Dil Dance Maare Re

The song "Dil Dance Maare Re" should probably be taken as a lighthearted satire on the Bollywood formula. To Hindi-challenged readers - sorry, it is beyond me to convey the sense of the Hindi-English in the song.

Note: the youtube below is only the audio; you can find glimpses of the accompanying dance by searching on Youtube.

Lyrics (approximate):

White white face dheke dil ma beating fast sasura jaan se maare re
Aare
White white face dheke dil ma beating fast sasura jaan se maare re
Jaan se maare re
Ohhhooo
White white face dheke
Aahh…
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Oh very… oh very…
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re

Very happy in my heart, dil dance maare re
Dil dance maare dance maare
Dil yeh dance maare
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re

Oiye can't stop my feet
Can't stop my feet, jo lamwa kare hai zalim beat
Hai can't stop my feet, jo lamwa kare hai zalim beat
Kadakti heat mein ban ja deet
Nainan se nain mila re
Baath dil kin a chupa re
Oh aaja mujhko tu baata re
Oh very happy… happy… happy
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
Very happy in my heart, dil dance maare re
Dil dance maare dance maare
Dil yeh dance maare re
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re

Hoo rose ki jaisan pink pink, humre gaal gulabi
Sky ke jaisan blue blue hi tohara nain sharabi
Bola chera jaise moon,
Kali zulfe jaisa cloud
Ab na aur chupya jaye, dhadkan ho gayi very loud
(Dhadkan ho gayi very loud) — 2

Hoiiii… tohare dil ka theatre ma aaa….
Tohare dil ka theatre ma
Dil deewana booking advance maare re
Aaaa..
Humre dil ka theatre ma
Dil deewana booking advance maare re
Oh very … oh very…
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
Very happy in my heart, dil dance maare re
Oh Dil dance maare dance maare
Dil yeh dance maare
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re

White white face dheke dil ma beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Aahh…
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Oh very… oh very…
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
Very happy in my heart, dil dance maare re
Dil dance maare dance maare
Dil yeh dance maare
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re….

Strange Omission

In the statement to the UN Security Council by India asking that the UNSC ban the Jamaat-ud-Dawa under UNSC Resolution 1267, what is conspicuous by its absence is any mention of Nariman House, the Chabad House where Rabbi Holtzberg and others were brutally murdered.

This article (h/t R.P.) interprets this fact as the influence of closet Islamists in PM Manmohan Singh's cabinet. The other possibility that occurs to me is that since the 1267 committee "takes all its decisions by consensus" and consists of all 15 members of the Security Council (see the link above), the mention of the explicit targeting of the Chabad House was elided to obtain unanimity - after all, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa was proscribed. Among the current members, which are the permanent five - the US, Russia, UK, France and China - and the temporary ten - Belgium, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia, Indonesia, Italy, Libya, Panama, South Africa and Vietnam - the primary suspects must then be China, Libya and Indonesia.

Pakistan's fairy tales

India Today veteran Dilip Bobb catalogs Pakistani public delusions.

Discombobulated!

Manas Chakravarthy in the Hindustan Times, would be hilarious if it wasn't also so painfully true: (hat-tip BRF)

First of all, they’re very unclear who exactly is a terrorist. Do we mean militants or freedom fighters or jihadis or extremists or those people whom Asif Ali Zardari says are ‘non-State actors’? That’s made even more complicated by the fact that these guys keep changing their names so that the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba becomes the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, or the Harkat-ul-Something becomes the Jaish-e-Something-Entirely-Different.

Besides, they also have Sunni fanatics, al-Qaeda operatives, Taliban militia, all adding to the confusion.

We could argue that all of them need to be put down immediately. Ah, but who’s going to do it? As Zardari has said, they have non-State actors in Pakistan. They also have State actors, non-State non-actors and State non-actors. Zardari is obviously a State non-actor. What they don’t seem to have are those who act on behalf of the State.

But that depends on which State we are talking about. The army, for instance, is a State within a State. The ISI is a State within the Army State within the State of Pakistan. And this ISI State also apparently includes ‘rogue elements’.

