Robert Fisk: Pakistan Is In Pieces

[Hutchroy]

OK first of all, before you start debating on the "number of internet connections we have?Why don't you look at your friend first, who started this mess about Pakistan being 30 years behind in terms of technology, with internet starting to gain popularity in 1990s. So please don't involve other sources that Pakistan broadband users, are less than a million etc. Most importantly, can you back up your Indian friends statement that Pakistan is 30 years behind in technology?

Sorry my good man - I am not responsible for others quotations.

I quote facts from "National" Sources and I do not make "Opinions" which I cannot sustain.

 

[Icarus]

It workds for me!

Of course this is not the first time that you have been unable to access a Web-Site.

I trust you can access the Sustainable Development Policy Institute of Pakistan now as earlier you were unable to gain access.

If you don't succeed the First Time, Try and Try Again!

I am using a military connection, the sites are probably off-limits.

 

[ameer219]

Oh yes, we live in caves, but in those caves we have greater percentage of internet using population, greater percentage of mobile phone subscribers, greater percentage of our country has access to mobile phones and Internet, Internet and mobile services are also easily available and at lower rates as compared to India but if it helps you to sleep better at night, yep we are 100,000 years behind you, technologically, Oh look, my neighbour just invented the wheel !!!!!!!!

Internet Users in Pakistan hit 17.5 Million Mark - ProPakistani

Pakistan goes from 300,000 to 90 million cell phone users in under 8 years | TechLahore

Internet Usage in Pakistan!!!!!

Thu Feb 25, 2010

At the present moment, Pakistan has about 79,000 broadband users – which for a country of almost 170 million remains staggeringly low. Many of these 70,000 broadband users are on 128kbps bandwidth limited connections, which isn’t broadband, as the PTA report itself points out.

My own estimate is that the true number of broadband connections in Pakistan is a fourth of PTA’s number – this is the generous estimate, and could be as low as a sixth of PTA’s number. So we’re looking at only 13,000 to 20,000 broadband connections in Pakistan! On the bright side, the report estimates that there will be 5 million broadband connections by 2010.

Of interest is that the report says Wateen Telecom’s Wimax network can support 1 million plus users, making it the largest Wimax deployment in the world – and that it is expected to launch at the end of this year.

This is the PTA, and just to point out yet again that they still don’t quite get the internet, they’ve published the report in pdf only, and that too at a hefty 100kb per page.

Sorry my good man - I am not responsible for others quotations.

I quote facts from "National" Sources and I do not make "Opinions" which I cannot sustain.

Sir, I doubt Kaketa even mention anything about Broadband in Pakistan, but mostly Internet users in Pakistan. So why are you deviating from the topic instead?

 

[ameer219]

I am using a military connection, the sites are probably off-limits.

Kaketa, don't bother replying him. He is just trying to proof nothing in the first place. So what if Pakistan broadband users are low? We are catching up the pace with India and other countries, to be a developing country. He has no sense of direction in his discussion. So leave it bro

 

[Icarus]

Sir, I doubt Kaketa even mention anything about Broadband in Pakistan, but mostly Internet users in Pakistan. So why are you deviating from the topic instead?

I don't get it either brother.................

 

[Icarus]

Kaketa, don't bother replying him. He is just trying to proof nothing in the first place. So what if Pakistan broadband users are low? We are catching up the pace with India and other countries, to be a developing country. He has no sense of direction in his discussion. So leave it bro

That is probably the wisest post in this entire discussion.

 

[mehru]

Pakistan is facing problems like any other country but that doesn't mean that it is on the verge of destruction. Sorry to disappoint the author, it's going nowhere. Our country is not the first in history who is facing terrorism, corruption, poverty and other problems. We know our country better than anyone so thanks but no thanks to this frisky.

 

[Hutchroy]

Pakistan is facing problems like any other country but that doesn't mean that it is on the verge of destruction. Sorry to disappoint the author, it's going nowhere. Our country is not the first in history who is facing terrorism, corruption, poverty and other problems. We know our country better than anyone so thanks but no thanks to this frisky.

Very well said.

There is no external power that can or will destroy Pakistan.

However, one cannot say about the Pakistani Leadership as despite the hardworking and intelligent Pakistanis the Pakistani Leadership is only looking to its personal interests and there is hardly any interest by the Leadership of the common person.

I suppose in due course with the spread of Education to higher levels one would find that at an Election in the near future the common Pakistani person will benefit by their Education and see through the insincerity of the entrenched Leadership thereby casting their Precious Votes for "New Blood" who would hopefully look at the interests as well as the needs of the Country and its People rather than go around in Designer Suits etc. and draw the attention of the People away from the real internal problems and have them delve on mythical foreign dangers.

There is hope for Pakistan!

 

[T-Faz]

Very well said.

There is no external power that can or will destroy Pakistan.

However, one cannot say about the Pakistani Leadership as despite the hardworking and intelligent Pakistanis the Pakistani Leadership is only looking to its personal interests and there is hardly any interest by the Leadership of the common person.

