And there I thought we were over with it...

[Elmo]

Lost in Transition

By Mohammad A. Qadeer

Even as Pakistan’s urban centres grow in size and numbers and the lifestyles undergo a radical transformation, our social life and moral order remains steeped in rural traditions of the past — a contradiction which cannot be sustained for long if urbanites accept the Taliban’s ideology and vision of Islam, for it negates every aspect of the urban life as lived today


Almost everybody in Pakistan has been drawn into the urban way of life. With the exception of those living in the remote parts of the country, all others including those who ostensibly live in villages have been swept into the monetary economy, the division of labour, specialisation of occupations, mobility and access to radio as well as television. Our way of life has been more or less urbanised. This is how our ‘lived’ life has become but in our conceptions and in our moral notions (ideas of right and wrong) we remain, by and large, agrarian and tribal. It is particularly true of those demanding Islamic laws in general and the Taliban in particular. This contradiction in our lived versus imagined life is a source of many of our problems, not least in our politics.

A population density of 400 persons per square kilometre is the international criterion for defining an urban area. On the basis of this density criterion, large rural regions of the central Punjab, Peshawar valley and southern Sindh qualify as urban. If this population is added to those living in cities and towns, almost 60 per cent or more Pakistanis are living in urban environments. The evidence is all around us. Take a drive from Lahore to Khanewal, Gujarat, Sialkot or Sargodha, or from Karachi to Hyderabad and beyond or from Peshawar to Mardan or Attock. Houses will be seldom out of sight, with workshops and stores planted amid fields. Here the countryside looks like a stretched out suburb.

In addition to a majority living in the urban environment, millions of villagers and tribesmen have been migrating to cities. They not only spread urban influences into villages but also reinforce the rural moorings of social life in cities. All in all, the physical living conditions of Pakistanis have been largely urbanised. However, social life and the moral order lag behind and remain anchored to the rural traditions of the past. More than that, the public narrative continues to be steeped in agrarian values and institutions.

What does living in an urban environment mean and how does it affect everyday life? An urban area has a large population, high density and diversity of activities. These three characteristics have transformative effects on living conditions. First, the impersonalisation of human interaction becomes a necessity. For example, one can’t greet all those whom one comes across on a street or encounters in shops, there are just too many. Thus neighbours share a distant and cold relationship. Another example is that of women’s role which, in urban areas, takes them outside the home and necessitates their dealings with strangers. They have to shop, work and take children to schools or clinics because men, who are working far from home, are not around to do these chores.

Second, in urban settings one person’s well-being is indivisible from the wellbeing of others. Rats in my house are a threat of plague for my neighbours and vice versa. These interdependencies precipitate the need for collective goods such as public health, fire and building regulations, zoning by-laws, drains, water supply, property registration etc.

Third, the diversity of activities gives rise to different occupations and specialisation. The self-sufficiency of a rural household gives way to the market exchanges of goods and services in urban areas. A new community structure based on interlocking roles and complementary activities comes to characterise urban living.

The sum total of these imperatives of urban living is the need for a social order based on formal rules and laws, achievement rather than inheritance as the basis of reward and status, secular and impartial bureaucracy for decision making, trust, diversity and tolerance as social values. Such a social order has to be backed by a moral order that instils in the people respect for rules, merit, people’s rights and equality before the law.

Our moral compass, instead, is set at values such as clan loyalties, personalised dealings, status based on ancestry, gender inequality, authoritarianism, religiosity and distrust of persons who are not relatives. These values conflict with the demands of urban living. They impede the smooth functioning of social institutions and contribute to their corruption, nepotism, indiscipline and ineffectiveness. Our person-centred politics is steeped in these agrarian values.

The rise of the Taliban and Islamic extremists is another reassertion of the agrarian-tribal values in a society that has been urbanised. Their ideas of right and wrong are largely matters of personal behaviour, guided by notions of sin and piety and not values of collective welfare and social good. Their moral order is rooted in values that segregate and confine women, ban music and other aesthetic pleasures and uphold retributive justice and the dictatorship of Mullahs. Their ‘good’ social order is a system of controls over people’s everyday life.

Happiness and initiative are not the values to be pursued. Instead piety and conformity are the touchstones of a good community. Corruption is primarily the mixing of men and women and not bribery, black market or smuggling, for example. These values have been forged in a small, clannish and tribal social milieu.

Their application to urban areas will only produce misery and repression. In the long run they will lead to the breakdown of the social order and economic organisation. The imperatives of urban living necessitate a moral order based on impersonal rules and the differentiation of the private and public spheres of life.

The reasons for the spread of the Taliban are many, but one not recognised is the urbanisation of Pakistan’s social life. It has created a cultural lag between our material and moral order. There is a moral vacuum. Our social and economic life has been transformed, but we cling to the values of the rural past.

It is not a surprise that many educated Pakistanis look upon the Taliban’s social order as rightfully Islamic, even if their own life is almost a complete negation of this order. They do not see the contradiction in their ideals and reality and do not have the courage to own their own lifestyle. Unless our moral discourse consciously and deliberately recognises the reality of our lived urban life, we will continue to be increasingly racked by poverty, instability and terrorism.



