Gulping a refreshing fruit juice close to qainchi-Flyover on Ferozepur Road some years ago, a member of the Punjab Elite Force (a unit which is employed for Special Ops as well as VIP transfer, and rose to some fame abroad last year as well, when one of them killed Salman Taseer) enjoying the same refreshment asked me where I was from. My experience told me that telling him I was from Austria was not going to get us far. While in Central Asian countries, people, thanks to their Soviet past, would tell me how they know Rapid Wien (a formerly internationally succesful Austrian soccer club) and an Engineer immediately retorted Alpenglühenwhen I mentioned Austria and Switzerland, in Pakistan my homecountry mostly evokes images of Kangurus and Cricket. While I then try to explain the difference, interest has most often waned (I can not blame them). This Police man however, with a proud smile pointed at his chest, where the logo of the Elite Force, comprising of bullets and two Glock pistols, is prominently placed. He was well aware, that the Glock pistol is an Austrian product.

Army Trucks

A somewhat similar encounter happened in Rawalpindi, this time with an older man from the Upper Class, who I talked to at the SOS Children’s Village. He was perfectly aware where Austria was, I would have expected a different relation though. He would not go on about Classical Music or Salzburg and Schoenbrunn (what I normally get from people who know Austria as tourists) or the fact, that SOS was founded in Austria. Again with a proud smile, in his position as an Pakistan Army member, he told me how he had just finalized a deal on Steyr Army Trucks, which are especially suitable for offroad terrain (Steyr guns are apart from that in use in the Pakistan Army as well).

Austria, thus, is known for it’s weapons in Pakistan.

(I had the idea to put that down today, when I stumbled over a project of two Austrian journalists, who attempt to track Austrian Weapon Deals/Stories around the world. We are officially a neutral country, but big in business …)

Money

There are similar exports from Switzerland (the country I live in when I am not in Austria or Pakistan), Oerlikon being the most prominent, but I have no such encounters to recount and apart from that Switzerland is more known. Kashmiri friends always ask me whether their country really deserves that ‘Kashmir is the Switzerland of Asia’ label (which I found for Northern Xinjiang as well and probably in a couple of other mountainous places in Asia). But while being at it, looking for links between the three countries the authors of this blog write from, it is interesting to make note of the topic that currently shakes the country and is top headline since nearly a week (it would be worth an analysis in itself, the essentials of the issue are not really grasped in the foreign media yet). Today, the president of the Swiss National Bank had to step down. Not because he covered Asif Zardari’s murky deals (which are also set in Zuerich), but because his wife made a small fortune with a foreign exchange dealing, while he was just stabilizing the Swiss Franc against the Euro last year. His wife, born Kashya Mehmood, is from Rawalpindi.

If you know German (Swiss German on top), watch today’s discussion on ‘Moral, Power and the Media’, it just finished. Both the media in Austria and Pakistan could learn from the quality of such TV debates (this strayed off the path somehwhere half, but is still worth watching, when you have read on the whole debacle of the last days).

Expats

I could, and should at some point, voice my expat concerns on my homecountry (how to lead a political debate is a great starter). But that is a complex topic. And I think this article by Franz Stefan Gady for the Huffington Post makes it a bit too easy too. As expats we could be a lot more interested (and that sincerely) in what goes on at home, and not just look down on it – easier said than done. But since he states, fittingly for our blog, I’ll have to include it:

Where are Austria’s grand strategists and statesmen? For example, it is a sheer impossibility to devise a daring new foreign policy for the Balkans or Eastern Europe (which was hijacked by the Austrian private sector more than 20 years ago) or dispatch the best and brightest of Austria to Brussels, the true ‘great uncle’ of small European powers, to push Austrian ‘interests’. (When did anyone ever hear any Austrian politician mention the word ‘Austrian interests’?) I am not even mentioning the rise of China, nuclear Iran, the war in Afghanistan, terrorism in Pakistan, the power transition in North Korea, or the current upheaval in Russia. “Such outward things dwell not in Austrian desires,” to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Henry V, and never seems to be a concern for any party.

I think reporters and especially scholars who report on the area extensively (like Schmidle and Fair) should be oblidged to state in their papers ‘that I actually don’t even understand the local population without a translator’.

