Photo-Blog from Lahore Part II
May 25, 2009 — koolblue
Photo-Blog from Lahore Part I
May 25, 2009 — koolblueLives in a day of Lahore
The photos speak volumes!
The poor who inhabit this city have a constant struggle to survive!
Scraps of food, no jobs, no shelter or place to rest
A ROLE FOR NAWAZ SHARIF
May 25, 2009 — koolblueThe NATION, Saturday, May 23, 2009
A PERSONAL VIEW, INAYATULLAH
“You have to go with the incompetents you’ve got”, said a senator in Washington at a lunch for Karzai and Zardari, attended by 26 other US senators. This “crude truth” has been revealed in a report published in the current issue of the Time Magazine. Senator Bob Croker was quite brutal when he dubbed both the presidents as corrupt.
One may be corrupt and competent but the mix of corruption and incompetence is indeed lethal.
Whatever be said about Zardari’s long absence from the country, one has to concede that his passion for money has remained undimmed. He pressed the Americans to fill the bowl without delay. By the time he left USA, $ 1.9 billion were about to be approved for Pakistan. If there are strings attached, so be it. All that matters is the flow of funds. In Tokyo, the “friends” pledged more than 5 billion. Gordon Brown and Sarkozi have agreed to give sizable amounts for the IDPs. “We are not a failed state yet”, Zardari told writer Ahmad Rashid in a recent meeting with him “but we can become one if we don’t receive international (read, financial) support to combat the Taliban threat”.
He keeps asking the world leaders to give more as Pakistan, he asserts, is fighting for the security of the whole world. What is not realized is that a considerable part of the money received, goes back to the donor country in various ways, part of it is misused and all of it has to be paid back with interest.
American Congressmen have not minced words while expressing their apprehensions about the way the money is used in Pakistan. Hence the stiff conditions proposed to be attached. Every time an installment is released the US president will certify that money was being spent on the lines indicated and the tasks met as prescribed.
The worrisome aspect of decisions the present government readily makes is the cavalier way it is done. Take the move to launch the military operation in Swat and the adjoining areas. The agreement for Nizam-e-Adl was approved by the National Assembly on April 14. Under US pressure, military action restarted by end of the month and the Taliban attacked in the 3 districts.
The National Assembly in session poised to discuss the situation was suddenly prorogued. Nawaz Sharif had called for a conference of all the political parties to determine the future course of action since the agreement was in doldrums. No such meeting was convened. Instead the prime minister addressed the nation announcing the launching of the military operation “to eliminate the Taliban”.
No steps for taken to examine option of discussing the scrapping of the agreement with the other parties before the next step was taken. The threat of Taliban to capture Islamabad was dramatically exaggerated by the American administration and the media. An old recording of flogging of a girl by the Taliban was repeatedly shown on national and international channels. US administration and media started airing fears about collapse of Pakistan and Taliban grabbing nuclear weapons.
The US secretary of state raised the scare, saying that government had abdicated its responsibilities. Obama called the civilian government as “fragile” and incapable of providing basic services to the people. Gilani’s sudden unilateral announcement of a renewed military operation was a response to the pressure exerted by Washington. Later he did hold an all parties conference which in spite of the consensus resolution (which does not endorses the military action) has become quite controversial.
This time the operation is on a large scale with artillery tanks and gunships deployed to crush the “enemy”. No thought however was given to the fall out of such drastic action. The sudden large scale movement of the people of Swat Dir and Buner was not foreseen. The IDPs number has swelled to more than 2 million hapless Pakistanis.
While most of them have been accommodated by large-hearted Pakistani families, arrangements to provide shelter, water, food and health care to the rest, leave much to be desired. There is also fear of the undesirable criminal elements and foreigners getting themselves registered at the camps as Pakistani citizens.
PPP government’s performance needs to be noted with regard to the timing of holding parliamentary sessions and political parties meeting. These had a definite relationship to Zardari’s presence in USA and other places.
Although amended resolution does not explicitly support the military action, it does not disapprove it, either. It endorses the role of armed forces of Pakistan in the present situation and “seeks to establish the writ of the state”. The Jamaat-i-Islami, Imran Khan’s Insaf party and some of the PML (N) leaders have been complaining of the ruling party hoodwinking them but they have themselves to blame for falling into the trap of consensus for the greater good of the country. They say that the operation having already started, the army needed to be backed and all that they could ask for was a swift completion of the mission.
