Dawn: Lying liars and the lies they tell By Cyril Almeida

By: Cyril Almeida

If the US is the 800-pound gorilla that stamps on itself, Pakistan is like a python which thinks it’s crushing its prey but is really asphyxiating itself.

For a couple of days after Mullen’s Haqqanis-are-a-veritable-arm-of-the-ISI allegation last week, it looked like the Americans had finally achieved the improbable: synchronising their tough talk against Pakistan.

In the wake of the Kabul embassy attack, it even made sense why the improbable had materialised: a psychological red line had been crossed by the Afghan militants and the US needed to snarl and snap until the war settled back into a low-level attritional framework.

But the improbable — getting a diverse American foreign and military policy cohort to speak as one, especially when it comes to Pakistan — is actually more like the impossible. Within days, the ‘full-court press’ has started to look like the bench press of a 99-pound weakling.

Mullen didn’t really mean what he said, the Americans began to suggest, the evidence is more like intelligence, it doesn’t really go that far. Yes, the mood is very emotional in DC and in Pakistan, but there’s still work to be done so let’s focus on that, they’ve been saying.

It’s not quite kiss-and-make-up, more an awkward one-armed hug.

The relationship will continue, intelligence cooperation over the capture of yet another Al Qaeda No 3 will be interspersed with spasmodic events like WikiLeaks, Raymond Davis, the OBL raid and the Mullen allegations.

Pressure will mount, pressure will subside, there’ll be paroxysms at times of unhappiness, circumspection at times of measured success and the ungainly and clumsy contraption that is the American policymaking apparatus will continue to make life for itself even more difficult when it comes to Pakistan.

As for the Pakistani side, expect more of the same, i.e. the same

Terror, tradition and good taste

By Irfan Hussain: OpEd Dawn News

THE suicide bomber who murdered Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the Afghan High Peace Council, concealed an explosive in his turban. This is not the first time the traditional head gear has been used to hide a bomb.

Similarly, terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan have carried weapons under burkas that they have used to slaughter innocent people. They were safe in the knowledge that they would not be stopped and searched by male security staff in deeply conservative societies. And, of course, it would be an insult to ask a Pakhtun to take off his turban.

These attitudes and traditions present formidable security challenges. We all remember how Maulana Abdul Aziz tried to escape arrest during the Lal Masjid episode by donning a burka. In India, robbers wore this all-concealing garb to hide their guns in a daring hold-up in a jewellery shop.

Security forces have been unable to come up with an answer to this troubling problem. There simply are not enough policewomen available to search every burka-clad woman in public places, and it would be anathema for male cops to demand that burkas be removed. So lives will continue to be lost at the altar of tradition.

In Europe, the burka and the niqab have become the focus of another kind of scrutiny. The French law barring these garments from public spaces has been hugely controversial. Widely supported by the majority, it has nevertheless divided opinion among feminists and liberals.

In a long recent article in the Guardian exploring the impact of the law, Angelique Chrisafis spoke to a number of women who continue to wear the full-face veil, despite the legal and social problems it poses. One of them, Hind Ahmas, said that on one occasion, she was attacked by a man and a woman on the street who told her “to go back to Afghanistan”. She was also punched in front of her three-year old daughter. The journalist quotes Ahmas about how the law has changed her life.

“In my head, I have to prepare for war every time

Arundhati Roy: 'The Press Decides Which Revolutions To Report'

The celebrated dissenter on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, mass uprisings in the Arab world, the Anna Hazare movement, her old comrades-in arm like Medha Patkar and Prashant Bhushan, Maoism, writing and much else.

Arundhati Roy

Rajesh Joshi: The 10th anniversary of September the 11th attacks on the US is upon us. What do you think has changed in the world, or hasn’t changed, in these years?

Arundhati Roy: Plenty has changed. The numbers of wars that are being fought has been expanded and the rhetoric that allows those wars —that are essentially a battle for resources —is now disguised in the rhetoric of the war on terror, and has become more acceptable in some ways and yet more transparent in other ways.

Perhaps the most dangerous thing that has happened is that increasingly we are seeing that these wars can’t be won. They can be initiated. But they can’t be won. Like the war in Vietnam was not won. The war in Iraq has not been won. The war in Afghanistan has not been won. The war on Libya will not be won. There is this initial pattern where you claim victory and then these occupation forces get mired in a kind of slow war of attrition. That’s also partially responsible for the global economy slowly coming apart.

The other difficulty is that the more the weapons of conventional warfare become nuclear —and all this kind of air bombing and so on —the more it becomes clear to people who are fighting occupations that you can’t win a conventional war. So, ironically the accumulation of conventional weaponry is leading to different kinds of terrorism and suicide bombings and a sort of desperate resort to extremely violent resistances. Violent, ideologically as well, because you have to really motivate people to want to go and blow themselves up. So, [it's a ] very, very dangerous time.