To make it easy for you, I have made an illustrative but by no means exhaustive list of the various groups in Pakistan.

Here it is: pro-State, pro-army; pro-State, anti-army; pro-non-State, pro-non-army; pro-State, anti-ISI; pro-army, anti-ISI (this is reportedly an oxymoron); pro-State, pro-army, pro-ISI, anti-rogue elements in the ISI (these are reportedly
morons); pro-generals, anti-retired generals; pro-retired cricketer, anti-retired general etc.

I’m uncertain whether the picture is clear now, but at least you have some idea of how complicated things really are in Pakistan.

What’s more, nobody is quite sure which of these factions runs the country. In short, if you need to hand over a list of demands the first thing to do is make about 500 photocopies and give it to each of those groups.

That’s because very often the State’s left hand has no inkling what its right hand is up to. For instance, when A.Q. Khan exploded that nuclear bomb, the Pakistan government had no idea what he was doing.

Why, even A.Q. Khan says he hadn’t a clue. “I had put my clothes in the washing machine, quite forgetting about the lump of uranium in my trouser pocket and then I went to the market to buy some veggies. Imagine my surprise when, on my way back, I saw this little mushroom cloud over my bungalow,” he told this reporter.

He then went on to explain that the uranium must have reacted with the heavy water in the washing machine (he always uses heavy water for washing, it’s good for stains) and inadvertently produced a nuclear explosion.

The point of this story is to emphasise just how difficult it is for anyone to know who is doing what in Pakistan.

Rumours have also reached me that this muddle about non-State actors and State actors has gone to such lengths that people are no longer pro-Asif Ali Zardari. Instead, some of them are pro-Asif but anti-Zardari, others are pro-Ali but anti-Asif and so on. This can, of course, happen only in Pakistan.

As for Zardari himself, he has now split into three distinct personalities — Asif, Ali and Zardari — so that if you ask him about that list of terrorists he can claim you never gave it to him at all because you handed it to Asif but the guy who’s before you now is Ali.

So if you see the president of Pakistan sitting quietly at his desk, don’t for a moment assume the poor man is lonely and depressed. For all you know, he may be having a wild party with Asif and Ali.

Why NATO is making no headway in Afghanistan

NATO is paying protection money to the Taliban. (via BRF)

The Times has learnt that it is in the outsourcing of convoys that payoffs amounting to millions of pounds, including money from British taxpayers, are given to the Taleban.

If the attacks on NATO convoys in Pakistan continue and if NATO succeeds in opening up the alternate supply routes - safer though longer - through the other end of the Old Silk Route, then this may actually end up weakening the Taliban.

Christmas lights

One of a unsatisfactory set last night, taken at various speeds and apertures, handheld and tripod. One problem - need surgical-like gloves that are also proof against the cold to be able to operate camera controls.

If I get it right, I will post a series on illuminated houses in the neighborhood.



Note: at this small size the problems are not apparent. The challenge is to get a critically sharp noiseless good exposure, including the flashing illumination (on which automatic metering does not work well), in which the lights are captured as tight spots without also capturing the halos they cast on the areas around them. It is how the human eye sees it, as a building decorated with constellations of stars.

Ejaz Haider makes a case for Guantanamo

The intelligence agencies of India and the US may have clear evidence that LeT's Zaki-ur-Rehman Zakhvi led the Mumbai's massacres, but as per Ejaz Haider, if it came to court, a "smart Jewish lawyer" would likely get him acquitted.

Lakhvi is put on trial. He can be sentenced if the decision to do so is political-strategic. But can he be if we just take the legal course? Yes. But what the degree of difficulty would be any trial lawyer can tell us. And if, figuratively speaking — maybe even literally — LeT were to hire a smart Jewish lawyer, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lakhvi walks into a coffee shop in Lahore and orders a cappuccino.....The point really is that the prosecution will have to prove the chain of custody at every level and the integrity of evidence and come up with a case that is perfect. And the Jewish lawyer will poke holes in the case at every stage and try to prove, very likely successfully, that the evidence is manufactured.