Mohammad A. Qadeer is a professor emeritus at Queen’s University, Canada, and the author of ‘Pakistan-Social and Cultural Transformations of a Muslim Nation’

 

[Elmo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17sun1.html?th&emc=th

May 17, 2009
Editorial

Photographs and Kangaroo Courts

We do not envy President Obama as he tries to undo George W. Bush’s illegal and shameful detainee policy.

Last week, Mr. Obama faced protests from some of his top generals, and more attacks from Republicans in Congress, as the government got ready to release photographs of soldiers abusing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Members of both parties decided there was political gold to be mined in complicating the president’s efforts to shut down the Guantánamo Bay prison.

But that does not change the fact that Mr. Obama was wrong when he flip-flopped and decided to resist orders by two federal courts to release the photos. We fear he is showing the same lack of resolve when it comes to Mr. Bush’s kangaroo courts — the tribunals at Guantánamo that Mr. Obama denounced passionately and frequently during the 2008 campaign.

On Friday, the president said he would seek a further continuance in several cases before the tribunals. And he proposed changes that would make the commissions’ procedures a less outrageous miscarriage of justice: among them, banning testimony obtained through abuse and torture; tightening rules on the admission of hearsay; and expanding prisoners’ access to counsel.

Unfortunately, that is not enough. The entire edifice must be scrapped and the laws that long governed military and civilian criminal trials put back in force.

We do not object to convening military tribunals to judge and punish crimes committed in war. That is a well-established part of American and international military justice. The problem is that these tribunals, unlike traditional ones, did not just cover prisoners captured on the battlefield. They covered anyone whom Mr. Bush declared beyond the reach of law with the preposterous claim that the whole world is now a field of battle.

Indeed, most Guantánamo prisoners facing the tribunals were captured far from any real battlefield, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11, and other top terrorism suspects.

These prisoners should be tried in civilian criminal courts under federal antiterrorism statutes. We are pleased that Mr. Obama envisions doing that in some cases. Republicans like to mock the notion of trying terrorists as criminals, but that is what they are. Treating them as warriors not only demeans civilian and military justice, but it gives terrorists the martyrdom they crave.

Just as Mr. Obama was wrong to reverse field on the military tribunals, he was wrong to do so on the release of photographs showing American soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in ways reminiscent of the crimes of Abu Ghraib. Federal district and appellate judges have ordered the government to release the pictures, and Mr. Obama initially said he would.

But last week, he changed his mind, offering a jumbled set of explanations including his fear of inflaming anti-American sentiment and jeopardizing American soldiers. We share that concern, but these pictures will come out — through the courts or through the press. It is better for those same soldiers for Mr. Obama to release them, while declaring how he plans to change policy to ensure that these abuses are never repeated.

It was particularly distressing to hear Mr. Obama echo Mr. Bush by saying that releasing the pictures would not add “to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals.” This was not the fault of a few individuals. It was widespread, and systemic, the result of policies set at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Mr. Obama was elected in part because of his promises to correct these lawless policies. He must create clear rules to deal with prisoners. And there must be a full accounting of what went so horribly wrong and how. Otherwise, Mr. Obama risks turning Mr. Bush’s mistakes into his own or, in the case of the photographs, turning Mr. Bush’s cover-up into his own. More important, he risks missing the chance to make sure the misdeeds and horrors of the Bush years are never repeated.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

 

[Elmo]

Well said, general

By Kamran Shafi

Tuesday, 19 May, 2009 | 03:02 AM PST |



FOR the very first time, a clear and unambiguous statement from Gen Ashfaq Kayani: that the army was capable of fighting an insurgency. And that all it needed was specialised equipment and weaponry.

I have always said this: e.g. on April 21 I wrote: ‘… there is no greater canard … that the Pakistan Army is only trained for conventional warfare and that the Americans have to come train our troops in the art of fighting an insurrection.

‘Nothing could be further from the truth. All that needs to be done is for our intelligence apparatus to start reporting the truth, and for the army to finally understand that its enemy is not on the eastern front but on the western. And that once what little is left of the so-called writ of the almost non-existent state of Pakistan is gone, the army too will be swept away.’

Kudos to you, general, if you really mean what you say. May the Almighty give you the strength, the tenacity and the wisdom to lead our army to complete and final victory over the criminal and heartlessly cruel thugs who have spread so much death and destruction and despair in our country. And may He protect you and your officers and men.

To the Americans I say: instead of toys for the boys such as the F-16s which are not allowed by you to be used in an offensive role anyway, please immediately supply our army with night-vision equipment, attack helicopters, and close-support aircraft such as the A-10 Warthog.

And to you, prime minister this: please, please heed the advice I have oft proffered you, your president and your ministers: if you have nothing worthwhile to say don’t say anything at all. I refer to the statement allegedly made on your behalf just two days ago by the garrulous Babar Awan that if the terrorists wanted to talk peace even now, the government was ready to talk.

You are unbelievable, you lot! How possibly can you talk peace with fanatical terrorists who have killed so many innocents in the most brutal ways possible? How possibly can you even think of making peace with those who blow up girls’ schools and slaughter women school teachers, after first marching them through the bazaars with dancing-girl bells on their ankles? What is wrong with you people? Do you not feel the agony of your own brothers and sisters? Talk peace, indeed! Instead of making fools of yourselves, will you kindly just stand behind the army, give it all the support you can, and see that it completes the job.

