attacks inside Pakistan, killing about thirteen hundred people, almost ninety per cent of them civilians, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies. Last October, Taliban raiders staged an unprecedented assault on the Army’s General Headquarters, in Rawalpindi. Customarily, Pakistani officers have blamed “bad” Taliban for such domestic raids, while absolving “good” Taliban (who shoot only at infidels in Afghanistan). As the violence on Pakistani soil intensifies, however, it would be natural for Pakistan’s generals to question whether their jihad-management strategy has become mired in false distinctions.

American diplomats have been warning Pakistan for years, to little effect, that support for Islamist extremists would boomerang against its own interests. The Bush Administration made matters worse by delivering several billion dollars of covert aid to the I.S.I. for help against Al Qaeda without holding it to account for coddling the Taliban and other militant groups. The paranoid style of politics in Pakistan makes the American version look quaint. In recent days, there has been speculation that Mullah Baradar’s detention is evidence of some sort of diabolical I.S.I. conspiracy to thwart reconciliation talks between the Taliban and the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, or to manipulate such talks, or to split the Taliban. (A report in the Times indicates that Baradar’s arrest may have been accidental; in Pakistan’s national psyche, however, there are no accidents.)

The Taliban are a diverse, dispersed guerrilla force with multiple command centers and locally autonomous leaders. Nonetheless, the Afghan Taliban leadership group in which Baradar reigned, known as the Quetta Shura, has exercised significant authority in recent years, particularly over Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, where U.S. marines have been fighting house to house. Uncontested sanctuary for Islamist guerrilla leaders in Pakistan contributed to the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan; the elimination or even the reduction of such a sanctuary for the Taliban (and Al Qaeda) would ease American burdens in Afghanistan by no small margin. American strategists claim to see encouraging changes in Pakistan’s behavior; intelligence-sharing between the United States and Pakistan, severely constrained by mistrust eighteen months ago, has increased.

Unfortunately, the geopolitical incentives that have informed Pakistan’s alliance with the Afghan Taliban remain unaltered. Pakistan’s generals have retained a bedrock belief that, however unruly and distasteful Islamist militias such as the Taliban may be, they could yet be useful proxies to ward off a perceived existential threat from India. In the Army’s view, at least, that threat has not receded. Indo-Pakistani peace negotiations that have been in suspension since the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack are only just re-starting. Absent a sudden breakthrough that charts the potential for normalizing relations between Pakistan and India—a framework settlement on Kashmir, freer trade, freer borders, and demilitarization—Pakistan’s rationale for preserving the Taliban and similar groups is not likely to change.

The I.S.I., by all accounts, is not a sentimental outfit. Although Zaeef witnessed its senior commanders wail over America’s plan to overthrow the Taliban (one I.S.I. general was “crying out loud, with his arms around my neck like a woman”), he was also savvy enough to take note of Pakistan’s “mixed signals.” Later, Zaeef defied the I.S.I.’s entreaties to break with Mullah Omar and lead a “moderate” Taliban movement; the Pakistanis arrested him, and handed him over to American soldiers, who transferred him to Guantánamo. (He was released in 2005 and has retired in Kabul.) In his memoir, Zaeef titles the chapter about his betrayal “A Hard Realisation.”

There will be more of those. The root problem in this murkiest theatre of the Afghan war is not Pakistan’s national character or even the character of its generals; rather, it involves Pakistan’s interests. The Pakistani Army has learned over many years to leverage its grievances, dysfunction, bad choices, and perpetual dangers to extract from the United States the financial and military support that it believes it requires against India. At the same time, Pakistan’s generals resent their dependency on America. For the I.S.I. to repudiate the Taliban entirely, its officers would have to imagine a new way of living in the world—to write a new definition of Pakistan’s national security, one that emphasizes politics and economics over clandestine war. For now, many Pakistani generals imagine themselves masters of an old game: to be not so sweet that they will be eaten whole by the United States, but not so bitter that they will be spat out.

Published in The New Yorker

WASIM VIEW- Coll’s article begins by laying bare well-known links between Pakistan’s ISI and the Taliban. Such facts are exactly that, facts and will not make breaking news, even on Fox News!  Coll’s article centres primarily on the recent arrest of Taliban leaders by Pakistan, Coll is in a crypic mood and ponders if there is more than meets the eye.

ISI-bashing in the US media is a common cause and Coll too lashes out against the ISI and the Pakistani military in his article. Coll bemoans Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, conveniently forgetting Pakistan’s complex geostrategic concerns which are factored in with the knowledge that America has left the region to the mercy of many a monster circa the cold war. Coll’s article does a disservice to his readership by its over-emphasis on ISI-Taliban relations which are the source of much copy in the US and related  hoo-ha. The ‘I’ that holds back Pakistan and peace in the region is not the ISI but India and her evil lasting decades, the sooner the Americans wake up to this reality, the better.

The final article is written by the one and only Fatima Bhutto. The article is well-timed as it addresses some of the lies and propaganda against Pakistan that arecommon currency in the West.

Home Truths by Fatima Bhutto

Everybody seems to be an expert on the Islamic Republic of Pakistan these days. You can’t turn left without running into some pundit or pontificating layperson moaning heartily about Pakistan’s future, lording it with their imaginary Pakistan PhDs over all and sundry. Baron- esses, David Miliband, the fellow who reads the news – they’re all Pakistan wonks now.

It used to be that, upon telling someone you hailed from Pakistan, you’d get a benign smile: “Oh, yes, next to India.” Yes, next to India, and Iran and China and Afghanistan. Now, the mere mention of Pakistan elicits a knowing wink. “Where’s Osama hiding, then? Ha ha ha.” We don’t know, he doesn’t send out a monthly newsletter. Detroit, I would venture.

But just as no one knows anything certain about Islam in today’s “I’m an authority because I saw a documentary once” age, there is no country with more mythology surrounding it than my Pakistan. Here are my three favourites:

1. Pakistan was created so fundamentalist Muslims – and no one else – would have a country of their own to call home.

In his address to the constituent assembly of Pakistan on 11 August 1947, three days before the country’s independence was to be celebra­ted, Muhammad Ali Jinnah called for liberty in the new nation. “You are free. You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”

Moral of the story? Religious extremists are made, not born. You can thank General Zia ul-Haq, our pro-Islamist president from 1977-88, and his financial backers Mrs Thatcher and Mr Reagan for that. What you have today is not how it’s always been. It is said that the indigenous inhabitants of Sindh, one of the four provinces of Pakistan, were the Dravidians. Then came the Aryans. Then the Arabs. And it was with them – pardon the rush through thousands of years of history – that Islam, and Sufi Islam, came to our lands.

