Amidst of  all the fuss over USA involvement in Pakistani affairs and the presence of their security agencies in Pakistan we see denials from Pakistani officials for any such presence and interference but still people are not satisfied with government lies.

Below is an article written by Jeremy Scahill of The Nation on the issue of Blackwater presence in Pakistan.

————————————————————————————————————————
Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan
By Jeremy Scahill

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

Click here to read the whole article

Zardari seems to be reaching new levels of desperation. Yesterday, he tried to ban Dr Shahid Masood’s program “Meray Mutabiq” by stopping it’s transmission from Dubai (though it still made the airwaves).

Another sign of his desperation is that he seems to have dug out the old picture of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and buried the picture of Benazir Bhutto — do excuse the pun.

Here are a few pictures from earlier:

And here is one from their meeting yesterday:

Additional Reading:
Rule by Thieves
PPP covering up Musharraf crimes
Government stops NAB from presenting annual report
NAB says lists are ok, as per files
If NRO ministers go, the president has to follow
Bhagwandas declines FPSC job
(If I recall, Justice Bhagwandas was looking into the oil companies scam and gave his report against which no action has yet been taken)
Poor getting poorer
Missing persons still untraced, AG informs Supreme Court

By: PKKH

When waging war “by way of deception,” the motto of Israel’s Mossad, well-timed crises play a critical agenda-setting role by displacing facts with what a target population can be deceived to believe. Thus the force-multiplier effect, when staged crises are reinforced with pre-staged intelligence. In combination, the two often prove persuasive.

Such agent provocateur operations typically include collateral incidents as pre-staging for the intended main event. Ongoing incidents suggest a follow-on operation is underway. Recent history suggests we’ll see an orgy of evidence that plausibly indicts a pre-staged Evil Doer. Though Iran is an obvious candidate, Pakistan is also a possibility where outside forces have been destabilising this nuclear Islamic nation with a series of violent incidents. Will it be coincidence if the next war—like the last—is consistent with the expansive goals of Jewish nationalists?

December 2007 saw the murder of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Mark Siegel, her Ashkenazem biographer and lobbyist, had assured US diplomats that her return was “the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact.” President Pervez Musharraf had announced that resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict was essential to the resolution of conflicts in Iraq and neighbouring Afghanistan. That comment made him a target for Tel Aviv. During Bhutto’s two terms as prime minister, Pakistani support for the Taleban — then celebrated as the Mujahideen — enabled her to wield influence in Afghanistan while also catalysing conflicts in Kashmir. By fuelling tension with India, she also fuelled an Indo-Israel alliance as Tel Aviv provided New Delhi with an emergency shipment of artillery shells during a conflict over the Kirpal region of Kashmir.

In January 2009, Israel delivered to India the first of three Phalcon Airborne Warning & Control Systems (AWACS) shifting the balance of conventional weapons in the region. That sale confirmed what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier announced: “Our ties with India don’t have any limitation….” That became apparent in April when Israel signed a $1.1 billion agreement to provide India an advanced tactical air defense system developed by Raytheon, a US 
defense contractor.

In August 2008, Ashkenazem General David Kezerashvili returned to Georgia from Tel Aviv to lead an assault on separatists in South Ossetia with the support of Israeli arms and training. That crisis ignited Cold War tensions between the US and Russia, key members of the Quartet (along with the EU and the UN) pledged to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Little was said about the Israeli interest in a pipeline across Georgia meant to move Caspian oil through Turkey and on

Bhutto’s murder ensured a crisis that replaced Musharraf with Asif Ali Zardari, her corrupt husband. By Washington’s alliance with Zardari, the US could be portrayed as extending its corrupting influence in the region. On August 7, 2008, Zadari-led ruling coalition called for a no-confidence vote in Parliament against Musharraf just as he was departing for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. On August 8, heavy fighting erupted overnight in South Ossetia. As with many of the recent incidents in Pakistan, this violent event involved armed separatists. But for pro-Israeli influence inside the US government, would our State Department have installed in office the corrupt Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, leading to record-level poppy production? Is the heroin epidemic presently eroding Russian society traceable to Israel’s infamous game theory war-planners?

