A Shaky Dialogue

Dawn 29 July 2011, Opinion
By: Cyril Almeida 


IT looked good, it sounded good — and in the fraught world of Pak-India relations, that was probably good enough, for now.
The young Pakistani princess outshone her dapper Indian counterpart; the media was agog; and the outside world looked on approvingly. So are the constituencies for peace in India and Pakistan back with a bang? Not quite.
What this week has been about is atmospherics and optics. Make the environment in which talks are conducted more congenial and make all the noises necessary to reassure the other side of interest in talks — without ceding anything meaningful on any front.
Improving atmospherics and optics is nothing to scoff at when you’re talking about a six-decade-old problem to rival any other on the global stage. But Pakistan and India have been down this road many times before. It is reasonable to ask, will this time be any different?
On the Indian side, the peace constituency appears to have been bolstered by at least four things. The Indian PM and his national security adviser are still keen on better ties with Pakistan. The US is pushing for an improvement in Pak-India relations because of the potential regional dividends.
India has realised that the post-Mumbai attempt to diplomatically isolate Pakistan was a bad idea because the rest of the world doesn’t see Pakistan through an Indian lens. And India wants to see the Mumbai perpetrators brought to justice, something unlikely to ever occur if India disengages Pakistan.
But the first real public test for the peace constituency in India will come when it has to push domestically for a deal on some of the mid-level stuff, a deal on Sir Creek perhaps or more

The imperative for peace: By Khalid Aziz

Khalid Aziz writes about the role of Pakistan in terrorism and questioning the basic premises of participation in the war and to what length, and discusses many important associated issues. 

POOR nations that fight long wars quickly become insolvent. Pakistan is on the verge. In his haste to obtain international support for his unconstitutional rule, Gen Musharraf pawned away Pakistan’s future for mere dimes.

After 10 years of fighting, Pakistan’s ability to finance its ways and means has evaporated. As the war continues, more money is needed but is not available.

Now is the time to change the paradigm and save ourselves from insolvency. Pakistan cannot afford to fight a war, which is a frightfully expensive and aimless exercise. Yet to end the war, other means based on peace-building have to be adopted.

The good news is that such a formula already exists for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata in the form of the Post-Crisis Need Assessment (PCNA) that is a multi-donor funded, Pakistan-led effort driven by the administrations of the two regions. More about that in a bit; first, let us dissect the financial difficulties facing the country.

The size of our national budget for 2011-12 is Rs2,767bn. This is 14.2 per cent higher than that of the previous year. As a result of the suspension of the $11.3bn IMF bailout programme, the government will be left with less than $526m (Rs46bn) in net external financing up to June 30, 2012. Th

Pakistan's patchy fight against Islamist violence sows confusion: by Myra MacDonald in Reuters

By Myra MacDonald

MINGORA, Pakistan | Fri Jul 8, 2011 6:50am EDT; Reuters
(Reuters) - At the rehabilitation center for former militants in Pakistan's Swat valley, the psychiatrist speaks for the young man sitting opposite him in silence. "It was terrible. He was unable to escape. The fear is so strong. Still the fear is so strong."

(A man takes a nap next to a poster of Osama bin Laden at the Chauburji monument in Lahore May 13, 2011. The message written on the posters read: "The prayer absentia for martyr of Islamic nation is a duty and a debt"/Mani Rana)

Hundreds of miles away in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, a retired army officer recalls another young man who attacked him while he prayed - his "absolutely expressionless face" as he crouched down robot-like to reload his gun.

Both youths had been sucked into an increasingly fierce campaign of gun and bomb attacks by Islamist militants on military and civilian targets across Pakistan.

But there the similarity stops.

One is now being "de-radicalized" in the rehabilitation center in Swat, the northern region which only two years ago was overrun by the Pakistani Taliban and has since been cleared after a massive military operation.

He will be taught that Islam does not permit violence against the state and that