Posts Tagged USA

Pak Usa Relation

By Raza Rumi :

Six months ago, an extraordinary news report was published by Dawn, which recounted the contents of a military briefing given to journalists on November 30, 2010. A top Pakistani military official stated that Pakistan “has transited from the ‘most sanctioned ally’ to the ‘most bullied ally’” of the US. Essentially an off-the-record briefing, the contents were leaked to the public wherein the army leadership declared that the US had a “transactional” relationship with Pakistan. That the US was “interested in perpetuating a state of ‘controlled chaos’ in Pakistan”; and the “real aim of US strategy is to denuclearise Pakistan.”
Paranoia about the US runs deep into the Pakistani psyche now. Other than the reticent generals, it is the vocal media men who have now made anti-Americanism an article of faith of Pakistani patriotism. (more…)

As if Pakistan’s domestic woes were not troubling, the unravelling of the US strategy and its implications are eluding even the best of strategists. Mind you, Pakistan is a place every third person is a ‘strategy’ expert and the term ‘strategic’, thanks to the militarisation of the Pakistani mind, is an ever-popular reference. The ideological domination of Pakistan’s discourse is a palpable reality. This is why, across the political spectrum one finds a sense of victory over the failure of US strategy in Afghanistan. This failure is interpreted as the validation of Pakistan’s ‘genuine’ and ‘legitimate’ interest in Afghanistan.

What has worried me most in recent weeks is the capitulation of the liberal-secular chatterati to this pop-discourse of military war games. One is not surprised when former generals and the hawkish hordes of former Foreign Office mandarins express their jubilation. But when supposedly rational and progressive experts pontificate about how ‘we’ have made ‘them’ fail, it is simply shocking. (more…)

Ironic that the United States has been perhaps the most pro-active and generous country in helping us with flood relief. Pakistanis, especially those were stranded for days are grateful for such a timely help. Contrary to the propaganda unleashed by several vested interests about how great friends China and the Muslim countries are, the US has proved to be our friend when we needed it the most. Yet, there will be many among the skeptics who would term this as ‘strategic’ given the state of things in dear homeland and in its neighbourhood. It is time that we acknowledge what needs to be acknowledged with no ifs and buts. Here is a fact sheet sent to Pak Tea House through reliable sources on the assistance so far. About time the self-styled US haters (rather entrenched in the country) take notice of this. US may have its own interests in stabilizing Pakistan, their response has been (and remains) substantive.

To date, the United States is providing approximately $150 million to support relief efforts in Pakistan, including funding for the operations of the Pakistan National Disaster Management Authority, the UN’s (more…)

The Australian picked up my story from Express-Tribune and republished it with minor edits.

It was good to see this link

My new oped for Express-Tribune

The Wikileaks’ damning half-truths pertain to the anti-war movement within the US. This has caused embarrassment to the US war architects and stirred the military industrial complex and its cousin, the corporate and embedded media. Similarly, what has been said about the role of Pakistan and its globally famed Inter Services Agency (ISI) is not something that is really a revelation and is more or less an open secret. Three important questions need to be considered before Wikileaks can be taken seriously.

Do field reports from individual sources, especially disgruntled, anti-Pakistan Afghan nationals constitute ‘evidence’? No. Is there sufficient evidence to substantiate the startling sensational pieces of information? Perhaps not. Is the Pakistan-ISI role central in the Taliban insurgency within Afghanistan? No clear answers can be determined due to the complexity of the Taliban resistance and the involvement of multiple players. (more…)

My new piece published by The Friday Times

While the gurus of security and international affairs continue to unpack and make sense of the high-profile and much-hyped strategic dialogue , the people of Pakistan continue to ask questions about its direct relevance to their lives. If increased US investment in the energy sector and other poverty alleviation programmes would be outcomes of this exercise, perhaps there may be some hope for an ordinary Pakistani. However, it appears that the process of dialogue has harped on familiar tunes, adding to the sound and fury that defines Pak-US relations.

If anything, the re-emergence of the Pakistan Army’s ascendancy over national affairs has been a direct result of the much touted “strategic” dialogue. The Pakistan Army and its leadership have already taken over the foreign policy and recent developments suggest that their command and control over domestic policies of public interest remains as entrenched as ever. Whether this pertains to the meeting of top bureaucrats presided over by the Chief of the Army Staff, or the capitulation of the civilian government before the obsessively India-centric policy of our military-bureaucratic establishment, we are sure about who is calling the shots in the Land of the Pure. (more…)

NPR has featured Asha Bhosle (12,000 songs and the greatest of Bollywood divas) and her fabulous voice – this is what the text has to say (full article here and recording at Los Angeles on Ashaji’s 75th birthday)

Asha sang naughty songs, and she had somewhat of a naughty personality, and she had a personal life that also had some naughtiness in it — the fact that she had run away from home and divorces and marriage and all of that.”

Bhosle made the vamp her specialty, and “Dum Maro Dum” is one of her most famous songs in that persona. It was written by composer R.D. Burman, who not only worked extensively with Asha Bhosle, but also married her. Burman took advantage of Bhosle’s vocal versatility and created songs for her that brought Western musical influences to Bollywood — combining, say, congas with tablas, or finding some of the grooviest psychedelic rock sounds. If anything cemented her reputation as a bad girl or turned people on, it was this song, writer Lavanya Shah says. (more…)

Muslimness is an elusive state of being. There are watertight strictures of the theological identity defined by men, interpreted as the Sharia, on the one hand; and the broad political and cultural sense of the self, on the other. Identity, in any case, is a messy affair: shifty, shifting and eventually, imagined. While 9/11 placed Muslims at the centre stage of global politics, the broth had already been simmering in the cauldrons of biased academe and pop reality mirrored through the blood-thirsty lens of corporate media.

