Why Pakistan's Decline Is Almost Inevitable

[Xeric]

Advice: Procrastination is the thief of time.

 

[Bane Blade]

I think people are going round in circles I love it how the media was dragged into the arguement but I disagree with some of the points that were quoted on the article of army not doing their duty. However their is a good saying in the army, My gun followed by My men followed by Me and then the rest come in the scope so yeah we can safely say that people should have turned to the government who should have managed the affair better and also have helped the people quicker, this although the army does do is not its duty, unless told to do so.

 

[Elmo]

@ Bane Blade: The articles quoted were just to tell why the quake-affected people had sympathies for the militants more than the army/civil institutions. It's not everyone's cup of tea.

I gather that the army is supposed to help in emergencies/natural disasters...and the government was under military rule. There were few civilians in the civil institutions. So it will have criticism heaped on it and rightfully.


as for threads being derailed and going round in circles, that's what they all boil down to here....learning to take it in my stride now

 

[Xeric]

1.Guud change of posture by some people here

2.Military Rule??

 

[Elmo]

1.Guud change of posture by some people here

2.Military Rule??

Would love to elaborate on "military rule".......except not with you mr. "i left the 'junior' category long ago". I find it hard to take you seriously.

Case Closed.

 

[Bane Blade]

Well the only difference then was that the PML(Q) was in power and I don't think that the army should solely be blamed for anything although as I said it could have been alot better.

 

[shravan]

I gather that the army is supposed to help in emergencies/natural disasters...and the government was under military rule. There were few civilians in the civil institutions. So it will have criticism heaped on it and rightfully.

I don't want to create a new thread so quoting you. Hope its fine.

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Terror charity turns to Pakistan war victims | The Australian



THE banned charity arm of Pakistan terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba is openly operating an ambulance service for hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the fighting across the North West Frontier Province.

The Australian found Jamaat-ud-Dawa ferrying patients to hospitals in Mardan and Swabi, towns south of the main battle theatres of Buner and Swat Valley.

The banned group's humanitarian work among the furious masses displaced by military operations appears to bear out warnings from aid groups, analysts and the Government that failure to provide relief for civilian refugees would create fertile ground for militant recruitment.

As the Government's war on the Taliban militants entered its third official day yesterday, Mardan's two public hospitals were filling fast with patients suffering from blast and gunshot wounds.

After months of pressure from the US, which has expressed growing alarm at the Taliban's expansion, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani vowed last week to "eliminate the militants and terrorists" who control swaths of territory across the Swat Valley and Malakand Province.

Following an emergency cabinet meeting at the weekend, Mr Gilani said the Swat offensive was a "war of the country's survival" that the military would win.

JUD was banned by the UN Security Council in the wake of November's Mumbai terror attacks - widely believed to be the work of LET - and subsequently outlawed by Pakistan's Government. The Punjab-based LET is known to be closely linked to the Taliban in Pakistan.

Doctors and relatives of patients at Mardan's largest hospital confirmed to The Australian yesterday that JUD was providing ambulance and paramedic services for civilians caught in the crossfire between the Taliban and armed forces determined to flush them from the NWFP.

"This boy was brought in by ambulance people from Jamaat-ud-Dawa," Shahid Durrani said at the hospital bedside of a boy injured by army shelling.

When asked if JUD was a front for a terror group, Dr Durrani shook his head. "No," he said. "They're a humanitarian organisation."

The boy's uncle said no government ambulance services could be found and JUD members were the only available help.

JUD saved a nine-year-old girl lying in the next ward, orphaned in a shelling attack, he said.

During the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, the group shamed the Pakistan military and top international aid agencies by getting help first to affected communities. But along with healthcare and social services, it is said to dole out liberal doses of extremist Islamic doctrine.

JUD is believed to have been established by the group that leads LET to circumvent sanctions after its designation as a terror organisation by the US and the UN Security Council. LET founder and JUD head Hafiz Muhammad Sayeed has been under house arrest since last December.

Last week, Mr Gilani announced 1 billion rupees in immediate aid for those displaced by the fighting in Malakand. The battle is exacting an enormous human toll. In the women's and children's ward at Mardan's newer public hospital, Chaman Ara, 13, peeled off a bandage to reveal a large leg wound.

She said she was hurt when an army helicopter gunship attacked a convoy of mostly women and children fleeing the fighting in Buner, 100km from the Pakistan capital, Islamabad.

Of the 20 people riding the truck to safety, seven died in the attack. She said the helicopter fired on the truck, even after the women lifted their chadors to show they were not Taliban and raised the Koran to the skies to beg for mercy. "We said again and again: we are not Taliban, we are not Taliban," she said.

At Mardan's largest hospital, the casualties are greater, the stories more horrific.

Shamsul Kamar said his two sons were caught in the crossfire of army and Taliban forces as they left their house in the upper Swat region of Matta 10 days ago to buy groceries. His oldest son Sayed, 18, was killed by a stray bullet from an army rifle.

As his second son, Pakhtoon, 13, lies in distress on a hospital gurney, his shattered feet swaddled in bandages, Shamsul tells a nightmare tale that illustrates the dilemma of a population caught between the brutality of the Taliban and the perceived callous indifference of the armed forces.

Three months ago Shamsul's family was targeted by the Taliban. The portly 35-year-old with bi-focal glasses works for 6000 rupee ($98) a month as a private security guard at a sugar mill in Matta, but the militants accused him of spying for the Government. Without warning, two Taliban came for him in February at his family home. When they failed to find him they seized his nephew for ransom.

They returned the following day, this time fatally shooting Shamsul's sister and one of her daughters. Another sister was shot in the leg and left for dead.

On the road outside the house the militants encountered his sister's mother-in-law, returning from a fruitless appeal to the local Taliban leader for her grandson's return.

They shot her too, he said, as she stood shouting at them for violating the sanctity of her home. "The Taliban that are over there (in Swat) - they are not students of Islam. They're all criminals, robbers and ransom takers," Shamsul said. The police were nowhere to be found. They had long since deserted their posts or retreated to their homes.

"I even complained to Sufi Mohammad," he said, referring to the firebrand cleric who brokered the controversial peace deal between the government and Swat Taliban for the imposition of Sharia Law that now appears to be in tatters.

"I took four witnesses along with me. I told them my sisters and nieces have done nothing wrong so why have they done this. And he said, 'That is the law and the law has been accomplished'."

"If you go into the (North Western) frontier there's no peace there, there's no government there. I pray to God that this situation in Pakistan will be finished and there will be peace."

 

[Bane Blade]

Which is probably the reason why the Taliban win the propaganda war this is the important factor lets hope we win this war this time around and win the people hearts and not just their territory.