So, as per Haider, we should leave Lakhvi alone, and consider instead the context in which the Mumbai massacres occurred.

I guess when faced with exactly this dilemma, G.W. Bush & Co decided that Ejaz Haider's suggestion was not acceptable.

PS: Unless I spell things out I will probably be accused of being a Nazi or some other kind of dehumanizer. This is what Ejaz Haider writes:

What does one do when terrorists are involved and one government is accusing another — or, as in this case, accusing “non-state” actors on another’s territory as having done this?

Take the legal course and one gets trumped. Kill the terrorist and beget more. In any case, a killed terrorist doesn’t help make the case one wants to — against a people or a government.

Moral: difficult though it may be, look at what is causing people to kill and get killed. No one wants to die; and except for psychopaths, no one wants to kill gratuitously. Still, people kill and get killed. The problem is way more complex than we try and make it out to be. Easy categorisation is today’s political Ockham’s Razor and helps us retain and deepen fault-lines and identities. But that is precisely where we tend to go wrong.

Make the terrorist irrelevant and the only way to do that is for the states to contextualise the problem before everyone can live in peace.

What Haider is saying is
- it is futile to prosecute terrorists
- it is futile to kill terrorists

Instead we must "contextualize" the problem of terrorism.

What does that mean? I see only one way to read it - "Unless you do everything to Pakistan's satisfaction, you will continue to be killed by terrorists hosted by Pakistan".

Jammu & Kashmir is supposed to be the context. We've been over this a million times. Starting from the fact that none of the Mumbai perpetrators is from Jammu and Kashmir, to the fact that if liberty is the goal, then Indian J&K is indescribably better off than Pakistan's "Azad Kashmir" and northern areas; that Indian J&K has constitutional government and that Pakistan-held Kashmir does not (even Pakistan does not); that Lord Avebury, once decorated as "Sitara-e-Pakistan" - their highest civilian award - for his support of the Kashmir cause, paid visits to the Kashmiri "freedom fighters" and came away disillusioned that they were not democrats and liberty is not their goal, and has kept his trap shut since; that the original plebiscite had as precondition that Pakistan would vacate its aggression; that while India has kept its J&K off-limits to any immigration from the rest of India, Pakistan has treated its area as a colony, changing irreversably its demographic composition; that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared that the UN Security Council resolutions regarding Kashmir were no longer relevant; and lastly, the so-called grievances of the LeT terrorists and their goals go way beyond J&K - they want to plant the flag of Islam in Delhi's Red Fort, carve out N new Pakistans out of India, and in general suppress the (from their perspective) recently uppity Hindus; to fight against the Yankee-Yehudi-Hindu conspiracies against Islam.**

The Indian point of view is simply - hey Pakistan, learn to accept that 150 million Muslims in India can live in peace and equality in a democratic India, that the pre-Independence vision of the Indian National Congress continues to be basically sound, and leave us alone. We know that that puts the Nazaria-e-Pakistan (the Pakistan ideology) at severe risk in the mind of anyone who can think without cognitive dissonance; but that is not fatal. Pakistan exists, make the best of it that you can.

**PS: India has indeed most shamefully let the Kashmir Valley be ethnically cleansed of Hindus : 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits have been forced out.

Cognitive dissonance

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times (Pakistan) - sorry, no URL, the TFT is behind a subscription firewall.

....the contradictory position adopted by Pakistanis on the issue of “Islamist terrorism” is evidence of guilt in the eyes of the world. For instance, we cannot say that neo-con America carried out the 9/11 attacks in order to create a pretext to attack Iraq and Afghanistan, and also claim in the same breath that “America had it coming” because of its imperialist and unjust policies in the Muslim world. In the case of 9/11, the remarkable thing is that both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri have proudly and publicly “owned” the attack not once but several times even as most Pakistanis fervently insist that they didn’t do it! In the case of India, the incompetence of its police and security services is excuse enough for most Pakistanis to make the contradictory claim that no Pakistani non-state actor was involved because such sophistication and audacity could only have been manufactured internally by the Indian intelligence services in their devious agenda to break up Pakistan.

