For anyone who harbours the delusion of there being some ‘good Taliban’ as opposed to the bad ones who wage war against the US, India and the rest, the video footage showing a 17-year-old girl being flogged for walking out of her home with a male companion who is not her husband in the Swat region in northwest Pakistan is a reality check, a rude reminder of an ugly reality. We do know that the Taliban can be cruelly regressive and do not like the idea of any freedoms, especially for women. But to see on television, a woman being held down and beaten brings this horror home to us. When they are not unleashing terror and violence against the world, the Taliban are doing so against their own people.
Certain sections of Pakistan, including the media, are not only scandalised, but they are willing to stand up against the atrocity and demand that Pakistan government do something to put a stop to it. The fact that a private television channel, Geo, chose to telecast the footage is a declaration that the saner elements in society are not in consonance with a callous political establishment which is not averse to doing nefarious political deals with sections of the Taliban. This is the only positive aspect of this incident which evokes nothing but revulsion.
The international community, including the US, will have to take the unambiguous stand that fanatical elements cannot be given a free run in the name of religion. So, whatever the political compulsions of Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai to reconcile with the ‘moderate’ Taliban, he needs to be warned that it will be unacceptable if people under Taliban jurisdiction will be subjected to inhuman treatment as witnessed in the video from Swat. Karzai government’s own decision to accept ‘marital rape’ as legitimate — another gesture of mollifying conservative Taliban sentiment — means giving in to extremist pressures which nullifies all attempts to introduce democracy and a measure of human rights into Afghanistan.
There is no room for the argument that the western type of liberalism is not suited to the people in south Asia. We live in an inter-connected world and cannot remain passive spectators to savage social rites like flogging and marital rape. These acts are enough to ostracise such countries from the comity of nations. Trying to pander to them for short-term gains is nothing but living in a fool’s paradise.

Worrying prospects for Pakistan

NN Sachitanand

Pakistan may be back from the brink but it is far from being out of the woods. A chilling reminder of that came last Monday (March 30) when a group of terrorists laid siege to a police training centre near Lahore and killed over 30 people.
But growing terrorism and insurgency are not the only problems bedevilling Pakistan. Its economy is in shambles. By the end of last year, inflation was at 25 per cent, gross Forex reserves had run down to just $3.5 billion, equivalent to four weeks of import value and fiscal deficit was higher than 7 per cent of the GDP. The GDPgrowth rate last year was about 2 per cent which means a flat per capita GDP growth, since population growth rate is now running at around 2 per cent a year. But for a $7.6 billion emergency loan sanctioned by the IMF last November, Pakistan would have become insolvent.
Exports have come down drastically due to global recession and remittances from Pak workers in the Middle East, which form a large chunk of the country’s Forex earnings, are set to dive as the immigrant workforce in that region is being subjected to large layoffs following the collapse of the real estate boom.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia has been a steadfast and munificent Sugar Daddy to Pakistan, although its money has been channelled more to the Wahabi theology pushing madrassas. Ironically, these have created the insurgent minds which are posing a threat to the integrity of Pakistan. However, thanks to the recent tanking of crude prices, even the House of Saud cannot afford to throw money at Pakistan.
US president Obama’s recently announced largesse of $1.5 billion per year for the next five years (with strings attached, as is typical of US aid) may stave off immediate disaster. The problem is that to extricate itself out of the present economic morass, Pakistan needs a stable and strong government. Unfortunately, as recent events have shown, this may be a fond hope.
Ironically, when the subcontinent was politically divided into two sovereign countries back in 1947, all the desiderata favoured Pakistan emerging as the stronger nation as it did not have the multiplicity of fault lines that India had.
So, why has Pakistan gone down the tube? One reason was that Pakistan was politically orphaned in its infancy. Jinnah died of illness in 1948 itself while his successor and close colleague in the Muslim League, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in 1951. With no political leaders of national stature, the ensuing decade was chaotic with seven different prime ministers and eight different cabinets following each other in quick succession. The disillusioned public lost faith in democracy and Ayub Khan’s military take over in 1958 was the first of many subsequent military dictatorships.
Pakistan’s present plight is also because it has allowed itself to be manipulated as a pawn by the US since the Cold War years — first by joining US-sponsored organisations to ring the USSR, then providing hit men (jihadis) to oust the Soviet-backed regime from Afghanistan. And now it is providing foot soldiers for the American hunt for the al Qaeda.
Again, Pakistan’s obsession with Kashmir, which started in 1947 itself, has so dominated its psyche that all other matters of state, such as education, commerce, industry, health and so on have been left unattended. It has even led that country to sponsor terrorist organisations like the LeT, which were supposed to harass India but have now turned on their own masters.
Recent actions by its civil society in boldly coming together to oust a military dictator (Musharraf) and humble a civilian despot (Zardari), seem to offer hope. But it could also be a false dawn. Youth dominates the population mix of Pakistan (37 per cent is under 15). But if these youngsters are constantly fed a Hate India diet they will only end up as recruits for the jihad factories and Pakistan is likely to slide further down the abyss of anarchy.

but Nazia bittiya ki baat bhi ghaur talab hai !!!!!