So what is it to be a Muslim? An inflexible bag of rituals? Or a cultural sense of belonging or a deeper dogma ingrained in young minds? I have never considered myself anything but a believer, a ‘practicing Muslim’. This has never been at variance with my secular and inclusive pretensions, despite the fact that the clergy in my country considers secularism akin to atheism, a sort of mirror image of the Pakistani political foundation. The clerics translate secular as la-deen , at best irreligious, and at worst, godless.

Ironical that this business of religious identity is articulated in a land that was the crucible of the secular Indus Valley civilization, non-militant Buddhism and a peculiar version of South Asian Islam that spread via the Sufi khanqahs and was a sort of amalgam of the Central Asian with the ancient South Asian. Even more ironical is the reality, neglected and veiled, that lived Islam is located around dargahs , tribal codes and customs which are irreligious in their own way. But who cares? Referred to as the world’s most dangerous country, Pakistan, according to the pundits of global opinion, is a haven for Islamic terrorists. Collateral damage, therefore, is kosher and a necessity to undo the unstated part of the ‘axis of evil’.

Labels and more labels. On the global shelves such products sell well and work in favour of a war machine hungry for energy resources, territory and blood. (more…)

We did it again. A hallmark of Hillary Clinton’s visit to Pakistan was her meeting with the stars of the Pakistani media – the all-knowing anchors who have taken it upon themselves to be the “representatives” of Pakistan. Forget the President elected by all the legislatures, the Prime Minister who enjoys the confidence of the National Assembly, and even the Foreign Minister, who at the end of the day was elected from a constituency with a huge majority and nominated by the ruling party.

Such constitutional niceties are of little value. What we witnessed with a motley group of top anchors was a repeat of their daily performance on the idiot box, and the discourse with America’s second most powerful politician was familiar and disappointing. A senior journalist based in Lahore remarked that even the young students at the Government College University came up with better questions than the exchanges aired on television.

Who are we? Muslim, South Asian, Arab? No clear answer, because we are ten different things at the same time, and while the rest of the world is comfortable with multiple identities, Punjab’s urban middle classes crave a singular Islamic identity but want it with all the world’s frills. This is why we cheer the blowing up of the World Trade Centre and at the same want to live in New York. This is why the Islamo-fascist hate-America crowd is at ease with their progeny studying in the United States (more…)

 Raza Rumi laments the tragedies of our times, and says that the state cannot be absolved of its responsibility to protect citizens against terrorism   (The Friday Times)

Lahore has finally been encircled by the layers and tremors of violence. If the events of March 2009 were not enough, there is now a concerted effort to create panic in the city. In the past few weeks, girls’ schools have been threatened that they would face the music for educating girls and promoting co-education. How can children and their middle-class urban parents survive these gruelling times? (pic left:Pir Baba’s shrine is now closed to visitors )

(more…)

By Raza Rumi

The triumph of a popular movement on March 16 has marked a new beginning. The retreat of an intransigent government and the wise response by the PML-N and the lawyers averted a major crisis that could have been violent, and also a potential recipe for harming the parliamentary system in its infancy. There was a sigh of relief among the public for a long-standing issue appeared to have been resolved. This has been a monumental achievement by all standards.

However, the inherent imbalances within Pakistan’s power structure and the state of its polity are yet to be addressed and the contradictions of how our power is exercised stared us as the good news rolled out through the ubiquitous TV channels and their zealous presenters. The way quintessentially political issues and turf-wars between the PPP and PML-N were battled and resolved through a stage-managed process only concealed the bitter power-realities of Pakistan. (more…)

I am completely under the spell of this fabulous piece of writing, brutally honest and eminently sensible.

essay: terror in mumbai

9 Is Not 11

(And November isn’t September)

ARUNDHATI ROY

We ‘ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching “India’s 9/11″. And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the ‘Bad Guys’ he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on ‘terrorist camps’ in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.

But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions. (more…)

I was introduced to Mahvish Khan’s daring work by Irfan. Her close work at the infamous Guantanamo Bay is remarkable for the insights and reversal of the dehumanisation that was until recently sanctioned by the state and corporate media.. An excerpt from her promising books – MY GUANTÁNAMO DIARY: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me - is avaialble at her website. I am also posting a little introduction after the excerpt:

“Who exactly has America detained all these years at Guantanamo? The Worst of the Worst? Or the Wretched of the Earth?” From My Guantanamo Diary

It’s easy to mistreat something called No. 1154. It’s easy to shave its beard, to kick it around like an object, to spit on it, torture it, or make it cry. It’s harder to dole out such abuse when No. 1154 retains its identity: Dr. Ali Shah Mousovi, a pediatrician who fled the Taliban, worked for the United Nations encouraging Afghans to participate and vote in the new democracy. It’s harder to hate No. 1154 when you realize that he’s more like you than he is different. His wife, an economist by profession, waits month after month, year after year for the news that her husband is coming home; his two sons and young daughter grow up without him.

The numbers denied the humanity of those assigned to them:….

It’s easy to skim over the numbers. And there are hundreds like them.”

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan is an American lawyer, born to immigrant Pashtun parents in Michigan. While persuing a law degree at the University of Miami, she became enraged by the illegal detainment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Having grown up listening to her mother tell her “Now is not the time to be complacent,” Khan felt compelled to help any way she could. With her fluency in Pashto and a familiarity with Afghan cultures and customs that no other “habeas” lawyer with security clearance had, she was quickly taken on as an interpreter for Afghan detainees. Six months later, in January 2006, Khan was on her way to Guantanamo Bay. Her role with the detainees quickly developed. She began providing supervised legal counsel and traveled to Afghanistan to find exonerating evidence for prisoners. (more…)