Reporting

A reader has commented that Fair’s proficiency in not only Urdu is actually quite well advanced. That may be so and I believe Schmidle can speak Urdu as well – I didn’t mean to point the finger at these two, who, as I have stated, I respect for much of the work and writing they have done. However, many journalists and scholars who have a great influence in shaping the image of Pakistan in the media abroad have extremely poor language skills. There is of course no prerequisite for immediate language skills of the country you report on – interpreters do the job to get a story together. When however you step up the ladder to being a commonly acknowledged ‘expert’ on the region (in Manan Ahmed’s definition of the word) and you still are dependent on English sources and an interpreter for the vernacular, I am becoming sceptical (and for the Pashto speaking drone impact area, Fair is such an example!). It’s not so much for being capable of proper grammar, but rather that you get a feeling for what a communication is suggesting between the lines – something an interpreter won’t translate. It will give you the chance to actually understand what they are brawling about at Aaj KamranKeSath or Capital Talk or whatever is currently running in the TV that is placed in the restaurant where you are waiting for an interview partner.  You’ll be actually able to understand what people talk about on the roadside and need not always resort to copy paste phrases like ‘the mood in the street is running high with anti-US sentiment’. Even if you are one of those journalists who base their stories basically on what the taxi driver from the airport to the hotel tells them, it would give you the chance to understand what he really has on his mind, and not just what remains when you put together the few English phrases he happily produces.

I find that issue especially valid for Pakistan, because it gets such wide, but, because of the language deficiency among other things, so shallow coverage. Few understand that Urdu may not be the ideal means to get at the core of the matter in most parts of the country, and that in some areas it’s even considered as colonial as English. Knowing Punjabi will help you understand that your chaiwallah is talking in poetry to you, knowing Pashto will make you aware that the local tribal leader is not cursing the infidel West into hell, but he is arguing reasonably and the tone of the language makes it sound crude to you, and understanding Burushaski will make you aware that the locals are complaining about other Pakistani individuals and not just the government. And the fact that so many media in the country are conveying information in English, leads to the assumption, that this gives a pretty fair and unbiased overview of what people are currently concerned with. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. It will tell you what the Urban Upper and Middle Class of the country is concerned with. Not much more.

Utility

On the other hand, it’s bemusing how languages in the area turn into vehicles of utility. Pashto you learn to get insight in the terrorist culture, Dari and Urdu because they have such a wide reach, Arabic because, well, religion and script and stuff. Of course that’s what how we learn languages at school as well – in Austria rather French than Italian because it has a more global reach, Chinese at University because that’s the new market, Spanish and South America is yours. Do learn Pashto because you always wanted to read Rahman Baba, Wakhi because you love the Pamir, Seraiki because of a good friend. It will give you the motivation to understand the language as a conveyor of history and culture that you could otherwise hardly grasp or just make you appreciate it’s sound and not just acknowledge it as a code that passes along information that may be geopolitically relevant. In the long run the understanding of culture through language will prove more relevant than what some Waziri checkpointwallah passed through in his Pashto dialect on the whereabouts of some cook of the third cousin of Sirajuddin Haqqani.

Literature

If foreign writers and journalists would be able to read something aside of English, we would have been spared all the recent articles on the ‘emerging literature scene’ in Pakistan which, in these accounts, basically comprises just half a dozen young writers who brought the whole Pakistani literature landscape into being.

Diversity

I even find many Pakistanis unaware of the fact that the country has an extremely diverse linguistic map which is not represented well in the media coverage even inside the country – reporting in Punjab or Sindh on areas outside their linguistic reach is often limited also because they have no knowledge of the language spoken there or are ignorant of their significance to local issues.

Bragging

Once foreigners have aquired some ever so minor language skills, it becomes fancy to drop vernacular words here and there. I have done so and having come to think over it after a comment by @salmaan_h, do agree that if it’s not necessary to convey information that could not otherwise be conveyed in English and is just inserted to add ‘local flavor’ one should cut it – I will.

Further Interesting Reading

Anjum Altaf on learning Hindi, Farsi and Pashto as an Urdu Speaker (note the language section on their page):

As an Urdu speaker, I had always felt it would be simple to learn Hindi and Farsi. The first shares the grammar and much of the essential vocabulary, differing only in script; the second shares the script and a considerable number of words, differing in construction of sentences and manner of speaking. My attempts to transform resolve into results yielded both confirmations and surprises and taught me something about learning, about languages, about our world and about myself.

