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 borders while all hands are bound to relief work, and therefore extremist will find the border region a new save haven and see an inflow of newly recruited fighters. Pakistan will also struggle to keep the Taliban at bay in Pakistan itself. So far the fatal possibilities of the flood have been neglected by western nations and India.

Article in the Daily Telegraph

Article in the New York Review of Books

Background material:

World Bank Pakistan Country Assistance Evaluation (2006)

The Political Economy of Growth Without Development: A Case Study of Pakistan. Paper for the Analytical Narratives of Growth Project, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, William Easterly, Development Research Group, World Bank, June 2001

The U.S. Aid “Surge” to Pakistan: Repeating a Failed Experiment? Lessons for U.S. Policymakers from the World Bank’sSocial-Sector Lending in the 1990s, Nancy Birdsall and Molly Kinder

Yale Journal of International Affairs, Winter 2010

Helpful Internet Resources:

An essential Reading List from the CGDev.

AidWatchers by William Easterly.

[Article] Karachi water mafia by Alex Rodriguez in LA Times

[Article] Fishermen pay for the political hickhack by Alex Rodriguez in LA Times

These are stories by all means not new. But they are rather what the journalists now again increasingly posted in Pakistan seem to churn out when there is no Taliban-head capture controversy to report about. Or when they simply realize, that the country has many other issues apart from the Taliban threat.

[Blog] Hunza landslide at PamirTimes.

A natural disaster still relatively unnoticed by foreign media has occured in Hunza and is threatening to become an ever bigger problem. The landslide took a whole village north of Aliabad and Karimabad into the Hunza river in January, until now the earth masses are holding back the water which is now reaching back nearly all the way to Passu. The first of the famous foot bridges is already under water. The lake already has a length of 12 km.

[Interview] Recent interview with the Indus Water Comissioner for Pakistan Jamaat Ali Shah in Dawn. Talks about the water issues between the two countries began today in Lahore (see Dawn article).

On the other side of the border, the idea of discussions with the Taliban has recently become popular again. Without any experience in dealing with Islamist groups in when it comes to state-running rather than state-wretching it looks like nobody really has a clue where to start.

Shadi Hamis argues in his papers for a Western appreciation of Islamist parties in the Miidle East and how the US and EU should not fear to approach those and step away from continued support, especially of the repressive regimes.

Perhaps a bigger obstacle to engagement is the mistrust that Islamists evince toward America and Europe, a result of the sometimes striking gap between Western pro-democracy rhetoric and policies that support repressive regimes. For example, France (as well as most European countries) voiced support for Algerian democratization in the late 1980s, but after the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a legal opposition party, swept the first round of parliamentary elections in 1991, France was the first nation to recognize the new military-led government.11 Similarly, the United States routinely expresses “concern” about human rights abuses in a variety of countries, while continuing to provide billions of dollars in economic and military support to these same regimes. As a result, many in the Middle East question how the U.S. can be interested in Middle East democracy if its policies are actively preventing it. from the paper at POMED.

By choosing to focus specifically on the motivations of al Qaeda jihadists, Freeman neglects the Muslim population at large. It is true that among most doctrinaire Salafists, democracy is seen as an intrusion by man into God’s sacred domain.3 But neither these Salafists, nor al Qaeda, are representative of Islamists, let alone the broader Muslim community. from Stanford University Policy Review.

On Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood he writes in the Democarcy Journal:

Just as neoconservatives got a lot wrong, progressives, in reaction, have learned some of the wrong lessons for the wrong reasons. Strong democracy rhetoric is not necessarily counterproductive, and there is little reason to think the Middle East is immune to democratic interventions. Pragmatism, the new and rather hollow progressive catch-all term, is not a substitute for well-considered policy. Nor should it obscure deeply held principles and ideals, principles that, sadly, we have so often failed to uphold in the Middle East.

For the case of Pakistan, while the local government should look for it’s roots in the visions of his founding father Jinnah who proclaimed “If we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor… you are free- you are free to go to your temples mosques or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state… in due course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to Muslims- not in a religious sense for that is the personal faith of an individual- but in a political sense as citizens of one state”. On the other side the Western governments should be prepared to acknowledge that Islamist parties, when supported by a democatic movement can be taken serious as well.

Numerous Bloggers and Scholars have taken that result as a proof for what they see as an increased unpopularity of the Taliban and thus an argument for continued presence in the region and apparent accordance on the goals of the current war. But the question was not “Do you support the actions/ideology of the Taliban?” or “Do you favor the Taliban over your civilian government?”. The presence of the Taliban is of course unpopular – with all it’s consequences including the presence of Western forces on their soil. But that doen’t mean that the questioned people favor the West’s interference in the region over the Taliban’s presence.

We keep asking questions in a way we already know what to expect as a pleasing answer. Justifying our actions in retrospect with flawed polls is not going to help us ahead.

Other nationals I met in big numbers, French and Japanese especially, Austrians, Chinese, Italian, Norwegian and German working in private business, as teachers, journalists or in the NGO sector. I met these people in the country, not just behind walled DHA mansions. But where are the Americans who make sure that all that money is actually spent as aid and not just contributed to be able to show off high numbers and use them as a leverage? Where are the Americans who explain Ann Patterson what happens outside her armoured vehicle, outside her Embassy compound, who explain Holebrook what’s going on while he is not there? Continuously relying on Pakistani informants who they then can blame again of not cooperating enough seems to be the credo.

Especially Japan, who is equally contributing extensive amounts of money in development projects in Pakistan, is showing how “Aid” actually becomes Aid (how extensive “Aid” can be counterproductive, erroding local structures is shown here on a recent example). They send well trained staff, most speaking one Pakistani language already when they arrive, who do not need armoured cars for safe passage but work without much clamour about their contribution. I know Japanese who rode a bycicle from Cantonement (Lhr) to Lower Mall where their office was (training police officers), who acted in Punjabi stage plays and the women were so adapted that they mounted the motor bike side-saddle. Of course, not being heavily involved in the area politically or in connection with the “war on terror” they are less a target for possible aggresion from locals. But that doens’t count as an argument, since people like Greg Mortensen or Todd Shea seem to manage.

(Update: my bad, they actually do mingle in public, she is the head of the consulate in Lahore – I really miss “Eye Spy” for Sunday breakfasts!)

Think Tanks like the Foreign Policy AfPak channel, a source I generally trust generates news on the area faster than the truth can run. Tiedemann writes that the FATA is a “lawless region” – just because it doesn’t obey American law doesn’t mean its without any of it. The way many experts shape our image of this area is dangerous – the wrong perception we get leads us inevitably to wrong decisions.

Information that we is just as disheartening but at least not manipulated by opinion-shapers are the newest opinion polls of the Pakistani public by IRI.

An interesting discussion highlighting what the people in Pakistan think of it all is currently raging at LUMS, already discussed in the national media. As far as I understand the issue, these discussions are on the one side reason for optimism (ultimately these people (Pakistanis and Afghanis, Central Asians) will find a solution to the whole mess of the area, not the “experts” around the US and Europe), on the other side, they do still point in an ideologic direction which I find worrisome.

[originally posted on 1/10/2009 at here-ware]

Although Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell rejected that the US has been supporting the terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi did appear on Voice of America’s Persian service in 2007. Some analysts, including Seymour Hersh, attribute the capture of Rigi to Pakistan that it is a counter to US/NATO’s push in Helmand and Marjah region to drive out militants into Pakistani Baluchistan and then eventually gaining control of Gawadar port from Chinese in the guise of taking out these militants (from Russia Today, see below).