As Fears Grow Over Pakistani President, U.S. Woos Rival
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Zob
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we don't want advise and aid with conditions attached...give it to us freely and we will take it attach strings to it NO THANK YOU SIR.....talibans ruled afghanistan peacefully for 5 years until the US came looknig for the real enemy of humanity AL QAEDA.....which now is chilling and laughing at the taliban,pakistan and the US as well as nato chase each other around.....
TALIBAN want foreign "invaders" to leave
Pakistan wants taliban al qaeda and the US to leave
US wants to....kill all and then it will leave....
so i guess no one is leaving anyone in the short run...nice game we got going on....but when the music stops wonder who would not be seated....??
TALIBAN want foreign "invaders" to leave
Pakistan wants taliban al qaeda and the US to leave
US wants to....kill all and then it will leave....
so i guess no one is leaving anyone in the short run...nice game we got going on....but when the music stops wonder who would not be seated....??
Bane Blade
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No if they come to you as a super power with a slightly more settled form of government they should help smaller nations but if they tend to stand on their own 2 feet US should not put sanctions on them so that they have to turn to the US again.
Solomon2
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Zob, I'll take your answer for a "no". As in, "No I don't, but I don't want to think about that, I want to take my anger out on you."
How charming.
Here's a dollar guys, buy yourselves a cup of coffee, the U.S. can move on and find someone else to be friends with.
How charming.
Here's a dollar guys, buy yourselves a cup of coffee, the U.S. can move on and find someone else to be friends with.
AgNoStiC MuSliM
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There is an assumption that all US advice offered to Pakistan is in Pakistan's interest, and that Pakistan should just accept it. Without reciprocity in also addressing Pakistani concerns and Pakistani 'advice', there is no 'relationship' or 'friendship' - it's merely one side trying to dictate to the other in the guise of 'friendly advice'.
Key word here - reciprocity.
Zob
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the U.S. can move on and find someone else to be friends with.
I wish it does we were doing just fine in the 90s....and my ANSWER NO is simple don't twist it...give us aid as a friend not as a MASTER....no strings attached period....not every pakistani is as corrupt as our MR.10% ZARDARI
I wish it does we were doing just fine in the 90s....and my ANSWER NO is simple don't twist it...give us aid as a friend not as a MASTER....no strings attached period....not every pakistani is as corrupt as our MR.10% ZARDARI
Solomon2
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American diplomats usually portray things that way, but the assumption is that the Pakistan should do xxx not only because it's in the American interest, but in Pakistan's as well. It's up to Pakistan's leaders to evaluate the whether the advice offered is accurate and the aid offerred useful, and if not to decide whether to engage the U.S. to convince it otherwise, or address other concerns. That is reciprocity, is it not?
Yet "reciprocity" is not the same as giving equal weight to each party. The U.S. is a distant friend, Pakistan is ground zero. What one can see from a satellite or airplane offers a different perspective, or truth, than what one sees up close, where it is often difficult and time-consuming to create the "big picture" otherwise.
And what the U.S. sees is that simply giving Pakistan money without strings hasn't worked: it disappears into a morass of corrupt officials, and what remains is diverted into other projects than those proposed to the Americans. It's almost, but not quite, as bad as giving money and equipment to Afghani officials.
Part of what is required in both countries is greater accountability, both to donor states and to their own people. But this goes against the locally time-sanctioned principle of casting aside rule-of-law in favor of gumming up the works and grabbing what loot you can while no one is working or people pay you for favors that wouldn't be necessary if officials did their jobs in the first place. Such deliberate misrule can only stop if the taps are turned off, or officials and lawmakers reform their current system.
We Westerners don't really have much cause to hold our nose in the air about this as we have had (and continue to have) our own problems on this score. But right now it's in Afghanistan and Pakistan that misrule has gotten so bad that Jacobites threaten the state.
BanglaBhoot
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Third Time's Not the Charm
As U.S. officials meet with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari this week in Washington, there is someone missing from the discussions: Zardari's archrival, Nawaz Sharif. The two-time prime minister is back with a vengeance -- and an approval rating more than three times that of the president. Now he is hoping for another chance at power. He has the political winds at his back. But can he be trusted to govern?
Head of his own wing of the Pakistan Muslim League party, Sharif is marketing himself at home and in Washington as a bulwark of democracy against the rising tide of Talibanization. In an April interview with USA Today, for example, he criticized Taliban militants for advocating a harsh version of sharia and vowed to roll back their territorial gains.
