Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
How so?
Mush is fighting Tribals who are revolting agasint the Army because the Army went after the Foreign Jihadists whom these Tribals are sheltering?
And how did all these foreigners come in our tribal areas and cities? Answer: Army's/ISI friends.
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So again, I don't get your point.
Would any other leader reacted differently?
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The point is army is equally corrupt and incompetent as past "democratic" leaders.
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
And how did all these foreigners come in our tribal areas and cities? Answer: Army's/ISI friends.
So were you against the ISI and Army helping the Afghans during the Soviet occupation or when ISI and Afghans used the Taliban to end the civil war there and protect our trade convoys?
And now that these people are there and have turned against Pakistan, we have to take them on and destroy them.
The point is army is equally corrupt and incompetent as past "democratic" leaders.
That maybe true but do you think that a democratically leader will have the balls to take on the tribals or rather cut deals with them?
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
Not really, its not as bad as they are trying to make it out.... just yet. Unless we have another 5-10 years of Musharraf then yes Pakistan will become more dangerous (compared to what it is now).
You think that these terrorists were not there before 9/11 or that Pakistan was not suffering from terrorism before 9/11?
Maybe that is your thinking but I believe that war against terrorism is not American war, it is actually Pakistani war as Pakistan was suffering from terrorism by these ‘Worrier of Iblis’ (AKA Jihadies) much before American even though of giving them a kick. Only thing that happened after 9/11 is that Pakistan took step to get rid of these Jihadies from Pakistan (Don’t get mistaken that these Jihadis are ‘Jihadies of Allah’, because they are not. They are ‘Jihadies of Shaitan’. They are not fighting for Islam but are fighting for Shaitanism).
Actually Pakistan should have started kicking them much before 9/11, rather should not have encouraged them in 1980s and should have started persecuting them in 1980s when they were at their infancy. Unfortunately Pakistan kept going soft on them until after 9/11, when they became too much to tolerate. Fortunately Pakistan started taking step against them after 9/11 else if they were left for few more years, they would have become worse monster.
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
It will not be long before suicide bombers will try to attack our nuclear installations. While all you people will be fighting over mush's uniform, civil war will come to Pakistan if jihadi menace is not stopped now. Still not too late.
Progressive forces like MQM warned you not to support mujahideen, but we were called traitors and RAW agents. Today, it is the same situation all over again.
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
This discussion and cyclical back and forth is typical and unavoidable and will never change unless you guys are ready to see the real underlying problems.
Army and politicians are only part of the equation. The scholars and schools of islam have spread their tentacles into all walks of like, into all 'institutions'. Ordinary people give money, abode and a platform for this cancer to spread and flourish.
Support of islam is seen as what's happening when soldiers desert, isi kills or when friends are betrayed or when schools in provinces are bombed by pakistan's own.
The machine is busy developing defenses which almost always goes "oh that wasn't really islam or this wasn't what koran said". Less and less people outside are buying this defense.
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
Like India reacted to it. It gave a lip service and became champion on war against terror. Mush should have resigned and handed over power to Interim government for elections during crisis days. A long time ago before 9/11, I had even suggested on this forum that Mush should not stay in power more than 90 days after dethroning illegally NS. He should form a national governemnt, for elections, and be back to his barracks.
BJP offered bases.. Anyway, India is not in the pakistani situation..
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
Progressive 
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
You think that these terrorists were not there before 9/11 or that Pakistan was not suffering from terrorism before 9/11?
Pakistan did have fanatics running amok (Shia vs Sunni), but no suicide bombings. Fanaticism began in 1980s with funding flowing in from Saudi Arabia for parties like SSP.
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Maybe that is your thinking but I believe that war against terrorism is not American war, it is actually Pakistani war as Pakistan was suffering from terrorism by these ‘Worrier of Iblis’ (AKA Jihadies) much before American even though of giving them a kick.
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It is war for both countries i.e. Pak & USA now, but we are the one who supported after US stopped their training/funding.
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Only thing that happened after 9/11 is that Pakistan took step to get rid of these Jihadies from Pakistan (Don’t get mistaken that these Jihadis are ‘Jihadies of Allah’, because they are not. They are ‘Jihadies of Shaitan’. They are not fighting for Islam but are fighting for Shaitanism).
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Once our hero, we turned them into zero or "jihadis for satan", we complain of US being hypocrites and become one ourselves as soon as we suffer the porblems. Pakistan is taking half hearted step to cleansing it out (Hint Lal Masjid).
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
So were you against the ISI and Army helping the Afghans during the Soviet occupation or when ISI and Afghans used the Taliban to end the civil war there and protect our trade convoys?
You reap what you sow, to "make money" with trade convoys we supported people who we can't control now, and now they are only showing us what they did on other side of border for us to get the "trade" going.... happy trading.
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And now that these people are there and have turned against Pakistan, we have to take them on and destroy them.
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Good luck, US is having hard time trying to do the same.
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That maybe true but do you think that a democratically leader will have the balls to take on the tribals or rather cut deals with them?
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Do you think Mushy has balls and is using them? Do you think their use will resut in "good" ?
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
I don't know what the big issue is here. If Pakistan is a dangerous place, people can go elsewhere for their holidays?
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
Yea I read the article too. I was really upset. I actually didn't even get the point of the article. It seemed like an attempt at scaring people. It paints the fiction that all pakistanis, authorities, elected local officials, public, women, men, anyone pakistani had a soft spot for bloog thirsty wahabi types. Its just horrific to read such phony attempts, out in the mainstream. I was really hurt.