U.R. Ananthamurthy on translation in India, a very short, very great read:

[W]as he influenced by the ethos into which he was translating? Wouldn’t a lot of great literature in our languages remain untranslatable if what is good is determined by the literary ethos of the language into which we are translating? I do not know what we can do about it, or honestly speaking whether we should do anything about it. [...] I read Saul Bellow as literature, but Premchand is read in the universities of United States of America for sociological purposes. That is their problem not ours. But that may well become our problem, too, if we should also globalize and become prisoners of the homogenized modern world system.

Supriya Nair on Mumbai’s Urduwallahs:

A note, Arzu says, which is too often unacknowledged. “Urdu is the language of people who are usually invisible except in movies and mushairas,” he says. “For a long time, nobody cared how people lived in Madanpura or Bhendi Bazaar. Urdu newspapers specialized in learning exactly what was going on in these communities.”

The form and functions of English in Pakistan, thesis by Mubina Talaat.

When one talks about the Left in Pakistan (also when it talks about itself) one is pretty quick quite far on the left, with comrades and worker’s struggle. (To follow what the very active Leftists are currently up to, the SPN Network is a great source). That is a bit bewildering to a Central European who understands the Political Left to be more heterogenuous than just Socialist. There could be the Greens, the Liberals, and other swaths of the population who would be left leaning but has little understanding of peasant’s uprsie in the rural areas or reminescences of a Socialist state.

Farooq Sulehria provides a brief history in a global context.

Masood Ashraf Raja even has to emphasize, that he is not talking about the Communist Party when talking about the left:

When I invoke the term left, I do not mean left in the classical sense: a centralized communist party. I rather mean a loose coalition of like-minded Pakistanis with a socialistic outlook who believe in a secular public sphere and do not treat class, gender, and other identities as fixed but as fluid constructs within a national space. Most of all, the left signifies for me a strong commitment to a liberatory and redemptive politics that builds lateral solidarities—within and without the nation—against the forces of neoliberal capital.

Pervez Hoodbhoy has last year looked at the potential of the Left in Pakistan – he drifts away into a lot of repetitive stuff that has really little to do with the Left and is just what he writes about again and again, but gets to a final point:

To become relevant to the real needs of Pakistan’s peoples, Pakistan’s leftists need to reaffirm their allegiance to what truly matters. Instead of chasing demons and indulging in meaningless sloganeering, they must squarely face religious militancy as the most immediate problem. Left-wing ideals lie in the great ideals of economic justice, secularism, universalistic ideas of human rights, good governance, women’s rights, and rationality in human affairs. Washington must be firmly resisted, but only when it seeks to drag Pakistan away from these goals. It is futile to frame every debate in pro- or anti-America terms; the key point is to be pro-people.

A recent short article on where the Pakistani Left could go, which sees a lot of positive potential, was recently published by Qalandar Bux Memon and Ali Mohsin. Like the other articles it dwells a lot in the past, but gives current examples where the Left is active and achieving.

From these foundations, the Left desires to push on to economic and social transformation. It’s a difficult, perilous task. But the Pakistani Left has never been more prepared.

This rooting in the present gives this piece some more realistic outlook what the Pakistani Left could be about today (no doubt, the different organisations are very active and do achieve a lot good – it would be laudable if interantional ‘nation builders’/'failed state theorizers’ would acknowledge these aspects of the Pakistani landscape). Nevertheless I think the Left would be well advised if they would further their spectrum from staunch comrades, anti-imperialists and the working class to for example the neo-liberals in Raja’s definition. Memon and others are reaching out to bring different people together via great initiatives in locations like Cafe Bol – I guess there could be more of it, also outside of the universities’ domain.

What struck me with both pieces though, is the fact that they stumble along pre-conceived lines of narratives on Pakistan. That is not something new in today’s writing on the area, but since these are two writers I more or less respect on what they have to say, it’s worth pointing out. Also it’s not a criticism specifically of these two as writers – they both have set out to write their pieces on another aim. Schmidle simply wants to portray the raid without embedding it in a wider local perspective but purely from the American’s viewpoint and Fair looks at the extent writers should state their sourcing. It’s rather also a criticism of us as readers, what we already expect as granted and what has penetrated our mind to such an extent that we do not find it weird any more. And of course of US army’s flawed decisions on issues they should by now have tackled.

Also some parts of the discussion do not appeal to me as a European reader as they may to an American. The SEALs are not ‘mine’ (as Fair puts it; even if the Austrian Cobra unit would have done the raid, we would not call them ‘ours’, they are just some guys doing some job), and the times where someone here would say ‘for God and Country’ casually, are long gone.