Sharif's timing has never been better. Taliban insurgents were within 60 miles of the capital last week; a government peace deal with pro-Taliban clerics in the Swat Valley has fallen apart; and despite recent upticks in effort, the Pakistani military seems unable (or unwilling) to truly engage in the fight.
Some improvements in the situation -- of the kind Sharif promises -- would be music to American ears. And unlike the Bush team, which preferred to work through former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the Obama administration is willing to hedge its bets. U.S. officials are actively courting opposition leaders, and especially Sharif.
So who is Nawaz Sharif? The politician has come a long way since his controversial start as a firebrand protégé of Islamist general and former Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. Like most ambitious politicians, he developed strong ties with the Pakistani military and intelligence officers and gave full support to the Afghan jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s.
Since then, Nawaz has reinvented himself as a constitutional liberal, an audacious if not entirely persuasive feat of political shrewdness. His two stints as prime minister in the early and late 1990s were marked by weak economic growth, widespread corruption, and ineffective governance. Still, he is remembered less for his failures than for authorizing the 1998 nuclear tests that made Pakistan the first, and so far only, Muslim country with a nuclear bomb.
More recently, Sharif owes his popularity to savvy moves such as his unbridled support for Pakistan's recently reinstated chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was twice removed unconstitutionally by Musharraf. Bold street protests led by Sharif forced the judge's reinstatement this year. He is a staunch supporter of constitutional reform including granting the rustic Baluchistan province more economic autonomy to keep a cap on a dormant insurgency there. Even Sharif's anti-American rhetoric has mellowed from fighting imperialism to asking for respect for Pakistani sovereignty.
Could Sharif use his popularity, and his Islamist credentials, to tame the Taliban? He does have a long and intimate relationship with Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, which he has often put to use in swallowing up Islamist parties into his larger political structure and base. Moreover, Sharif has encouraging experience with urban counterinsurgency. In the early 1990s, he used effective (albeit unaccountable) policing to quell an uprising in Karachi -- an 18 million-strong tinderbox of ethnic, criminal, and religiopolitical forces. Today, with Pakistan's cities threatened by even deadlier forces, such as al Qaeda and the Taliban, it might help that Sharif is no novice.
Of course, there are caveats. Sharif was successful in Karachi during his term but later capitulated to Islamists in the Swat Valley. He acquiesced to a pact with the Islamist parties in the late 1980s for political expediency. Then in the late 1990s, he showed little resistance to Islamists as they called for laws to reduce religious freedom and gender equality throughout Pakistan. Sharif introduced a 1998 bill intended to impose strict sharia nationwide and make him the supreme leader, Iran style -- able to challenge any legislation that he deemed inconsistent with the Koran and the country's Islamic Constitution.
Sharif's supporters in the United States -- and he has some -- contest that this Islamist-leaning prime minister is now "dead." Today he is a patriotic demagogue, they say, willing and ready to defend his country from either Taliban or U.S. dictates. One might even argue that Sharif's previous experience taught him the perils of cutting deals with Islamists in Pakistan's northern frontier -- as the government of Zardari has just done.
Whether the White House believes that story or not, President Barack Obama is likely to keep his options open. The stakes in Pakistan are too great for the U.S. president to rely solely on one leader. If in the next 12 to 18 months the Taliban's gains are not reversed, don't be surprised if Washington pushes for political change in Islamabad, starting with Nawaz Sharif as prime minister. (Many expect the newly reinstated chief justice to help clear the charges of corruption currently preventing him from running.) From there, Zardari could be coerced to step down with the help of the military, notably Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and new parliamentary elections could be organized.
Presently, Zardari and Sharif will undoubtedly try to make political gains from the country's reigning instability. They would do well to realize that this time around, there will be no blank checks -- from the United States or the Taliban.
Foreign Policy: Third Time's Not the Charm
As U.S. officials meet with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari this week in Washington, there is someone missing from the discussions: Zardari's archrival, Nawaz Sharif. The two-time prime minister is back with a vengeance -- and an approval rating more than three times that of the president. Now he is hoping for another chance at power. He has the political winds at his back. But can he be trusted to govern?