Today, the struggle for the soul of Pakistani Islam is being fought between the qawwali- singing, tolerant Sufis and the puritanical Wah­habi Muslim sect, which has been supported for years with funding from orthodox Sunni Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

Who will win? The Sufis, according to Ayeda Naqvi, who teaches Islamic mysticism. “It was Sufis who came and spread the religious message of love and harmony and beauty. There were no swords . . . And you can’t separate it from our culture – it’s in our music, it’s in our folklore, it’s in our architecture. We are a Sufi country.” And it is worth noting that religious, or Islamist, parties have never prospered on a national level in Pakistan. They peaked in 2002, winning 17 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly after the US invasion of Afghanistan, but dropped back to 1 per cent in 2008.

2. Sufis? No, no, no. Pakistan is a nation of madrasa-educated, bearded Taliban enthusiasts.

In fact, it’s not Islamic schools but rampant corruption that’s brought the Taliban and their ilk to the forefront. As Jinnah presciently noted in that same early speech, corruption and bribery are a threat that Pakistan must put down with “an iron hand”. He called corruption (and nepotism, in case you were wondering) our “great evils”. But no one listened. Puppet parliaments, military dictatorships – every single one of them supported by western powers – and corrupt but pliable civilian rulers all but ensured that our young nation’s wealth would be spent on those great evils and little else.

Take the last budget, with its total outlay of 2.5 trillion rupees. Of that, Rs32bn were set aside for education, with another Rs22bn towards higher education. That sounds interesting – not too spectacular, but not too shabby either. Until you read on, that is: Rs166bn were earmarked for the construction of dams; federal ministries walked away with Rs262bn for their own costs; and an income support scheme named after the president’s late wife, under which poor people line up to receive charity cash payments (photo with president optional) received Rs70bn. Our politicians prefer these projects to spending on health and education, because it is easier to siphon off funds from them. So, is it any wonder that Islamists who turn up and build madrasas and medical camps end up becoming popular? No. But we owe that to corruption, not to their attractive political philosophies or their ability to grow beards.

3. Pakistan funds religious terrorists such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

But so does the US, notably Sunni militias in Iraq and once even the Taliban in Afghanistan. Find me a country that doesn’t stash its cash in dirty bank accounts and then we’ll talk.

Pakistan’s problems, like Islam’s, are myriad. But CNN doesn’t define them for us. They are the problems faced by most people in my country every day – the difficulty of getting access to drinkable water, the rising price of food, the struggle to secure employment when most people are illiterate, the absence of justice and law and order. But no one wants to be a pretend authority on those subjects when there are US drones to drop bombs on villages and a sexy war on terror to talk up. Let’s not forget that diarrhoea still kills many more children than the Taliban do in our nuclear-armed state. That’s the crux of 21st-century Pakistan’s problems.

Published in The New Statesman

WASIM VIEW- Fatima Bhutto’s article hits the nail on the head in dealing with the lies against Pakistan. The references made to America and the West’s support for terrorists the world over is fact for truth-seeking individuals but a key part of the selective amensia syndrome that has it home in Washington.

Best of all is Fatima Bhutto’s spotlighting of the history of Pakistan as a country that was born to live out the true ideals of Islam as promised by the Quaid-e- Azam when he promised freedom of worship and equal rights for all citizens of Pakistan.  The subsequent negation of that ideal came into being thanks to military dictatorships strangling Pakistan every decade or two aided by bedfellow partners like the USA and UK who over many decades have supported khaki kings against the will and the people of Pakistan. Home-truths is an apt title for the article as it tackles head-on the lies many planted with intent against Pakistan, it is an article that is compulsory reading for non-Pakistanis above all.  

September’s B-side content includes:

• The Last Straw by STEPHAN FARIS
• My Country of Horror and Possibility by FATIMA BHUTTO
• Getting Back to Basics by Admiral MIKE MULLEN

The first article is written by Stephan Faris and it represents a doomsday scenario for Pakistan, a day of reckoning,  of death and destruction.

The Last Straw by Stephan Faris

Hopelessly overcrowded, crippled by poverty, teeming with Islamist militancy, careless with its nukes—it sometimes seems as if Pakistan can’t get any more terrifying. But forget about the Taliban: The country’s troubles today pale compared with what it might face 25 years from now. When it comes to the stability of one of the world’s most volatile regions, it’s the fate of the Himalayan glaciers that should be keeping us awake at night.

In the mountainous area of Kashmir along and around Pakistan’s contested border with India lies what might become the epicenter of the problem. Since the separation of the two countries 62 years ago, the argument over whether Kashmir belongs to Muslim Pakistan or secular India has never ceased. Since 1998, when both countries tested nuclear weapons, the conflict has taken on the added risk of escalating into cataclysm. Another increasingly important factor will soon heighten the tension: Ninety percent of Pakistan’s agricultural irrigation depends on rivers that originate in Kashmir. “This water issue between India and Pakistan is the key,” Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami, a parliamentarian from Kashmir, told me. “Much more than any other political or religious concern.”

Until now, the two sides had been able to relegate the water issue to the back burner. In 1960, India and Pakistan agreed to divide the six tributaries that form the Indus River. India claimed the three eastern branches, which flow through Punjab. The water in the other three, which pass through Jammu and Kashmir, became Pakistan’s. The countries set a cap on how much land Kashmir could irrigate and agreed to strict regulations on how and where water could be stored. The resulting Indus Waters Treaty has survived three wars and nearly 50 years. It’s often cited as an example of how resource scarcity can lead to cooperation rather than conflict.

But the treaty’s success depends on the maintenance of a status quo that will be disrupted as the world warms. Traditionally, Kashmir’s waters have been naturally regulated by the glaciers in the Himalayas. Precipitation freezes during the coldest months and then melts during the agricultural season. But if global warming continues at its current rate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates, the glaciers could be mostly gone from the mountains by 2035. Water that once flowed for the planting will flush away in winter floods.

Research by the global NGO ActionAid has found that the effects are already starting to be felt within Kashmir. In the valley, snow rarely falls and almost never sticks. The summertime levels of streams, rivers, springs, and ponds have dropped. In February 2007, melting snow combined with unseasonably heavy rainfall to undermine the mountain slopes; landslides buried the national highway—the region’s only land connection with the rest of India—for 12 days.

Normally, countries control such cyclical water flows with dams, as the United States does with runoff from the Rocky Mountains. For Pakistan, however, that solution is not an option. The best damming sites are in Kashmir, where the Islamabad government has vigorously opposed Indian efforts to tinker with the rivers. The worry is that in times of conflict, India’s leaders could cut back on water supplies or unleash a torrent into the country’s fields. “In a warlike situation, India could use the project like a bomb,” one Kashmiri journalist told me.

