name wanted for province

The Pashtun homelands are not inherently lawless lands of constant warfare, Victorian pulp fiction and modern blogosphere hyperbole notwithstanding.

Pull Out – Balance Offshore

Since some time we have planned to put down arguments for whether to stay or pull out of AfPak was the right decision – I won’t get into lengthy writing, nothing substantially new would come of it. Over the last year’s readings (the last being My Life with the Taliban by Zaeef), my first National Security lecture at the ETH CSS and the recent work in Pakistan especially toward the Afghanistan border I have moved from “Stay put”, to “Undecided, but in any case the western presence is extremely ill-informed and hence dangerous”, to “Pull Out”.

John Mearsheimer puts that last point into perspective. He comes around to the pre 9/11 dogma to focus on China but ends his article with a focus on inside the US.

Kaplan’s Imperial Grunts

Shortly before I left back to Europe I found Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts in a friends bookshelf in Lahore, happy to get something into my hands that would somehow prepare me for where I was heading, a reminder of the history of the continent I was going to live in again. Once there, wishing to look back I read his Soldiers of God.

A curious case of Pakistani agencies

During the ongoing missing persons case in Pakistan’s Supreme Court, the agencies have admitted that they abducted 11 missing persons from Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi. These are the same agencies that denied having any information, on disappearance of these 11 jailed persons, for 7 months. And there are hundreds of others who face the same fate. [...]

To bat or not to bat

The tradition of tossing a coin to decide who bats first in a cricket match introduces a randomly assigned advantage to one team that is unique in sporting contests.

Flood of Cash

The United States needs to radically change the way it distributes aid to change nondemocracies’ calculations. In Pakistan, for example, the United States should stop providing ongoing aid, much of which is subsequently stolen. Instead, it could set up an international escrow account that would be accessible to Pakistan’s government only if problems remain fixed.

Der Spende-Hilfe Nexus

Ich stelle mir also die Frage, ob der “individual impact” oder der “global impact” meiner Spende wichtiger für mich (und mein zu beruhigendes Gewissen?) ist und wie wir unser Spendenverhalten überdenken könnten.

Ahmed Rashid on the flood disaster in Pakistan

summary: Because the pakistani government has lost ground in flood hit provinces KP and Balochistan, and the international relief response has not yet met minimum requirements, it is likely that extremism will increase rapidly in the area. That will not only affect the war in Afghanistan, as the Pakistan Army is not capable of defending [...]

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?