Why Pakistan's Decline Is Almost Inevitable

[Xeric]

— Dear Mr Enigma947, I am not disputing this. Neither did anyone in reputable publications.

Dear? hmm i like that! (but this 'like' lacks the testosteronic factor )

And if you are not disputing it then what's the fuss about?

Please read what I have found…

Done!

Ironic and funny… did they thank the CO for the baysti or treat him in turn?

Ironic-Yes!
Funny-may be not, it's easy to laugh while sitting inside the couch and munching beans while flying over the internet.

And if you are trying to be funny by suggesting that did they thanked the CO or not, then i must say that you have failed miserably!

Granted

Don't grant me nuffin!

especially when you have news channels and analysts dime a dozen — they need some fodder.

Is it my problem or is it the nation's problem, neither i suppose. They shouldn't be screwing the third party while they compete for more bucks.

The Herald had carried something similar but their articles aren’t available on the net.

Herald..oh the one which has nothing guud to say, i got it.

This will definitely seethe you but these guys (Zahid Hussain and Talat Hussain) are extremely credible — not into sensationalism (read Kamran Khan and Hamid Mir).

Hamid the instigator! i like him too!

Facts stand where they are.

Yes they exactly stand where they were, but they are multiplied by X

Once again I am not undermining the army.

What else do you think you are doing...

Too Little, Too Late

By Zahid Hussain

While civil society and the general public responded with unprecedented zeal, the state has miserably failed to fulfil its responsibility. Whatever credibility the government had was buried under the debris of the earthquake. Pakistan's greatest disaster has harshly exposed the weakness of state institutions.
For almost 72 hours the government remained in a state of inertia. The cabinet had no clue about the magnitude of the disaster and the military proved to be incapable of dealing with the crisis. It was shocking to see that it took so long to start rescue work even in the most heavily militarised zone of Azad Kashmir. In Bagh, one of the most devastated regions, there was no outside help available for two days. Army helicopters flew throughout the day to the army brigade headquarter to take out the injured soldiers. But none came to the rescue of the thousands of trapped civilians. That further fuelled the bitterness among the hapless people.

The emphasis is on State BTW.
But yes the Army responded late, and there was a reason to it which i had amply explained in my previous post.

As for the crying around Bagh by the writer, he forgot to mention that Bagh is the most hostile of the remaining Kashmir and requires sharp vision and high state of alertness round the year against the indians, so i think i'll be saving my (country's) a$$ first from the external threat and deal the internal there on.

A simple example:
You must have traveled by air and you must have listened to this announcement a thousand a time: in case of low air pressure first put on your own oxygen mask and then help the one sitting next to you.
When i was a kid i thought this as selfishness (really) but when i life started coming towards me unharnessed, i came to know that it is absolutely the right procedure!

i hope you got the aim behind the example!

"Why can't they come here?"questioned a young man. His anger was palpable: "We have fought for Pakistan, but they don't care for us."

The same sentiments were reflected everywhere in Azad Kashmir. Timely rescue efforts could have saved thousands of lives, at least in towns like Muzaffarabad, Bagh and Balakot.

Had some told them the actual story, they probably had not been that angry, but why should someone let off the opportunity to malign the most prestiges institution of the country. And you very well know the reason behind it.

Though this still doesn't justify the Army's belated response.

A major reason for the slow relief process was that the entire operation was handed over to the army. The civil administration was nowhere in the picture, even in northern Pakistan where a local government is in place.

Yeah right!
Oh! the government, this government: (Some year back's example) These government officials (a bureaucrat of the DMG group sitting along with a local politician to be precise) who while talking to a group of Army personnels in a lighter mood boasted regarding the famous Nullah Lai: "why should we spend the funds allotted for the brick lining of the nullah and constructing houses for the people living in jhuggis[/] around Nala Lai when we have the Army to deal with the catastrophe when the damn Lai spills over! We'll put it in our pockets!"
If this is how your state official deal with a crisis then sorry to say the Army has to take all the responsibility, because thori si shram hai abhi

Army troops can be more effective if they are deployed to assist the civil administration

We will love to do this, and this is how the things should be done. But Alas! if the civil administration has gone incompetent or refuses to take and feel the responsibility then what should done.

they cannot be expected to manage the entire relief work operation.

Sorry to hurt the feelings but yes they can.