In late November 2008, a terrorist attack in Mumbai, India’s financial centre, renewed fears of nuclear tensions between India and Pakistan. When the attackers struck a hostel managed by Chabad Lubavitch, an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect from New York, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced from Tel Aviv: “Our world is under attack.” By early December, Israeli journalists urged that we “fortify the security of Jewish institutions worldwide.”

Pakistani cooperation with “Islamic extremists” created the impression of enhanced insecurity and vulnerability for the US and its allies. That perceived threat was marketed by mainstream media as proof of the perils of
 “militant Islam.”

With the Taleban and Al-Qaeda portrayed as operating freely in a nuclear-armed Islamic state, Tel Aviv gained traction for its claim that a nuclear Tehran posed an “existential threat” to the Jewish state. Meanwhile Israel’s election of an ultra-nationalist/ultra-orthodox coalition further delayed resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

More delay is destined to evoke more extremism and gain more traction for those marketing the “global war on terrorism.” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni argued after the assault in Mumbai: “Israel, India and the rest of the free world are positioned in the forefront of the battle against terrorists 
and extremism.”

In announcing that list, Islamabad was indicted by its exclusion even though Pakistan is dominantly Sunni and, unlike Iran’s Shia, abhors theocratic rule. The fact patterns suggest that Pakistan, not India, was the target of the murderous terrorism in Mumbai. Not surprisingly, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent mission to Islamabad was a diplomatic disaster. Abrasive and arrogant, America’s top diplomat reinforced Pakistani concerns that it is surrounded by hostile forces and that the nation is being set up to fail by Jewish nationalist advisers to a nation it considered an ally. In a climate of heightened tensions, Clinton undermined US interests, boosted the Israeli case for a global war on “Islamo-fascism” and lent credence to the Clash of Civilisations.

As Afghanistan and Pakistan join other nations being destabilised by outside forces, key questions must be answered:

· Was India’s 9-11 a form of geopolitical misdirection meant to serve both the tactical goals of Muslim extremists and the strategic goals of Jewish nationalists? Who benefits — within Pakistan — from humiliation at the hands of India and the US?

· With Bhutto’s murder and Musharraf’s departure, the crisis in Mumbai drew Pakistani forces to the Indian border and away from the western tribal region. Was that the geostrategic goal of these well-timed crises? What role, if any, did Israel play?

· Is delay in ending the occupation of Palestine part of an agent provocateur strategy? Was the latest assault on Gaza part of this strategy?

Each of these crises incrementally advanced the expansionist agenda of the Zionists. Do these collateral incidents trace their origin to a common source? Is that source again using serial events to pre-stage a main event?

The public has an intuitive grasp of the source of this oft-recurring behaviour. An October 2003 poll of 7,500 respondents in member nations of the European Union found that Israel was considered the greatest threat to world peace. Is terrorism limited to “Islamo-fascists”? Are mass murders also deployed as a strategy of geopolitical manipulation by those who philosopher Hannah Arendt described as 
“Jewish fascists”?

Khaleej Times

Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership 
Solution. See www.criminalstate.com

This week French President Sarkozy called for a ban to be placed on Muslim women who choose to express their faith by observing hijab and donning a burkha.  The French have been the most vocal and active in the arena of attacking religious freedom.  In 2004 they outlawed the use of headscarves, Sikh turbans, large Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps in their state schools.  The French defend their law which is designed to strictly adhere to their ideas of separation of church and state, but French liberalism is coming dangerously close to ending religious freedom.  Even worse it seems to be spreading to other parts of Europe.  Italy, Turkey, three Belgian towns and seven of Germany’s 16 states have banned headscarves.  While speaking in Cairo President Obama said it clearly, “it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.” Members of the French Parliament, from both the left and right called the burkha an “oppressive dress that breaches individual freedoms”.

Individual freedoms?  According to whom?  There are many in the world who would consider Western women oppressed because they feel compelled to don a style of dress that is made to entice and attract men.  Indeed, upon hearing the new French policy the spokesman for the Muslim Council of Great Britain said, “Unfortunately, there is a pressure on women to dress skimpily in the West.”  I agree.

Perhaps the burkha could provide greater freedom than a skimpy bikini ever could.  It can be said that the burkha is a tyrannical and repressive piece of clothing forced on the women who wear it, but the same could be said of a bikini. Both the burkha and the bikini are worn to indulge the whims of men in the society they represent.  The burkha is worn to mask and conceal that which belongs or could belong to the men, and the bikini is worn to expose and display the same.  Both articles of clothing find their impetus in their effort to control and subjugate women.

