Grand Trunk Road

• Asma Jehangir gets it exactly right:
  

  Most sections of society within Pakistan seem to be in a state of denial regarding the allegations made by the Indian authorities. They are not willing to accept even a remote possibility of any connection between Pakistan and the terrorist attacks that took place in Mumbai last week. At the same time, any attack within Pakistan is treated differently. A large number of people have openly blamed militant groups operating within Pakistan and rogue elements within our intelligence agencies for acts of violence carried out in Pakistan. Yet, we are not willing to grant the same significance to any claims made by neighbours against the very same elements that admittedly are under insufficient control.

• A thought-provoking column by Mosharraf Zaidi:

  First things first: it is true that Pakistanis (and Bangladeshis) have no business in taking sides within India’s internal cleavages. However all South Asian Muslims, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Indians not only have the right to think about and mourn what has happened in Mumbai, they have an anthropological duty or dharma to examine the carnage, to think about how it will affect them, and what they can and should do, to avoid it from happening again, anywhere.
  [...]
  Forget also that there is a domestic Muslim Indian terrorism problem. First, the problem is not unique to India, it is a problem that is common today to most countries with a substantial Muslim minority, from the United Kingdom to the Philippines, from Thailand to Nigeria. Second, domestic terrorism, as a problem is also not unique in India. India has had varying degrees of success in staring down secessionists and terrorists in Assam, Orrissa, Rajhastan, and Punjab among others. Third, as a democracy, India is better positioned to deal with the challenge of domestic terrorism than any country where democracy is a novelty. Democracy may be the tyranny of the majority, but the majority’s tyranny is self-contained. It eventually behaves in self-interested ways. By gun or with butter, democracies find ways that dictatorships cannot.
  [...]
  If peaceful South Asian Muslims feel besieged-by the mindless and evil violence perpetrated in the name of their faith on the one hand, and by the mind numbingly jingoistic Indian media on the other-they should get over it. Muslim culpability in the attack on Mumbai is historic, not episodic. It is structural, not incidental. The history and structure of this culpability has failed to release Kashmir from the clutches of oppression, failed to address the systemic social exclusion of the Indian Muslim, failed to formulate a workable Muslim paradigm in either Pakistan, or Bangladesh. What has happened in Mumbai will do more than any other previous incident to weaken the Kashmir cause, weaken the Indian Muslim, and weaken the average citizen of India’s smaller and more vulnerable neighbours. That’s why, despite our fascination with their sophistication, the Mumbai terrorists represent nothing substantively new. They are the newest face of an old problem.

• Pakistan: when even someone like Juan Cole is telling you to get your act together, it’s really time to act. A little bit too much blame displacement towards the Americans, but a good synopsis of Pakistan’s jihad policy and why it is imperative that it must end:

  f the Pakistani government does not give up this covert terrorist campaign in Kashmir and does not stop coddling the radical vigilantes who go off to fight there, South Asian terrorism will grow as a problem and very possibly provoke the world’s first nuclear war (possible death toll: 20 million).

In Dawn:
FOR the last three months domestic bourses are dormant due to existence of ‘floor’ barrier. Many investors are sceptical about removal of this hurdle as many tentative dates were given, as solace, for its removal. Besides, finance adviser Shaukat Tareen has announced that markets will soon be injected a hefty sum of Rs20 billion through contribution of Rs5 billion each by NIT, NBP, SLIC and EOBI but no practical steps have so far been taken.

This prolonged uncertainty is causing mental sufferings to all stakeholders.

According to available information, about Rs10 billion is still lying in CFT, incurring unbearable markups. It is feared that the entire investment will melt if expeditious action is not taken.

Even if government financial organisations opt for investment in selected scripts, then merely Rs5 billion will be released. Besides this adverse scenario, equities worth Rs40 billion have been financed by banks, including Rs6 billion in CFT. Thus this colossal amount of banks is at stake. Consequently, these financial institutions want to carry ‘floor’ till December closing to save their credibility.

Huge investments also made in mutual funds and peculation melted up to 45 per cent under shelter of risk disclosure clause.

Remnant equities worth Rs70 to 80 billion also belong to foreigners and it is feared that this footloose capital will be withdrawn immediately upon removal of ‘floor’.

Although it is feared that many barons of bourses will collapse upon removal of ‘floor’, yet is there any justification to keep on lingering just to save their souls.

Thousands of employees belonging to various categories either are not getting their salaries or underpaid for the last three months but do not disclose overtly to save the honour of their employers in spite being put under distress.