Musharraf used the catastrophe to further tighten the military's grip on politics and undermine civil institutions. The army is controlling everything, from relief to foreign donations - and it is not accountable to anyone.

i am not Mush's spokesman so sorry-no comments.

The cabinet and the parliament were completely bypassed and there is no one to provide any central leadership to the unprecedented public mobilisation. While the government was slow to respond and the army failed to deliver,

Already killed.

The Islamic militant groups, with their vast network and well disciplined cadres, were most active in the affected areas, particularly in Kashmir. The Jamaat-ud-Daawa's camp, on a piece of sloping ground by the river Neelum in Muzaffarabad, illustrates their efficiency and organisation. Daawa, on the terror watch list, is the parent organisation of the Lashkar-i-Toiba, an outlawed militant group fighting the Indian forces in Kashmir. A cluster of almost a hundred tents provide shelter for displaced persons and house a mobile hospital where doctors from all over Pakistan and other countries perform surgery round-the-clock. Laying down their arms, hundreds of LeT fighters are now busy carrying relief goods, sometimes on their backs to those remote areas, which can only be reached by helicopters. Several other outlawed Kashmiri militant groups have also set up their own relief camps.
Just a couple of kilometers from the Daawa camp, is the newly set up American field hospital. "The Americans face tough competition from the radical Islamists in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Kashmiris," says Rifaqat Hussain, a local resident. The radical Islamists have already made an immense impact in the region. While the government has been able to do very little, the burden of relief work has been taken over by the Islamists.

The Army of thousands failed (ok they got delayed due to the very pure reasons in the initial stage but what about the later) and the civil administration collapsed, but a bunch of Mullahs succeeded in providing relief to ALL the earthquake stricken area (though i am not refuting their effort at all)
a Disaster[/url]

Anatomy of a Disaster

By Talat Hussain
The seeds of mismanagement were sown on the day that mountains shook and the earth opened, and villages upon villages were wiped out. The communication system broke down and all standard operating procedures of the feedback process simply melted away. The most stark example was Azad Jammu and Kashmir, where the entire frontline of the Pakistan army's deployment and infrastructure turned into dust in a matter of five minutes. The back-end support system too was badly hit and for the next 12 hours there was a frantic effort to assess the damage in these areas.
General Pervez Musharraf was informed of the severity of the earthquake in the first two hours; but there was little information available on the extent of damage.
The ISI's satellite imagery only told a partial story; while it showed visible evidence of landslides, broken roads and absent military deployments, its verticle view did not catch the damnation that hid beneath the tin roofs that had come down crushing the inmates. Even the dead and the injured piling up at the Qasim Base Rawalpindi, flown in from different areas, did not present the true picture. Helicopters were then sent up for a more detailed look: the news they brought back was unbelievable.
And this despite the fact that in the first twelve hours of the earthquake, TV and print journalists had made their way to every accessible nook and cranny of the disaster zone. Images were coming out and were flashed on television in abundance. Local journalists overcoming their own personal grief - over 70 mediamen have been badly affected by the earthquake, losing their homes or loved ones in the tragedy - were feverishly reporting and calling their contacts in the government to inform them of the magnitude of the calamity.
The night of the first day of the earthquake was a long one for General Musharraf and his close military and civilian aides. Their first instinct was to secure the now exposed frontier along the Line of Control. For the survivors of the earthquake, that first night was crucial and, for thousands, deadly. Desperate for immediate rescue and emergency aid supplies, they struggled for survival beneath the rubble, trapped inside collapsed structures, or sitting in the open looking for a government that had totally collapsed in Azad Kashmir, paralysed in the NWFP and moving at snail's pace in Islamabad.
Day two dawned with even more death and misery because the first 24 hours had passed without any substantive aid and relief reaching these areas. Some areas were cut off from the main roads, but others, like Muzaffarbad, Bagh and Balakot were still reachable. Yet except for random relief from the community-based organisations or wholly inadequate services from the government machinery, no systematic emergency operation was in place. The situation did not change much even two days later, when relief goods coming from all corners of Pakistan, were looted and plundered, in part by desperate men and in part by thugs and malcontents from neighbouring areas. Between the second and fourth day I witnessed near-complete anarchy in Bagh and Muzaffarbad, where no government agency had stepped in to take charge of these devastated towns, now soaked in the drying blood of the earthquake victims. Two relief goods trucks that I accompanied were looted, one at Dhirkot and the other in Muzaffarabad. Meanwhile, it took the President four days to address the nation.
The army's lack of visibility - considering that it is the only organised force that had the numbers and the logistics to fill the administrative vacuum - was arguably the most crucial factor defining, not just the relief and rescue operations, but also for restoring order and to direct and manage relief goods coming in from across the country. By the time the force was put in place, it was too late for the first victims of the tragedy. The severely injured had died, the homeless had begun to scatter and the relief effort, that had no center for coordination, was not reaching the most needy and the desperate. The new relief commissioner took time to get going in his office; in the meanwhile foreign rescue teams of doctors, engineers and volunteers waited long hours at Chaklala Airport without any direction about their destination. The same happened to relief goods: these all piled up at the Chaklala air-base which soon began to look like a giant warehouse.