Neither were you alone in shooting off your mouth. Exactly one day after Gen Kayani said the army is capable of fighting an insurgency, our president (God bless us!) says the army needs training by American and British instructors! I ask you! Could Mr Zardari also please stop speaking in the first person singular: ‘I need money’; ‘I need arms’; ‘I can’t fight the Taliban alone,’ ‘I need help’; ‘my democracy will succeed’ and so on?

And while you all are at it (and this goes for the senior officers of the services too), could you please order an immediate 70 per cent cut in the running expenses of your plush official homes and fancy offices? And ground all your executive jets? And ask that no more will huge bouquets of flowers be placed before you at meetings and other gatherings? And put a moratorium on all foreign junkets until Pakistan returns to peace?

And now, short report on what happened to a dear friend and college mate’s 30-year old son in Islamabad the Beautiful at the hands of the Rangers on May 2, 2008. But before that, a short word on the Rangers. In my day if getting a posting to the Scouts (the Frontier Corps) was a great honour for a line officer, a posting to the Rangers was considered a bloody disgrace, for the Rangers were always considered a subordinate civil armed force, into all kinds of argy-bargy on the border. It only came to prominence when the Commando used it to brazenly influence the 2002 election.

Anyway, this young man was walking on trail three just off Margalla Avenue with his cousin who, being more fit, left him behind. Soon he came upon two men in civvies, one wearing camouflage trousers and a blue T-shirt and the other a shalwar-kameez. The two stopped him and asked who he was and what he was doing there. (Not an intelligent question, what!). The boy told them, they asked for his ID card which he was not carrying at the time, upon which they told him he would have to come with them.

The boy in turn asked for their ID which they said they didn’t have and pointed to a hand-held wireless, saying they were from the ‘intelligence.’ Since hand-held wireless sets are freely available in the market and are hardly a means of identifying officials of the state, he panicked and started running away from them thinking they were kidnappers/Taliban, whatever. If readers will recall there have been stories in the press where the Taliban have been known to kidnap for ransom to feed their insurgency.

Anyhow, he was caught, trussed up like a criminal, blindfolded, and eventually led to the Rangers camp along the Margalla Road where he was produced before an officer. The usual phone calls were then made; influential people were brought into the loop and the boy was freed five hours after his ordeal began. What gives, Mister Rehman Malik, Lord and Master of all you survey? Is this the way citizens will be treated by your minions in your empire? Be ashamed of yourself, sir!

Something sublime now. While trolling through the Internet the other day looking for old books on Frontier warfare I came across Delphi Books which led me to a site salimansar.com. I was astonished at the sheer range of books and rare manuscripts offered for sale on this site.

Whilst one of the oldest books, the handwritten Qissa Shirin Farhad was published in 1166, and there are countless other such gems such as the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and The Kasidah of Haji Abu El-Yezdi, translated by Sir Richard Burton in 1880, what particularly interested me at this time was Operations in Waziristan put together by the general staff, army headquarters, India, in 1921.

Here is how the country is described: ‘Waziristan lies on the western border of the Indian empire, and forms the connecting link on the Afghan frontier between the districts of Kurram and Zhob. For political and administrative purposes it is divided into Northern and Southern Waziristan its shape resembling a rough parallelogram….’

I wonder if our present general staff is putting together an account of the operations they are conducting so that a full account can be left for posterity; and so that our succeeding generations can learn from what we are experiencing. I doubt it very much, for scholarship is at low ebb in our country.

DAWN.COM | Columnists | Well said, general

 

[Elmo]

Unheeded lessons of democracy

By Niilofur Farrukh

Tuesday, 19 May, 2009 | 07:41 AM PST |



WITH the Taliban facing the might of the military — supported this time by government will — in Swat and its adjoining areas, the spectre of the militants’ advance to the cities has diminished considerably.



There is no doubt, though, that the military operation has come at a great loss with thousands being forced to flee the scene of conflict in what is one of the greatest waves of human exodus in the region. But as Pakistanis muster up their energies to face yet another humanitarian crisis they must also pause to reflect on Talibanisation and its relationship to our dysfunctional democracy. We need to give serious thought to the deep-seated causes behind the presence of the Taliban in Malakand. Why, for instance, did the message of adl resonate with the people until the Taliban began to show more of their brutal, expansionist tendencies? The Taliban managed to make inroads not because they are invincible or outnumber their detractors but because we, the citizens of Pakistan, for six decades have collectively ignored the lessons of democracy that promises equal rights and justice for all citizens.



Dictators may have deprived us of our vote from time to time, but we as a nation have contributed to a system built on nepotism, expediency and convenience. Pakistanis clamour for democracy during dictatorships yet make a mockery of adult franchise when less than 30 per cent of the voting population casts its vote. Our tolerance for bribes, kickbacks, illegal commissions etc has reached an alarming level. So it comes as no surprise that Pakistan ranks among this planet’s five most corrupt countries. Institutions, both in the public and private sector, that could have served as the building blocks of democracy have been turned into personal fiefdoms with little regard for the mandate they have been given to serve.



