Jakob Steiner
SufiLore #7 – Development Assistance and Aid in Pakistan
The presentation held in Vienna as a Talaash discussion round can be downloaded as a Powerpoint here (.ppt, 9.5 MB) in short form, or as JPG slides for the original slides (.jpeg, 2.4 MB) (I wasn’t able to downsize the original presentation to a convenient size).
Events, dear boy! Events.
As part of my National Security Lecture I just finished a very good paper by Jolyon Howorth (published in Christopher Hill & Michael Smith (eds.), The International Relations of the European Union, Oxford University Press, 2004) on the EU’s defence and security outlook. While Germany is struggling with it’s deployment of troops in Afghanistan, Austria is buying planes while not knowing what to use them for and discussing a new law adressed for Austrians who trained in terror camps one wonders where the plans of the EU about it’s multilateral national security looks like.
SufiLore #6 – Pakistan’s water
I have earlier linked to a very good report on water issues in Pakistan here. Following are some links to recently observed water issues in the country.
Selling democracy – what’s our tactic?
When Musharraf was in power, the West had it’s major evil in Pakistan: it’s not a democracy. Now having a, in the West’s eyes, democratic government in place we are back to dealing with the country through the Army and Secret Service rather than the elected representatives. What has the West done for a democratic Pakistan? Cheered at a brick-throwing lawyers movement? Shoved in a government that so far has shown little will to bring in the original constitution?
Flawed basis for our reasoning
Gallup Pakistan has recently published statistics on opinion of Pakistanis and Afghanis on whether the presence of the Taliban in their country has a positive or a negative influence on their homeland. The results were clear, 72% in Pakistan and 79% in Afghanistan see it as a negative influence.
The Opinionators Influence
On how the pundit’s writings, sometimes not even fully thought through – why else would he in retrospect claim “As one who used to advocate strongly for the liberation of Iraq (perhaps more strongly than I knew)” – can influence soldier’s choices on the ground. Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair.
US “presence” in Pakistan
Financial support to Pakistan by the US is extensive, discussions about the security of the state’s personel there ongoing (here and here) but all the foreigners I see on the ground are non-US citizens. In 4 years in Lahore, Kashmir, the Northern Areas, the Tribal Areas and Peshawar I have met 4 American Nationals. I do not count my visits to horrible expat paries in Isloo with tipsy girls and tough guys or my encounter with well-built guys on the airport, who had a special escort past the queue and were obviously not here to taste Daal or learn a foreign language but to look grim and foster a clicheed, conspirational Xe-image, US citizens based in Pakistan nowadays have.
Rethinking interests
Raul R. Pillar is probably right with his theory , that terrorists (foremost al-Qaeda) do not necessarily need Afghanistan as a safe haven to attack the US in future and that the presence of US troops in the area should not be justified with just this target – to eradicate such breeding places.
pundit mayhem
Experts on AfPak sprout out of the ground like mushrooms – everyone gets his go at what it’s all really about and what should have been done in the first place or what the future will definitely look like. While one would expect, that having so many smart people around who all know so much about this place that noone really seems to understand, the picture would become more clear, the floods of opinions and predictions on the topic just make the situation worse.
on pakistani identity
Two new Pakistani Nationals and NADRA a mess: Hussein here and Malek here.
Identification
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