Water is already undermining Pakistan’s stability. In recent years, recurring shortages have led to grain shortfalls. In 2008, flour became so scarce it turned into an election issue; the government deployed thousands of troops to guard its wheat stores. As the glaciers melt and the rivers dry, this issue will only become more critical. Pakistan—unstable, facing dramatic drops in water supplies, caged in by India’s vastly superior conventional forces—will be forced to make one of three choices. It can let its people starve. It can cooperate with India in building dams and reservoirs, handing over control of its waters to the country it regards as the enemy. Or it can ramp up support for the insurgency, gambling that violence can bleed India’s resolve without degenerating into full-fledged war. “The idea of ceding territory to India is anathema,” says Sumit Ganguly, a professor of political science at Indiana University. “Suffering, particularly for the elite, is unacceptable. So what’s the other option? Escalate.”

“It’s very bad news,” he adds, referring to the melting glaciers. “It’s extremely grim.”

The Kashmiri water conflict is just one of many climate-driven geopolitical crises on the horizon. These range from possible economic and treaty conflicts that will likely be resolved peacefully—the waters of the Rio Grande and Colorado River have long been a point of contention between the United States and Mexico, for instance—to possible outright wars. In 2007, the London-based NGO International Alert compiled a list of countries with a high risk of armed conflict due to climate change. They cited no fewer than 46 countries, or one in every four, including some of the world’s most gravely unstable countries, such as Somalia, Nigeria, Iran, Colombia, Bolivia, Israel, Indonesia, Bosnia, Algeria, and Peru. Already, climate change might be behind the deep drought that contributed to the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Rising global temperatures are putting the whole world under stress, and the first countries to succumb will be those, such as Sudan, that are least able to adapt. Compare the Netherlands and Bangladesh: Both are vulnerable to rises in sea levels, with large parts of their territory near or under the level of the waves. But the wealthy Dutch are building state-of-the-art flood-control systems and experimenting with floating houses. All the impoverished Bangladeshis can do is prepare to head for higher ground. “It’s best not to get too bogged down in the physics of climate,” says Nils Gilman, an analyst at Monitor Group and the author of a 2006 report on climate change and national security. “Rather, you should look at the social, physical, and political geography of regions that are impacted.”

Indeed, with a population half that of the United States crammed into an area a little smaller than Louisiana, Bangladesh might be among the most imperiled countries on Earth. In a normal decade, the country experiences one major flood. In the last 11 years, its rivers have leapt their banks three times, most recently in 2007. That winter, Cyclone Sidr, a Category 5 storm, tore into the country’s coast, flattening tin shacks, ripping through paddies, and plunging the capital into darkness. As many as 10,000 people may have died.

Bangladesh’s troubles are likely to ripple across the region, where immigration flows have been historically accompanied by rising tensions. In India’s northeastern state of Assam, for instance, rapidly changing demographics have led to riots, massacres, and the rise of an insurgency. As global warming tightens its squeeze on Bangladesh, these pressures will mount. And in a worst-case scenario, in which the country is struck by sudden, cataclysmic flooding, the international community will have to cope with a humanitarian emergency in which tens of millions of waterlogged refugees suddenly flee toward India, Burma, China, and Pakistan.

Indeed, the U.S. military has come to recognize that weakened states—the Bangladeshes and Pakistans of the world—are often breeding grounds for extremism, terrorism, and potentially destabilizing conflict. And as it has done so, it has increasingly deployed in response to natural disasters. Such missions often require a warlike scale of forces, if not warlike duration. During the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, for instance, the United States sent 15,000 military personnel, 25 ships, and 94 aircraft. “The military brings a tremendous capacity of command-and-control and communications,” says retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of U.S. Central Command. “You have tremendous logistics capability, transportation, engineering, the ability to purify water.”

As the world warms, more years could start to look like 2007, when the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced it had responded to a record number of droughts, floods, and storms. Of the 13 natural disasters it responded to, only one—an earthquake in Peru—was not related to the climate.

Worryingly, some analysts have suggested the United States might not fully grasp what it needs to respond to this challenge. The U.S. military has been required by law since 2008 to incorporate climate change into its planning, but though Pentagon strategic documents describe a climate-stressed future, there’s little sign the Department of Defense is pivoting to meet it. “Most of the things that the military is requesting are still for a conventional war with a peer competitor,” says Sharon Burke, an energy and climate change specialist at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security. “They say they’re going to have more humanitarian missions, but there’s no discussion at all of ‘What do you need?’” The rate at which the war in Iraq has chewed through vehicles and equipment, for instance, has astonished military planners. “Is this a forewarning of what it’s like to operate in harsher conditions?” Burke asks.

To be sure, some of the more severe consequences of climate change are expected to unfold over a relatively extended time frame. But so does military development, procurement, and planning. As global warming churns the world’s weather, it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s time to start thinking about the long term. In doing so, the West may need to adopt an even broader definition of what it takes to protect itself from danger. Dealing with the repercussions of its emissions might mean buttressing governments, deploying into disaster zones, or tamping down insurgencies. But the bulk of the West’s effort might be better spent at home. If the rivers of Kashmir have the potential to plunge South Asia into chaos, the most effective response might be to do our best to ensure the glaciers never melt at all.

Stephan Faris is the author of Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley, from which reporting for this article is drawn.

Published in Foreign Policy

WASIM VIEW- The doomsday scenario  for Pakistan painted in the article by Stephan Faris is both real and worrying.  It is no less than a mayday call for Pakistan on how climate change promises to destroy the Pakistan as we know it today. The cataclysmic impact of the melting glaciers of the Himalayas have been showcased in the article and they must make every Pakistani tremble and fear the worst.

It is not rocket science to suggest that the Pakistani government must move fast so that Pakistan can have its own climate change response strategy, One suggestion this scribe can  give straight away is to invite my friend and Nobel Prize winner who served on the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change and an eminent Pakistani,  Dr Adil Najam to report on this issue for the nation. Indeed I personally will ask Adil Bhai’s views on the subject and ask him to lead the nation using his expertise.

Returning to the article, Faris does well to highlight the impact of climate change in Kashmir thus far. However Faris  does hit below the belt when he accuses Pakistan of being careless with its nukes, a charge for which he provides no evidence or even bothers to debate other than a grandstanding and cheap remark at the start of his otherwise excellent article.

The second article is written by a friend and mentor of sorts, the one and only Fatima Bhutto.