Humourist Imran Aslam took a potshot at the way Pakistanis view core values when he pointed out in a recent play that we are a country where Ideas is a departmental store, Liberty is the name of a market and Freedom and Trust are personal hygiene products. Maybe it’s time to ask if Pakistan was ever a democracy, or have we rapidly slipped from being a colony to an oligarchy constituted by a powerful, dishonest and self-serving elite that connives at monopolising politics, land, the military and industry. The conspiracy to keep the majority disenfranchised is clear to anyone who has lived through or studied the country’s short history.



We do not need statistics to see the deeply entrenched tentacles of this elite. The villagers of Khaskheli in Sanghar, Sindh, have been protesting in front of the Karachi Press Club for almost a month. One of them has died. Their only demand is to return safely to their village usurped by a landowner patronised by political might. Despite documentation in their possession and repeated assurances by ministers and government advisers, no end to their plight is in sight. The only positive development is the recent arrest of the principal culprit but it has yet to translate into justice as political clout usually ensures an aborted jail sentence.



In Lahore where a group of LUMS students were in an accident and one student killed in full view of a crowd, the case could not be registered immediately against the son of a powerful developer who was behind the wheel. It took a daylong strike by LUMS students and faculty and the intervention of influential persons before the police registered an FIR.



One had hardly stopped debating the controversial incident of the daughter of a former chief justice getting generous grace marks when two exam scandals surfaced. In Karachi, officials raided ‘cheating centres’ which were being passed off as examination centres. Most outrageous was the presence of parents who were supporting their children. Meanwhile, a member of the National Assembly — who was subsequently asked to resign by his party — sent a relative to take an exam on his behalf in Rawalpindi. His relative was apprehended at the examination centre. The person who refused to allow the matter to be hushed up was Dr Naeemullah Bajwa, who should be a national hero. Instead he appeared visibly shaken in a TV interview when he talked of how threats had forced him to send his family into hiding.



With most institutions having lost the capacity to function efficiently the masses feel a growing sense of injustice, deprivation and helplessness. These have created deep fissures in our society and gradually pushed us to the brink that makes us so vulnerable to extremist ideologies.



The nations that have averted disasters are the ones that can find the inner strength, resolve and resilience so future generations do not have to pay a heavy price. Encouraged by the lawyers’ movement, Pakistani civil society had begun to regroup and register its outrage against Talibanisation when the Nizam-i-Adl was signed. Thousands of letters and emails were sent to the president, demonstrations and public meetings brought together large numbers. Over the past week, citizens have been mobilising to respond to the urgent needs of the displaced people of Swat.



However cathartic for the participants these efforts should be seen in their correct perspective — that they are only a battle cry to remind opponents and the government that the Taliban ideology is incompatible with the values of Quaid’s Pakistan.



For any tangible success the real battle has to be fought within each Pakistani as he/she struggles to re-learn the spirit of democracy. The blueprint to victory lies in the understanding and practice of the constitution which has been forsaken by citizens and leaders alike. The first step in this direction would be to dismantle the system of economic apartheid which resides both in attitudes and in the crumbling brick-and-mortar facilities for the masses.



To become a stronger nation, each time we come back from an anti-Taliban demonstration or fund-raising drive for the Swat refugees, we need to tell ourselves, change is only possible if we begin to build the foundations of a participatory democracy.



asnaclay06@yahoo.com

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | Unheeded lessons of democracy

 

[Elmo]

May 20, 2009, 9:30 pm
What You Don’t Know Makes You Nervous
By Daniel Gilbert

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Seventy-six years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took to the inaugural dais and reminded a nation that its recent troubles “concern, thank God, only material things.” In the midst of the Depression, he urged Americans to remember that “happiness lies not in the mere possession of money” and to recognize “the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success.”

“The only thing we have to fear,” he claimed, “is fear itself.”

As it turned out, Americans had a great deal more to fear than that, and their innocent belief that money buys happiness was entirely correct. Psychologists and economists now know that although the very rich are no happier than the merely rich, for the other 99 percent of us, happiness is greatly enhanced by a few quaint assets, like shelter, sustenance and security. Those who think the material is immaterial have probably never stood in a breadline.

Money matters and today most of us have less of it, so no one will be surprised by new survey results from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index showing that Americans are smiling less and worrying more than they were a year ago, that happiness is down and sadness is up, that we are getting less sleep and smoking more cigarettes, that depression is on the rise.
An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait.

But light wallets are not the cause of our heavy hearts. After all, most of us still have more inflation-adjusted dollars than our grandparents had, and they didn’t live in an unremitting funk. Middle-class Americans still enjoy more luxury than upper-class Americans enjoyed a century earlier, and the fin de siècle was not an especially gloomy time. Clearly, people can be perfectly happy with less than we had last year and less than we have now.

So if a dearth of dollars isn’t making us miserable, then what is? No one knows. I don’t mean that no one knows the answer to this question. I mean that the answer to this question is that no one knows — and not knowing is making us sick.

Consider an experiment by researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who gave subjects a series of 20 electric shocks. Some subjects knew they would receive an intense shock on every trial. Others knew they would receive 17 mild shocks and 3 intense shocks, but they didn’t know on which of the 20 trials the intense shocks would come. The results showed that subjects who thought there was a small chance of receiving an intense shock were more afraid — they sweated more profusely, their hearts beat faster — than subjects who knew for sure that they’d receive an intense shock.

