The solution for Balochistan

The ‘supreme authority’ in Pakistan appears less enthralled to implement the repeated orders of the Supreme Court regarding the atrocious situation in Balochistan. After 71 hearings and countless interim orders by the Court, the situation in ill-fated Balochistan is at a standstill. Human rights violations are at an all-time high, extrajudicial killings by proxy death squads are on the rise, criminal elements are on the go to abduct civilians for ransom and corruption has surpassed all known records.

Since the high profile hearing on September 27, 2012, where Mr Akhtar Mengal presented his six-point roadmap for peace and stability, 109 innocent civilians and political activists have been killed along with four journalists.

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THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

To ensure civilian control over its military, the American Constitution specifies that the president, and not a general or an admiral, is commander-in-chief of the armed forces.  As Clausewitz brilliantly observed nearly two centuries ago, war is an admixture of policy with other means. Thus, successful use of military force must be subordinate to the broader political context.  That means to succeed as commander-in-chief, presidential understanding of what objectives strategy can and, perhaps more importantly, cannot achieve is crucial as well as holding subordinates accountable as well as responsible for carrying out that strategy.

That is not always the case. Undue deference to political expediency and political correctness and the temptation of seeking overly simplistic or unrealistic strategic objectives are further guarantees for disaster. And holding generals and admirals responsible for executing a military strategy without making them accountable is also a prescription for failure.

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Indo-Pak nuclear arms race

The possibility of a nuclear war between Pakistan and India grows every day.  If the Pakistanis do not bring under control the terrorist groups in the country and resolve the conflicts with India, it is not a matter of if it will happen, but when.

There have been few achievements to celebrate in the sixty-five year history of Pakistan and that has made the success of the nuclear program central to the national identity.  This is especially true for the military that receives a quarter of the budget and is the only strong national institution.

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Volunteer for Pakistan

A common factor among all socially and politically developed countries is the presence of a strong civil society. A civil society is composed of the totality of voluntary civic and social organizations and institutions that form the basis of a function. This encompasses a wide array of tasks and roles and simply denotes strong people-to-people contact. A common form of civil society organization in Pakistan would be the committee system, where residents in a colony, members of an association, traders, union members, etc form casual groups to start a savings structure for themselves. The committee system is indicative of social trust and faith people have in each other, and a society that is bound by ties of mutual trust and understanding is a strong unified society.

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Israel, Hamas agree to ceasefire in Gaza

A ceasefire has gone into effect in and around the Gaza Strip, after Israel and Hamas agreed to cease hostilities.

Many Palestinians in Gaza City took to the streets to celebrate the truce on Wednesday night, blasting car horns and setting off fireworks from rooftops amid celebratory gunfire.

The Egyptian foreign minister announced the ceasefire agreement hours before it took hold at 19:00 GMT on Wednesday.

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FIXING THE FLAWS IN THE PIVOT TO ASIA

President Barack Obama is underscoring the administration’s “strategic pivot” to Asia with his current trip to the Pacific.  This column has criticized this pivot and the botched public diplomacy campaign that managed to irritate friends, allies and, of course, China.  The Pentagon attempted to minimize the PR damage renaming the pivot “rebalancing.” But so far the obvious and potentially fatal flaws in this pivot with its emphasis on military and not diplomatic, economic and political tools remain uncorrected.

Meanwhile, the most dangerous and visible ticking time bombs lie in North Africa, the Middle East, Iran and the Afghan-Pakistani border where conflict is ongoing and could too easily explode.  Tensions in the South and East China seas over territorial claims involving several states are unlikely to escalate to war.  While China is increasing its defense spending and its military capability, virtually all of its neighbors are not friends or allies and possess (or could possess) counter-balancing forces, including India’s large and nuclear equipped army.

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Tacstrat Analysis: The Invisible War

According to one of the more hard line analysts a fourth generation war—4GW—has been declared on Pakistan. The dots he connects to make the mosaic are—the insurgency in FATA, the lawlessness and violence in Baluchistan and Karachi, the insidious propaganda to defame and defang the military and intelligence institutions, the rapid economic decline and the overall destabilization created by bomb blasts, kidnappings, extortion rackets and high profile robberies. He traces the origin of this situation to the convergence in US, Indian and Afghan interests and those within the country who wittingly or unwittingly have become their collaborators or willing tools. He does not mince his words when he says that the states’ response capacity has been overwhelmed and the only way out is for a national emergency to be declared and the military asked to clean up the mess and restore stability. Failing this, he thinks the military has to step in to save the country. Failing either of these the country will fall apart.

A softer voiced analyst thinks the overall situation is so complex that all the problems have become interconnected and intertwined so the option of tackling each situation separately and sequentially is no longer there. Any operation in North Waziristan would lead to orchestrated violent reprisals in the urban areas possibly with the Baluchistan and Karachi situations spiraling out of control. He traces the origin of this mess to political inaction and, not just mis-governance but a total absence of governance in areas where it is most needed. That others are exploiting our internal vulnerability goes without saying because foreign policy is the first victim of internal divides and weaknesses that shape the image of a failed or failing country.

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Defeating disabilities

A staggered gait. A protruding limb. A twisted gaze. A crooked smile.

Do these features make you uncomfortable? Make you feel the need to look for alternative topics of discussion?  Then you are one of the thousands Pakistanis who treat people with special needs with a discriminatory attitude.

Disabled people are mostly treated with pity or contempt. In the first case, the sympathy, even if well intended, only makes the disabled more conscious of his/her disability. Disabled people have frequently expressed their anger about how their disability is used to define their character and personality. Non-disabled people are likely to believe the disabled to be oppressed, lonely and disadvantaged. In reality there are people like Abia who are great leaders striving for a better world.