You have been very critical of the war on terror, especially the US policy. Would you have preferred a Saddam Hussain or a Taliban regime in Afghanistan?

Well, it does look as if the Taliban regime is going to return in Afghanistan in some form or shape. And

Kashgar Must Not Mar Ties

Pakistan China Relationships are strongly bonded and must not be allowed to mar: Mushahid Hussain, Chairman Pakistan China Institute writes on the subject

By Mushahid Hussain, Chairman Pakistan China Institute

The recent events in the ancient Chinese city of Kashgar and their possible fallout need to be examined in three broad contexts: China’s concerns, Pakistan’s track record in combating anti-China terrorists and extremists, and the emerging ‘Great Game’ in a region in which the strategically located, mineral-rich province of Xinjiang is a geopolitical centre of gravity.

Xinjiang, bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics, has 17 per cent of China’s land mass producing roughly 40 per cent of its oil, coal and gas. The province’s economic underdevelopment has been reinforced by a cultural chasm between the Muslim Uighurs of Turkic origin and the Han Chinese population. Xinjiang saw the first signs of organised armed groups emerging soon after the end of the Afghan jihad in 1990. The biggest outbreak of violence was in July 2009 when rioting in the provincial capital, Urumqi, led to over 200 deaths and some 1,700 were injured.

Following the Urumqi riots, in May 2010, the Chinese central government announced the launching of a major modernisation and development plan for Xinjiang, with plans to pump in almost $100bn over a five-year period, with its centrepiece being the Special Economic Zone for Kashgar (similar to the one in Shenzhen, close to Hong Kong) to link the province economically closer to Pakistan and the seven other neighbouring countries that border Xinjiang. The Chinese initiative for Xinjiang also has two interrelated objectives: development and stability.

After the recent violence in Kashgar, local authorities referred to a leader of this terror group having been trained in Pakistan, a claim echoed in the semi-official English-language China Daily

One Province Leads To Many

By Asha'ar Rehman: Dawn Op-ed August 9, 2011

THE wish has been expressed, the slogans raised. The people have set off on the road to a new province, which will take some travelling and entail quite a lot of discomfort, not to speak of the pain of those who must view this as a parting.

All historical tours of Pakistan must begin in India. Indian examples abound in all our discussions. It is no surprise then that the new province debate is in part sustained by how the Indians divided their provinces. They divided them in the wake of Partition, chastened by Partition. It was in a way logical for the people of India to demarcate the boundaries when a partition had just happened.

The movements for division — or as it were, a coming together of small British-period states — on a linguistic basis was strong even in the early 1950s, and following the creation of a Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh just six years after Partition, a number of new states emerged on the Indian map in 1956. The principles set and constitutional cover given, it later led to the creation of more states. Pakistan, meanwhile, decided to go its own way in nation-building.

Religion was a given, and it used Urdu, in the name of unity of the people who lived in its five provinces. East Pakistan was told by none other than the Quaid himself that Urdu

Hina Rabbani Khar Offers Hope to Pakistan

Shehrbano Taseer writes in Guardian UK

Indian foreign minister, SM Krishna, and his Pakistan counterpart, Hina Rabbani Khar, arrive for talks in New Delhi, India.

As soon as Hina Rabbani Khar touched down in New Delhi last week to meet SM Krishna, her Indian counterpart, #HRK and #Birkin – her initials and the name of her handbag – began trending worldwide on Twitter.

Across the border, reactions to Khar – who, at 34, is Pakistan's youngest foreign minister – were surprising. The Indian media gushed ("First they sent bombs, now they send bombshells"), while Pakistan's was less enamoured ("Does this expensively dressed minister represent a country which is under hefty debt?"). But Khar – Hermes purse, Roberto Cavalli sunglasses and all – very much represents Pakistan. And especially Pakistani political culture.

The rich-poor disconnect in Pakistan is increasing. A 2010 study estimated that 32% of Pakistan's 180 million population subsists below the poverty line. According to the Human Development Index, 60.3% live on under $2 a day. Wealth distribution in Pakistan is highly uneven and the richest pay little in taxes; Khar only paid Rs8,000 (less than £60) in taxes last year. So her ability to accessorise while millions in her country are homeless jobless and malnourished is hardly surprising. It is indicative of the gulf between the haves

The land between KRH and HRK (Hina Rabbani Khar)

By : Asha' Rehman
The Indian audiences have been treated to many Pakistani images between Hina Rabbani Khar (already considered worthy of the ‘HRK’ acronym) and Raj Kapoor’s Khush Rang Heena (KRH). I wouldn’t say that they represent two opposite sides of Pakistan. Only to my mind they do signify two opposing Indian approaches to locating the lost Pakistani cousin.
Pakistani perceptions of India are hard to change. Two years after I made my last trip to India, many Pakistanis I meet still wonder if I am speaking the truth when I tell them about the ready friends I found myself surrounded by across the Wagha.

