Tag Archives: Asia

India, Pakistan, Politics

US mid-terms and Af-Pak policy: what lies ahead —Dr Mohammad Taqi

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…. The same review will also focus on Pakistan’s role in the Afghan imbroglio. That Pakistan is essential for US success and ultimately peace in Afghanistan is understood clearly by both Obama and the Congress. However, the perception — and to a large extent the reality — remains that Pakistan continues to come to the negotiating table with its suicide jacket on. If — and a mighty if that is — Obama can miraculously manage to talk Pakistan’s establishment out of its delusional belief in its zero-sum regional policy, that alone may be sufficient to earn him immortality in history. Alas, the mid-term defeat has shattered Obama’s walking-on-water myth. He, therefore, will remain engaged with India, the Central Asian Republics and even Iran, as the counterpoise to Pakistan. The Pakistani establishment obviously does not like this scenario and that is the catch-22 for the US. …

To read full article : Daily Times

News, Pakistan, Punjab, Religion

Christian woman sentenced to death in Pakistan ‘for blasphemy’

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A Christian woman has been sentenced to hang in Pakistan after being convicted of defaming the Prophet

By Rob Crilly in Islamabad and Aoun Sahi in Lahore

Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother-of-five, denies blasphemy and told investigators that she was being persecuted for her faith in a country where Christians face routine harassment and discrimination.

Christian groups and human rights campaigners condemned the verdict and called for the blasphemy laws to be repealed. ..

Read more : THE TELEGRAPH

Human Rights, India, News

India is worse than Pakistan on gender equality

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by Aradhana Sharma

NEW DELHI: Believe it or not when it comes to gender inequities India fares worse than Pakistan. In fact, the country fares lower than all other countries in South Asia save Afghanistan. These are the findings of the 2010 Human Development Report released by the United Nations Development Programme on Thursday as per its Gender Inequality Index.

So while Pakistan may be in the news for its treatment of women and might have become a hot bed for international women’s activism, it certainly seems to know how to take care of its mothers better. On maternal mortality, India — with its abysmal record — trails Pakistan. …
Read more :  The Times of India

Pakistan, Politics

Making sense of it all

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By Kamran Shafi
When Musharraf made his U-turn on the Taliban upon American ‘urging’ after 9/11, some of us thought he meant it.

And, being the boss of bosses of the establishment of the Land of the Pure, would influence the Pakistani Deep State to change its stance too, and help the rest of the world fight the scourge wholeheartedly. And that the Taliban could do little against the rest of the world if no foreign power helped them.

Consider: the Russians, the Central Asian Republics, China, Iran, all the countries surrounding Afghanistan except for some extremist elements in Central Asia and Pakistan were against the Taliban. They were isolated and could easily have been eliminated.

Little did we know, however, that Musharraf and his junta did not mean what they said; that they were being two-faced; that the Deep State, with his approval, wanted to keep the Afghan Taliban as their proxies in the ongoing Great Game in Afghanistan, and their cousins, the Pakistani version of the bloodthirsty lot, as its ‘strategic assets’ against India.

Whilst we well remember Musharraf’s spin-doctors (aka ‘spin-quacks’) patting themselves on the back and exulting over the honorific bestowed on the dictatorship when it was anointed a ‘non-Nato ally’ of the US, they never really meant it.

While his junta milked the Americans of billions of dollars it allowed the Afghan Taliban to maintain their safe houses and bases inside Pakistani territory where they repaired after effectively targeting our ‘allies’ in Afghanistan and inflicting damage on coalition troops. This was two-facedness of a particularly vicious kind, but one that the Americans naively ignored, as it now turns out, to their cost.

Never mind too, that the Pakistani Taliban would be allowed, indeed helped, towards taking over large swathes of Pakistani territory, particularly Swat, through a mixture of acts of omission and commission of the Deep State to send a signal to the Americans that it was hard put to defend its own country, so what could it do to help in matters Afghan? And to inveigle more monies out of them, a reported $11bn in nine years, much of it unaccounted for to date. …

Read more : DAWN

Pakistan, Politics, Religion

Blast at Dargah Shah Ghazi: When will Muslims come out of denial?

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It has become the norm in the South Asian Muslim society to act in denial of our own wrongdoing and blame all the evil deeds of terrorists on the US or India. The Taliban and other militant outfits have totally radicalised the Muslim society in Pakistan, so much so that religious intolerance to them has become synonymous with Islam and righteousness. Sectarian violence has become the order of the day in this so-called Islamic society. Taliban, influenced by Wahabism has made dargahs their target. Dargahs of Data Ganjbakhsh, Abdullah Shah Gazi and now Baba Farid Ganjshakar have been targeted by the Taliban but the middle class intelligentsia and the media in Pakistan loves to live in denial.  This will not help extract the Pakistani society from the morass it has thrown itself in. The Urdu article is published here with its English translation as a prime example. ….Read more : newagaislam

India, Kashmir, News, Pakistan

Thousands attend Eid protests in Kashmir

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The BBC’s Altaf Hussain: “The government is clueless as to what to do about it”

Tens of thousands of people across Indian-administered Kashmir have joined protests against Indian rule, following prayers to mark the end of Ramadan.

A government building and a police checkpoint were set on fire in separate rallies in the city of Srinagar.