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Chinese ‘Thunder Fire’ helicopter to rival US ‘Apache’

China has unveiled a new attack helicopter as it seeks to rival similar aircraft made by the United States and Russia, state media said.

A unit of China Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC) showed off the WZ-10, or “Thunder Fire”, for the first time in public at the country’s premier airshow in the southern city of Zhuhai, the China Daily newspaper said.

China is displaying a range of military hardware, including a new drone and a model of a next-generation fighter plane at the show, as it builds up its own defence capabilities and seeks customers for its products.

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Taliban soldiers freed by Pakistan

Pakistani officials on Wednesday said they had released some Taliban prisoners to support Afghanistan’s reconciliation efforts.

The “positive gesture” came amid meetings between Kabul’s peace negotiator Salaluddin Rabbani and Pakistani authorities in Islamabad.

“A group of Afghan Taliban has been released and they are accessible to anyone who wants to contact them,” a Foreign Ministry official privy to the talks said.

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Welcome to the nascent world of E-Commerce

From the creation of an online shopping facility in 1979 by Michael Aldrich, to estimated sales worth $226 billion, an increase of 12 percent over 2011, through ecommerce and online retail sales in the US alone, the world of ecommerce and online shopping has changed the concept and experience of shopping for good.

E-tailing or ‘virtual storefronts’ on web sites with online catalogs, sometimes gathered into a ‘virtual mall’, are capable of providing exhaustive variety in consumer goods, apparel, electronic products and just about anything that can be bought and/or sold. By-passing the need for major fixed and overhead costs, online markets cover millions of miles and markets worldwide, to provide consumers with anything they want, anywhere in the world, as long as they are willing to pay for it. From Malossol Caviar from Iran, to cut diamonds from South Africa, online retailing has revolutionized the way the consumer views the marketplace.

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The Army Chief’s Address

‘When a country looks at its fighting forces it is looking in a mirror, if the mirror is a true one, the face it sees will be its own.’

---General Sir John Hackett

The Pakistan Army Chief addressed the officers in General Headquarters on November 5, 2012. The press release giving the highlights of his talk has led to media frenzy with anchors, analysts and commentators falling over each other to give their own understanding of what the Chief said, why he said it and what he actually meant when he said it. If ever there was any doubt as to where the center of gravity lay this reaction has removed it.

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US 2012: It does matter if its Black or White

Waking up to Obama’s projected victory after he had crossed the 270 electoral vote mark was a relief. No. Actually it gave me that adrenaline rush I needed to get my day started. 6 billion dollars have been spent in the past 4 years on both the candidates’ campaigns combined. And we land pretty much where we started. While back home many insist American Presidential election remains irrelevant, I beg to differ.

Both candidates might primarily only disagree on domestic policy issues. Recently, given my obsession with online quizzes and politics, the perfect treat was this interactive on Aljazeera (one of my all time favorite news sources by the way) which had a list of hypothetical situations with ‘agree’ to ‘disagree’ bars for each. The surprising thing was that my level of favorability increased or decreased (to different extents though) for each candidate on the foreign policy concerns. But by the end of it Obama suited my preferences more (sure I did not answer the domestic policy concerns).  Even that however is not the point.

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Being responsible drivers

How many of us can say that they haven’t been involved in a road accident? Hardly anyone. Even worse, how many of us have been involved in multiple road accidents? Surprisingly, many of us.

With a rising population and new credit schemes, road traffic has swollen phenomenally. However it has not been accompanied with a corresponding rise in safety measures. According to latest statistics, 45,000 people are injured and 20,000 people die from road accidents annually in Pakistan. It is common to see underage drivers driving precariously in the plying traffic of the cities’ busiest districts. Of those who do happen to carry a license, most have by-passed the legal method of acquiring one with the help of contacts.

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Drones and America’s third war

Nov. 3 marks the tenth anniversary of America's Third War -- the campaign of targeted killings in non-battlefield settings that has been a defining feature of post-9/11 American military policy as much as the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Unlike other wars, there won't be any ceremonies at the White House or Pentagon, parades down Main Streets, or town square rallies to acknowledge the sacrifices made by the countless civilian and military personnel involved. There won't even be a presidential statement since targeted killings cannot and will not be recognized by the U.S. government. The war is conducted by both the CIA -- covert and totally unacknowledged -- and by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) -- described without any specificity as "direct action" by the White House. Whether the CIA or JSOC is the lead executive agency, the Third War is marked by the limited transparency and accountability of U.S. officials.

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Spearhead Special Report – Balochistan: Oscillating in a Chasm

As the ‘Balochistan conflict’ earns the title of Pakistan’s other war, humanitarian attention flocks in the direction of Pakistan’s biggest and least populated province. Local and international media highlight the injustice taking place at the hands of the centre, the army and the agencies and in return Pakistanis have developed an apologetic attitude towards their Baloch brethren.

While emotion may dictate popular movements, it is crucial to question the validity of the tall claims made by the apologists, and also to be critical of the presence of agencies. Baloch history, economic evolution, the forced accession to Pakistan, and political standing build the right context to address questions that have been avoided for too long.

“Balochistan: Oscillating in a Chasm” is divided in 4 parts:

1. Historical and Geographical context, Ethnic composition.
2. Accession to Pakistan, political party formation.
3. Balochistan today.
4. Questions that need to be addressed.

Download Complete Report: Balochistan: Oscillating in a Chasm