Most? I don't know if Najam Sethi has taken a poll. But this cognitive dissonance - simultaneous holding of the ideas that America (India) attacked itself as part of a devious plot, and that America (India) was attacked because of its anti-Muslim policies - is a common feature of the Pakistani public discourse.

Even worse than "Pakistan is a failed state" is "Pakistanis are a failed people".

Hamid Gul

Part one of four above. For people who can't follow Urdu, some commentary from Shiv on BRF:

...these videos are not only a great study of Paki piskology [psychology], but they are of good psy ops value to us.

Both this series of videos and the 4 videos of an interview of Samar Mubarakman appear to be TV programs designed to "reassure" the Pakistani public that they cannot be defeated. The problem with the type of exaggeration and hyperbole in those clips is that it will only confuse and anger the Pakistani public to see Pakistan responding to demands from India and the international community.

But that response is making Hamid Gul very angry indeed. Hamid Gul is a very angry man. He believes that Pakistan is not given the "international status" it deserves by India. he is very irritated at the way India speaks of Kashmir as a bilateral issue and it makes him feel that India is treating Pakistan like another state in India.

He feels humiliated and angry at Musharraf's u-turns and dissociates himself from that. But then, even the TV anchor says Musharraf is playing golf in the UK after doing all those things. The TV interviewer asks the right questions but as far as I can recall he was the first to speak the Kashmir word.

Hamid Gul blames Musharraf for the fact that Pakistani soldiers are fighting the forces of Jihad. He almost hopes to see India attacking Pakistan. he say that if India attacks Pakistan, the forces of jihad will fight side by side with the soldiers and Pakistan will become united again. Hamid Gul also says that there are 250,000 ex servicemen in Pakistan who will join a war with India and that he has started exercising again :lol: to get fit to fight. I kid you not, but you have to be masochistic enough to listen to 40 minutes of Hamid Gul.

He gets all dreamy about war with India. He says that if 10 or 12 jihadis can do what they did to Mumbai imagine what 12,000 would be able to do. ("Naani ki yaad aa jayegi")

The TV interviewer asks if Pakistan has ever had occasion to scare any country with verbal threats like India demanded to see the ISI director. Hamid Gul says that "The official secrets act prevents him from talking" :rotfl: When the interviewer persisted he said that he was in charge of the Pakistan 10th army division in 1987 and Rajiv Gandhi panicked because the division had "disappeared" from view for a few days. Hmm- now where have I heard that story before?

Should Pakistan be broken up?

Gul Agha, from Sindh, on whether Pakistan should be broken up, written in 2002.

(I've been reading Gul Agha since USENET days.)

Ayaz Amir

Ayaz Amir was formerly a columnist for The Dawn. He quit when he tried to get elected to the national legislature. Here he is in the Daily Times.

What I get from the essay is that Ayaz Amir finds the jihad too dangerous a strategy for Pakistan and so he calls for its abandonment; not because innocents get killed or because there is something morally suspect about it. Look at his role models:

There is nothing in Pakistan, not even the 'jihadi' organisations like the Lashkar dedicated to vague causes, to compare with the courage and organisation of Hizbollah. And there is no leader in Pakistan, or indeed across the embattled world of Islam – a religion which we disgrace by our incompetence and cowardice – to match Hasan Nasrullah. So with what weapons in our armoury can we stand up to America and India?

It is Pakistan's honor and dignity that is being shredded because its jihadis lack sufficient courage and organization. Islam is disgraced not by the violence of some of its votaries, but by incompetence and cowardice in the pursuit of jihad.

I would like to know if you got the same impression. Maybe my views are colored by many years of reading Ayaz Amir.

Bahaziq

Johann on BRF has provided some information on Indian-born Saudi national and Saudi resident Bahaziq, who is a financier for the LeT. My interest regarding Bahaziq is to see if the anti-terrorism effort extends to Saudi Arabia, or whether, as always, they get a free pass.

I'm copying the information here for future reference.

My request for information was after reading this US Treasury release from May 27, 2008.