The demonstrators carried green Islamic flags and chanted slogans demanding autonomy and freedom.

Seventy people have been killed in protests in Kashmir since June. But clashes are rare during Eid al-Fitr.

‘Lingering dispute’

Police fired warning shots and tear gas to disperse the protesters who attacked the police checkpoint near the Hazrat Bal shrine on the outskirts of Srinagar on Saturday, and burned the nearby offices of the state police force and the electricity department.

“We want freedom. Go India, go back,” the demonstrators chanted. “Our nation, we’ll decide its fate.” …

Read more >> BBC

Pakistan

Regional Scenario: Central Asian ‘Muslim’ states fear Pakistan – by Shiraz Paracha

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Central Asia’s richest and largest state Kazakhstan is following a strict visa policy for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the same time offering further relaxations in visa regulations to nationals from Western and several non-Western countries.

Pakistan has an image problem in the former Soviet republics. The current floods and the continuing violence has further exacerbated Pakistan’s image. To the people of Central Asia and other countries in the region Pakistan is a trouble spot.

It is an irony that the six “Muslim” Central Asian states prefer to keep a distance from Pakistan despite the fact that Pakistan played a crucial role in their independence.

Following the split of the Soviet Union, Pakistani military generals thought that they would control poor and backward Central Asia. The plan was to bring the six Central Asian states under the Pakistan’s sphere of influence. Time has proved how wrong the Pakistani generals were. In the early 1990s, Pakistan took Central Asia for granted. Islamabad looked down at Central Asian countries. Now it is the other way round. Many Central Asians pity Pakistan. Almost every day, they watch television and realize that Pakistan is home to millions of hungry, poor and helpless people. Central Asians fear that troubles from Pakistan can come into their societies. …

Read more >> Criticalppp

Pakistan, Politics

Pakistan is Sinking – Everyone should read following analysis

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Pakistan is Sinking: Time For Tough Love? Walter Russell Mead

The news from Pakistan remains dire. The flood waters now sweeping toward the Arabian Gulf have been far more devastating and the destruction more widespread than anyone predicted. They have cruelly exposed many of Pakistan’s glaring weaknesses: its corrupt feudal elite, its corrupt and ineffective bureaucracy, its lack of infrastructure, its weak civil society, and the presence (unsurprising given the decades long failures of the country’s public and private institutions to do their job) of radical religious extremism and terrorism emerging from the rage and despair of a people betrayed by its leaders.

The long term outlook is not good. Pakistan has failed yet again to educate a rising generation of children and the population is rising faster than the country can find jobs. While the IPCC may have overstated the problem of glacier melt, long term trends point to a decline in the flow of the rivers on which Pakistan depends. The growing power gap between Pakistan and India (the world’s two most hostile nuclear powers) is likely to destabilize the geopolitical environment for some time to come. The slow but inexorable decay of the Pakistani state, the rise of separatism in some parts of the country, and a depressingly long list of other problems greatly complicate the task of those in Pakistan and abroad who would like to help.

Beset by so many problems from so many different sources, Pakistanis struggle to make sense of their country and the world. Conspiracy theories are rife; the raucous and rambunctious media (especially the Urdu media) is better at expressing anger than analysis. A strong civil society is struggling to emerge, but the enormous internal disparities in wealth and education make it hard for strong and effective groups to emerge. Like idealistic 19th century Russian aristocrats and students, the educated idealists who direct many Pakistani social movements are so distant from the world of the poor that their efforts, commendable and well intentioned as they may be, are often irrelevant to the problems of the masses. …

Read more >> The American Interest

History, India, International, Politics

Terrorism is not a Muslim monopoly

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– Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar

“All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” This comment , frequently heard after the Mumbai bomb blasts implies that terrorism is a Muslim specialty, if not a monopoly. The facts are very different.

First, there is nothing new about terrorism. In 1881, anarchists killed the Russian Tsar Alexander II and 21 bystanders. In 1901, anarchists killed US President McKinley as well as King Humbert I of Italy.

World War I started in 1914 when anarchists killed Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. These terrorist attacks were not Muslim. Terrorism is generally defined as the killing of civilians for political reasons.

Going by this definition, the British Raj referred to Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and many other Indian freedom fighters as terrorists. These were Hindu and Sikh rather than Muslim.

Guerrilla fighters from Mao Zedong to Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro killed civilians during their revolutionary campaigns. They too were called terrorists until they triumphed.

Nothing Muslim about them. In Palestine, after World War II, Jewish groups (the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) fought for the creation of a Jewish state, bombing hotels and installations and killing civilians.

The British, who then governed Palestine, rightly called these Jewish groups terrorists. Many of these terrorists later became leaders of independent Israel — Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon.

Ironically, these former terrorists then lambasted terrorism, applying this label only to Arabs fighting for the very same nationhood that the Jews had fought for earlier.

In Germany in 1968-92, the Baader-Meinhoff Gang killed dozens, including the head of Treuhand, the German privatisation agency. In Italy, the Red Brigades kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, former prime minister.

The Japanese Red Army was an Asian version of this. Japan was also the home of Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist cult that tried to kill thousands in the Tokyo metro system using nerve gas in 1995.

Read more >>- THE TIMES OF INDIA

Courtesy:  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1794203.cms