That’s because people feel worse when something bad might occur than when something bad will occur. Most of us aren’t losing sleep and sucking down Marlboros because the Dow is going to fall another thousand points, but because we don’t know whether it will fall or not — and human beings find uncertainty more painful than the things they’re uncertain about.

But why?

A colostomy reroutes the colon so that waste products leave the body through a hole in the abdomen, and it isn’t anyone’s idea of a picnic. A University of Michigan-led research team studied patients whose colostomies were permanent and patients who had a chance of someday having their colostomies reversed. Six months after their operations, patients who knew they would be permanently disabled were happier than those who thought they might someday be returned to normal.

Similarly, researchers at the University of British Columbia studied people who had undergone genetic testing to determine their risk for developing the neurodegenerative disorder known as Huntington’s disease. Those who learned that they had a very high likelihood of developing the condition were happier a year after testing than those who did not learn what their risk was.

Why would we prefer to know the worst than to suspect it? Because when we get bad news we weep for a while, and then get busy making the best of it. We change our behavior, we change our attitudes. We raise our consciousness and lower our standards. We find our bootstraps and tug. But we can’t come to terms with circumstances whose terms we don’t yet know. An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait.

Our national gloom is real enough, but it isn’t a matter of insufficient funds. It’s a matter of insufficient certainty. Americans have been perfectly happy with far less wealth than most of us have now, and we could quickly become those Americans again — if only we knew we had to.

Daniel Gilbert is professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of “Stumbling on Happiness.”

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/what-you-dont-know-makes-you-nervous/?pagemode=print

 

[Elmo]

May 21, 2009
1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON — An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has returned to terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

The conclusion could strengthen the arguments of critics who have warned against the transfer or release of any more detainees as part of President Obama’s plan to shut down the prison by January. Past Pentagon reports on Guantánamo recidivism have been met with skepticism from civil liberties groups and criticized for their lack of detail.

The Pentagon promised in January that the latest report would be released soon, but Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said this week that the findings were still “under review.”

Two administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report was being held up by Defense Department employees fearful of upsetting the White House, at a time when even Congressional Democrats have begun to show misgivings over Mr. Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo.

At the White House on Wednesday, Mr. Obama ran into a different kind of resistance when he met with human rights advocates who told him they would oppose any plan that would hold terrorism suspects without charges.

The White House has said Mr. Obama will provide further details about his plans for Guantánamo detainees in a speech Thursday.

To relocate the 240 prisoners now at Guantánamo Bay, administration officials have said the plan will ultimately rely on some combination of sending some overseas for release, transferring others to the custody of foreign governments, and moving the rest to facilities in the United States, either for military or civilian trials or, in some cases, perhaps, to be held without charges.

But the prospect that detainees might be moved to American soil has run into strong opposition in Congress. To show its misgivings, the Senate voted on Wednesday, 90 to 6, to cut from a war-spending bill the $80 million requested by Mr. Obama to close the prison, and overwhelmingly approved a second amendment requiring that a threat assessment be prepared for each prisoner now at Guantánamo to address what might happen on release.

The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said Wednesday that moving detainees to American prisons would bring with it risks including “the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States.”

But Michele A. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, said of the detainees: “I think there will be some that need to end up in the United States.”

Pentagon officials said there had been no pressure from the Obama White House to suppress the report about the Guantánamo detainees who had been transferred abroad under the Bush administration. The officials said they believed that Defense Department employees, some of them holdovers from the Bush administration, were acting to protect their jobs.

The report is the subject of numerous Freedom of Information Act requests from news media organizations, and Mr. Whitman said he expected it to be released shortly. The report, a copy of which was made available to The New York Times, says the Pentagon believes that 74 prisoners released from Guantánamo have returned to terrorism or militant activity, making for a recidivism rate of nearly 14 percent.

The report was made available by an official who said the delay in releasing it was creating unnecessary “conspiracy theories” about the holdup.

A Defense Department official said there was little will at the Pentagon to release the report because it had become politically radioactive under Mr. Obama.

“If we hold it, then everybody claims it’s political and you’re protecting the Obama administration,” said the official, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. “And if we let it go, then everybody says you’re undermining Obama.”

Previous assertions by the Pentagon that substantial numbers of former Guantánamo prisoners had returned to terrorism were sharply criticized by civil liberties and human rights groups who said the information was too vague to be credible and amounted to propaganda in favor of keeping the prison open. The Pentagon began making the assertions in 2007 but stopped earlier this year, shortly before Mr. Obama took office.

Among the 74 former prisoners that the report says are again engaged in terrorism, 29 have been identified by name by the Pentagon, including 16 named for the first time in the report. The Pentagon has said that the remaining 45 could not be named because of national security and intelligence-gathering concerns.

In the report, the Pentagon confirmed that two former Guantánamo prisoners whose terrorist activities had been previously reported had indeed returned to the fight. They are Said Ali al-Shihri, a leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch suspected in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Sana, Yemen’s capital, last year, and Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, an Afghan Taliban commander, who also goes by the name Mullah Abdullah Zakir.

The Pentagon has provided no way of authenticating its 45 unnamed recidivists, and only a few of the 29 people identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists, with almost no other details provided.

