Pakistan’s strategic retreat will be irreversible…unless the military establishment is transformed
First the facts: the Pakistani government has struck a deal with Maulana Sufi Mohammed, who heads an organisation called the Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) to impose Nizam-e-Adl regulations, which are based on Sharia law, in the Malakand Division of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). [...]
Some Taliban are allied with Pakistan, against America. Other Taliban are against Pakistan because of America. None of them are ‘moderate’.
Choose your pick: aspirin or scotch. You’ll need help to cope with this week’s news from Pakistan.
First, there is Mullah Omar and his shura, all but openly operating out of Quetta in Balochistan, reliably with [...]
Not quite
In Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha’s now famous interview to Der Spiegel, he defends the Taliban’s right to "freedom of opinion" although the question itself related to Mullah Omar’s presence in Pakistan.
However, it is worth listening closely when the general explains why he too is unwilling to apprehend the Taliban leadership, even though many [...]
The Pakistani government is tying itself in knots merely on account of the extremely trivial matter of having to accept that Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman "Kasab" is a Pakistani national. They already sacked the national security advisor. Now imagine the upheaval if the matters they will have to accept are not that trivial.
So what if Pakistan is misunderstood?
Commenting on Mohammed Hanif’s attempt to dispel ten myths about Pakistan, Dhruva Jaishankar writes (in an email):
Mohammed Hanif is clearly very smart, and his prose both entertaining and readable, but his attempt at overturning Indian myths of Pakistan also exposes some of the myths that Pakistanis—particularly upper-class, educated Pakistanis—have about [...]
Four immediate steps
The Pakistani military-jihadi complex has, as expected, gone on a war footing. General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani has pledged a “matching response” to Indian surgical strikes, “in no time”. The Pakistan Air Force was scrambled to fly sorties over major cities, scaring ordinary people. And the Jamaat-ud-Dawa organised a major pow-wow of religious parties—which [...]
And Pakistan is at the centre of it
The world’s strategic analysts worry about the how the “intersection of international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction” poses the biggest threat to international security. [See these reports]
The truth is that the intersection has already occurred. In Pakistan.
Much of the discourse linking terrorists and nuclear weapons revolves [...]
No, seriously
The Pakistani government is unable to raise fiscal resources by getting people and businesses to pay their taxes. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa can—it imposes a flat tax of 2.5% of annual savings on each family. It also raises resources through remittances from abroad. And its collection of hides of animals slaughtered for Eid-ul-Adha should bring a [...]
Pakistan’s military-jihadi complex remains unaffected by the latest ‘crackdown’
It would be one thing if Pakistan’s ‘crackdown’ on its jihadi groups was sincere and thoroughgoing. But it’s not. It is as much a temporary, cosmetic and unsatisfactory exercise as the ones under General Musharraf five years ago (see this archived post). The leaders and operatives of [...]
Why did it pull them out?
The Christian Science Monitor reports that:
India also sought to have the UN committee include on the list Hamid Gul, a retired Pakistani Army general who headed the country’s main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, in the late 1980s. However, China, a close ally of Pakistan that has veto power [...]
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