Women long to adopt a carefree and liberating expression in their choice of clothing.  There are few women that can wear a bikini and feel comfortable in it.  Even supermodels lament because they feel their thighs or behinds are more ample than they should be.  Donning a large black covering in the morning could provide a liberation few Western women have experienced.  To arrive at work, school, or social occasion without first applying makeup, dressing the hair, and fussing over clothing would be a dream come true!

One need only to read the comments and remarks made about Hilary Clinton’s appearance to long for this type of freedom.  During her run for the democratic presidential nomination, what Mrs. Clinton said was never as important, as how she was dressed when she said it.  The criticism made about Mrs. Clinton’s hair, makeup, body type, and clothing took precedence over what she was saying.  Her legs were compared to tree trunks, her clothes called frumpy, and her hair and makeup was the topic of many water cooler gatherings.  In the same vein, such discussions did not take place about Benazir Bhutto or Indira Gandhi when they were Prime Ministers of their countries.  The political pundits debated their political agendas and viewpoints, not their choice of clothing or makeup.  Perhaps this was because the males in their countries were conditioned to view respectable women in a non-sexual way, and therefore these women were taken more seriously than Hilary Clinton.

Men will be unable to view women as equal—as long as women continue to exercise their right to seduce men, and therefore objectify themselves.  If women will dress in a manner that does not engage a man’s libido and instead engages his mind, they will be able to experience true freedom and liberation.  Both women and men should be disturbed by this fact: the American voting public is unable to elect a woman even as a vice-president.  While India, in 1966 and Pakistan, in 1988—countries thought by the West to have little equality for women, had already elected women as Prime Ministers!

Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Quaid Altaf Husain has advised President Asif Ali Zardari to quit as President.

KARACHI: The chief of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Altaf Hussain has decided to oppose NRO in the Parliament and advice President Asif Ali Zardari to quit as president.

The senior analyst of Geo News Dr.Shahid Masood said the top leadership of MQM had conveyed the message to President Zardari through Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr. Baber Awan to give sacrifice along with accomplices and face courts.
Talking to Dr. Shahd Masood, MQM leader Altaf Hussain said told the government that NRO is a black law and it should not be presented in the assembly but government had ignored the suggestion and presented it in the parliament. The MQM coordination committee will announce the decision from MQM.

Talking to Dunya News senior analyst Haroon Rashid said that NRO had no future. “NRO is nowhere. Government is already weak and it shouldn’t increase its problems by brining NRO into the parliament,” Haroon opined.
NRO was issued by the former president of Pakistan General (R) Pervez Musharraf on October 5, 2007. It granted amnesty to politicians, political workers and bureaucrats who were accused of corruption, embezzlement, money-laundering, murder and terrorism between 1st January 1986 and October 12th 1999, the time between two Martial Laws.
The NRO states: “Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in sub-section(1), the Federal Government or a Provincial Government may, before the judgment is pronounced by a trial court, withdraw from the prosecution of any person including an absconding accused who is found to be falsely involved for political reasons or through political victimization in any case initiated between 1st day of January, 1986 to 12th day of October, 1999 and upon such withdrawal clause (a) and clause (b) of sub-section (1) shall apply.”
The current Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, suspended this ordinance on October 12, 2007. But he was soon dismissed after Musharraf abrogated the constitution on November 3, 2007. The new Chief Justice, Abdul Hameed Dogar revived the NRO on February 27, 2008.

This is ridiculous and unacceptable for any sensible Pakistani?

I think Jinnah is the founder of Pakistan not any Bhutto.

Can someone  tell this  to PPPP “leadership”?

It’s a real shame that in front of the whole world PPPP leadership is showing that they have forgotten the founder of the nation and the country has become a family and political party affair.

PM Gillani in press conference with Turkish PM Erdogan -->Where is Jinnah and What Benazir Bhutto is doing in the background?

Host of the program “Awam Ki Awaz” on CNBC visits city courts in Karachi to see the improvements made by the much vaunted (by “civil society” and the “honorable lawyers”) Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

I guess it was a fair trade to give away Musharraf and 2 years of Pakistan, and get Iftikhar Chaudhry in return ?