Some of the opposition leaders including Imran Khan and part of the media feel that by sheer ineptitude and servile subservience to the imperial power of the day along with the greed for money the country’s stability and future have been jeopardized. The trouble began when at the American behest, Musharraf dispatched tens of thousands of soldiers to FATA turning loyal and peaceful Pakistanis into so-called “militants”, terrorists and insurgents.
Half-hearted attempts were made to take them into confidence. These armed and proud people were pushed into belligerence and counter-measures forgetting that they were as good Pakistanis as any of us. At the same time no sustained and serious effort was made to identify and expel the foreigners and criminal elements. By consenting to Drone attacks the disaffected and aggrieved tribal Pakistanis have been turned into virtual enemies.
Many of them have been grabbed for money and handed over to the American intelligence to rot in the torture cells. Instead of safeguarding our interests, we have been serving others’ designs for dollars and cents. We, indeed, are hired labour often rebuked for not doing the work properly. Our economy is literally mortgaged to US administration and IMF in Washington. No wonder Aryan Baker writing in the Time Magazine has remarked: “But no one bears more responsibility for a slow collective suicide than Pakistanis themselves. A set of failures has contributed to Pakistan’s fall”.
One more sobering quote attributed by Aryan Baker to a Pakistani doctor practicing in UK: “It is well known that the present civilian government headed by a corrupt, psychopath was conjured up by the US and UK to push their agenda and what do they get in return, violence, drugs instability.”
Nawaz Sharif alone has the stature and possibly the sense to mobilize public opinion to save the country. He did a remarkable job to boost the lawyers’ struggle to achieve restoration of the Chief Justice and his colleagues. His performance since has been unimpressive. For certain reasons he, keeps assuring the PPP government of his support and often indulging unnecessarily in appease its leaders.
He doesn’t realize that his strength and promise to rescue the country from the quagmire it has fallen into lies in his role of an upright uncompromising protector of the vital national interests of the country. He may feel elated with the sweet noises the influential American visitors make when they come to him, off and on. He shouldn’t forget that they come to soften him for the furtherance of their designs. The stooge NRO government is already in their grip.
Beware of the trap being laid for you Mr. Sharif. Being good-natured is not good enough while dealing with wily and sly confidence – tricksters.
The writer is a political and international
relations analyst.
Email: pacade@brain.net.pk
VIEWS OF FATIMA BHUTTO – Part 2
May 25, 2009 — koolblueZardari Baba and his 40 Thieves.
Pakistani writer Ms. Fatima Bhutto wrote the
following comments from Karachi, Pakistan, in her article published on
5 May 2009 in The Daily Beast, a Web publication based in New York,
NY, USA:
Obama’s Murderous Guest
(1) Besides ruining my country, I believe my aunt’s husband, [PPP]
President [Asif Ali] Zardari, orchestrated my father’s murder. Is
[Imperialist] Obama really going to offer him billions more?
(2) Something rotten arrived in Washington DC [in May 2009]. [Israeli-
Zionist] President Barack Obama shook hands and staged Oval Office
photo ops for the first time with the man [Satanist Zardari] who many
believe stole billions from the Pakistani treasury, and whom I have
publicly accused of orchestrating the murder of my father, Murtaza
Bhutto, an elected member of Parliament until he was killed in 1996.
(3) My father was a vocal critic of both Pakistan’s former Prime
Minister, Benazir Bhutto (his sister, my aunt), and her husband,
current [PPP] President Asif Zardari. He called Zardari and his
cronies "Asif Baba and the 40 thieves", and spoke out against the
targeted killings of opposition members and activists by the state’s
police and security forces. In the end, my father was slain in an
extrajudicial assassination. The fact that he was seen, in a
traditionally patriarchal society, as the heir to the Bhutto legacy
did not make him any safer as Benazir’s second government began to
lose power and international repute.
(4) In Washington, the man [Extortionist Zardari] who helped this
happen asked for money and the chance to cling to his dwindling power.
[Zionist] Obama, in turn, asked for results. That’s going to be a
problem. [Israeli-Zionist] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has
called the situation in my country a threat to universal peace.
[Israeli-Zionist] Richard Holbrooke, [Zionist] Obama’s special envoy
for Pakistan [and illegally occupied Afghanistan], has said the
[Terrorist Zardari] government is capable of fighting terror, but he
also calls the [South Asian] region "Af-Pak", so he is probably
confused. [Israeli-Zionist] President Obama has not offered much of an
opinion yet. He has noted that the [PPP, ANP, MQM, JUI-F] civilian
government has failed to provide its citizens with the most basic
services. But he has also suggested that some hard cash might help the
[Satanic] Zardari government through its problems. No, it won’t.