My Country of Horror and Possibility by Fatima Bhutto

As the Taliban advances across northern Pakistan, international headlines have declared my country the latest victim of an increasingly hostile fundamentalist regime. Yet those of us who have been living within Pakistan have been watching this unfold every day and know that this is nothing new: The Pakistani Taliban and their brand of extremism has been advancing throughout our country for the last ten years, and they are gaining traction among Pakistan’s people largely because of our own government’s corruption and neglect.

My generation of Pakistanis has come of age under this military and civilian dictatorship, under a government that aids and abets these fundamentalist groups while vastly ignoring the needs of the people. The international community must understand that our government’s corruption—and the United States’ support of this corruption—has not only created enormous poverty but has also created a vacuum that Islamist fundamentalists are filling. This is the heart of the reason why the Taliban has been successful in my country; it is not because we are a country of extremists, or a country of dishonesty.

I would like the world to know that when we say our government does not represent us, we mean it. Pakistanis are not our government; we did not vote for Asif Ali Zardari, our president. We do not vote for our governments, and when we do have elections, they are orchestrated and rigged.

When I travel abroad, there is a perception that because I am Pakistani I must have a beard or be engaged in some kind of jihad. No one factors in that we are a country that has Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Jain heritage. We are a country of people who speak a Hindi-ized Urdu and a Persian-ized Dari. We have so many shades that are not seen by the world because it is more convenient to portray us in a certain way that ignores our history, our realities, and our visions for the future of our country.

As a child growing up in exile from General Zia-ul-Haq’s regime, I understood Pakistan much like the rest of the world understands us now: as a nightmarish place where women are stoned, where public floggings are encouraged, and where the dark shadow of dictatorship looms with a violent and orthodox edge.

For me, it was my father who gave Pakistan its soul. Before he was assassinated by police when I was 14, he would tell me of the various poets and Sufi saints enshrined in Sindh Province; of the orange, pink, and purple painted buses at every traffic light; of the smell of the Indian Ocean, of the taste of Pakcola. It became a sort of romantic place for me, when in reality it was an extremely violent and unpredictable country. When I moved to Pakistan, I came to know early on that beneath this violence is a soul, a heart.

When I moved permanently to Pakistan at age 11, I learned that this heart beats in Karachi. Our pulse is here. It is Pakistan’s largest, most populous city and it is a cross between a refugee camp and a construction site. It is a broken-down city, but there is always something new happening here: a new art exhibit, new graffiti on the walls, new people coming to see what is swirling through our air, what radical new idea is emerging.

But when there is violence, Karachi is also the center. This is a city of immense poverty, and the violence we see is not always physical, though we see our fair share of that too. It is the violence of poverty. Karachi has one of the largest slum populations in the world. We are a very sad city, but because of that we are also a resilient city. There are so many odds against us that we almost shouldn’t be. But somehow we are. That we continue to exist is hopeful for me, that we continue to be a business, artistic, and cultural center in the face of impossible violence is something to recognize and embrace. . . .

But we also must embrace the fact that something is not working, and that something must give for Pakistan and her people to thrive. We are a country that is losing our people day by day to the Taliban because the government has turned their heads from our basic needs, and fundamentalist groups have stepped in to fill the widening gap.

We are a nuclear country that hasn’t been able to eradicate polio per our Millennium Development Goals because we do not have enough electricity to refrigerate the vaccine. And we are a country where parents must choose between sending their children to a school with government teachers who collect salaries but do not teach, or sending them to the madrassa on the next block that teaches radical Islam but provides at least a basic education.

We were all hopeful when Barack Obama was elected the president of the United States. We thought there might be a chance for real change, but the fact is that he has merely continued Bush-era policies that fuel the violence.

We have seen Obama continue the drone missile attacks on northern Pakistan, ordering the first strike on North and South Waziristan during his very first week in office.

I have watched in absolute horror as Obama recently released $1.5 billion in nonmilitary aid to our government. By my last count, Pakistan has received $12 billion in aid from the US since 2002. And it has not helped in the least to make Pakistan, or our neighbors, safer.

By propping up our corrupt government and funding a president who has stolen an estimated $2-3 billion from Pakistan’s people, Obama is not helping to eradicate the “main threat to regional stability”—he’s feeding it. When the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan in 1996, I never imagined that the footage I saw on the news—Afghan women being flogged, beaten, and raped as punishment for crimes that weren’t really crimes at all—would play out in Pakistan’s own streets 13 years later. But now I see it happening to us. Up until recently I felt safe as a woman in my country, but today the situation for Pakistani women is rapidly deteriorating.

This rarely makes international headlines. The Western world seems to identify Pakistan with the fact that we were the first Muslim country to “elect” a woman leader—my aunt, Benazir Bhutto, who was prime minister from 1988 to 1990, and then again from 1993 to 1996, before she was assassinated in 2007. But my aunt did nothing to stop the deterioration of women’s rights in Pakistan. She—just like our current government—capitulated to radical Islam and refused to amend the Shariya Laws that infringe on women’s rights.

The Hudood Laws—put into place in 1979, during the time when my family and I were in exile, then taken out of practice in 2006 by former president Musharraf—are the enactment of Shariya Law and are again gaining traction in Pakistan. As a woman, if your head is not covered in public, you stand out. If you visit a household in a rural or small town, you will be taken to a room away from the men. And, if you commit adultery, your sentence will be death.

We have enormous challenges ahead of us as a country, but I do not believe that we are a lost cause, or that we will succumb to Talibanization just yet. We are a country that has an enormous amount of strength and determination; we are a country of the possible. This strength comes largely from ordinary women doing extraordinary things.

This is a country where women have to push for what they want; they have to push for what they need. And if you push—if you’re loud enough— you make ripples; you make waves. We have women in the arts; women in the NGO sector; women in leadership, but we do not afford women a voice in our media, in our politics, in our communities. It is women like Mukhtar Mai and her rolling courage who are the backbone of Pakistan. These women— and there are many of them who are operating under the radar—are standing up against the Hudood Laws and risking their lives for justice despite the challenges and increasing oppressions.

We are at a crucial point in Pakistan’s history; we have an opportunity to keep Pakistan from going the way of Afghanistan. It starts with showing solidarity and sharing our stories with other women. There is a phenomenal untapped sisterhood of women around the world, and if we tap that support and connect person to person, it will mean much more to Pakistan’s women than Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton giving our corrupt leaders billions of dollars.

When we talk about Pakistan, we must look to what becomes possible if we put money into the hands of grassroots organizations and people’s initiatives. We must turn our efforts to summer camps for girls, media training, teaching handicrafts to women who have been jailed for breaking the Hudood Laws. We must organize to get women ID cards across the country so that they can vote in our elections. All of this is possible; it just requires support. We cannot continue to put our fate in the hands of our government or in the hands of the US government. We cannot continue to ignore the potential of Pakistan’s people and, especially, Pakistan’s women.