I suppose in due course with the spread of Education to higher levels one would find that at an Election in the near future the common Pakistani person will benefit by their Education and see through the insincerity of the entrenched Leadership thereby casting their Precious Votes for "New Blood" who would hopefully look at the interests as well as the needs of the Country and its People rather than go around in Designer Suits etc. and draw the attention of the People away from the real internal problems and have them delve on mythical foreign dangers.

There is hope for Pakistan!

Like wise for India, one day a non extremist (BJP) or part of Nehru-Gandhi dynasty leader will rise and pull 100's of million people out of poverty while also building toilets for indians to use so they do not do their business in the open. He will not spend his money on flashy houses or cars but rather concentrate on child hunger, malnourished population and rights for lower castes.

Hopefully education will spread to higher levels other than just learning english and answering a phone call so they can achieve more. There are many intelligent and well to do indians but they are sidelined by the inane political system and nepotism.

But there is hope for India. The day will come when the slogan Shining India will truly be applicable to the whole nation.

 

[blain2]

Although Robert Fisk is entitled to his opinions,

Here are a couple of divergent views (first one an article specific to Swat and second a book about Pakistan):

Article:
washingtonpost.com

This is a book worth buying and reading:

Alive and Well in Pakistan
February 2nd, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments
Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) by Ethan Casey

Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004) by Ethan Casey


Acclaim for Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004):

“The author’s real journey is a search for common humanity.”

— The Daily Telegraph

“Casey plunges into Pakistan like a knife, unearthing and unraveling the often unexplainable and unpredictable contradictions of a country on the edge. Pakistan just happens to be one of the most complex and difficult countries to describe, but Casey does a magnificent job. Casey’s prose sings, and his portraits are master class. A conjuror of images and sensations in an unpredictable land.”

— Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos

“A delightfully penetrating read … Casey brilliantly depicts the events and scenario in Kashmir in the 90s. … He deftly weaves the dissonant perspectives and poisonous vocabularies partisans bring to matters of dispute in the subcontinent along with the simple voices and ideas and emotions of the common people.”

— The Tribune (Chandigarh, India)

“Alive and Well in Pakistan is distinguished by its author’s quest for honesty. Ethan Casey stubbornly refuses to embrace the grand theories of others or to indulge his own preconceptions. Instead, he gives us the insights of a singular, clear-eyed, and humane traveler. The result is an intelligent and compelling book.”

— Mohsin Hamid, author of Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist

“Wonderful. What an incredible journey, a model of travel writing. So worldly yet personal. Given our current involvement in the region, it should be read by everyone.”

— Edwidge Danticat

“Alive and Well in Pakistan serves us well in rescuing the very ordinariness of life in Pakistan from the sensationalism and scare-mongering of self-interested pundits, the media, and even politicians.”

— Munis D. Faruqi, Harvard International Review

 

[Forrest Griffin]

By Robert Fisk

Pakistan Is In Pieces : Information Clearing House - ICH

This is the same as if Manmohan Singh says Pakistan is in pieces. Its meaningless.

 

[fatman17]

Room for optimism

By Mohsin Hamid

Friday, 09 Apr, 2010

Despite the desperate suffering, Pakistan is also something of a miracle.

EVER since returning to live in Pakistan a few months ago, I’ve been struck by the pervasive negativity of views here about our country. Whether in conversation, on television, or in the newspaper, what I hear and read often tends to boil down to the same message: our country is going down the drain.

But I’m not convinced that it is.

I don’t dispute for a second that these are hard times. Thousands of us died last year in terrorist attacks. Hundreds of thousands were displaced by military operations. Most of us don’t have access to decent schools. Inflation is squeezing our poor and middle class. Millions are, if not starving, hungry. Even those who can afford electricity don’t have it half the day.

Yet despite this desperate suffering, Pakistan is also something of a miracle. It’s worth pointing this out, because incessant pessimism robs us of an important resource: hope.

First, we are a vast nation. We are the sixth most populous country in the world. One in every 40 human beings is Pakistani. There are more people aged 14 and younger in Pakistan than there are in America. A nation is its people, and in our people we have a huge, and significantly untapped, sea of potential.

Second, we are spectacularly diverse. I have travelled to all six of the world’s inhabited continents, and I have seen few countries whose diversity comes close to matching ours. Linguistically, we are home to many major languages. And I mean major: Punjabi is spoken in Pakistan by more people than the entire population of France, Pushto by more than the population of Saudi Arabia, Sindhi by more than Australia, Seraiki by more than the Netherlands, Urdu by more than Cuba, and Balochi by more than Singapore.

Nor is our diversity limited to language. Religiously we are overwhelmingly Muslim, but still we have more non-Muslims than there are people in either Toronto or Miami. We have more Shias than any country besides Iran. Even our majority Sunnis include followers of the Barelvi, Deobandi and numerous other schools, as well as, in all likelihood, many millions who have no idea what school they belong to and don’t really care.

Culturally, too, we are incredibly diverse. We have transvestite talk-show hosts, advocates for “eunuch rights”, burka-wearers, turbaned men with beards, outstanding fast bowlers, mediocre opening batsmen, tribal chieftains, bhang-drinking farmers, semi-nomadic shepherds, and at least one champion female sprinter. We have the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party and we have Porsche dealerships. We are nobody’s stereotype.

