The Other View
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.
Pak Army Publicity Stunt Department
The Western media seems to buy everything from the Pakistani Publicity Stunt Department and blow it up to an even bigger extent that probably even Athar Abbas has to laught at. ABC News pays specialists (in this case Abu Muqawama) to make judgments from propaganda material, that are obvious (”they left in a hurry, otherwise [...]
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.
Imam Hatip school’s model of Islamic education
Imam Hatip is a secondary level school in Turkey which teaches Arabic and Quran, and a wide array of literature including Stefanie Meyer’s Eclipse! A far cry from a stereotype madrassah model, it opens a door of opportunity for moderate model of education. DAWN shows small gallery from the school here and school’s website can [...]
You’re a terrorist. And you’re not.
US authorities have confirmed that Joseph Andrew Stack who crashed a plane in government office in Austin, TX is not a terrorist. Austin’s Chief of Police, Art Acevedo, stated,
“I consider this a criminal attack by a lone individual.”
They testified this after proclaiming that it was indeed a suicide attack. Indeed, an ‘interesting’ definition. A man hits [...]
Looking for trust – in the wrong place.
The Western media, especially after Mullah Abdul Ghani Akhund and some other high-up Talibans where pinned down by ISI/CIA, are trying to understand the ISI and the Pakistani army again. When news of Ghani’s arrest broke, the first reaction was “yeah, finally they do what we want”, only to be immediately followed by “I am sure they are tricking us again” (claiming that the ISI captured him in Karachi making sure he could be kept in their custody and wouldn’t be interrogated by ISAF/CIA at Bagram, Penetta yesterday requested a transfer there)
Plight of Islam in the Modern World – Egypt of the Muslim Brothers compared to post 9/11 Pakistan
While Pakistan in the first decade of the 21st century may be very different to Egypt in the high time of the Muslim Brothers (1930s – 1950s), there are some striking resemblances concerning modernity and religion and how the conflict between these two terms has influenced society or in reverse was shaped by it. In this paper some of these similarities are portrayed. While Hassan al-Banna stood for a defense of the (Muslim) East against the West based on reasoning coming from the Quran, Sunna and Sufism and trying to find a non-violent consensus, his movement is remembered as radically conservative and an intellectual base for today’s leaders of terroristic activity. Similarly an underlying intellectual development in Pakistan is disregarded over the rising violent outbreaks in the name of religion.
heer ranjha or terror, taliban and totay – where is Pakistan’s cinema?
I just returned from the cinema watching Boz Salkyn, a Kyrgyz movie – a simple story about bride-kidnapping, love and the Kyrgyz people. It has some Heer Ranja aspects. It’s emotional, completely a-political without the aim to critizice society, the state or question religion
Forgotten Promise – Pankaj Mishra on Kashmir
Pankaj Mishra writes about the neglect of the Kashmir issue on the wide political scale, especially in light of increased focus on the AfPak area from the West that always seems to mention the Kashmir issue as a basis to the problem but never addresses it directly (similarly to the Nuclear Arms threat that Seymour [...]
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