Head of his own wing of the Pakistan Muslim League party, Sharif is marketing himself at home and in Washington as a bulwark of democracy against the rising tide of Talibanization. In an April interview with USA Today, for example, he criticized Taliban militants for advocating a harsh version of sharia and vowed to roll back their territorial gains.
Sharif's timing has never been better. Taliban insurgents were within 60 miles of the capital last week; a government peace deal with pro-Taliban clerics in the Swat Valley has fallen apart; and despite recent upticks in effort, the Pakistani military seems unable (or unwilling) to truly engage in the fight.
Some improvements in the situation -- of the kind Sharif promises -- would be music to American ears. And unlike the Bush team, which preferred to work through former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the Obama administration is willing to hedge its bets. U.S. officials are actively courting opposition leaders, and especially Sharif.
So who is Nawaz Sharif? The politician has come a long way since his controversial start as a firebrand protégé of Islamist general and former Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. Like most ambitious politicians, he developed strong ties with the Pakistani military and intelligence officers and gave full support to the Afghan jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s.
Since then, Nawaz has reinvented himself as a constitutional liberal, an audacious if not entirely persuasive feat of political shrewdness. His two stints as prime minister in the early and late 1990s were marked by weak economic growth, widespread corruption, and ineffective governance. Still, he is remembered less for his failures than for authorizing the 1998 nuclear tests that made Pakistan the first, and so far only, Muslim country with a nuclear bomb.
More recently, Sharif owes his popularity to savvy moves such as his unbridled support for Pakistan's recently reinstated chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was twice removed unconstitutionally by Musharraf. Bold street protests led by Sharif forced the judge's reinstatement this year. He is a staunch supporter of constitutional reform including granting the rustic Baluchistan province more economic autonomy to keep a cap on a dormant insurgency there. Even Sharif's anti-American rhetoric has mellowed from fighting imperialism to asking for respect for Pakistani sovereignty.
Could Sharif use his popularity, and his Islamist credentials, to tame the Taliban? He does have a long and intimate relationship with Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, which he has often put to use in swallowing up Islamist parties into his larger political structure and base. Moreover, Sharif has encouraging experience with urban counterinsurgency. In the early 1990s, he used effective (albeit unaccountable) policing to quell an uprising in Karachi -- an 18 million-strong tinderbox of ethnic, criminal, and religiopolitical forces. Today, with Pakistan's cities threatened by even deadlier forces, such as al Qaeda and the Taliban, it might help that Sharif is no novice.
Of course, there are caveats. Sharif was successful in Karachi during his term but later capitulated to Islamists in the Swat Valley. He acquiesced to a pact with the Islamist parties in the late 1980s for political expediency. Then in the late 1990s, he showed little resistance to Islamists as they called for laws to reduce religious freedom and gender equality throughout Pakistan. Sharif introduced a 1998 bill intended to impose strict sharia nationwide and make him the supreme leader, Iran style -- able to challenge any legislation that he deemed inconsistent with the Koran and the country's Islamic Constitution.
Sharif's supporters in the United States -- and he has some -- contest that this Islamist-leaning prime minister is now "dead." Today he is a patriotic demagogue, they say, willing and ready to defend his country from either Taliban or U.S. dictates. One might even argue that Sharif's previous experience taught him the perils of cutting deals with Islamists in Pakistan's northern frontier -- as the government of Zardari has just done.
Whether the White House believes that story or not, President Barack Obama is likely to keep his options open. The stakes in Pakistan are too great for the U.S. president to rely solely on one leader. If in the next 12 to 18 months the Taliban's gains are not reversed, don't be surprised if Washington pushes for political change in Islamabad, starting with Nawaz Sharif as prime minister. (Many expect the newly reinstated chief justice to help clear the charges of corruption currently preventing him from running.) From there, Zardari could be coerced to step down with the help of the military, notably Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and new parliamentary elections could be organized.
Presently, Zardari and Sharif will undoubtedly try to make political gains from the country's reigning instability. They would do well to realize that this time around, there will be no blank checks -- from the United States or the Taliban.
Foreign Policy: Third Time's Not the Charm
Bane Blade
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Zardari won't give up that easy when he is in trouble he follows whatever the Amercians say he is completely mouldadble and that is always going to be a key factor Nawaz Sharif in the past has also been difficult to persuade even by imposing sanctions on him, as for the point on weak economic growth Nawaz Sharif has had quite good economic results when he was in power the first time as well as before the Nuclear issue.
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