To see normally “harami” lawyers portrayed as great saviours of “civil society” by Geo and AAJ TV.

Whoever thought up THAT script ? Could it be someone who was not familiar with the realities of Pakistani lawyers ?

Geo and AAJ happen to run programs made by foreign government agencies (Voice of America – VOA) and run them so they are indistinguishable from their own programming. Which media channel would tolerate that kind of brand dilution – especially in Pakistan where airing a U.S. propaganda channel would not exactly be a commercially profitable move.

How much are Geo and ARY “overpaid” for their services ?

In the same way that the USIS overpaid for printing material at the Jamaat-e-Islami printing presses in the 1960s – as a way to clandestinely (and “legally”) fund them ?

This video has lawyers fighting with the reporter instead of accepting realities (so that they can prepare themselves to fix them).

One lawyer lies by saying he has never seen a policeman take a bribe. The reporter says she has seen it already in her short trip to the city courts.

This is the result when lawyers refuse to condemn their own. Why ? Because they have a “lawyer’s biradari” (a term they seem to be quite proud of).

Which explains why a complaint against Iftikhar Chaudhry was not examined by the Supreme Judicial Council but was squelched by his colleagues on the Supreme Court. What was so damaging in the accusations against Iftikhar Chaudhry that they did not want to bring it up to scrutiny ? What were the reasons for refusing to look at the accusations ?

The Pakistani public still does not know if there ever was an analysis done of the accusations against Iftikhar Chaudhry – were they correct or were they incorrect ?

The public is split between people who could see what was happening, party workers (each supporting their own), and the rest were non-thinkers. Asma Shirazi on Geo TV is one of those. At least Hamid Mir knows why he hates Musharraf or why he wants to make it appear that he hates him. Yet it is presenters on TV like Asma Shirazi who cannot control their facial expressions – they are so SURE that the story told by the “media” is the correct one, and anyone supporting Musharraf MUST be mistaken.

Evidently she did not feel any sign of disgust when she glad-handed the many parliamentarians on her former show “Parliament Cafe” on Geo TV. Fine specimens of integrity those.

Asma has now been replaced by an equally naive and perhaps even more jahil lady presenter on Geo TV, who has her own show where she is utterly incapable of asking any incisive question of her guests.

Links:
1/3 Awam Ki Awaz – CNBC Pak – Oct 8, 2009
2/3 Awam Ki Awaz – CNBC Pak – Oct 8, 2009
3/3 Awam Ki Awaz – CNBC Pak – Oct 8, 2009

Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) has been initiated by Government of Pakistan with initial allocation of Rs.34 billion (US $ 425 million approximately) for the year 2008-09 which is the third largest allocation in the total budget and is 0.3% of the GDP for the year 2008-09.
Read the rest of this entry »

Musharraf interview on Frontline with Kamran Shahid on Express News TV – Sept 13, 2009

Kamran Shahid, representing the younger, and possible more urbane (i.e. post-newspaper era) journalists, who has previously conducted reasonably combatitive interviews with other politicians, here tackles Musharraf.

This interview encapsulates nicely the disparate arguments given earlier in the series “Why Musharraf Was Removed” on this youtube channel (and on this blog).

The answer is that Musharraf was considered cooperative but not totally servile.

Servile observance is much more forthcoming from the feudal elements of Pakistan. They are used to that model of behaviour where their slaves are servile, while they themselves are servile to a bigger entity.

From expansion of drone bases to expansion of U.S. “diplomatic mission” to many acres of land right next to centers of power in Islamabad. And the proliferation of Blackwater (or whatever new name it has acquired) presence.

Also some well placed criticism of the “journalists” like Ahmed Rashid, who sit in the U.S. and act like all too keen advisors. They are akin to the native american scouts who helped Europeans to expand into North America to the detriment of their own people.

However even Ahmed Rashid is probably better than some of the wolf-in-sheeps-clothing “journalists” like Hamid Mir and some others, who are not presenters of truth, but presenters of controversy. Thus they did not highlight the real and budding problems for Pakistan ahead of time, and then wind up blaming Musharraf for them – for example the power crisis.

