Tag Archives: Pakistan

How to create a really twisted ruling class, the golf course edition

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People are generally good, and it takes quite a bit of effort to turn them into monsters. You have to start at a young age as that’s when people are most impressionable. One method is to send them to a madrassah, where they grow up mentally stunted and fed mental poison for years, with their star pupils turning into suicide bombers and assassins, amongst other achievements.

That’s one type of twisted, but to rule a country, other skills come into play. How do the children of the ruling class turn into monsters, and go on to wreck havoc on the country? Well, they too get trained in the art of becoming a self centered monster at a young age, and though they might not attend madrassa’s, or the school of how to steal more money than your neighbour, but they do have many institutions in their lives to strip them of their humanity. One is the nanny, and omnipresent servants, but thats a story for another day. Today’s story is about teaching children that it’s ok to hurt people.

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Escapees from the land of the pure

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Life is tough in Pakistan if you don’t two the religious line (or at least hide the lack of toeing). Though in this case the victims escaped, hurray for them!


Asmaa Azeem is 22, Fatima is 16. They are sisters from Pakistan, seeking asylum in Sri Lanka. Their parents are religious fundamentalists and the girls want out. They want an end to the abuse, they want an end to the old religious order and they want a life of freedom; freedom of thought, freedom of expression and more importantly, freedom of religion. The girls are atheists, and proud ones.

The girl’s family are the obvious scoundrels and scum here, and it’s interesting how scoundrels and scum are always connected to the upper levels of the Pakistan govt:


They say their uncle is extremely influential in Pakistan and has many contacts with top officials and the Ministry of Interior.

And


Why did the ‘society’ she was brought up in, choose to turn a blind eye and even deny issues and incidents that took place right in its face? (She describes the sexual molestation a cousin went through at the hands of an uncle)  Why did women have no fundamental rights in her country? Why, why and more why?

The uncle probably went on to molest more of his nieces and nephews and achieved a high post in Pakistani society… and while the Pakistan embassy in Colombo is probably figuring out ways to extradite the girls back to Pakistan, real criminals roam free.

Times have really changed in this country. The media’s latest love affair with Raymond Davis has really stirred up enough people against anyone who’s different, that tourism is dead. A white face on the streets is just asking to be lynched. A lot of foreigners have asked me over the years whether it’s safe to travel across Pakistan, and I’ve always said yes, but with caveats which kept getting bigger over the years into what has become an absolute no.

It doesn’t really matter what the masses think – the majority might be flower hugging hippies all wanting peace, but the number of people wanting to kill others is large, and the number supporting these killers even larger – browsing through Pakistani TV a lot of the media shows support killing anyone who’se different – and considering people watch them, it’s one indication that their ideas have a following.

Update: Reddit post and discussion

Stephen Cohen on Pakistan’s Road to Disintegration, 2011 edition

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A depressing read on Pakistan, including state failure, growing insecurity, govt failure and the increasing reliance on China:

“The fundamentals of the state are either failing or questionable, and this applies to both the idea of Pakistan, the ideology of the state, the purpose of the state, and also to the coherence of the state itself,” Cohen says. “I wouldn’t predict a comprehensive failure soon, but clearly that’s the direction in which Pakistan is moving.” On a recent trip, he was struck by the growing sense of insecurity in Pakistan, even within the military, and the growing importance of China.

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Send your ads to Awab, the happy new year edition

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My friend Awab is running a free advertisment campaign to highlight stuff needing highlighting, so here’s my pitch for all the issues hiding in obscure dark corners all over Pakistan, and much deserving of recognition:


How about an ad for all those lonely groups of brigadiers and colonels toiling away in obscurity hatching plan after plan, I mean only the lucky few like Benazir’s plotters end up on the front page of the Tribune, I’m sure the rest could do with publicity too!

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Other countries just like Pakistan, but with extra oil

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Russia steps up to the plate, but being somewhat more literate it’s descent into a mafia state is done way much better than Pakistan’s ongoing slide…

Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a “virtual mafia state”, according to leaked secret diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile rival superpower.

Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus: the cables paint a bleak picture of a political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300bn a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of the government and organised crime.