Schmidle picks up the vaccination story. This has been dealt with by the Guardian already, and I hope a day will come soon, where we will find it so ridiculous to assume that it may be a good idea to start a vaccination program really anywhere in Pakistan, that mentioning it in a lauding article of the American army and C.I.A. will become obsolete.

Then comes the point where the American translator, ‘Ahmed’ fends of locals in Pashto. Fair and many of her (Pakistani) commenters, have adressed that in a typical way, just to show of some rudimentary knowledge off the couch of themselves – they point out that in Abbottabad more people speak Hindko, a Pashto translator is therefore rubbish. They are quite right, but a Punjabi speaker may have equally done the job, locals may not have found that a big issue. It may be cool to be a smart-ass on Pakistani languages and where they are generally used, it would be more valuable to understand how the West uses that knowledge to subjugate the locals into tribal vernacular linguicists who need to be adressed in their local customs. Pashto, and that not only in the Army and the intellignence services but also in the wider blogosphere and scholarly literature, is considered the language of the tribal hilly-billy Taliban and quickly from there, of all those evil terorists (be they Punjabi Lashkars or German-Turkish mercenaries). On the one hand, that is very convenient, because now scholars who work in the field can always point out their knowledge, ‘that Pashto, really, is a very difficult language to learn – you will understand that I can not master it but will rather report on the area without understanding the locals’. No I don’t understand. Unfortunately that narrative has gone so far, that many do not even attempt to learn it properly. To go in line with Fair’s argument of disclosing sourcing, I think reporters and especially scholars who report on the area extensively (like Schmidle and Fair) should be oblidged to state in their papers ‘that I actually don’t even understand the local population without a translator’. On the other hand, it fosters the narrative that the terrorist lot is ethnically and linguistically homogenuous and tribally backward (you’ve got to talk in their harsh vernacular to them!). Also Abbottabad is no such hamlet – it’s a (‘small’) city with nearly 200 000 inhabitants and a number of universities/colleges.

Schmidle also ‘recounts’ how the SEALs catch bin Laden’s wives in bear hugs fearing they were wearing suicide wests. I understand that precaution is never a stupid thing, but the fact that the narrative on al-Qaeda has managed to expect us that women of their high-ups put on a suicide west each night after they take down their make up and brush their teeth with an electric toothbrush (yeah, I guess they even have that – shocking, eh?) is showing how far we have managed to construct the evil ‘other’ to our liking.

Fair also manages to do some collectivizing of ‘the Muslim world’ although here I think/hope that’s purely because of poor wording. Altogether her criticism of Schmidle’s piece, while getting to a valid point, is more of a rant unfortunately.

Hoping to look into the role of exciting, exotical and eastern mountaineering as part of careers in the east that have become part of our understanding of the area that is belted by Hindukush. Karakoram and Himalaya, I am currently with Francis Younghusband in Tibet. While he was determined to understand the locals here (and earlier in Hunza and the Pamirs) and of the Great Gamers is definitely one who was relatively well informed about local customs and histories, he always manages to portray the locals as backward through narratives that are a mixture of empire-supremacy, political opportunism, ethnology and heart-felt-love for or heart-felt-despise of the people. I smirk now and again at his descriptions – after all, that was a whole century ago. Todays’ writing that becomes policy relevant like Younghausband’s did in it’s day is, chastened by the ever present threat of being accused of Orientalism or breach of political correctness, a lot less obvious in such revealings of imagination. But when it does come up, it leaves me with a cringing smirk.

[I am not on the pay-roll of Manan Ahmed - I do not even know him, not even as a tweeting fellow. But his book on that issue is a recomendation. It deals with exactly that - 'the American imagination of Pakistan'. I have reviewed it in german here. Also, if you are more interested in how the bin Laden raid has any significance rather than what was the weapon of choice of each SEAL, his At Sea is still worth a couple of thoughts.]