Although the power crisis is exacerbated by the PPP government’s refusal to pay the IPPs (independent power producers), and negotiation of newer power contracts at higher rates (perhaps is a way to strongarm the IPPs to pay “commission” to Zardari), there still was a (albeit smaller) crisis in the making because of all the consumer electronics (ballooning of airconditioners) which ramped up consumption.

Where were the big business interests (once again they demonstrate how big business in Pakistan has not graduated from the “Seth” mentality seeking political favour under one leadership or the other regardless of the overall policy impact for Pakistan), and where were the media in highlight the imminent power crisis.

Also the blind spot in the media to the reality of the “Lawyer’s movement”. Their lack of focus on why the Supreme Judicial Council failed to examine the accusations against Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. The financial backing by Benazir to get better terms in NRO negotiations and after the departure of the PPP “former-Jiyala” lawyers, the resuscitation by Nawaz Sharif to a movement that mustered few lawyers, though it compensated with support from Nawaz Sharif voting base.

Add to this the presence of foreign funding to Geo and AAJ TV in the form of payments for airing VOA programs.

And you have the makings of a perfect storm of media coverage that covers one side of the story, but chooses to keep quiet about the moderating caveats in the story. This “movement” has been likened to the “mass uprising” in Iran against the Mossadegh government by Zaid Hamid (the Brasstacks defence analyst). The anti-Mossadegh movement was a CIA operation to remove a leader who was being seen as constraining for U.S. interest at that time.

Although realistically, in the case of Musharraf, even if there was a need for “regime change” by the U.S. it was probably a combination of getting better terms for drone flights, expansion of U.S. embassy as well as reintroducing the policial figures back into Pakistan.

This was a need probably realized by Musharraf himself – the removal of the political forces (which includes feudal and entrenched forces) had created a vacuum, which rather than being filled by educated youth and new idealistic leaders wound up being filled by the religious forces which were primed (with weapons) following the Afghan wars, Saudi funding (proxy war against Iran) and drug money to crimianl elements in FATA.

The corruption probes had mainly affected PPP and PML-N (and PML-Q some of who had been forgiven for exigency sake). Many cases were instigated by PPP or PML-N themselves against the other – and not Musharraf. The cases had languished in courts and the incompetent (and underpaid) legal system had not handled them well. In the absence of these political forces, the “religious” parties saw great opportunity (as if there can be such a thing in Islam – since what is a “religious” in a state full of muslims ?).

The fallout of 911 and the activated anti-U.S. sentiment did not help either – as the religious parties could make that their banner (even though when the time comes they would kowtow to the U.S. even more). Thus the religious parties used this time to foment domestic dissention at a time of great foreign threat to Pakistan.

On the other hand, it may have been used by Musharraf as well – NOT as media is prone to say to “bolster his own position” – but to argue for why Pakistan ‘could not do more”. Yet few in the media understood or bothered to care for these undercurrents.

Links:
1/5 Musharraf interview – Frontline with Kamran Shahid – Express News TV – Sept 13, 2009
2/5 Musharraf interview – Frontline with Kamran Shahid – Express News TV – Sept 13, 2009
3/5 Musharraf interview – Frontline with Kamran Shahid – Express News TV – Sept 13, 2009
4/5 Musharraf interview – Frontline with Kamran Shahid – Express News TV – Sept 13, 2009
5/5 Musharraf interview – Frontline with Kamran Shahid – Express News TV – Sept 13, 2009

Mohammed Mosaddeq

Dr. Danish interviews Musharraf on ARY TV – September 11, 2009.

Links:
1/6 Musharraf interview – Dr. Danish – ARY TV – Sept 11, 2009
2/6 Musharraf interview – Dr. Danish – ARY TV – Sept 11, 2009
3/6 Musharraf interview – Dr. Danish – ARY TV – Sept 11, 2009
4/6 Musharraf interview – Dr. Danish – ARY TV – Sept 11, 2009
5/6 Musharraf interview – Dr. Danish – ARY TV – Sept 11, 2009
6/6 Musharraf interview – Dr. Danish – ARY TV – Sept 11, 2009

Rumor has it that Mr. Zardari, in league with certain retired Pakistani generals, has launched a new propaganda campaign against the Muslim League (N) leaders. The purpose, it is being said, is to force Mr. Nawaz Sharif to give up on his mission to  ensure that Musharraf is tried, and to draw attention away from the 17th amendment that has, illegally, altered Pakistani parliamentary system in favor of an indirectly elected president. None of this is new. And while Mr. Zardari was married to a great woman of character, we should not expect that he himself possesses the same courage and character as the late Benazir Bhutto did.