We are a young country that emerged out of a heady idealism some 60 years ago, and we cannot let go of this sense of optimism. Milan Kundera said that “the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” I, for one, will not forget the heart and soul of Pakistan that I came to know as a child in exile. I will keep fighting

Published in World Pulse Magazine

WASIM VIEW- Fatima Bhutto’s article is aimed at a female audience in the main and charts the rise and fall of women in Pakistan. The inferior status afforded to women in Pakistan is not a secret but a national shame and Fatima Bhutto does well to highlight this key issue.

Fatima Bhutto’s article is also worth a read for she represents the future of Pakistan not as a Bhutto,  but as a Pakistani in her own right. In that sense, Fatima who I have conversed with by email as a friend and comrade, represents an outlook shared by many which sees Pakistan’s perennial problems yet at the same time can see its potential too.

And so when Fatima Bhutto writes on corruption and how it has crippled Pakistan or when she bemoans US drone strikes,  she speaks the word of the street or chowks from Lahore to Lakki Marwat.  Indeed President Obama and others should take cue from such writings.

All in all I find this article,  like Fatima Bhutto’s other articles  too, one that is alway positive and hopeful of a better tomorrow. Let us pray that Fatima Bhutto’s better tomorrow comes soon for a Pakistani nation that is desperate and deserving for that better day.

The final article is in fact a speech on Pakistan and US actions or the lack of them theroef by Admiral Mike Mullen, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman.

Getting Back to Basics by Admiral Mike Mullen

It is time for us to take a harder look at “strategic communication.”

Frankly, I don’t care for the term. We get too hung up on that word, strategic. If we’ve learned nothing else these past 8 years, it should be that the lines between strategic, operational, and tactical are blurred beyond distinction. This is particularly true in the world of communication, where videos and images plastered on the Web—or even the idea of their being so posted—can and often do drive national security decision making.

But beyond the term itself, I believe we have walked away from the original intent. By organizing to it—creating whole structures around it—we have allowed strategic communication to become a thing instead of a process, an abstract thought instead of a way of thinking. It is now sadly something of a cottage industry.

We need to get back to basics, and we can start by not beating ourselves up. The problem isn’t that we are bad at communicating or being outdone by men in caves. Most of them aren’t even in caves. The Taliban and al Qaeda live largely among the people. They intimidate and control and communicate from within, not from the sidelines.

And they aren’t just out there shooting videos, either. They deliver. Want to know what happens if somebody violates their view of Sharia law? You don’t have to look very far or very long. Each beheading, each bombing, and each beating sends a powerful message or, rather, is a powerful message.

Got a governance problem? The Taliban is getting pretty effective at it. They’ve set up functional courts in some locations, assess and collect taxes, and even allow people to file formal complaints against local Talib leaders. Part of the Taliban plan to win over the people in Swat was to help the poor or displaced own land.

Their utter brutality has not waned, nor has their disregard for human life. But with each such transaction, they chip away at the legitimacy of the Afghan government, saying in effect: “We can give you the stability the government cannot.”

No, our biggest problem isn’t caves; it’s credibility. Our messages lack credibility because we haven’t invested enough in building trust and relationships, and we haven’t always delivered on promises.

The most common questions that I get in Pakistan and Afghanistan are: “Will you really stay with us this time?” “Can we really count on you?” I tell them that we will and that they can, but when it comes to real trust in places such as these, I don’t believe we are even in Year Zero yet. There’s a very long way to go.

The irony here is that we know better.

For all the instant polling, market analysis, and focus groups we employ today, we could learn a lot by looking to our own past. No other people on Earth have proven more capable at establishing trust and credibility in more places than we have. And we’ve done it primarily through the power of our example.

The voyage of the Great White Fleet told the world that the United States was no longer a second-rate nation. The Marshall Plan made it clear that our strength was only as good as it was shared. The policy of containment let it be known we wouldn’t stand for the spread of communism. And relief efforts in the wake of natural disasters all over the world said calmly and clearly: we will help you through this.

We didn’t need a public opinion poll to launch that fleet. We didn’t need a “strat comm” plan to help rebuild Europe. And we sure didn’t need talking points and Power- Point slides to deliver aid. Americans simply showed up and did the right thing because it was, well, the right thing to do.

That’s the essence of good communication: having the right intent up front and letting our actions speak for themselves. We shouldn’t care if people don’t like us; that isn’t the goal. The goal is credibility. And we earn that over time.

Now I’m not suggesting we stop planning to communicate or that we fail to factor in audience reaction, perceptions, or culture.

I recognize the information environment today is much more complex than it was in 1909, or even 1999. As someone who “tweets” almost daily, I appreciate the need to embrace the latest technologies.

But more important than any particular tool, we must know the context within which our actions will be received and understood. We hurt ourselves and the message we try to send when it appears we are doing something merely for the credit.

We hurt ourselves more when our words don’t align with our actions. Our enemies regularly monitor the news to discern coalition and American intent as weighed against the efforts of our forces. When they find a “say-do” gap—such as Abu Ghraib—they drive a truck right through it.

So should we, quite frankly. We must be vigilant about holding ourselves accountable to higher standards of conduct and closing any gaps, real or perceived, between what we say about ourselves and what we do to back it up.

In fact, I would argue that most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all. They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.

And make no mistake—there has been a certain arrogance to our “strat comm” efforts. We’ve come to believe that messages are something we can launch downrange like a rocket, something we can fire for effect.

They are not. Good communication runs both ways. It’s not about telling our story. We must also be better listeners. The Muslim community is a subtle world we don’t fully—and don’t always attempt to understand. Only through a shared appreciation of the people’s culture, needs, and hopes for the future can we hope ourselves to supplant the extremist narrative.

We cannot capture hearts and minds. We must engage them; we must listen to them, one heart and one mind at a time—over time.

I’m a big fan of Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. In fact, I had the opportunity this summer to help him open up a new school for girls in the Panjshir Valley. Greg believes that building relationships is just as important as building projects. “The enemy is ignorance,” he told me, “and it isn’t theirs alone. We have far more to learn from the people who live here than we could ever hope to teach them.”

He’s right. We are only going to be as good as our own learning curve. And just the simple act of trying, of listening to others, speaks volumes all by itself.

I know strategic communication as a term of reference is probably here to stay. Regrettably, it’s grown too much a part of our lexicon. But I do hope we take this opportunity under the coming Quadrennial

Defense Review to reexamine what we mean by it. Strategic communication should be an enabling function that guides and informs our decisions and not an organization unto itself. Rather than trying to capture all communication activity underneath it, we should use it to describe the process by which we integrate and coordinate.