Here is a picture of him from the Fall of 1992, taken in Bosnia by a Newsweek journalist who managed to secure an interview at the training camp in Travnik. At that point he didnt reveal his origins in the subcontinent, speaking in Arabic and english.



In hindsight His position as first among equals among mujaheddin commanders in Bosnia was a reflection of the resources that Javed Nasir, the D-G of the ISI put in to the Bosnian jihad at that point.

Interestingly enough, this was at the time of the attacks on Bombay in 1993, and the US threat to put Pakistan on the terrorist state sponsor list unless they got rid of Nasir.

Abdel Azziz is a very important high level liaison between the Arab and Pakistani jihadi movements, which is not surprising given that the LeT are Wahhabis/salafis.

I have a translated interview published in a jihadi magazine from 1994 if anyone is interested

It is *highly* unlikely the Saudis will either try him or extradite him. They havent really handed over anyone to the Americans either. The most they will do as long as there is pressure is shut down his overt fundraising operations, offices and curtail his speaking at gatherings.

PS: The Hindu has this:

Mahmoud Bahaziq is among the most enigmatic figures in the Lashkar command structure. Under circumstances which are unclear, he obtained hard-to-get Saudi Arabian nationality, and has lived in that country for most of his life.According to the USTD, Bahaziq “is credited with being the main financier of the LET and its activities in the 1980s and 1990s.” He “coordinated LET’s fundraising activities with Saudi non-governmental organisations and Saudi businessmen.” Indian investigators had first learned of Bahaziq’s activities in2000, during an investigation into the activities of Mohammad AzamGhauri—one of the co-founders of the Lashkar’s operations in India. Hyderabad resident Ghauri, who was killed by police, is thought tohave received funds from Bahaziq in Mumbai.

Later, in August, 2001, the Hyderabad Police learned that Bahaziq hadfunded Abdul Aziz, who was arrested while attempting to set upjihadist cells in the city. According to police records, Aziz, an electrician, met Bahaziq while working in Saudi Arabia. Aziz served in Bosnia in 1994, and then fought alongside Chechen Islamists in 1996. Bahaziq is believed to have been arrested by Saudi Arabia in 2006, on charges of financing terrorism. There has been no public word, however, on the status of his trial.

A quick trio on the Jamaat

China blocked move to ban Jamaat thrice.

Twice recently, and once in 2006: "Three attempts to ban Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the frontal organisation of the Pakistan-based Terror outfit LeT, in the UN Security Council were blocked by China in the past".

The Jamaat snarls

Some charitable outfit!

Jamaat-ud-Dawa’h, considered to be front organisation for the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, on Wednesday warned India and Pakistan of dire consequences if banned by the Government of Pakistan under international pressure.

In spite of all that, the NYT reports that:

At the United Nations on Wednesday, the Security Council committee dealing with the sanctions list for people or groups linked to terrorism announced seven additions stemming from Mumbai carnage. They are four Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders; Jamaat-ud-Dawa and two banks that handled money for it, Al-Rashid Trust and Al-Akhtar Trust International.

The leaders are Mr. Saeed; Mr. Lakhvi; Muhammad Ashraf, the group’s top financial officer; and Mahmoud Mohamed Ahmed Bahaziq, called the leader of the group in Saudi Arabia and one of its financiers.

It will be instructive to see what Saudi Arabia does - will it expel imprison Mahmoud Bahaziq?

PS: See the US Treasury notice on the above-named individuals from May 27, 2008, in particular:

Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq

AKAs: Mahmoud Bahaziq
Abu `Abd al-'Aziz
Abu Abdul Aziz
Shaykh Sahib
DOB: 17 August 1943
Alt DOB: 1943
Alt DOB: 1944
POB: India
Nationality: Saudi Arabian
Saudi Registration Number: 4-6032-0048-1

Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq is an LET financier and is credited with being the main financier behind the establishment of the LET and its activities in the 1980s and 1990s. He has also served as the leader of LET in Saudi Arabia. In 2003, Bahaziq coordinated LET's fundraising activities with Saudi nongovernmental organizations and Saudi businessmen, and encouraged LET operatives to continue and accelerate fundraising and organizing activities. As of mid-2005, Bahaziq played a key role in LET's propaganda and media operations.