Instead of Cyprus, read Dubai and London, and of course, there is no way 300 billion dollars of bribery exchanges hands – even the biggest briber of them all only admits to about 5-6 billion dollars a year, so adding up all the rest we’re probably looking at a figure well south of a 100 billion dollars.

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Playing Ostrich with the Taliban

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The more I read about the western world’s adventure in Afghanistan and Pakistan, bombing villages here and there to bits and occupying a country, the more surreal it gets. The latest news is a doozy – the taliban leader the US have been negotiating with for a peace deal turns out to be a fake – an enterprising Pakistani or Afghani out to make a quick buck for himself. Full props to the guy… as to the US Army and what not, no suprise they got fooled yet again:

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement. But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all.

This guy strung around NATO for over a year! The suprising, and very interesting thing about the US involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan is that they get every single thing wrong, over and over again.

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The effect of Colonial rule in India

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A paper on the effect of colonial rule in India, comparing areas ruled directly by the British against the indirectly ruled ones:

This paper compares economic outcomes across areas in India which were under di- rect British colonial rule with areas which were under indirect colonial rule. Controlling for selective annexation using a specific policy rule, I find that areas which experienced direct rule have significantly lower levels of access to schools, health centers and roads in the post-colonial period. I find evidence that the quality of governance in the colonial period has a significant persistent effect on post-colonial outcomes.

A recent book on Colonial India had pointed out that the gdp per capita for the average Indian fell by over 50% during the colonial period, which also suggests that Colonial rule was not quite peaches and cream for the toiling masses. Of course, the Mughal era before colonial rule wasn’t particularly better. The Mughal’s spent their empire building huge tombs and palaces, and the British did practically the same, except on an island far away with their Indian wealth. Continue reading →

No Ayaz and other morons, civil society isn’t going to take a rest

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A lot of stuff written in Pakistan english newspapers is written in a language which is not exactly english, so here’s my translation into simple english of Ayaz Amir’s latest, in which he first accuses people clamoring for a change for the better for being powerless fools than asks than to stop speaking as the government, courts and army can’t function faced with all that noise. Onwards to the ill-logic which passes for opinion pieces these days:

The lawyers’ movement fostered many illusions, none more powerful than the myth that there was something called civil society in Pakistan, good people out to do good and inspired by the best of intentions. Retired bureaucrats, professors of academia in search of a cause, society girls and begums, and frustrated politicians – a politician who fails to get elected or who has nowhere to get elected from is a study in frustration – became the standard bearers of civil society.

Ayaz here says that tis no civil society in Pakistan, and only self serving washed up has-beens try to achieve any good. The cynical worldview and lack of ethics is disgusting – Ayaz says here that all of the many people involved in Pakistani society who tried to make a difference either didn’t exist and throws a bucketful of scorn on them anyways.

At the end of the day, whoever fights for a good cause, in whatever fashion, is more worthy than people like like Ayaz who make fun of them.

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Illiteracy meets high finance

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In Shikarpur today, the govt handed out prepaid visa cards to ppl who don’t understand them in places where they can’t spend them.

Yes, really. They gave them out. Riots ensued. UBL regional chief clutched his head in despair. Some interesting numbers jumped up out of the whole affair, though not the numbers the card holders wanted:

Number of ppl who managed to get money out: Zero.

Number of shops or anything for that matter in a 45km district accepting cards, or even having telephone lines to connect card machines to: Zero

(46km to the nearest store accepting visa cards in Sukkur. It’s a seperate issue that their machine doesn’t work and they sell chocolates and pastries, not atta.)

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Fatima Bhutto: Songs of Blood and Swords

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I gave this book a huge margin for the fact that it’s not a work of history, as the author states right in the beginning, rather it’s her attempt to make sense of and come to terms with her own family history. So the following is my attempt to be less critical and hold the book to a different benchmark than my norm…

The book conveniently cherry picks a bunch of facts, true though some are, made up as others might be, to present a lopsided and sometimes made up view of history. The book is about Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his family, but switches over to dry facts and lots of omissions when convenient – in this case, Zulfi’s large role in instigating and supporting the civil war in East Pakistan, and his sheer meglomania throughout in not willing to accept a party which had won more seats and more votes than his own.

There is much history written about this era, some good, many bad, and having read much of it the gloss and spin in this spin makes for painful reading.

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