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 the [...]

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).

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.

Why West fears theft of Pakistan’s nuclear assets

Why West fears theft of Pakistan’s nuclear assets..

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.

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.

The capture of Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Rigi

Abdolmalek Rigi, the leader of Jundallah militant group, was nabbed in Iran on 23rd Feb in a dramatic fashion. His post-arrest statement and a photo allegedly showing him at a US base in Afghanistan just 24 hours before his arrest has sparked an interest debate on US role with Jundallah under Obama’s administration.

Although Pentagon spokesman [...]