“It’s part of a campaign to win the hearts and minds of history for Guantánamo,” said Mark P. Denbeaux, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who has represented Guantánamo detainees and co-written three studies highly critical of the Pentagon’s previous recidivism reports. “They want to be able to claim there really were bad people there.”

Mr. Denbeaux acknowledged that some of the named detainees had engaged in verifiable terrorist acts since their release, but he said his research showed that their numbers were small.

“We’ve never said there weren’t some people who would return to the fight,” Mr. Denbeaux said. “It seems to be unavoidable. Nothing is perfect.”

Terrorism experts said a 14 percent recidivism rate was far lower than the rate for prisoners in the United States, which, they said, can run as high as 68 percent three years after release. They also said that while Americans might have a lower level of tolerance for recidivism among Guantánamo detainees, there was no evidence that any of those released had engaged in elaborate operations like the Sept. 11 attacks.

In addition to Mr. Shihri and Mr. Rasoul, at least three others among the 29 named have engaged in verifiable terrorist activity or have threatened terrorist acts.

Margot Williams contributed reporting from New York, and David Herszenhorn from Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21gitmo.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

 

[Elmo]

The state that wouldn’t fail

By Cyril Almeida

Friday, 22 May, 2009 | 02:01 AM PST |


PAKISTAN is the country that just won’t fail. It threatens to, seemingly always on the brink, always giving the world a collective migraine, always on the verge of chaos, but just when you think we’re done for, when all hope is lost, when it seems nothing can save it from itself, somehow we end up doing just enough of the right thing to keep the country afloat, to live another day to drift into another crisis.

And so it is this time with the operation in Malakand division. The government wants you to believe that it had a plan all along, that the Nizam-i-Adl was a way of stripping away the last vestiges of justification for the militancy in Swat, that the negotiations with the TNSM were a necessary charade to expose the motives of Maulana Fazlullah and his band of savages.

Would that the illusion of a government with a plan in hand were the truth. The fact is, the government, and us, the people, by extension, got lucky. If the ANP government in NWFP and the PPP government in Islamabad had their way, Sufi Mohammad would still quietly be rearranging society in Malakand to his liking, with the TTP the stick with which Sufi would enforce his law in his bailiwick. And thus, with one problem confined to one area, the governments in Peshawar and Islamabad could go about their business of pretending to govern the other areas under their control.

But two things happened to spoil the plan, and while both were always likely to have occurred, it would be charitable in the extreme to argue that the provincial and federal governments anticipated them and had factored them into their plans for Malakand.

First, the militants in Swat, freed from fighting in the district, set forth and began to spread their seed in neighbouring districts. We can know the government didn’t expect this because it installed a pro-Taliban commissioner in Malakand and didn’t do anything to try and stop the militants from slipping into Buner, Lower Dir and Shangla and setting up shop for business.

Fact is, if the government’s plan always was to eventually fight the militants it would have acted to limit the theatre in which the militants were to be fought. But now, even weeks after trying to retake even a small mountain village like Pir Baba in Buner, the army is struggling. What could have been nipped in the bud by local police and administrative action, has become a full-fledged military operation.

Second, Sufi Mohammad reverted to his kooky ideas publicly. Neither the ANP nor the PPP expected it — in fact they planned for something quite the contrary. The massive gathering on that scenic grassy field in Mingora was arranged by the government to give Sufi a grand stage from which to denounce Fazlullah and declare a fatwa against his intransigent militants. But when Sufi got up on the stage, he became giddy at the sight of all those thousands gathered to listen to him and thought, ‘Heck with it, this is my moment. I’ll speak from the heart.’

And so he did, declaring everybody and everything in Pakistan un-Islamic. The cameras focused on the wild applause of the audience, but if they had looked elsewhere they would have captured the stricken faces of government officials. Things had most definitely not gone according to plan.

So, once the original plan — if it can even be called a plan — had failed, the government had to come up with something else; and by then the only option left was the military option. Criticism of the government at this stage may seem churlish, given that so rarely does a Pakistani government do the right thing even after all the wrong options have been exhausted.

But the story of how this government arrived at the military option in Malakand is important because it is not the final stop in the fight against militancy — there is a long road ahead, and it weaves through Fata and Punjab and Pakistan’s cities. The point is, if the road ahead is navigated with a similar mix of lucky breaks and nonsense planning, a fortuitous result is far more unlikely than likely.

Steering blindfolded may yet get the government around another bend or two and burnish the legend of Pakistan being the state that just won’t fail, but it won’t affect the inexorable logic of failure in the long run — you can only get away with mismanagement of a country for so long in the face of a violent threat. If not tomorrow or next year, then five, 10, 15 years down the road, at some point our luck will run out. That isn’t abject cynicism, it is a logical certainty.

But for all the sins of omission and commission, the failures of the government of today — or even the one of tomorrow — are only part of the problem. At the root of the problem of militancy is the security establishment — essentially the Pakistan Army high command with sections of the intelligence apparatus and retired officers as its instruments of policy implementation.

It is that group which sets the parameters of what the state can or cannot do against the militants, and it still cleaves to the distinction between good and bad militants. There is no reason to believe that it is not serious about eliminating the militants in Malakand this time. The militants there have proved intractable and of no utility to the state — in fact, they are a threat to it and therefore are being taken on.