(5) Pakistan [Military Government] has been at war with its own
[Pakistani] people for a long time now – given the daily politics of
persecution that the state machinery inflicts on its own citizens,
perhaps it’s only natural that we move on. Now this [corrupt,
tyrannical and evil Zardari] government has to go. It’s either them or
Pakistan.
(6) [PPP] President Zardari is a man with a colorful history. He is
known by many endearing epithets here in Pakistan: Mr. 10 Percent (a
reference to kickbacks), Mr. 50 Percent, the First Spouse (twice), and
President Ghadari or Traitor in Urdu. I might not be the right person
to tell his story, given that I believe he was involved in my father’s
murder. But, then again, I just might be in the best position to warn
[Israeli-Zionist] President Obama about him.
(7) Last summer, as an odious bill called the National Reconciliation
Ordinance [NRO] expunged from his prison record the four murder cases
pending against him – my father’s included – as well as various
national and international corruption cases, [Criminal] Zardari
prepared himself for power. He did so not only by wiping his criminal
slate clean, but also by distancing himself from medical records that
showed him to be "a man with multiple and severe physical and mental-
health problems", according to the Financial Times [of London, UK].
(8) When [Satanist] Obama met [Devilist] Zardari in Washington, he met
not only with a dangerous man, but with an unelected official.
[Dictator] Zardari never stood for [parliamentary] elections in
Pakistan. He has no constituency, no vote of support from the
[Pakistani] people, no democratic mandate. The "Opposition", the
Pakistan Muslim League [PML-N], is run by [Extremist] Zardari’s
frenemy, [Muhammad] Nawaz Sharif, also unelected – Pakistan, a nation
of 180 million people, is at the mercy of two unelected men. [Israeli-
Zionist] President Obama has to decide this week whether he wants to
foster democrazy in Pakistan, or whether he wants to have a pliable
government in power – a government, it bears noting, that is so inept
it managed to grow a local [insurgency].
(9) Lest we forget, when [Tyrant] Zardari took power last September
[2008], Pakistan did not have an indigenous [insurgency]. Now, a year
into his rule, the [insurgency] not only exists in Pakistan, but
controls the North West Frontier Province [NWFP], frighteningly close
to the Afghan border. The reason Pakistan’s [PPP, ANP, MQM, JUI-F]
government cannot fight the [insurgency] is not because Pakistan does
not have the money to fight terror. We do, plenty of it. By my last
count, we have received some $ 12 billion in military aid over the
last eight years. (It may not have gone where it was supposed to go,
however. It might have ended up in someone’s Swiss bank account – no
names, but we can guess.) And it’s not because Pakistanis are rabid
fundamentalists elated by the arrival of an indigenous [Muslim freedom
movement]. That’s not it at all. Pakistan is a religiously diverse
country – we have a history of [Muslim, Christian], Buddhist, Sikh and
Hindu heritage.
(10) The reason is the [ruling evil Satanic] leadership [of six
Satanists: Asif Ali Zardari (PPP), Yusuf Raza Gilani (PPP), Ashfaq
Parvez Kayani (Army), Asfandyar Wali Khan (ANP), Altaf Hussain (MQM)
and Fazal-ur-Rehman (JUI-F)]. It’s just not working. In the year that
[Warlord] Zardari has been [PPP] President, Pakistan has become a
third front in the War of Terror. We are not safer, our neighbors are
not safer and we have not made any strides toward fighting [liberal]
fundamentalism.
(11) As much as America finds [PPP] President Zardari repellent, we in
Pakisan do, too. But you [Bush-Obama tyranny] made him our [PPP]
President and now you are about to give him billions of dollars in
[American tax-payers] aid. We cannot foster any democratic
alternatives to [Con-Artist] Zardari while his [corrupt] government
gets bucketloads of American money. Local activists, secular parties
and nascent opposition groups can’t fight that kind of money – it’s
impossible to compete with a party that has access to billions of
dollars. Pakistan is at a crossroads. We are either going to save our
country from its descent into [Zardari-Gilani-Kayani] fundamentalism
and lawlessness, or we are going to have [Puppet] Zardari as [PPP]
President, bolstered by American aid and support. The ball is in
[Israeli-Zionist] President Obama’s court today. Let’s hope he makes
the right decision.
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