In addition to this, charitable organisations getting donations from affluent class in financial market are in limbo.

It is suggested that funds should be injected up to Rs10 billion in blue chips, which is quite safe to protect the other national organizations, and for remaining shortfall, punish the bubble creators.

Under any circumstances we should never resort to unethical business practice like this artificial support in order to maintain credibility which prevents flight of capital.

We must dare to face the reality to create confidence among domestic as well as foreign investors. Hence remove the barrier of incognito ‘floor’ at once.

SIDDIK S. JAANGDA
Karachi

This is a very thought-provoking column by Khalid Aziz:

Many Pushtun intellectuals believe, wrongly, I think, that the Pushtun has been a peaceful rustic who has been transformed into a fighting machine by the Afghan jihad. They fail to understand the basic cultural and religious drivers within Pushtun society. The US has no problems with the Tajik or Uzbek or other ethnic groups inside Afghanistan. However, with the Pushtuns the US faces a unique cultural difficulty. The problem is that the Pushtun is prone to religious extremism and readily accepts membership into millenarian movements to resist reform of a centralising state which externalises Pushtun governance and politics; he cannot live with the transfer of his management to a larger entity like a modernising state. This is because he fears that his social conduct, “Pushtunwali,” will be endangered and he will lose his identity. For a Pushtun, whether he is supporting Mulla Umar in Afghanistan, Fazalullah in Swat, Maulvi Faqir in Bajaur or Baithullah in Waziristan – he is fighting a war to preserve his identity.

Looking over the Pakistani response to the Mumbai attacks has scared the hell out of me. It’s understandable that Pakistanis are defensive, but the television anchors have gone into full-fledged conspiracy mode, the op-ed writers have brought up all the 2002 rage over Gujarat and there is no shortage of “the BJP did it” conspiracy theories. I’ve always wondered what could possibly push the collective psyche of a country over the edge into North Korea territory and I fear that we are fast heading that way. Thankfully, there is no way we can push ourselves into international isolation and sustain ourselves for long once there (we lack even that basic level of competence).

• Dawn, Karachi in the wake of violence
• hah JI urges govt to call in Army (also urges MQM and ANP to quit provincial ruling coalition)
• Chief Minster of Sindh smooths over fight between MQM and ANP on the floor today

  When an MQM MPA, Adil Khan, raised an issue about the use of bulldozers in Gadap to ‘displace’ people to make room for “Pakhtoonabad”, it was expected that it would trigger what it eventually did. Well done, Mr Khan. We hope you have achieved whatever it is you wanted to – perhaps some importance?

  An ANP legislator, Amanullah Masood, almost predictably, raised a counter issue of Pakhtoons being displaced from “Urdu-speaking areas” and said that a campaign had been launched against them in Karachi.

  Before you knew it, an uneasy shadow began to descend on the house; the galleries were getting disturbing flashes of the ethic riots of the 1980s. You almost could hear the collective apprehension in the house. The word on the street became reality on the floor of the house.

• A few weeks old, but Saleem Shehzad, the exiled MQM leader who was implicated in the famous Major Kaleem case in 1991 that preceded Operation Cleanup has returned to Karachi.
• the government asked MQM to join the federal cabinet again
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• Nicholas Kristof on the Indian response to the Mumbai attacks
• on the fact that Pakistan is collapsing
• Karachi observer on the tentative truce between MQM and ANP
• AKS at Five Rupees on violence and rumours of riots in Karachi
• An interview with Ajai Sahni on the Mumbai attacks
• A very funny take on the political future of Aitzaz Ahsan and Iftikhar Chaudhry (but one that my father swears by!)
• Foreign Policy blog on the contradictory accounts of the Mumbai attacks
• Stephen Tankel at the Kings of War blog (he is an academic studying Lashkar-e-Taiba) on the Lashkar-e-Taiba angle
• An interview with Sumit Ganguly
• Dr. Farrukh Saleem explaining his issues with the Keynsian politics of the IMF. (although one has to ask how raising interest rates is Keynesian?)

From The News¹:

LAHORE: The Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) released on Monday an audio tape containing a conversation purportedly between PML-Q leader Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and an unidentified person making references to two senior most members of the judiciary for rejection of the nomination papers of PML-N leaders Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif.