To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate. I also hope we learn to be more humble, to listen more. Because what we are after in the end—or should be after—are actions that speak for themselves, that speak for us. What we need more than anything is credibility.

And we can’t get that in a talking point.

MICHAEL G. MULLEN

Admiral, U.S. Navy

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Published in JCS News

WASIM VIEW- Admiral Mike Mullen is a household name in Pakistan for all the wrong reasons and is the chief soldier for our good friend, one Uncle Sam.

That said, Mullen does makes good sense in his communication to American troops, especially in highlighting how US words often do not meet US actions. Mullen speaks some home-truths that must be heeded if the US is to win support in the world including how the Taliban have succeeded in governance where the might of the US and NATO have failed miserably.

Mullen does well to speak of the Greg Mortensen story and he would do we if he asked for its wider implementation in Pakistan and Afghanistan if Uncle Sam is to see success in the region.

That said the real test for Mullen and the troops he commands, and the leaders he serves  including celebrity President Obama remains the same, will the words he and Uncle Sam say today match their actions on the ground?

February’s B-side contents are:

• Saluting Ali Moeen Nawazish by WASIM ARIF
• Pleasing Mr Obama by FATIMA BHUTTO
• Truckling to the Taliban by PETER PRESTON

Doom and gloom seems to be the default state of Pakistan. However the success of Ali Moeen Nawazish will make every Pakistani proud, I guarantee.

Saluting Ali Moeen Nawazish by Wasim Arif

Ali Moeen Nawazish is an example even an envy to the world for setting a world record in  passing 22 A-levels. Ali’s achievements leave me struggling for words.

Ali’s story is spellbinding and it goes like this.  Ali’s ambition from childhood was to win a place at the illustrious Cambridge university. Ali decided to study 7 A-levels initially but worried that he might not get into Cambridge still, Ali decided to sit another three A level exams, and three more and more and more culminating in him securing 20 A grades, one B and a C, wow!

Ali hails from Rawalpindi and studied at Rawalpindi’s Roots College International, hence his success is a success story made totally in Pakistan. When Ali filled out his university application form he struggled to find space to list his qualifications. Unsurprisingly he was successful in securing a place and he is now studying a computer science degree course at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

As the Daily Mail writes Ali also achieved a top score in the U.S. admissions test and was accepted by most Ivy League institutions, including Harvard and Yale. Apart from the core science subjects Ali is almost entirely self taught. He studied for up to 12 hours a day, using energy drinks to help concentrate yet  still managed to keep up his leisure pursuits namely playing the guitar, cricket and table tennis, and editing his school newspaper. He even found time for a trip to America to attend a Harvard leadership course.

Ali Moeen Nawazish if you ever read this I want to say that Pakistan is so proud of you and personally I salute you.  You represent the best of Pakistan and you have made all Pakistanis proud again to be from the land of the pure. I know that all readers of this post will echo my sentiments entirely.

Photo published in The Daily Mail

An excellent article on the missing people of Pakistan by the till now missing Fatima Bhutto!

Pleasing Mr Obama by Fatima Bhutto

Zachary represents scores of America’s most secretly guarded prisoners. When he meets his clients, they are often chained to the ground in shackles. He told me how some of the guards at the prison are 18-year-olds, suckered into the job with the lure of extra pay and the promise that they are a buttress against the aspirations of global terrorism. Visits from the Dallas Cowboys football cheerleaders and Victoria’s Secret lingerie models, who have dropped by to rally the troops, make the difficult job and the long hours away from home occasionally worthwhile.

But last June, when I met Zachary, a lawyer with Reprieve – the British organisation set up by Clive Stafford Smith to defend the rights of prisoners across the world – we weren’t there to talk about him. Reprieve, which has a tiny office in Islamabad, was trying to drum up interest in Pakistan for the seven of its nationals being held in Guantanamo. Reprieve staff made the rounds; they called up the foreign minister and other notables in the PPP-led government hoping to convince them to lobby for their prisoners. Not one bit; government officials did not seem to be terribly concerned.

Pakistan is a premier ally in the war on terror and it is with a certain amount of pride that the government proclaims that the road to Guantanamo started here in Pakistan. According to Reprieve, several Pakistani prisoners at Guantanamo were handed over for huge rewards, resulting in dubious profiteering by the state.

While other allies in the war on terror, including Britain under the divinely inspired Tony Blair and (surprisingly) Saudi Arabia, demanded the return of their citizens, calling their detainment at Gitmo unacceptable by their country’s legal standards, Pakistan seems not to have put up much of a fight. There are no Pakistani lawyers working directly on the cases of Pakistani nationals held at the prison, no local NGOs involved in the case of defending Pakistanis incarcerated abroad.

Katznelson was in Pakistan to speak about one citizen in particular – Saifullah Paracha, a businessman from Karachi who disappeared during a 2003 business trip to Bangkok. Paracha, who exported textiles to the United States, never left Bangkok airport or cleared immigration, and it was weeks before his family learned that he was being held at a US airbase in Bagram, Afghanistan. Paracha, whose eldest son was also taken into custody, was eventually moved to Guantanamo where, for the first two years, he had no legal representation.

He suffers heart problems, and has yet to see the complete evidence used to keep him as a guest of the US prison system.

The charges against Paracha are tenuous and vague. It is alleged that he helped al-Qaeda and that he ran a terror network. He did not. He had met, through his business dealings, several dubious sorts, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “principal architect” of the 11 September 2001 attacks, and even Osama Bin Laden, but these meetings occurred before the men became infamous, no money has changed hands, and no contact or links were maintained.

Paracha’s 16-year-old daughter, Zahra, has not seen her father for six years. “It’s mind-boggling to me to even think about my father and brother because they are, in essence, political prisoners of a cold war between America and imaginary terrorists,” she wrote in an email to me. Now, she despairs at getting justice under the new US administration because already, in 2009, the issue of Guantanamo is beginning to seem stale: a talking point a new president discusses at press conferences, a faraway jail we’ve never been bothered enough about to deal with.

Barack Obama’s administration has pledged to close down Guantanamo; the closure of the prison is a priority, it has been said. But the president’s conservative opponents won’t give up Gitmo without a battle, warning that an exodus of prisoners is unlikely to make America a safer place.

In an article in the Washington Post on 5 February, Jim Riches, a retired firefighter who lost his son Jimmy in the 11 September 2001 attacks, is reported as saying this of President Obama’s decision on Guantanamo: “I want to let them [the government] know that these men are dangerous.”

