Report
Pakistan’s Army and piety
Dexter Filkins, in his recent article for the New Yorker, makes a rare foray into accusing the US of complicity in the disappearance of Pakistani journalists, in this case of Saleem Shahzad.
Aid, a weapon?
Especially the rural poor will often not give a damn what happens outside their brick kiln geo-politically and confronting them with opinions on radical islamist outlets may be of little benefit for assessing general support of these groups. On top of that, if they have an opinion, they may have a totally different conception of these groups’ connections (the authors offer four choices: Kashmiri tanzeem, al-Qa’ida, TTP, sectarian outfits). The understanding of Pakistani militant groups is very poorly developed in Political Science courses in the West and even less understood is how the am log perceives them (before they are even asked to judge them as good or bad).
sissies and thugs – an alternative approach to explaining Karachi’s violence
Verkaaik looks at urban militancy in Sindh with a focus on Hyderabad where he researched intensively. As his choice of location suggests he is not prone to walking along stereotipical representation of Pakistan – while Hyderabad is by no means some small village, he is the first foreign author on Pakistan I read who is not based in Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi. On the other hand he does not present himself as theshalwar kameez wearing gora who has understood it all and is at par with the locals. His account is sober, but makes use of both – his intellectual background and understanding of cultural, political and historical complexities and his personal experience as a part-time resident of the city and member of the local society.
exchange rate: $ to PKR
The US – Pakistan relationship dubbed as a double game – little understanding is there for the fact that the flaws of this bond should be looked for on both sides and how they deal with each other.
Women Empowerment in Pakistani administered Kashmir
We have just finished a report on the impact of our Vocational Training Centre in Dhulli on Women Empowerment in Kashmir – whether that works on the societal and enterpreneureal level and how. It can be downloaded from our website here.
swooping broad brush theories – refuting conventional wisdom
Two rather recent papers by Christine C. Fair and Jacob N. Shapiro aimed at investigating the foundation for militant and violence support in Pakistan, after in recent years studies in this direction have become numerous, but most were not so clear when it came to data aquiring and whether this would be representative for Pakistan. The most important problem was that ‘conventional wisdom’ on Pakistan is often taken as granted and used as a basis for such studies without further testing. Mainly conducted in urban areas and without considering the huge differences between the provinces, these studies become next to worthless – but they shape international policies. Fair and Shapiro have attacked these conventional wisdoms and I believe do give some scholarly backing to observations that are rather obvious to people with experience in Pakistan.
Learning from recent experiences?
With the reconstruction in Kashmir having widely come to a halt (although far from complete in many areas) and the next reconstruction phase in the flood affected areas looming ahead, I want to direct attention to two very good studies that deal with the experiences in Kashmir – and are extremely valuable for the work coming up ahead in other parts of the country.
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.
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.
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