Patrick French gets it!

In the NYT

America’s so-called war on terror has been, in many respects, a catastrophe.....links between the military, the intelligence services and the jihadis have remained intact: Lashkar-e-Taiba is merely one of a number of extremist organizations that continues to function....It does the people of Pakistan no favors for Washington to allow their leaders to continue with the strategy of perpetual diversion, asking India to be patient while denying the true nature of the immediate terrorist threat.....

How to deal with Pakistan

CIP did not like my idea of turning Pakistan into a UN protectorate. Here is a proposal from a Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

India should take the following steps to destabilise the economy of Pakistan:

1. Identify the major export items of Pakistan (like Basmati rice, carpets, etc) and provide zero export tax or even subsidise them for export from India. Hurt Pakistan on the export front.

2. Identify the major countries providing arms to Pakistan and arm twist them. Tell Brazil and Germany (currently planning to supply massive defense items to Pakistan) that it will impact their ability to invest in India. Tell Germany that retail license to Metro will be off and other existing projects will be in jeopardy.

3. Incidentally, after the arrival of Coke and Pepsi in China, the human rights violations of China are not talked about much by US government organs. Think it is a coincidence? Unless we use our markets to arm-twist arms exporters to Pakistan, we will not achieve our objectives.

4. Tell American companies that for every 5% increase in FDI limit for them, their government needs to reduce equipping Pakistan by $5 billion. That is real politics, not whining. Let us remember that funds are in desperate search of emerging markets and not the other way about. Let us also remember that international economics is politics by another name.

5. Create assets to print/distribute their currency widely inside their country. To some extent, Telgi types can be used to outsource this activity. Or just drop their notes in remote areas.

6. Pressurise IMF to add additional conditionality to the loans given to them or at least do not vote for their loans.

7. Create assets within Pakistan to destabilise Karachi stock market - it is already in a shambles.

8. Cricket and Bollywood are the opium of the Indian middle classes. Both have been adequately manipulated/ controlled by the D-company since the eighties. Chase the D-company money in cricket/ Bollywood and punish by burning D-assets in India instead of trying to have them auctioned by the IT department when nobody comes to bid for it.

9. Provide for capital punishment to those who fund terror and help in that. We have the division in the finance ministry to monitor money laundering, etc. It is important that terror financing is taken seriously and fully integrated into money laundering monitoring systems and this division is provided with much larger budget and human resources. And it should coordinate with RAW.

10. Encourage and allow scientists/ academicians/ elites of Pakistan to opt for Indian passport and widely publicise that fact since it will hurt their self-respect and dignity. There will be a long queue to get Indian passports -- many will jump to get our passport -- since they will not be stopped at international airports. It is rumoured that Adnan Sami wants one. Do not give passports to all -- make it a prized possession. Let it hurt the army- and ISI-controlled country. This one step will destroy their identity and self-confidence.

11. Discourage companies from India from investing in Pakistan, particularly IT companies, till Pakistan stops exporting its own IT (international terrorism).

12. In all these, it is important that we do not bring in the domestic religious issues. The target is the terror central, namely Pakistan, and if there are elements helping them here then they also should be punished -- irrespective of religious labels. If Pakistan is dismantled and the idea of Pakistan is gone, many of our domestic issues will also be sorted out.

PS: it is scary, but I've now been a Pakistan-watcher for 18 years. Conclusion - what an unmitigated waste of time. It should have been obvious from the start that there is no way to dislodge the Pakistani military's hold on the country without dismantling the Pakistani state. The unwillingness of the Pakistani military to even protect NATO convoys from Taliban attacks on Pakistani territory is evident, and they are getting paid for this. You think that they can be turned from their obsession with India and the search for "strategic depth" in Afghanistan? They lurch from disaster to disaster, but do not learn, cannot change. No good change can come from within Pakistan - the only force that can challenge the military is a fundamentalist terrorist movement that slips its leash.