Zahra, who created a website to publicise her father’s case when she was 13 years old, thinks the “average American doesn’t give a damn” about the illegality of her father’s and brother’s arrest and detention. She might be right. Unfortunately, it seems that the average Pakistani doesn’t care much, either.

In Pakistan, the government is hard at work ensuring that Afghanistan doesn’t turn out to be Obama’s Vietnam, as ominously declared by Newsweek this month. Since the new administration took office, Pakistan’s northern areas have been subject to three unmanned drone attacks. President Asif Ali Zardari made the bizarre choice, in the run-up to these attacks, of presenting the US assistant secretary of state Richard Boucher (they call him Richard Butcher here in Karachi) and Joe Biden with the national Hilal-e-Imtiaz award for their “services to Pakistan”.

So, nothing has changed since Obama’s election, for Pakistan at least. Nor, with talks of an Afghan surge and troop increase, are they likely to change for the imprisoned Pakistanis any time soon.

Published in the New Statesman

WASIM VIEW- The fact that General Musharraf sold his own people like Saifullah Paracha to the guesthouse at Guantamo Bay is tantamount to a war crime against the Pakistani people . Fatima Bhutto does well to highlight this key issue and it is an issue that has played on the conscious of the West who are contemplating the real costs of the war on terror.

A few oceans away, the impotent and uncaring government of Pakistan does not care very much it seems, except for thundering statements occassionally about the real cost of the war on terror.  I knew that Pakistani blood spilled at the behest of the West (as we serve as their proxy yet again) is of no value for our masters and not friends. Indeed it will be worse I suspect under change-we-cant Obama.

To end an article by Peter Preston caught my eye, do read why …

Truckling to the Taliban by Peter Preston

Listen, for far in the distance one can hear the sound of a great tin cup rattling. The president of Pakistan tells the newest president on the block (via the Washington Post) that his country could be “the most critical external problem” facing the US.

And he wants “aggressive, innovative action” against the forces of darkness. But for Pakistan to defeat the extremists, it must be stable – and economically viable. So give us the money, and necessary military hardware, too. Then together we can try to do something about Afghanistan and our collapsing region – your slightly desperate friend, Asif Ali Zardari.

Well, that’s the story of the last 30 years – perhaps even the basic story of Pakistan’s short existence. Hang tight with whoever happens to be in the White House and hope that he delivers enough goods to keep us afloat. But now, perhaps, there’s a new answer building. Ask not what the US treasury can do for you – ask, rather, what you can do for America. And, first, ask Pakistan’s million-plus military. (Immediately deployable men, 650,000; plus 350,000 paramilitary, and reservists and reserve reservists, making 1.4 million in a crisis – the seventh biggest national defence total in the world.)

Turn those big figures inside out. Short of resources to fight the Taliban inside Pakistan as Nato’s secretary general rattles his own tin cup? Anxious, if you’re Obama, to wind down Iraqi deployments so you can bring critical mass to bear from Kabul to Helmand to the long, infinitely porous border with Pakistan? Then look at the troops already there or thereabouts on the ground.

Factor in some of Zardari’s millions. “Unlike in the 1980s, we are surrogates for no one,” he writes. “We need no lectures on our commitment. This is our war. It is our children and wives who are dying.”

Very well. Then follow the logic and match his pretty desperate assertion against 60 years of war and constant tension. Pakistan’s army is the largest, most omnipresent political player in the country. Four of its leaders have doubled as military dictators – rivalling mere elected politicians in time served at the top. The army, in that sense, is effectively a political party itself, seizing power when the quasi-democrats fail and relinquishing it when their popularity begins to run dry.

And, within that neat game of pass the power parcel, there are well-oiled wheels within wheels. Retired top brass don’t go home to the Punjab and sit on their porches: they run corporations, found factories, open carpet emporiums and travel agencies. In sum, they accumulate nice little earners, wrapped safe by the nest-feathering activities of previous army generations. Putting on the braid is one of the best insurance policies in the world.

And who – as America pours in more billions of dollars – is the main enemy here? Not those involved in “our war, where women and children are dying”. No, as always, the alleged enemy is India, with Kashmir as casus belli. Military intelligence specialises in shadowy manoeuvres involving Kabul (where Indian influence is a supposed threat). Army deployment concentrates along the border with India, supposedly ready for any attack.

But it’s irrelevant now. Nuclear weapons on both sides has made it irrelevant. And see how the puppet masters pull the strings. An attack in Mumbai leaves carnage in its wake. India prepares to react. Islamabad orders its Afghan frontier forces to head east to another frontier fast. Implied message: you can have one proper line of defence, but not two. There’s an obvious answer to that.

Pakistan’s president is right. “This is our war” being waged now and increasingly lost – not just on the Afghan border, but right through the North-West Frontier, where extremists can shut the Khyber Pass for days. So why shouldn’t Obama make a totally fresh offer? Withdraw from the borders with India. We Americans will give all the guarantees necessary, plus some international troops on the ground to make that stick. And this, Mr Zardari, means you can flood the other border with your own surge. Instead of abandoning the Swat Valley and shrugging, you can take it back. Instead of truckling to the Taliban, you can do your own dirty work properly – and show, once and for all, whose side you’re on.

What’s the use of a 1.4 million military if it can’t or won’t fight the war it has on its hands? What’s the use of feeding a beast with no will to win? Maybe Helmand and the rest need more troops as those who are there go on dying – but, over that lethal, open border, there’s a mighty army busy doing not very much. Time for it to get on – or time for us to get out, and take our billions with us.

Published in the Guardian

WASIM VIEW – Where do I start with Peter Preston’s article as at best its juvenile journalism. Of course it doesnt help that the writer can refer to a article  recently published by Pakistan’s beggar President Zardari to support his points.

Preston’s article is a litany of complaints against the Pakistan army and presents a charge-sheet against Pakistani efforts vis a vis the so-called war on terror. The tone of the article is condescending and almost colonial in its outlook reminding Pakistan of her servant status in carrying the white man’s burden.

Tragic as it is though Preston is right when he reminds us all albeit gloatingly of Pakistan’s transactional relationship with the West and with Uncle Sam especially. It is a strategy that he describes in the article as ‘hang tight with whoever happens to be in the White House and hope that he delivers enough goods to keep us afloat’.

The killing fields of Pakistan bear testament to the real cost of the war on terror to Pakistan. Yet Preston remains unsatisfied as per the Western script  of ‘do more’ and  reminds his readers that the Pakistan army ‘is the nation’s most powerful and omnipresent politial power. Implied in his words are that the army can call the shots as it chooses and can do much more.