But there is every reason to believe that the security establishment is serious about maintaining that distinction elsewhere. And that is especially problematic when it comes to dealing with Ground Zero of militancy — the Waziristan agencies.

Separating good from bad is tactically possible when the good and bad militants are spatially separated, in small numbers and not in control of territory. So in Punjab and the cities the state can go after Al Qaeda militants — the bad ones — while turning a blind eye to the good ones, our home-grown jihadi networks.

But in the Waziristan agencies the good and the bad are intertwined, exist in larger numbers and control the territory. Trying to whack the bad militants there while avoiding trampling the good ones is a non-starter. To succeed there — and there is no doubt that militancy in Pakistan cannot be defeated without success there — the good/bad distinction would need to be abandoned first.

And if we don’t drop that distinction soon, the legend of the state that just wouldn’t fail may eventually prove untrue.

cyril.a@gmail.com
DAWN.COM | Columnists | The state that wouldn?t fail

Copyright © 2009 - Dawn Media Group

 

[Bane Blade]

However the Good or Bad distinction needs to be present or we will be fighting an enemy that will continue growing people won't tolerate it if the PA declares war on everyone and they know that the region can't be run without the local Taliban pitching in.

 

[Elmo]

However the Good or Bad distinction needs to be present or we will be fighting an enemy that will continue growing people won't tolerate it if the PA declares war on everyone and they know that the region can't be run without the local Taliban pitching in.

I completely that the need to distinguish good and bad needs to be maintained. The distinction is an idea that has been taken off from the US in Afghanistan, contending that one needs to do away with it is not right. The columnist here hasn't zoomed out and looked long term — whether we like to admit it or not, when Rah-e-Rast is over, success has been achieved hopefully, these elements will still be there. For them not to come again, we will have to talk to them. In that instance, we need to be able to differentiate between those Taliban who can be controlled and those who want to spread anarchy.




(I post columns/articles here that I find interesting. The highlighted bit don't necessarily reflect my viewpoint or agreement with them. Just thoughts that are floating around and need to be considered.)

 

[Bane Blade]

And I posted my views on those articles I simply believe that if we don't distinguish we won't be able to win the hearts of the people on the ground indeed it is tough but we need to distinguish at somepoint and these elements will have to be invited to fight their view on the ballot not on the battle.

 

[Elmo]

And I posted my views on those articles I simply believe that if we don't distinguish we won't be able to win the hearts of the people on the ground indeed it is tough but we need to distinguish at somepoint and these elements will have to be invited to fight their view on the ballot not on the battle.

Okay, I wasn't clear on that.

Elaborating more on the latter: When one sees a leading conservative publication such as Dawn carry such views, one can't help but take think over them. Here's an educated guy who wants to do away with the distinction simply because he thinks the Taliban cannot be dealt with otherwise.
And he isn't the only one. There are many other young, educated people who think that military action will be the only way to deal with the Taliban. That certainly is short-sightedness or if one may dare to say selfishness because you are scared that the extremists will come in your city and take over.
Very easy to come up with such solutions sitting far away and not in the thick of conflict but very hard to ignore when you know that Talibanisation has deep roots in one's area. It's as much a war for the hearts and minds of the people as it is about regaining physical control.

 

[Elmo]

Broadband subscribers
Access more areas

May 22nd 2009
From Economist.com
Where most people subscribe to broadband

THE number of people subscribing to broadband in OECD countries increased by 13% last year to 267m. More than a fifth of the combined population of the 30 mostly rich nations in the OECD now have high-speed access to the internet. The broadband penetration rate is above a third in Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. Adoption is lowest in poorer countries such as Mexico, where just over 7% are broadband subscribers. Slovakia enjoyed the fastest growth in broadband subscriptions per person. Those subscribers, however, paid most for their connection, once exchange rates were adjusted for local spending power. On that basis, Slovaks shelled out over twice as much for speedy internet access as broadband users in Britain or Japan.

 

[Elmo]

American national security

Seeking closure
May 21st 2009
From Economist.com


Barack Obama and Dick Cheney disagree about how best to ensure America's national security



THE contrast was stark: on the one hand Barack Obama, young, idealistic, wet-behind the ears, and on the other Dick Cheney, the former vice-president and the voice of experience, in his best growling form. Both gave speeches on Thursday May 21st: Mr Obama at the National Archives, home of the American constitution, and Mr Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute, the favourite nest of the now-rather-quiet neoconservatives. Mr Obama's voice boomed as it echoed around the walls that house America's revered founding documents; a wheezy Mr Cheney sipped from a water bottle.

Between them, the men represent the two poles of the national-security debate that is raging in Washington. Mr Obama has pledged to shut the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba, by January 2010, but even his own party disagrees with him. Democrats in Congress have rebelled and removed money for closing the prison camp, and possibly building another, from war-spending bills that are going through Congress. They will not be happy with the president’s proposal until he produces a thought-out plan that can convince them that wild-eyed jihadists are not about to be released into their neighbourhoods. Mr Obama made his speech to try to persuade them that he does, indeed, have such a plan.