I do realise that this is no new idea, neither one that has a very important impact compared to other forms and forums of debate on culture in Pakistan and I have adressed this issue in danka-nama #3:

DANKA covers one front-end of culture – how it manifests itself in events in the public sphere. We do not cover the private (which unarguably has a much wider scope than the public, but may be overlapping), and we hardly cover what leads from the Pakistani self (as a nation, a society, a single person) to this manifestation in public. The danka-nama aims to go in that direction… [...] It is of course important to note that the definition of such terms [culture, Pakistan] is hardly a process that will come to a definite end.  Also it happens at at least five diverse ends which exist in self-contained ways and I think  unfortunately seldom inspire each other. On the real side, there are institutions like Café Bol, the former Chitrkar, or T2F where such terms are shaped in life discussions and which probably provide the best space to actually bring ideas from different ends – from the intellectual to street talk – together. [...] The space, which has the least relevance in shaping this quest for a common narrative, but with (at least outside the country) the single most impact on public perception, is the net-space (most importantly the blogosphere, including the newspapers which are more and more turning into blogs with a print-name). This includes of course the danka-nama. The question of course remains how this public perception is having it’s repercussion on the shaping of an understanding of Pakistani culture.

2. Ausgabe der Sino-Pakistan Serie

Teil I

“How and why this nuclear relationship emerged can only be a matter of speculation.” schreibt William Burr in einer Zusammenstellung von deklassifizierten Dokumenten der amerikanischen Regierung und der CIA im National Security Archive. Und während diese Feststellung zwar nur in Zusammenhang mit dem nuklearen Program beider Staaten gefallen ist, kann man sie einfach auf die sino-pakistanische Beziehung in ihrem ganzen (unklaren) Umfang ausdehnen. Burr führt als erstes auch ein Dokument (PDF) an, dass sich mit der sino-pakistanischen Beziehung allgemein, im Lichte amerikanischer Interessen, beschäftigt. Thomas Hughes (State Department) schreibt an WF Raborn (CIA) am 21. Juli 1965:

We recognize, of course, that Pakistan has had more or less valid reasons for taking many of these actions — it’s fear of India, domestic political considerations, a desire to play a large role in Afro-Asia — and do not underestimate their importance. Also there have been a few instances, such as Ayub’s refusal to support China on the Vietnam issue during his Peking visit of March 1965, for which Pakistan deserves credit. On balance however, the record is a disappointing one considering the US investment in Pakistan.”

“Although we do not believe that such an understanding is very formal the Pakistanis have probably been dealing with China behind our backs.”

Aktuelle Depeschen zu diesem Thema (die man durch Wikileaks wohl schon eher als erst nach 2050 einsehen wird) sehen wohl nicht grundlegend anders aus. War es damals Pakistan’s Haltung gegenüber China zu Vietnam und sein Atomprogramm, sind es heute meist wirtschaftliche Fragen – Gwadar, Indus und der KKH – wie auch militärische Kooperation und die gemeinsamen Interessen im GWOT. Allein seine Grenzkonflikte mit Indien und China’s Rolle darin sind geblieben. Hughes merkt an, dass Pakistan den Konflikt um den Rann of Kutch wohl mit indirekter amerikanischer Unterstützung gefuehrt hat, ähnlich dem heutigen Vorwurf, dass Pakistan US-Militärhilfe gegen Indien einsetzt.

China's biggest investments in Pakistan (from FT)

Die Narrative, die den meisten Artikeln zur Dreiecksbeziehung USA-Pakistan-China zu Grunde liegt, ist die Sorge, dass China eine auseinanderbröckelnde US-Pakistan Beziehung nutzt, bzw. Pakistan nicht allein auf die USA angewiesen ist. Nur scheint niemand wirklich zu wissen wie die chinesisch-pakistanische wirklich aussieht und wie bedeutend sie ist – wahrscheinlich wissen es die beiden Seiten selbst nicht genau.

Die Andeutung, China und Pakistan seien gerade dabei eine Beziehung aufzubauen (wie der z.B. der Titel “An Alliance is being built” des FT Artikels suggeriert) ist in jedem Fall naiv und zeigt wie wenig sich auch die Medien mit dieser Beziehung seit den 60er Jahren beschäftigt haben – die Allianz besteht schon längst auf viel mehr Schichten als eine US-Pakistanische Beziehung. Der Austausch von Studenten wie auch Arbeitskräften findet in beide Richtungen statt – Pakistanis studieren in China von Xinjiang bis Dalian in allen moeglichen Provinzen und decken damit China im Gegensatz zum Westen in seiner ganzen Breite ab, das gleiche gilt umgekehrt. Während für den Westen oft Pakistan=Islamabad/Karachi und China=Beijing/Shanghai gilt, fusst sie sino-pakistanische Beziehung hier auf einem besseren Verständnis.