Preston ignores the ground realities that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, furthermore he is pig ignorant of the fact that the Pushtuns will never cave in at Tora Bora or elsewhere to occupiers, full stop.

Preston also ignores the shared history and futures of the Pushtun people on both sides of the Durrand Line. I can bet my bottom dollar that Preston and other armchair pundits like him know not that 200,000 Pushtuns cross the  impossible to seal 2,640km porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border each day.

The Preston article ends with a suggestion that the West should withdraw her billions if the Pakistan army is not up to the job. ‘Take our billions with us ‘ Preston warns, please do so I say and let Pakistan be.

- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW (My thanks to cowards Tariq Pervez. Sabihuddin, Sardar Raza & Co for selling out)

Today Pakistan remains uneasy and restless no thanks to the retired general and his actions to destabilise democracy. That said the Gillani’s PPP government’s constant dilly-dalling over the restoration of the judges within 30 days has created even more unease given Sherry ‘Sunglasses’ Rehman has mouthed off a new deadline yet again. This must stop and now.

Hence this post is an appeal for calm to the entire nation. The level of vitroil displayed on both sides on TV programmes, on blogs and on the streets show the way the wind is blowing hence my appeal for calm. I am not saying that one should ever stop speakig the truth as this our primary duty but we must be guided by the principles of honest and respectful debate.

Thus I appeal to all friends and foes here and elsewhere to take a pause and reflect on where we are going?

Please remember that Pakistan is still bleeding and that the fire is still burning and needs to be extinguished. My posts written at the death of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto are still as valid for today’s situation. Also please remember that many of these posts came from a passionate political opponent of BB in her life yet they show a decency and respect for opponents that we all need to aspire to. See any one of my posts via the  Archive section of the blog and see the difference.

Pakistan is Bleeding

My Farewell and Fatima Bhutto’s Farewell to Another Martyred Bhutto

Welcome Home Benazir Zardari

Will the Real Pakistan People’s Party Please Stand Up?

So I conclude with an appeal to all Pakistanis to do likewise with their opponents however savage they are. The war of words soon becomes the war of weapons and serves no purpose for the forces of darkness are out again to steal the democratic process from the nation via their evil designs. We must resist them by ensuring calm in all of her actions and adhering to the Quaid’s eternal motto – FAITH, UNITY AND DISCIPLINE.

Feimanallah Pakistan

- Originally posted on 13th April 2008, 15:27 PK Time, written under MARTIAL LAW

The following verses echo my sentiments and are my farewell to the legend that is Benazir Bhutto. I also dedicate the words to fallen Bhuttos and living Bhuttos especially her children Bilawal, Bakthwar, Asifa, her nephew Zulfiqar and above all her neice Fatima Bhutto who like me has been a principled opponent and has suffered a similar fate of mixed emotions coupled with a grief that resonates with one and all.

 I have also chosen to post the final farewell to Benazir Bhutto by the brilliant Fatima Bhutto. The article is a must read and will resonate will all who have suffered pain and grief, love and hate. The article was published in the News on 29 December and is shown below:

Farewell to Wadi Bua by Fatima Bhutto

My aunt and I had a complicated relationship. That is the truth, the sad truth. The last fifteen years were not one we spent as friends or as relatives, that is also the truth. But this week, I too want to remember her differently. I want to remember her differently because I must. I can’t lose faith in this country, my home. I can’t believe that it was for nothing, that violence in its purest form is so cruel and so unforgiving. I can’t accept that this is what we have come to. So, I must offer a farewell. One that is written in tears and anger but one that comes from a place far away, from the realm of memory and forgiving — a place where at another time, we might have all been safe. As a child, I used to call my aunt Wadi Bua, Sindhi for father’s older sister.

When I got the news, I was told that something had happened to Wadi Bua. It was an expression I hadn’t heard or used in a very long time, when I heard it said to me over the phone I remembered someone different.

We used to read children’s books together. We used to like exactly the same sweets — sugared chestnuts and candied apples. We used to get the same ear infections, ear infections that tortured us and plagued us throughout the years.

I have never before written an article that seemed so impossible. We were very different. Though people liked to compare us, almost instinctively, because well, they could. It is difficult for me to write about two people, one in the present tense and one in the past, at the same time.

Especially when one person’s passing makes the other one wonder whether there is a cusp to things and whether or not there really is a past and present to life.

I never agreed with her politics. I never did. I never agreed with those she kept around her, the political opportunists, hanger-ons, them. They repulse me.

I never agreed with her version of events. Never. But in death, in death perhaps there is a moment to call for calm. To say, enough. We have had enough. We cannot, and we will not, take anymore madness.

I mourn because my family has had enough. I mourn for Bilawal, Bakhtawar, and Asifa. I mourn for them because I too lost a parent. I know what it feels like to be lost and left at sea, unanchored and afraid.

I mourn for the workers of the party, those who have been bereaved of their own loved ones in this tragedy.

When congregants gather in a church, temple, or mosque they offer prayers for those that reside beyond. The congregants sing to the heavens and they offer the divine their hymns of sadness and hope. There are no hymns consisting of frustration or anger — this too shall pass, they say, remember that. What hymns do we sing now?

In those hymns, there is hope encapsulated in the sadness. There is a lingering sense that after darkness a dawn will rise. What then do we have to be hopeful for? And how do we proceed to wake the dawn?

I have always been honest with you, I promised that to you at the beginning. Honestly, I am at a loss. I am compounded in a state of shock.

I am in shock because I have yet to bury a loved one who has died from natural causes. Four. That’s the number of family members, immediate family members, whom we have laid to rest, all victims of senseless, senseless killing.

I was born five years after my grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s assassination. I was born into the void of his absence and for my father, Murtaza, I was a new chance at life. I grew up hearing my grandfather’s speeches, watching him on old black and white video cassettes, enamoured at his every word. My father was a young man when his father was killed and it was something he carried with him every second, every minute for the rest of his life.

I was three when my uncle Shahnawaz was murdered. I remember Wadi Bua sitting with me and telling me stories while the rest of the family was with the police.

When I was fourteen, my life was ended. I lost my heart and soul, my father Murtaza. I am and have been since then a shell of the person I was. I suppose there are cusps in life, and thank god for that because that way we can stay in between.

And now at twenty five, Wadi. But this isn’t about me, it’s about those whom we have lost. It’s about the graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bux that is just too full.

I pray that this is the last, that from this moment onwards we will no longer have to bid farewell too quickly. . Wadi, farewell.

I have nothing to add other than – Jeeyo Bhutto. 

 - Originally posted on 31st December 2007, 05:47 PK Time, written under MARTIAL LAW