But I think it will take at least another couple of decades to convince the international community that this has to be done, and by then it will be way too late.

The CIA represents the American people

Oops! a geographic dislocation in the title, sorry!
(via BRF)
A letter to US legislators, The News, Pakistan.

Any attacks on our intelligence agencies are seen as an attack on the state and thus the people. The ISI cannot be divorced from the people, and nor can our military. All previous efforts made to interfere in its structure by the US have been negatively viewed as an effort by US to create a wedge between the military and the civilian population. In fact, it strengthens the national resolve to protect our institutions. The past DGs of the ISI should be protected by the state, and not be presented to the world as criminals, since the latter course would go against national pride and security.

Military, Inc

Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy.

The corollaries are that

1. It is well near impossible to break the hold the Pakistani military has on public life, without severe disruptions.

2. Veteran Pakistan watchers know that the civilian government is merely a facade the military uses as camouflage. The civilian government does not have full economic authority, let alone political authority. In particular, the Pakistani military, and not the civilian government, will be making national security policy decisions.

3. Having the keys to the Pakistani nukes, the Pakistani military will refuse to be displaced, and will threaten to take the world down with them if pressed too hard.

4. The Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Taliban among others were nurtured by the Pakistani military and continue so. One America-friendly general at the top cannot change it; the military constituency as a whole controls large private resources, and funding and aid will continue to flow to these groups.

---

My commentary is that the real danger of the Pakistani troops moving from the western border to the eastern border to face India is to Pakistan - when the West finds out that things actually start improving in Afghanistan (or at least get no worse) after that move.

Credibility trumps truth

Pakistan is also haunted by the accusations made by India with regard to the origin of the one terrorist caught in Mumbai. The question is not whether the Indians are right or wrong. What is important, in real terms, is whether the world believes India or Pakistan. -- editorial in The Daily Times

It doesn't matter whether Pakistan harbors terrorists or not. All that matters is whether the world believes so. The impact on Pakistani society and politics of having active terrorist groups in their midst is unimportant if the world is not paying attention.

From further down in the editorial:

The army has removed a Lashkar-e-Tayba training camp in Azad Kashmir, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad. ...Accusations were flying thick about this camp for a long time. Informed Pakistanis knew that the camp was there, although camouflaged somewhat by the stratagem of allowing the outfit to take the role of a rescuer of people after the 2005 earthquake in Azad Kashmir, despite some “problems” that the outfit had with “foreign” NGOs working there and their female members.

The above examples are typical of the thinking of the Pakistan RAPE class. (The folks on the bharat-rakshak forum come up with wicked acronyms: RAPE stands for Rich Anglophone Pakistani Elite). To the RAPE, reality consists primarily of public relations. What is more important to them is that Pakistani spokesmen had plausible deniability of the existence of the LeT traning camp. The complaint is that by removing the camp, the Pakistani army has implicitly admitted the camp is there, and that undermines Pakistani credibility.

The world may know you are lying, but as long as the world is too polite to point it out, everything is hunky-dory. That Pakistan may have a tiger by the tail is not to be thought about.

Population growth in South Asia

There is a correlation between prosperity and a falling population growth rate. For the longest time I had thought that increasing prosperity drives having fewer children, but something CIP posted or linked to, seemed to show quite clearly that in the modern era at least, countries entered the (virtuous?) cycle of increasing prosperity, decreasing population growth rate by first decreasing the population growth rate. A very obvious example of this is China. The reasoning is that smaller families (at any income level) result in more capital being accumulated - whether that be in physical assets, or less tangible ones such as more education or more parental attention per child.

In that regard, it is interesting to look at the big three of the Indian subcontinent. As per the CIA World Fact Book, estimated population growth rates for the countries are,

Bangladesh: 2.02%
India: 1.58%
Pakistan: 2.00% - this last is interesting, we shall see below.

In the 1951 census, India had a population of 357 million, and today 1148 million, a factor of 3.22 increase.

East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in 1951 counted 42.06 million souls and today 153.6 million, a 3.65-fold increase.