Having admitted that the camp was “quite simply, a mess”, Mr Obama went through the categories of prisoners and how he intended to deal with them. The most dangerous of the 240 detainees would be sent to “super-max” federal prisons—from which, he reminded his audience, no one has ever escaped. Some trials would be held in federal court, where several terrorists have already been tried and sentenced. Military commissions were “appropriate” for those who had violated the laws of war, and he had not changed tack on them; he had always approved of them, he said, in a reformed shape. Detainees who were suitable for transfer abroad would be shifted there (although, as Mr Cheney pointed out, other countries are not lining up to take them). Those who had been ordered released would be released. As for those who could not be prosecuted but were still a threat, he had begun to “reshape” standards and construct a “legitimate legal framework” to deal with them. Details were lacking.

The great bulk of Mr Obama’s lawyerly speech, however—which repeated well-worn themes from his campaign and seemed unnecessarily lengthy—was devoted to moral principles. Unless America abided by its fundamental values, its people would never truly be safe. Guantánamo had “set back our moral authority”, and had become instead “a rallying cry for our enemies”. In the same way, “enhanced interrogation techniques”—as both he and Mr Cheney fastidiously referred to torture—had not advanced America’s principles, but undermined them. That was why he had released the Bush administration’s “torture memoranda”, to show the world what America was no longer prepared to do. Ending water-boarding (simulated drowning) and closing Guantánamo were further steps down the path of legality and morality.

Fine, unexceptionable words, delivered with the usual eloquence. But Mr Obama looked like a man whose closest brush with terror had been watching “Independence Day”. Mr Cheney, by contrast, had been there. He recalled the moment on September 11th 2001 when he had been bundled from his White House office into the presidential bunker. It had not made him a different man, he said, but it had focused all his thoughts on the safety of the country. Another attack might come at any time. So, mindful of that, the Bush administration had invoked Article two of the constitution: “all necessary and appropriate force” could be used to protect the American people. Mr Cheney, too, can bring on the Founding Fathers when he needs to.

Included in that appropriate force, Mr Cheney continued, were wiretapping and the extraction of information from terrorist suspects. It was “lawful, skilful” work, he said. The liberals’ bête noire, water-boarding, had been used on just three notable terrorists, including Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind behind the September 11th plot and beheading of a journalist, Daniel Pearl. When captured, Mr Mohammed demanded to speak to his lawyer in New York. The interrogation techniques had been reviewed by lawyers, said Mr Cheney, and the line between toughness and torture carefully followed. To reveal these techniques by releasing the memos had done a “serious injustice” to the officers concerned. In fact, rasped the old bulldog, Mr Obama’s people had whipped up “feigned outrage based on a false narrative”.

The Obama administration had released redacted versions of classified memos that revealed what had been done to extract information, but was silent on the usefulness of that information and the possible atrocities that had been averted. And as for the plan to close Guantánamo, that had been done without proper deliberation; the president might find, “on reflection”, that it was a bad idea to let hardened terrorists go. Mr Cheney was on a roll.

Time still remains for Congress to add Guantánamo funds to the spending bill, if it wants to. The president’s moral argument remains unimpeachable. But his vague and virtuous hopefulness rang a little hollow beside the straight talk of Mr Cheney whose action at the time of September 11th had seemed justified—to some senior Democrats, as well as Republicans—at the time.

 

[muse]

There are many other young, educated people who think that military action will be the only way to deal with the Taliban. That certainly is short-sightedness or if one may dare to say selfishness because you are scared that the extremists will come in your city and take over

Really? Short sighted? Just because they are affraid the talib may take over their city?

Very easy to come up with such solutions sitting far away and not in the thick of conflict but very hard to ignore when you know that Talibanisation has deep roots in one's area. It's as much a war for the hearts and minds of the people as it is about regaining physical control

Deep roots? Hearts and minds? Which presumably explains why that Talib rely on terror and Ak-47s, because they have "deep roots" and have sowed great affection in the hearts of the unwashed locals by beating their women, forcing parents to give their daughters to them and by introducing the locals to the many virtues of the AK47?

There I was, Just when I thought sense would prevail, ideology showed up masquerading as thought.

 

[Elmo]

Really? Short sighted? Just because they are affraid the talib may take over their city?

No short-sight as in not thinking about the long-term repercussions of the current actions in the lives of people from the region. Not vis-a-vis the Taliban take-over in their cities.

Deep roots? Hearts and minds? Which presumably explains why that Talib rely on terror and Ak-47s, because they have "deep roots" and have sowed great affection in the hearts of the unwashed locals by beating their women, forcing parents to give their daughters to them and by introducing the locals to the many virtues of the AK47?

Deep roots as in local support for the Taliban (this also includes those in government service — theirs' would be clandestine support though).

Hearts and minds — definitely yes. One would suggest a visit to the IDP camp and seeing the conditions there. The morale of the people is at its lowest and there is hushed critique of the army operations.

We have to be extremely realistic and realise that it is physically impossible to kill each and every single Taliban. Tomorrow when they come back, people should side with the government and not go, "Oh god, here we will be uprooted once again so let's side with the Taliban because obviously the government is finding it difficult to establish its writ."

Besides, its winning over the hearts and minds which is the toughest battle. You win those, a major portion of the task be considered done.

There I was, Just when I thought sense would prevail, ideology showed up masquerading as thought.

What does this mean and more importantly got to do with the two above?