Terrorism in Pakistan

A hostile ally

Clinton flies into a war zone

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Students of international relations should study the Pakistan - USA relations since 1951 to 2009. It would make a fascinating rading of how clever Pakistan has been. The 'double game' Pakistan has played to ensure it rains US dollars upon the Pakistan army and ISI, is unprecedented in world history.

Alas, Pakistan may have been too clever for its own good.


The international diplomacy is like prostitution, You sleep with everybody provided you get something in return and you don't fall in love with each other. But with Pakistan what happens is whenever U.S asks for its 'services' it assumes it U.S is in love with it and it rejects all other current and potential clients and just goes with U.S. Now as most countries when U.S. is no longer requires the 'services' it walks off after paying Pakistan feels dumped as it was expecting to get married.


@ VishnuGupta
"the international community should stick with Zardari "

Common Gupta Bandhu. What a boring statement.

Zardari should migrate to Mumbai. Settle in Ulhas Nagar and run his Dubai and UK empire.

Intelligent man, and I like him.


Realistically Pakistan is looking at atleast another 5 years of quasi civil war before it attains a semblance of normality.

I think the international community should stick with Zardari till then and avoid the instinct of getting the pak army to take over and start the cycle all over again.

A functioning democracy takes a long long time to become workable it took us Indians 50 long years to get something that works properly it won't be atleast another 20 before Pakistan has something like that but if it is ever going to develop then the mullah-military-feudal lord nexus has to be broken and having a Democracy ver 1.0 for all its faults is probably the best we can manage.

And to my Indian countrymen:Guys we should stop looking at Pakistan for our weekly entertainment fix. It isn't a funny basketcase with grand dreams ,filled with simpletons anymore, do we really want a talibanistan next door?
I think we should have a US-Mexico type relation with Pakistan that way they get a semi functioning economy and we get free entertainment(pop islam + histrionics) on our western border,a real partnership.


I am not a Clinton fan, but I was gratified to hear her comments. For too long, Americans have indulged Pakistani gov't sensitivities. We had to ignore the obvious - that the Taliban was an ISI creation in the 1990s and still enjoy support from elements of the ISI. We had to ignore the Quetta shura. We had to ignore the extensive AQ Khan network. We even had to ignore recorded conversations between gunmen in Bombay and their handlers in Pakistan. The fact is that there are competing centers of power in that nation - and if Pakistan is unable to counter those groups that are destabilizing its neighbors, then it should not be surprised when other nations take matters into their own hands.


Mrs Clinton’s visit is vital and timely but should be backed by prompt material support to the pro-American Zardari government in addition to American aid bill which is still slow cooking.



you are on song, good to see you again. Well i would like to remind the viewers here a quote by one of our living legends Dr. Abdul kalam: His message to humanity was quoted beautifully as follows in one of his speeches: In india the battle of kin and kith had been waged many a times, there is a lesson in this for us indians and for pakistani's.

Purpose of human life

The purpose of human life is beautifully described in “Bhagawat Geeta”. In the battle scene, where Arjuna was hesitating to fight against his own kith and kin in Kurukshetra, Lord Krishna showed Arjuna a vision of Vrindavan where the whole garden was blossoming with beautiful flowers and fragrance and the flowers attracting honeybee. It was an enchanting scene. In another vision of the garden all the flowers which blossomed in the morning had now fallen on the ground. Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, "See the flower, how generously it offers beauty, fragrance and honey. It gives to all, gives freely its essence. When its work is done, it falls away quietly. Try to be like the flower, unassuming despite all its qualities". Lord Krishna conveys this message to the humanity.



General Ayyub, Gandhi, Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Shastri, Liaqat Ali Khan .... all these leaders were th product of the British Raj in India. Meanwhile a new generation born after independence has matured. This generation has inherited the conflicts and traditions from the Raj days which hang over us like the morning after a night of binge drinking. It's up to the the people themselves to shake off that hangover.
I can't speak for the Indians, but the Pakistanis do have their guiding scriptures. They read them, and they understand that the lowest depths of hell await the hypocrites. They understand that they will be put to the test and tried with affliction. A downward spiralling confrontation with the Hindus is what they have earned so far. No one will protect the Pakistanis except the Almighty, and if they have chosen to ignore Him, they should know that they have no other friend besides Him.