Between Raj Kapoor’s Khush Rang Hina and Hina Rabbani Khar, my Indian friends have essentially been busy in showing off parts of Pakistan that sell to the Indian market - AP Photo

I can see that some of these Pakistanis find it hard to believe how a Pundit who wore a pleasant smile and sported Jeetendra-white patent shoes could take us on a trip through my grandfather’s village. The Pakistanis are perplexed – should I say a wee bit disappointed? – that I never ran into the standard notorious enemy in India. And yes they are amused and patriotically pleased when I relate to them how my little son’s inborn prejudice for the Pakistani flag gave his grownup minders a few anxious moments during that trip.
Since we live in Lahore and away from the flag-infested life in a Kati Pahari or Lyari or an Azizabad, the only flags my younger son, now 5, is familiar with happens to be the national flag of Pakistan. To his uncluttered mind that is the only flag that exists in the world, the result being that over time he has developed this little habit of greeting all flags with the chant of “Pakistan zindabad”.
Pakistan zindabad — This is precisely how he reacted at one instance in India, his inspiration a few flags fluttering atop a Hindu mandir.  Back home, there have been occasions where I as a proud father have been made to feel as if, short of installing the Pakistani flag on Laal Qila in Dilli,

IMP: US, Pakistan heading towards confrontation over N-arms issues

WASHINGTON: The United States and Pakistan are heading towards yet another confrontation, perhaps consequentially more devastating than all previous disputes, as the Obama administration prepares to persuade Islamabad to halt the production of nuclear bomb materials.
Recent reports in the US media suggest that the UN General Assembly in New York next month will be the venue for this new push and the US has the blessings of four declared nuclear powers for its move.
Also on Wednesday, the NBC News channel reported that the US was preparing for “the worst-case scenario of attempting to snatch Pakistan`s 100-plus nuclear weapons if it feared they were about to fall into the wrong hands”.
The channel quoted former president Pervez Musharraf as warning that this “would be a disastrous miscalculation, as such an incursion would lead to `total confrontation` between the United States and Pakistan”.
Current and former US officials, however, told NBC News that “ensuring the security of Pakistan`s nuclear weapons has long been a high national security priority, even before the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, and that plans have been drawn up for dealing with worst-case scenarios in Pakistan”.
But the expected confrontation in New York has nothing to do with any secret plan to snatch Pakistan`s nukes. The United States will launch an open move with support from other powers to force Pakistan to sign the Fissile Material Cutoff
Treaty.
The US media reported that the Obama administration had won China`s support for finalising the FMCT. At a recent conference in Paris, Russia, France and Britain all declared nuclear powers like China – also supported the US plan.
It is, however, not clear if China would back the move to cap Pakistan`s nuclear capability and thus allow India to become the sole nuclear power in South Asia.
The US and its allies are seeking an agreement by September and then go to the UN General Assembly with a joint plan for starting talks on the

Pakistan And The FMCT By Ikram Sehgal

On December 16, 1993, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for the “negotiations of ‘a non-discriminatory, multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”. Since then, negotiations for the fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) continue to be stalled on various issues.
The US contributed to the stalemate by refusing to accept international mechanisms for verification and insisting that National Technical Means (NTMs) were adequate to ensure compliance. The Obama Administration broke the impasse last year by its pledge to support international verification.
Fundamental differences between the 65 members of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) on the purpose and scope of the FMCT have failed to evolve its final draft. Every member has the right of veto, countries have the right to halt negotiations; if the national interests of any member country is targeted the next stage is not possible. Many members question whether it would be a measure of nuclear non-proliferation or would it address the

'Hina Charms Indian Papers'

New Delhi: A flurry of flattering headlines yesterday greeted Pakistan's 34-year-old first woman foreign minister.

Hina Rabbani Khar, the news and youngest, 34 years old, Pakistani Foreign Minister, with her 79 years old Indian counterpart SM Krishna 

Hina Rabbani Khar's picture adorned the front pages of most Indian newspapers.

‘Pak Puts On Its Best Face', said The Times of India, the biggest-selling English-language daily, while mass circulation Hindi newspaper Navbharat Times said India was 'sweating over the model-like minister'.

 

‘Pak bomb lands in India', joked the Mumbai Mirror.

The Mail Today tabloid devoted space to Khar's choice of outfit and her fashion sense.

'Tasteful accessories — Roberto Cavalli sunglasses, oversized Hermes Birkin bag and classic pearl jewellery — added a hint of glamour to her look,' it said.

The Telegraph drew comparisons between Khar and her 79-year-old counterpart S.M. Krishna.

'In the unkind world of adjectives, the odds are stacked against SMK and in favour of HRK,' it said, using the ministers' initials. 'Khar carries with ease descriptions such as ‘stunning' and ‘petite'.'

India's style mavens estimate that her accessories alone -- a pearl necklace, Birkin bag and Cavalli sunglasses among them -- probably cost her upwards of $30,000,