Talat is a balanced personality.
He don't seem to target the military to the extent where i should counter him in his article so i'll skip it

 

[Patriot]

Hi,
Hamid Mir is anything but neutral.He is extremely anti Army because supposedly his dad was killed by ISI during Zia's regime.He leave no chance to take cheap shots at PA.

 

[Xeric]

The post is extremely long... couldn't help it.

If you call your last post as 'long' then you need to revisit the definition of long. Or may be you can see a few posts quoted by me to give you a better understanding of the word 'long'

Since Mr Enigma947 you don't like going over long posts,

Me sir!!??
No sir!

I have just highlighted (bold) bits that would give you the other side of the picture.

The 'hard work' is appreciated though.

 

[Elmo]

@ Mr Enigma947: you are hopeless

 

[Xeric]

@ Mr Enigma947: you are hopeless

Thanks for the compliment!

 

[Elmo]

The 'dear' denotes formality...

The 'hopeless' referred to your insistence on taking jibes at the poster and making every argument personal.

The reason I quoted the article was to substantiate the point I was trying to get across — in educated circles personal anecdotes don't matter. For all I know, what you wrote about the unit officer and politicians are a figment of your imagination.

The army really isn't doing much: it has admitted defeat in Fata, it failed miserably to score points with the quake victims. May be you as a junior officer feel that the army is the sole saviour and there is nothing wrong with it, sadly you are wrong. The top brass of the army meddles with the government. Moreover, you opinion isn't shared by the millions of residents of this country.

Mr Enigma947, you need to spend some time outside your station cantonment and see the discontentment brewing.

CASE CLOSED.

 

[Xeric]

The 'dear' denotes formality...

The 'hopeless' referred to your insistence on taking jibes at the poster and making every argument personal.

The reason I quoted the article was to substantiate the point I was trying to get across — in educated circles personal anecdotes don't matter. For all I know, what you wrote about the unit officer and politicians are a figment of your imagination.

The army really isn't doing much: it has admitted defeat in Fata, it failed miserably to score points with the quake victims. May be you as a junior officer feel that the army is the sole saviour and there is nothing wrong with it, sadly you are wrong. The top brass of the army meddles with the government. Moreover, you opinion isn't shared by the millions of residents of this country.

Mr Enigma947, you need to spend some time outside your station cantonment and see the discontentment brewing.

CASE CLOSED.

One word:Ignored!

But before i finally give up on you, i'll like to clarify two things:

One: i have no way to prove my story regarding the unit and the politicians other than that i give out their names (of the officer and the politicians) and the contacts of that unit so that you may ask them yourself. And as this ain't happening so you are welcome not to believe it

Two, i have left the 'junior' category long ago-just telling you so that you can refresh your knowledge!

Tata!

P.S But i'll be catching on your where it warrants.

 

[Elmo]

Hi,
Hamid Mir is anything but neutral.He is extremely anti Army because supposedly his dad was killed by ISI during Zia's regime.He leave no chance to take cheap shots at PA.

I don't know about his father being killed by the army. But he is anti-army. He wasn't even that well-known a journalist, it was his links with Osama bin Laden that made him famous. He interviewed bin Laden around the time of the US invasion. And now the intelligence uses him as a tool to leak information (Kamran Khan is another well-known establishment guy).

You should watch this one episode of Live with Khalid Butt (the host is Murtaza Chaudhry) and his take on the media. It will have you in peels of laughter
I'll try finding it and posting it here...