The Pakistani millitary only serves to keep the lights on as the ship slowly sinks.


"The apple doesnt fall far from the tree"

It falss downwards. Its not the magniture but the direction that counts.

Pakistani leadership failed to give the direction and just concetrated on magnitude, where size of the apple was as big as Kashmir. Just that a billion poors appropriatly directioned by a dirty old man called Nehru got to keep that apple.


Hi PakDemocrat

It is true that the millitary leadership of Pakistan is limited in its capacity to deliver good governance. I remember Gen. Musharraf's promise in the early days of his rule that he would build a double track railway line from Karachi to Peshawar. This never happened , along with many other such goals that he had set out for himself. His resignation was his certificate of incompitence - brave soldier though he may have been - he was no statesman.

However, the millitary has been accommodating to civilian leadership. Pakistan has also had many civilian leaders, all of whom just managed to beat around the bush - except for the founder Jinnah. Jinnah stood a whole head taller than the rest of the Pakistanis, but sadly he is no more, and his likes are very rare.

It is only natural for the millitary to step fill in the power vaccume caused by a lack of civilian talent. There are some examples of "iron men" in history. Stalin was originally a priest, Hitler, an aspiring artist, was a corporal in the army, discharged after the war. Do you percieve these two as civilians or millitary men? For a real statesman, a millitary uniform is meaningless. A true leader is a soldier at heart and a judge in mind. Therefore, I contend that it is really meaningless to blame the Pakistani millitary leadership for the troubles of the state. The apple doesnt fall far from the tree. It is a collective failure of the Pakistani people. Millitary or civilian government - it's all the same . Both are totally incapable of killing the monster known as "POVERTY". If you want to lay the blame on someone , lay it on poverty. The millitary leadership is just the lesser of the two evils.

@HindooKafir :

May your Kingfisher stay chilled at 2 degrees C. May the empty bottles continue to provide employment for the children of your tribe!


As a Pakistani I will be the first to admit that a large part of my country's problems emanate from our powerful army's constant state of utter myopia. When such a dominant and undemocratic institution pursues a self-serving agenda one can only expect the worst outcome.

Hillary Clinton was not off the mark when she chided our Generals for patronising the Afghan Taleban. Any Pakistani with half a brain knows that the Quetta Shura does indeed exist. And, we also did surmise several years ago that Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda leadership are ensconced somewhere in the wilderness of FATA's remote mountains.

The problem is that Asif Zardari is so virally loathed all over Pakistan that we seemed to have forgotten what nasty and stupid shits our military dictators can be.

While Zardari will be gone in the near future, Pakistanis have to protect themselves from the arrogant brain malfunctions of our generals.


Dear Majid Bhai and My Good friend November

Good to see you back. Why are you calling India a Pawn, we are just spineless kafirs, sitting on the fence watching the fun and frolics. If you guys come for us all guns blazing we will retreat and run (into Afghanistan)

As for Oil, I wonder if the Muslim world knew what that liquid was before Americans found a way of refining it. Was it the proverbial Abe Zaam Zaam that Ibrham accidently discovered.


I agree with majid Akhtar 100% that the present conflict has its roots deep in the oilfields of the Muslim world. Japan started the war with America because it was being denied its share of the black gold by the Americans. The Americans resisted the Soviets in Afghanistan through Pakistan only because they could'nt accept their rival's access to the Persian Gulf through the coast of Baluchistan. Former secretary of state Dr. Henry Kissinger disclosed in his memoirs that the US had serious plans to invade the oil fields of Saudi Arabia during the 1973 oil embargo which was hurting the Americans.

Even today, those plans exist on paper, among other plans plans to invade Iran and Pakistan should the occasion arise. A very convenient tool to take control of the Saudi oilfields would be the overthrow of the current monarchy by some democratic or fundamentalist revolutionary group, branded as terrorists. The Americans would then be obliged to help their ward (house of Saud) behind the facade of fighting terrorism. This American puppet monarchy in Saudi will only endure as long as the oilfields continue to yield their produce. When the oil is finally exhausted, watch the Americans kick the Saudis out of the house of ill repute!