So don’t be surprised at the silly adventures of Chicken-heart Zardari; it is absurd to expect courage and forethought from someone who, despite having been married to a great leader, has no respect for the legacy and wishes of his late wife and our leader.

The question that we should be asking Mr. Chicken-heart is simply this: What does the country gain if its democratically elected leaders destroy the character of other popular leaders to save a washed out dictator?

Dr. Danish examines the truth about Kargil with Siddique Al-Farooq (PML-N), Gohar Ayub (PML-Q, and son of Ayub Khan) and Brigadier (R) M. Ali Jawed (Analyst).

Links:
1/3 Truth about Kargil – Dr. Danish – Aug 22, 2009
2/3 Truth about Kargil – Dr. Danish – Aug 22, 2009
3/3 Truth about Kargil – Dr. Danish – Aug 22, 2009

Yasin Malik criticizes those who take domestic politics and take it overseas in other countries. Compares the unity among overseas Hindus who while critical of each other inside India, do not distinguish between themselves when they are overseas and lobby for India.

This seems to catch Imran Khan in his tracks as he is in the middle of a tirade against our leaders and taking it overseas.

This is one of the weaknesses of Imran Khan, that while railing (correctly) against the (usually nonthinking) Pakistanis who start acting like they are Western themselves and take their case to the West, he himself allows himself to succumb to that. Taking the domestic politics of Pakistan and taking it to the U.K. “advising” them about the unsuitability of such and such candidate in Pakistan. All the while being unthinking about the impression this creates in people in Pakistan. The “going to London” to advise outsiders is not much different from the behaviour he has criticized earlier.

While it maybe borne of frustration as local power centers – feudals and others create very little space for someone like Imran Khan in Pakistani (and esp. non-Karachi) politics, but then he makes the mistake of taking his complaints to the U.K. as if they are his masters. In addition he makes the foolish mistake of going against the MQM – which while flawed in some respects – is the closest thing to a middle class oriented party, and which has in recent years taken pains to bring itself out from the cold (mainly thanks to Musharraf who allowed them the space to conduct themselves with honour and legitimacy in Karachi as opposed to the “choron ki tarha” they had to operate when Nawaz Sharif started military operations in Karachi, or Benazir refused to accept them as a major player in Sindhi politics as a challenge to her heriditary feudal-on-the-inside/populist-on-the-outside “jaagir” of politics in Sindh).

Imran Khan has similarly played his cards incorrectly by going with the Tehreek-e-Taliban when it was becoming clear to the public that the Tehreek-e-Taliban were more like a criminal organization than anything remotely religious (let alone Sufi-like, although they did have someone named Sufi Muhammed in their ranks).

Imran Khan has played the pro-FATA and “Jirga system” card for a number of years, and it may have seemed fine prior to Musharraf when the “bay zaabtagian” of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir were for all to see. However what he fails to account for is the bulk of the middle class in Pakistan which fails to have ANY sympathy for the “with you but apart” system of FATA which seems very close to mini-feudalism, which has been responsible for their car thefts and all sorts of illegal activity. In addition the wiser among the population may have started to see just how anachronistic the FATA system is in this day and age and how full of potential problems it has always been – some of which have been glaringly exposed in the inability of the existing system in FATA to demonstrate any type of people power that can rise against criminal elements who take up residence there. This is because this type of activity was prevalent in FATA – i.e. “sanctuary for money” and all sorts of other activity that would be illegal in other parts of Pakistan. So ordinary citizens of Pakistan would naturally ask “what distinguishes FATA to have rights to do illegal activity that are denied to those living in our cities” ?

Imran Khan is standing on the wrong side of the fence, as public opinion increasingly sees the realities emerging as the existing setup faces the stresses which is exposing it’s weaknesses.

Links:
1/2 Yasin Malik (Kashmiri leader) owns Imran Khan
2/2 Yasin Malik (Kashmiri leader) owns Imran Khan

Assessing Imran Khan

Pakistan after Musharraf resignation. Dawn TV interviews some people (though not enough).

Links:
Pakistan after Musharraf – Dawn TV – Aug 18, 2009</a