 

[Elmo]

Okay Mr Enigma947 since you insist on being in my face...what's your age, rank, regiment, group (as in A,Q,G) etc. Tell me about yourself...


After an edit: I want to know who exactly I am speaking to since you'll be "catching on you where it warrants"

 

[Xeric]

Okay Mr Enigma947 since you insist on being in my face...what's your age, rank, regiment, group (as in A,Q,G) etc. Tell me about yourself...

What made you think that i'll be telling you all that?

Only to bring you back from your dreamland: i am like a couple of decades old

 

[Elmo]

Something called civility... but you are obviously short on that.

 

[Patriot]

I don't know about his father being killed by the army. But he is anti-army. He wasn't even that well-known a journalist, it was his links with Osama bin Laden that made him famous. He interviewed bin Laden around the time of the US invasion. And now the intelligence uses him as a tool to leak information (Kamran Khan is another well-known establishment guy).

You should watch this one episode of Live with Khalid Butt (the host is Murtaza Chaudhry) and his take on the media. It will have you in peels of laughter
I'll try finding it and posting it here...

Do you honestly believe he is ISI/Army Agent in the Media?You are surely smoking something special.Just watch his interviews he is extremely Anti Army/ISI and Army is respected within Pakistan except by the people who think Army is waging wrong war against Jihahids or by the families of Politicians.It was the same army that would have saved your *** after 26/11 had India attacked Pakistan and no i am not in Army.

 

[Elmo]

Do you honestly believe he is ISI/Army Agent in the Media?You are surely smoking something special.

Nope not smoking something special just listening to what he has to say. Watch his programme and see what he hs to say and then watch the rest of the shows: he always knows a tad too much. Same goes for Kamran Khan's show.


Just watch his interviews he is extremely Anti Army/ISI
That changes, read between the lines...

and Army is respected within Pakistan except by the people who think Army is waging wrong war against Jihahids or by the families of Politicians.

the exceptions also include the thousands of internally displaced people, people if violence stricken areas such as Swat (the military would impose a ten day curfew with a six hour relaxation), flood-affected people in Balochistan and the people of Dera Bugti (who live under constant watch), the tenants of the Okara Farms who were evicted by the military, the low-ranking officials who hae deserted the army for waging a war against its own people (the list is long) ..... and last but not the least by the politicised people of this country who can see the mess it creates.


It was the same army that would have saved your *** after 26/11 had India attacked Pakistan
India wasn't going to attack Pakistan. For the Pk. army the red signal for using the nuclear weapons is Any invasion/attack by India (don't know what it is for India), India wasn't going to create n international crises for itself. Less of these conspiracy theories.
The army currently needs to save its own "a-s-s" in Fata and the Frontier province.

and no i am not in Army.
That's obvious

 

[Patriot]

the exceptions also include the thousands of internally displaced people, people if violence stricken areas such as Swat (the military would impose a ten day curfew with a six hour relaxation), flood-affected people in Balochistan and the people of Dera Bugti (who live under constant watch), the tenants of the Okara Farms who were evicted by the military, the low-ranking officials who hae deserted the army for waging a war against its own people (the list is long) ..... and last but not the least by the politicised people of this country who can see the mess it creates.

Well, the millitary is not given orders by Cvillians to go Swat.OTOH, it is also criticized for fighting America's war.It's upto Central Government to do something for Baluchistan.PA is just deployed there to maintain peace.Army can very well save it's own *** if required.They will rip the hearts of these Talibans from their bodies but only if Nation supports them as well as the Civil Government.Yes, i agree Millitary should not step in Politics.

 

[Elmo]

Well, the millitary is not given orders by Cvillians to go Swat. OTOH, it is also criticized for fighting America's war.
You aren't clear in your statement. You mean that it isn't the army who wants to be deployed there in the first place?

It's upto Central Government to do something for Baluchistan.
What I had said was vis-a-vis the military being unpopular.

PA is just deployed there to maintain peace.Army can very well save it's own *** if required.They will rip the hearts of these Talibans from their bodies but only if Nation supports them as well as the Civil Government.
The nation and the civil govt. is supporting it... how much more is expected?


Yes, i agree Millitary should not step in Politics.
Thank you for agreeing