It is good that Mrs. Clinton has done some plain speaking by stating the obvious. Understandably, this has evoked much criticism of USA's Afpak policy in Pakistan. One would like to believe that Mrs. Clinton could have avoided being so brutally frank. Frankness and diplomacy don't go together. She could have harped more emphatically on larger issue of need of stability in South Asia through bonds of friendship among South Asian countries and greater integration of USA in terms of economic and political strategic relationships. South Asian pluralism, which is sought to be institutionalised in SAARC, if allowed to grow in a domocratic framework based on mutual tolerance can easily bloom into a prosperous confederation of states, which can rid US of many of it's problems including threat perceptions from terrorists/fundamentalists and other forces of authoritarianism in Asia. Needless to say, Pakistan is not ready for the language of frankness in it's present state of evolution.


The United States will never learn. It's foreign policies are so short sighted that they are forever pretending to solve other peoples' problems. Forgetting that in the first place, they are the one ones responsible for causing them. South Asia would be a lot safer if the Americans let the local populace solve and settle their own problems. Time that America realises that the world doesn't want it's "peace keepers".
Don't forget what happened to Vietnam.

Majid Akhtar


That said, the US and UK have been making plans pre 9-11 to secure the reserves of other nations. They have usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat. Al-Qaeda is not a group but a notion, the fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Anglo Saxon alliance as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions.

Like the US, the UK has been importing the majority of its oil. An interesting fact to observe here is that during the invasion of Iraq British Petroleum (BP) was the only non-US oil company that had been stated in the mix for oil exploration privileges in the post-Saddam Iraq. Of course, unlike EU nations such as France and Germany, the Uk has not yet ascended to the Euro currency. It is also very likely since of most of the 9/11 hijackers were reported by the five US mass media conglomerates as Saudi citizens, it is likely that US policy-makers have military contingency plans for an invasion of the eastern oil fields of Saudi Arabia. Realistically, US troops were stationed after the 1991 Gulf War not to enusre the flow of oil, but to ensure that the House of Saud was not overthrown.

Undoubtedly, the alternative to the Iraq war would have required asking the American people to make sacrifices, while Washington engaged in multi-lateral negotiations with respect to energy depletion issues.

I encourage every Muslim in Pakistan and the rest of the world to get the facts on the so called "War on Terror". The real enemy and hostile ally is the US. India is a pawn in this game, a mere distraction for China.


A quote from Clinton


Perhaps I was wrong - India does have a vested interest in getting Pakistan to spend 45% of their Budget on the army.

Surely india should , if it does not already , support the taliban ? (Rhetorical question )


Straight from dawn ...

The Pakistan's are their won worst enemies

And the obvious corollary:

how can we expect to win this war if we aren’t fighting all the pieces in the militancy jigsaw? Have a look at the names and domiciles of the militants blamed for the current wave of violence in the country. At least half, if not a majority, of them are Punjabi, not tribal.



Further to my comment below - your's is the example of the attitude I speak about.

So I deduce that you are saying that Zia-ul-Huq --- the man responsible for the the Taliban policy and the L.E.T policies was had no popular support for his policies .

You are saying that spending 45% of your budget on the army (instead of all rounded education and Infracstructure and health and thus laying the foundation for a more Intelligent population) is not your fault ?

Interesting logic. That type of reasoning will keep Pakistan in the lower echelons of the World society.


I find clinton's comments, about Pak governments inability to find terrorists hard to believe. How can a developing country with limited technological advancements find the terrorists hiding among 160 million plus population. Would clinton care to highlight the flaws in their own intelligence services especially after the 9/11 aftermath. Its so much easier to pinpoint the mistakes in others.
Yes America and Pakistan are both responsible for making alqeada and their off shoots. Lets not forget that who became the soul super power when USSR got bogged down by the jihadi outfits supported and nurtured by CIA. I feel we Pakistanis have made America the super power that they are. I wish USSR was here to counter the growing American influence and minimize their strategic interests. Even Hillary Clinton had the Freudian slip by mentioning Pakistan's strategic location to be very unique and thus influential. It doesn't take us long to put 2 and 2 together. We Pakistanis (and I mean the people and not government) cannot afford to be burned by American deceptiveness again!


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