Auch so waghalsige Artikel wie der von Selig Harrison, zur chinesischen Infiltration von Gilgit-Baltistan basieren allein auf dem Wunsch Aufmerksamkeit im heiteren Ratespiel zu erhaschen und nie auf on-the-ground Recherche an beiden Enden. Dementsprechend sind Artikel zu diesem Thema auch immer in Washington, Abu Dhabi oder Dehli geschrieben, in sicherer Distanz zur Thematik. Auch lassen sich so einfach Intentionen beider Seiten hineininterpretieren, deren sich diese selbst wohl gar nicht bewusst sind. China führt seine Aussenpolitik ideologisch auf ganz anderen Vorstellungen als die USA und Pakistan ist wohl in erster Linie um eine gute Beziehung zu beiden Seiten bemüht und versucht nicht in erster Linie den einen gegen den anderen auszuspielen (auch wenn die kindische Rhetorik von Mukhtar und Malik oft in diese Richtung zeigen).

Um die pakistanisch-chinesischen Beziehungen wirklich realistisch einzuschätzen, braucht es in erster Linie einmal realistische Berichterstattung zu beiden Entitäteten unabhängig von ihrer Verbindung. Erst dann wird es auch für amerikanisches und europäisches Publikum möglich Intentionen abzuschätzen. Nur ist man da auf beiden Seiten noch sehr weit entfernt. Ich werde darauf 2050 zurückkommen.

P.S.: Eine etwas seltsame Meldung, aber sie passt ganz gut zu diesem Thema: “magnanimously pardoned the driver in the name of the friendship between the two countries”

We (the NGO I work for as a program manager for Pakistan projects) currently run an ambulance in the vicinity of the Shamshattoo Refugee camp. How that camp, and it’s surrounding areas, is linked to the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan I won’t get back to – Ron Moreau has recently written an interesting story on how Hekmatyar is recruiting his fighters from the camp and trains them in Afghanistan just to send them back where they wait for their call. There is little government control of the area, the population is extremely poor, health issues mainly circulate around malnutrition and diseases that stem from the lack of clean drinking water and hygiene problems. Even after serious injuries, people can often not afford to go to Peshawar for treatment. Afghanis not being treated in government hospitals and Pakistanis not being treated in NGO Hospitals in the Camp increases their dire situation. Malnutrition leads to serious physical problems of children. More than 90% of the women are married before they turn 20, nearly half of them already by their mid teens – by the time they are 30, they have often reached the average family size, just above 9. Female literacy is somehwhere around 2%, male literacy just below 20%. Pretty much all people work in the brick trade and associated jobs. Patients here are both, Afghani and Pakistani.

The Afghanis sometimes bring their family members from back home for treatment. So far so good, these are no big numbers. What’s surprising though, is that we expect the number of Afghani Refugee patients to plummet during the hottest summer months. Many of them return to their high pastures in Afghanistan during summer. For one, that ridicules our understanding of a refugee (who I would expect to only be in the host country, because it’s really impossible for him, for whatever reason, to live where his home is). Considering the fact that the area in Afghanistan where they come from (the border provinces) is now probably a lot more prone to fighting than during winter, the non-fighting season, they obviously do not just stay in Pakistan because their Afghani home is deemed unsafe(r). Anyhow, it shows how big the numbers crossing the borders each year may well be (there are somewhat 1 lakh refugees in Shamshattoo alone, of which enough move that we feel the consequences in an ambulance that is outside the camp – and there are a few more such camps in the area). Differentiating between a young man who crosses the border to tend to his cattle and one who crosses it to tend to his bomb-making-update-course is impossible. Probably these two intents often also inhabit one and the same person – who will then rightly claim that he is just a farmer, if he is controlled at all.

It’s a simple observation, contrary to Moreau I have not done any further researching into that. I would be interested in opinions from people with experiences in the area.

—————-

*That accusation is hurled against Pakistan authorities. Who that would be, or which of those (civil, army, secret service) feels like that accusation is meant for the respective I am not sure – I am pretty sure though, that the West/the US is not sure either.

**Just like not being sure who to blame, no one is clear on who those extremists are. I know Afghanis who are fighting as seasonal labor. When there is no call from their leader they sell carpets or drive tractors in Kashmir, in Punjab, in Mazar. Once they are needed they move to Waziristan from where they are shipped to wherever their skills are sought. They don’t call themselves Taliban, they are just fighting for their respective leader one up in command. The term “Taliban” they know from CNN or GEO, whatever is running in their chaikhana.