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
^ that's partly truE. But when is the last time any good stuff came oit of pakistan? only some economic numbers which people simply dismiss as lies from a dictatorial govt.
Otoh almost every terrorist act has had a source or strong paki link.
What do you expect?
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10430237
The world’s most dangerous place
Jan 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition
Nothing else has worked: it is time for Pakistan to try democracy
THE war against Islamist extremism and the terrorism it spawns is being fought on many fronts. But it may well be in Pakistan that it is won or lost. It is not only that the country’s lawless frontier lands provide a refuge for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and that its jihad academies train suicide-bombers with global reach. Pakistan is also itself the world’s second most populous Muslim nation, with a proud tradition of tolerance and moderation, now under threat from the extremists on its fringes. Until recently, the risk that Pakistan might be prey to Islamic fundamentalism of the sort its Taliban protégés enforced in Afghanistan until 2001 seemed laughable. It is still far-fetched. But after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, twice prime minister, nobody is laughing. This, after all, is a country that now has the bomb Miss Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, craved so passionately as prime minister in the 1970s.
There are many other reasons why the murder of Miss Bhutto (and some 20 other people unlucky enough to be near her) makes Pakistan seem a frightening place (see article). That terrorists could strike in Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistani army, despite having advertised threats against Miss Bhutto, and despite the slaughter of some 150 people in Karachi on the day she returned from exile last October, suggests no one is safe. If, as many in Pakistan believe, the security services were themselves complicit, that is perhaps even scarier. It would make it even harder to deal with the country’s many other fissures: the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims; the ethnic tensions between Punjabis, Sindhis, Pushtuns and “mohajir” immigrants from India; the insurgency in Baluchistan; and the spread of the “Pakistani Taliban” out of the border tribal areas into the heartlands.
In search of statesmen
Miss Bhutto’s murder has left her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the country’s biggest, at risk of disintegration. It is now in the hands of her unpopular widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and her 19-year-old son, Bilawal, who by rights should be punting and partying with his classmates at Oxford, not risking his neck in politics. The election whose campaign killed Miss Bhutto was due on January 8th, but the Election Commission has delayed it by six weeks. The PPP will reap a big sympathy vote. But bereft of Miss Bhutto, the party—and the country—look desperately short of leaders of national stature. Other Bhutto clan-members are already sniping at her successors.
The other big mainstream party, led by her rival Nawaz Sharif, another two-time prime minister, is also in disarray. Both parties have been weakened by their leaders’ exiles, as well as by persecution at the hands of President Pervez Musharraf’s military dictatorship. In truth, both Miss Bhutto and Mr Sharif were lousy prime ministers. But at least they had some semblance of a popular mandate. The systematic debilitation of their parties benefits the army, which has entrenched itself in the economic as well as the political system. But it also helps the Islamist parties—backed, as they are, by an army which has sometimes found them more congenial partners than the more popular mainstream parties. The unpopularity of the Musharraf regime, hostility towards America, and resentment at a war in neighbouring Afghanistan that many in Pakistan see as directed at both Islam and their ethnic-Pushtun kin, have also helped the Islamists.
So, ironically, America’s support for Mr Musharraf, justified as necessary to combat extremism next door, has fostered extremism at home. Similarly, in the 1980s America backed General Zia ul Haq, a dictator and Islamic fundamentalist, as his intelligence services sponsored the mujahideen who eventually toppled the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan. In the process, they helped create what Miss Bhutto called a “Frankenstein’s monster”—of jihadist groups with sympathisers in the army and intelligence services. The clubbable, whisky-quaffing, poodle-cuddling Mr Musharraf is no fundamentalist. But the monster still stalks his security forces.
Two straws to clutch
Yet Pakistan’s plight is not yet hopeless. Two things could still help arrest its slide into anarchy, improbable though both now seem. The first is a credible investigation into Miss Bhutto’s murder and the security-service lapses (or connivance) that allowed it to happen. Mr Musharraf’s willingness to let a couple of British policemen help the inquiry is unlikely to produce this. Every time a bomb goes off in Pakistan, people believe that one of the country’s own spooks lit the fuse. Until there has been a convincing purge of the military-intelligence apparatus, Pakistan will never know true stability.
Second, there could be a fair election. This would expose the weakness of the Islamist parties. In the last general election in 2002, they won just one-tenth of the votes, despite outrageous rigging that favoured them. Even if they fared somewhat better this time, they would still, in the most populous provinces, Sindh and Punjab, be trounced by the mainstream parties. An elected government with popular support would be better placed to work with the moderate, secular, professional tendency in the army to tackle extremism and bring Pakistan’s poor the economic development they need.
Sadly, there seems little hope that the security forces will abandon the habit of a lifetime and allow truly fair elections. The delay in the voting—opposed by both main opposition parties—has been seen as part of its plan to rig the results. The violence that has scarred the country since Miss Bhutto’s assassination may intensify. The army may be tempted to impose another state of emergency; or it may cling on to ensure that the election produces the result it wants—a weak and pliable coalition of the PPP and Mr Musharraf’s loyalists.
For too long, Mr Musharraf has been allowed to pay lip-service to democratic forms, while the United States has winked at his blatant disdain for the substance. The justification has been the pre-eminent importance of “stability” in the world’s most dangerous place. It is time to impress upon him and the generals still propping him up that democracy is not the alternative to stability. It is Pakistan’s only hope.
Re: Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Country in the world
I think it was an excellent article with good solutions, coming from the economist, and should be a thread on its own.