Pervaiz Elahi denies the authenticity of the tape. Here’s the important excerpt:

Caller: You asked for the rejection of their applications (nomination papers). Sir, the chief of Lahore was called last night.
Elahi: Oh, yes, but buddy, the rejection could not be achieved.
Caller: Sir, it’s done. It was finalised last night.
Elahi: (pleased) Oh.
Caller: The chief [justice] of Lahore [high court] was called and given the material. He said that the two people and the material be sent to the high court. Much offended, he (the third person) said why he (the chief of Lahore) let the papers be accepted when they (Sharif brothers) are facing so serious charges. Then the chief of Lahore said that the two people might be sent to him at the high court. He said he would constitute a tribunal to see the nomination papers rejected.

The tape was released by the PML-N information secretary Ahsan Iqbal at a press conference. Iqbal later compared Musharraf to a computer virus², destroying the whole country.

¹ ‘Pervaiz’ caught on tape. The News. May 27, 2008.
² Khan, Yasir Habib. ‘Ex-CM tape reveals conspiracies’. The Nation. May 27, 2008.

Over at chowk, interactor Optimistic_Aadil from Mardan has an first-hand account of the bakery bombing on May 17 with an interesting alternative explanation:

According to a general consensus, it might be engineered by the establishment courtesy the fact that Mardan cantonment authorities were about to lose a case in the Supreme Court regarding the cutting off of a link road which actually passes through two entities of the contonment, connecting two parts of the city. Incidents of simillar nature happened on the last two occasions whenever the road was about to be opened following the verdicts of the city and Peshawar High Courts in favor of people of the locality. The road was permanently blocked by the army citing security reasons following a suicid blast last year in Dargai where a suicide bomber entered into the Army Cantonment and claimed the lives of dozens of young recruites. The stoppage proved hazardous for the commuters who would reach the city center taking alternative routes which of course were much more time consuming for a distace of about 2 kilometers.

The News reported on Sunday that former chief of the Steel Mills Lt Gen (retd) Abdul Qayyum, in an interview with Geo News, disclosed that differences between Musharraf and deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry cropped up over the privatisation of the Steel Mills:

The ex-Steel Mills chief said when the case was being heard by a full court of the Supreme Court, President Musharraf called him (Justice Iftikhar) and asked as to what kind of remarks he (Musharraf) was hearing from him, adding the case should be decided in a manner that it does not cause any loss to the country. To this, Justice Iftikhar said, “You shouldn’t worry. I will decide the case in the best interest of the country.”

The next day when the Supreme Court judgment in the case came, it was totally against the expectations of the president. It was then that a row between the president and the then chief justice ensued.¹

Khaleej Times has a similar report:

[Qayyum] said that former premier Shaukat Aziz was afraid he would be tried on criminal charges after Supreme Court annulled the privatisation of the Steel Mills citing gross irregularities.²

Today, The News has an article about a statement made by the People’s Workers Union (PWU) Pakistan Steel (CBA) President Shamshad Qureshi who said that Gen Qayyum’s allegations were false and that he was fully involved in the privatization of the organization and was the front man of Pervez Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz during that period.³
Parvaiz Elahi took things a step further and blamed it all on Shaukat Aziz:

Commenting on the action of November 3, he said it was Shaukat Aziz responsibility. He said that he came to know about the issue of deposed Chief Justice through television and afterwards Shaukat Aziz also called him about the issue.⁴

¹ Ex-chief of Steel Mills spills the beans. The News. May 25, 2008.
² Aziz was afraid he could be tried in Steel Mills case. Khaleej Times. May 26, 2008.
³ Union challenges Pakistan Steel Mills ex-chairman’s claim. The News. May 26, 2008.
⁴ Aziz responsible for judges’ issue, says Elahi. The Post. May 26, 2008.

From an editorial today in The News¹:

The KSE crash is of course only a reflection of the overall situation of the economy and, dare one say, the polity. The grim reality is that Pakistan finds itself in the grip of both economic and political turmoil. The two are indeed closely tied together. The economic crisis – high inflation along with a mounting budget and trade deficit along with declining investment, a weakening currency and capital flight – is contributing to political uncertainty, with expectations that it may be used against the government with the grim inflation figures and lowered debt rating offered up as evidence of the inability of government to deliver. At the same time, in the immediate future, there can be little hope of the political stability that would be needed to boost investor confidence and create an environment conducive to economic growth. The vicious cycle seems unbreakable for the present. The mood at the stock market has indeed remained downbeat for weeks. This is unlikely to change soon given the turbulence in the political atmosphere, and a long, rocky road towards recovery from both political and economic crisis still lies ahead.

¹ “Black Friday”. The News. May 25, 2008.