Pakistan (then West Pakistan) started out behind East Pakistan in 1951 at 33.78 million. This being in the minority had fateful consequences - if Pakistani history can be summarized in one sentence, it is the history of attempting to evade the consequences of one person-one vote. Pakistan went through political contortions and ultimately the 1971 war trying to keep the Bengali majority from playing a dominant role in politics. The irony is, as per the CIA World Fact Book, Pakistan's count is now 172.8 million, way ahead of Bangladesh. Pakistan has increased by a factor of 5.1 since 1951. That does not square with its estimated current growth rate of 2%.

Pakistan has been 95% or more Muslim since 1951. East Pakistan was 76.8% Muslim in 1951 and is 83% Muslim now. India was 10.4% Muslim in 1951 and 13.4% in 2001. Using the 2001 religion ratios, one can calculated that Indian non-Muslims increased by a factor of 3.04 since 1951, while Indian Muslims have increased by a factor of 4.12.

(Figuring things about Bangladesh is difficult because we do not know how many people have emigrated, in particular how much of the non-Muslim population has migrated.)

Over the coming days you are going to hear or read a lot about oppression of Muslims in India, and how they are falling behind in the economic race with Hindus; even the so-called lower castes of Hindus. Without minimizing the real political and social problems that Indian Muslims face in India, the demographics contribute some small part to their problems.

And if the Pakistan population estimate is correct, it is a time-bomb that cannot be defused. There is not enough resource base - not even in people resources - to support its population. Let this fact sink in - in the land won for the Muslims who yearned to breath free of Hindu neighbors, the literacy rate is lower than among India's "oppressed" lot of co-religionists. Of course, Pakistan is famous for cancelling its censuses and national sample surveys, because of fear of what the results might mean politically, so the estimates are much more rough than for India or Bangladesh. A sliver of straw for the drowning, but that is all the world has.

My commentary is that Pakistan is destined to explode; it is best to do it now rather than later, when the costs will be higher. IMO, the state needs to be dismantled and made into a UN protectorate.

Brave!

(via BRF) TVR Shenoy writes:

A few days ago as you read this there was a simple ceremony at the not-so-iconic D B Marg police station, when garlands were placed around the photograph of Assistant Police Inspector Tukaram Gopal Ombale. Were there any reporters present to honour Ombale's tale of heartbreaking courage?

On the night of 26-27 November, Ombale and several other policemen were on alert in the Girgaum Chowpatty area. They had been told that two terrorists were on the run in a Skoda. The twenty policemen out there had a grand total of two self-loading rifles and two bullet-proof vests. The vests were given to the men with the rifles, who were placed at vantage points around metal barricades. The rest of the policemen carried only lathis (batons)); some were plainclothesmen, others in uniform.

Those (virtually unarmed) policemen tried to stop the Skoda. The driver fired at them. The police shot back from the pre-determined vantage point and got him. The other man slid out, pretending to surrender, but carrying an AK-47.

Ombale rushed to secure him when the terrorist started pumping away with the AK-47. Call it guts or instinct but Tukaram Gopal Ombale refused to let go of his assailant. I am told that something like 30 bullets were recovered from his body.

His colleagues took advantage of Ombale's last act as they rushed at the terrorist with their lathis. The plainclothesmen were later identified as a 'mob' in grainy footage shot by someone on a mobile phone!

Tukaram Gopal Ombale died for his bravery. Assistant Police Inspector Sanjay Govilkar received bullet injuries. But those ordinary policemen -- some in their forties, laughably ill-equipped -- succeeded in doing what nobody else could, they captured a terrorist on a suicide mission alive. They also recovered artillery dwarfing their modest weapons -- AK-47s, several magazines, 9mm pistols, and grenades.

Today security agencies from across the planet are sending men to Mumbai, from the FBI, the CIA, Britain's MI-6, Israel's Mossad and Shin Bet, and even from Russia [Images]. Between them, they have mixed opinions of the Indian security forces' tactics -- especially the Israelis -- but to a man they salute those constables from D B Road police station.