Pakistan is once again gripped by political and social upheavals. With rapidly deteriorating economic and law and order situations, there is real danger of an implosion.
If Pakistan only faced external enemies, it would be easy to understand its problems. The real tragedy is that its rulers are the greatest enemies the state and the people have to face.
For a state to function reasonably well, it must fulfill certain basic needs of the people: provide security of life, limb and property as well as food, water, education and health services.
A charismatic politician charming crowds throughout Pakistan. A rising crescendo of political speeches and rallies setting the nation afire, an impalpable sense of excitement building in the populace, casting the halo of destiny itself on the celebrity politician. A sense of promise, a social contract written anew; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1973? No, rather it is Imran Khan in 2012, launching a flamboyant path to become the next prime minister of Pakistan.
Pakistan’s story is like an unending tragedy in which there are no heroes, only villains. Each tries to outdo the other in how much evil he can perpetrate. It would be worthwhile to identify the villains, both institutional and individual. At the institutional level there are the feudal lords that control vast land holdings that were granted to their ancestors by the British colonialists.
How long this standoff will continue is debatable but what we need to consider is how this situation has deteriorated to a point that the US feels it can attack and kill Pakistanis at will.
Pakistan’s relations with the US have never been easy but recent developments have brought them to such a point that even the polite and usually soft-spoken Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was forced to concede: “we do not trust the Americans.”
General Mirza Aslam Beg — who is the former Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan and currently Chairman of the Islamabad-based NGO, Foundation for Research on International Environment, National Development and Security (FRIENDS) — expresses some of his views about the Islamic resistance and Pakistan.
Since he entered the White House in January 2009, Barack Obama has made war on Pakistan the most important policy of his presidency even while he has maintained a broad grin on his face. the presidential campaign: speak softly but carry a big stick.
The release of Raymond Davis on March 16 has dismayed most Pakistanis who felt the American was guilty of murder and should have been dealt with according to the law of Pakistan. Instead, what this confirms yet again is the craven attitude of the government in its dealings with the US.
The Raymond Davis saga is beginning to assume the proportions of a spy thriller, literally. Presenting himself as a security contractor with the US Consulate in Lahore.
Raymond Davis, the CIA agent operating as a "security consultant" at the US Consulate in Lahore, will be set free, Crescent International has learned. Davis shot and killed two people riding a motorbike in Lahore on January 26 whom he accused of trying to rob him.
The assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer on January 4 at the hands of his own bodyguard has exposed the numerous fault lines criss-crossing the social fabric of Pakistani society over the blasphemy law. It has pushed the country toward two extremes drowning out rational and knowledge-based discussion.
Last month’s events have confirmed, yet again, with striking clarity how deeply polarized the Pakistani society is. The killing of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab Province, by his own bodyguard on January 4 has scared the living daylights out of the already cowardly rulers.
As he was wheeled into the operation theatre at a Washington hospital, Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, must have prayed the Pakistani surgeon tending to him would successfully stitch his torn aorta to save his life so he could “save” Afghanistan.
Jonathan Banks, the CIA station chief in Pakistan, left Islamabad in a hurry after his cover was blown. Banks had a “business” visa but operated from the US embassy from where he coordinated drone strikes on North and South Waziristan.
A fresh development in this schizophrenic saga is the return of Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf to the political arena
At the other end of the country, violence has periodically erupted between different ethnic and political groups in Karachi
Zardari owns a huge property in France where his father Hakim Ali Zardari now lives
