By: Christina Lamb
While we are slashing our social services and making our children pay hefty university fees, why should we be giving all this money to a country that has reduced its education budget to 1.5% of GDP while spending several times as much on defence?
honestly speaking its not very hard to defend. when u r fighting war - which according to many has a global dimension - your military spending goes up. the situation gets worse when you hardly receive timely or significant monetary assistance from donor countries. Also remember that 40 to 50% of the aid money goes back to the donor country under various overheads. Now under such circumstances, social sector is the only sector which faces the brunt (its the same across all the countries). Also we not very far behind in education indicators when compared to india.
A country where only 1.7m of a population of 180m pay tax? A country that is stepping up its production of nuclear weapons so much that its arsenal will soon outnumber Britain's?
well the quality of our nuclear weapons is much lower than that of Britain. meaning we need to keep upgrading our system. Hence the higher number.
A country so corrupt that when its embassy in Washington held an auction to raise money for flood victims, and a phone rang, one Pakistani said loudly: "That's the president calling for his cut"?
not a very convincing indicator. also much of the corruption indicators are based on perception surveys and not on loopholes in income and other accounting statements. meaning, having a leader with tainted reputation makes the people think that everything has become corrupt.
The first time I went to Pakistan in 1987 I was astonished to see that while billions of pounds' worth of weapons from the West were going to Pakistan's intelligence service to distribute to the Afghan mujaheddin, there was nothing for schools.
ask charlie wilson as to why his advice was ignored?
Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican congressman from California who sits on the House foreign affairs committee and has been dealing with Pakistan since working in the Reagan White House, says he now realises "they were playing us for suckers all along".
ppl in pakistan feel the same way. a common complain when things dont go your way....
"We were snookered. For a long time we bought into this vision that Pakistan's military was a moderate force and we were supporting moderates by supporting the military. In fact the military is in alliance with radical militants. Just because they shave their beards and look western they fooled a lot of people."
just like other international intelligence agencies have al-qaeda and other taliban people on their pay role... tell me which agency doesnt try to use such tools to their advantage? who cares about moral values?
If that were the case one might expect Lahore University of Management Sciences, one of the most elite universities in the country, to be a bastion of liberalism. Yet in the physics department Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of nuclear physics, sits with his head in his hands staring out at a sea of burqas. "People used to imagine there was only a lunatic fringe in Pakistan society of these ultra-religious people," he said. "Now we're learning that this is not a fringe but a majority."
talkin about secularism and then complaining about other persons outlook? contradictory, isnt it? also i bet this writer knows nothing about LUMS culture. another thing.... hoodboy teacher at Quaid-e-Azam university - not at all an elitist institute.
What brought this home to him was the murder earlier this year of Salman Taseer, the half-British governor of Punjab who had called for the pardoning of a Christian woman sentenced to death under the blasphemy law. The woman, Aasia Bibi, had been convicted after a mullah had accused her of impugning Islam when she shouted at two girls who refused to drink water after she had touched it because they said it was unclean.
this was an unfortunate happening. Also without having any intention of defending anyone, i must say that this is an old evil which came to limelight once again. Hence Ill call it the continuation of past trends instead of using terminologies like 'deterioration' or 'steep decline' etc..
Raza Rumi- I look at my own extended family. When I was growing up, maybe one or two people had a beard. Last time I went to a family wedding I was shell-shocked. All these uncles and aunts who were regular Pakistanis watching cricket and Indian movies now all have beards or are in hijabs.
how does this indicate rise in radicalism. Im not saying that there wasnt any or vice versa, but only questioning the overall strength of this indicator.
It is base to an alphabet soup of militant groups, not just in its tribal areas bordering Afghanistan but also in Punjab, its heartland.
Some of those, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, were founded by Pakistan's military under General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s as proxies to launch attacks against its great enemy India and to fight for the disputed province of Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the Mumbai massacre in 2008 and, according to US officials, is now focusing beyond India on worldwide targets and is increasingly active in eastern Afghanistan.
well again.... which agency doesnt use or exploit proxies to their own advantage. im not saying that this should be done, but only saying that this is nothing specific to pakistan.
Pakistan's military argues it has 140,000 troops in its tribal areas and has lost 2,700 soldiers in the fight against militants. But to Washington's frustration it has steadfastly refused to go after the Afghan Taliban or the Haqqani network (a Pakistani group allied to the Taliban), both of which run their operations from Pakistan.
yup washington can only get frustrated. especially when 100s of taliban escape from their self guarded prison and also wen 100s of taliban attack pakistani check post and return back to their safe havens in afghanistan while nato stands and watch.
"The priority of the state is to go after those directly threatening us, such as TTP [Pakistan Taliban]. If we go after other groups such as Haqqani, wouldn't our people have the right to ask: what has Haqqani done to me? Why are you chasing him?"
not a bad question to raise. why should one open a new front with you havent even finished with the immediate threat?
"It's not just a matter of creating proxies," said Ahmed. "I think we need to realise that Pakistan's security agencies and Al-Qaeda share the same ideology."
since when pak army decided to invade the world or have its own world order? im very impressed if this is so...
All of this security is to protect against attacks from the Pakistan Taliban. Yet the military has convinced Pakistanis that the real enemy is the United States. Polls repeatedly show that 60% of the population see America as the biggest threat compared with about 10% saying it is the Taliban.
What has fanned this anger is the use of unmanned aircraft to kill militants in Pakistan's tribal areas. Started by President George W Bush in 2006, the attacks have been stepped up under Barack Obama, to 133 last year, largely out of frustration at Pakistan's refusal to take on militants.
This fiction initially suited both sides but Washington has got fed up with the endless criticism in Pakistan's media, which is heavily influenced by the military. America became so concerned that Pakistan's military was taking its money but still helping militant groups that it sent in security contractors to spy.
One of these, Raymond Davis, shot dead two men in Lahore in January after they apparently threatened him. A second American, whom he called into assist, ran over and killed a third Pakistani. After being arrested, Davis was found to have photographs of Lashkar-e-Taiba locations. The incident played into all Pakistan's conspiracy theories and threatened to derail relations. Admiral Mike Mullen, the US military chief, held a heated meeting in Oman with Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, to warn that matters were going too far. Davis was released last month after £1.1m in blood money had been paid to the dead men's relatives.
and we still call it a conspiracy theory????????????
The day after his release America carried out the biggest drone attack for months. Kayani reacted with outrage, claiming 41 civilians had been killed and calling it "unjustified and intolerable".
and then u have a problem with pakistanis not liking US. interesting, very interesting.
most intelligence analysts see these weapons falling into the wrong hands as one of the greatest threats to the world.
excessive use of such statements - far from reality - make pakistanis believe that world is after our nukes? Dont use such statements and the fear will disappear.
"Frankly, if it wasn't for the nukes, we'd be treating them like Congo," admitted a senior American official.[/B]
so our nukes are of some use.