This diversity is an enormous advantage. Not only is there brilliance and potential in our differences, a wealth of experience and ideas, but also our lack of sameness forces us to accommodate each other, to find ways to coexist.

Which brings me to our third great asset. ‘Tolerance’ seems a strange word to apply to a country where women are still buried alive and teenagers have started detonating themselves in busy shopping districts. Yet these acts shock us because they are aberrations, not the norm. Pakistan is characterised not by the outliers among its citizens who are willing to kill those unlike themselves, but by the millions of us who reject every opportunity to do so. Our different linguistic, religious and cultural groups mostly live side by side in relative peace. It usually takes state intervention (whether by our own state, our allies or our enemies) to get us to kill one another, and even then, those who do so are a tiny minority.

The ability to hold our noses and put up with fellow citizens we don’t much like is surely a modern Pakistani characteristic. It could be the result of geography and history, of millennia of invading, being invaded, and dealing with the aftermath. Europe learned the value of peace from World Wars One and Two. Maybe we learned our lesson from the violence of partition or ’71. Call it pragmatism or cosmopolitanism or whatever you want, but I think most Pakistanis have it. I’ll call it coexistence-ism, and it’s a blessing.

Over the past 60-some years, with many disastrous missteps along the way, our vastness, diversity and coexistence-ism have forced us to develop (or to begin to develop, for it is a work in progress) our fourth great asset: the many related components of our democracy. Between India and Europe, there is no country with a combination of diversity and democracy that comes close to ours. Other than Turkey, the rest are dictatorships, monarchies, apartheid states or under foreign occupation.

We, on the other hand, are evolving a system that allows our population to decide how they will be ruled. Many of our politicians may be corrupt and venal, but they are part of a lively and hotly contested multiparty democracy. Many in our media may be immature or serving vested interests, but collectively they engage in a no-holds-barred debate that exposes, criticises, entertains and informs — and through television they have given our country, for the first time in its history, a genuine public space. Our judges may have a rather unusual understanding of the correct relationship between legislature and judiciary, but they are undoubtedly expanding the rule of law — and hence the power of the average citizen — in a land where it has been almost absent.

As I see it, the Pakistan project is a messy search for ways to improve the lives of 180 million very different citizens. False nationalism won’t work: we are too diverse to believe it. That is why our dictatorships inevitably end. Theocracy won’t work: we are too diverse to agree on the interpretation of religious laws. That is why the Taliban won’t win.

Can democracy deliver? In some ways it already is. The NFC award and, hopefully, the 18th Amendment, are powerful moves towards devolution of power to the provinces. Too much centralisation has been stifling in a country as diverse as ours. That is about to change. And the pressure of democracy seems likely to go further, moving power below the provinces to regions and districts. Cities like Karachi and Lahore have shown that good local governance is possible in Pakistan. That lesson can now start to spread.

Similarly, democracy is pushing us to raise revenue. Our taxes amount to a tiny 10 per cent of GDP. After spending on defence and interest on our debt, we are left with precious little for schools, hospitals, roads, electricity, water and social support. We, and especially our rich, must pay more. American economic aid comes to less than nine dollars per Pakistani per year. That isn’t much, and the secret is: we shouldn’t need it. New taxes, whether as VAT or in some other form, could give us far more.

Our free assemblies, powerful media and independent judiciary collectively contain within them both pressures to raise taxes and mechanisms to see that taxes actually get paid. This is new for Pakistan. Our number one war shouldn’t be a war on terrorists or a cold war with India or a war against fishing for the ball outside off-stump (although all of those matter): it should be a war on free riders, on people taking advantage of what Pakistan offers without paying their fair share in taxes to our society. Luckily this war looks like it is ready to escalate, and not a moment too soon.

I have no idea if things will work out for the best. The pessimists may be right. But it seems mistaken to write Pakistan off. We have reasons for optimism too.

The writer is the author of the novels Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist

 

[HAWK73]

Robert Fisk terè mun mein khakk.

 

[fatman17]

I am a big admirer of R/Fisk but here for once he is wrong!

 

[RaaD]

If Pakistan had any strategic importance, the United States would not have turned its back on it for 10 years and sanctioned it in the 1990's.

They only came into the region to fight Afghanistan and root out Islamic militants. They twisted Musharraf's arm easily into abandoning support for Afghanistan.

When those militants escaped into Pakistan, due to the ineptness of the United States' military, that is when Pakistan became important.

The United States only concerns itself with threats to itself. Pakistan is not a threat to the US, but Islamists in the region are. So it has come back to wipe them out.

Eventually, the US will leave. Its economy cannot sustain such a conflict for long. Afghanistan will always be Islamist. Karzai threatened to join the Taliban the other day. He was being facetious but the point remains that the only difference between the Taliban and Karzai's government is that one supports the US while one does not. They are both filled with Islamists who now hate Pakistan.

The United States will also leave India in a much stronger position and Pakistan in a much weaker position.

You can add up the variables and figure out what will happen next.