What can’t the US do to us…
The world is being sucked into a vortex of embattlement and warring. The first experiment of this ‘war’ is being conducted on Pakistan. The interesting thing is while the aggressor is the US, the aggression is emanating from all Pakistani quarters. Our leaders, government officials, public representatives, religious politicos, or any one for that matter doesn’t refrain from rapping on the US while the US is taking all this huffing and puffing with patience and assuring that we will take care of Pakistan’s grievances. But our representatives have mistaken the patience of the US representatives for something else and are putting demand after demand in front of them thinking that now the US is in our clamp, we should milk it for all it’s worth.
Whichever determined hero I talk to, they all claim with single-minded confidence that “the US cannot exit Afghanistan without our help.” This means that we have convinced ourselves that the US indeed does want to leave Afghanistan and that these people believe that the US will stick to the timetable it has given for leaving Afghanistan. But who will make the US follow this timetable? Who? The maulvi sahiban who are out to ‘defend’ Pakistan? Will they make the US scoot? Will the Jamaat-e-Islami take care of the US like it took care of India in East Pakistan? Or will it be our media crusaders who don’t like hearing the name the US but are ever-willing and ever-waiting for invitation to tours to the very same country? When I hear the yammering of such people, I say “We’ll show the US by not taking their money.” But even that doesn’t happen. We threaten the US, try to intimidate it but we also keep asking for dollars. The interesting thing is that the US is also taking the bait to an extent.
Those who think that the US will attack us directly are bound to be disappointed. Military action is always taken where other options are not available. In the past decade or so, the US and its allies have taken formal military action against three countries; these attacks and invasions were conducted on countries where no other options were available.
The first such military action was in Afghanistan. The country is so backward and under-developed, with virtually no economy, infrastructure or functioning society to speak of, that any conspiracy could be enacted there. They neither have industry or a financial system which the US could strangle as leverage. Al-Qaeda had dens all over this administratively anarchic country and was carrying out its plan all around the world from its safe havens here. The US attacked Afghanistan because the country was already too entropic for the US to manipulate through engineering some kind of intrigue or chaos.
The second, Iraq. It was under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. It had cut off all kinds of trade relations with the US. The Americans weren’t even allowed to enter the country under the pretext of reporting or tourism. If any American was allowed at all, they were kept under strict surveillance. No Iraqi citizen was allowed to have any relations with a US citizen. If an Iraqi was even found to be merely conversing with an American, they would find themselves in a cosy torture cell the very next day. Two-thirds of the staff of an Iraqi embassy was designated to keep tabs on Iraqi diplomats. Iraq wasn’t short on dollars courtesy their earnings from oil exports. No Iraqi was dying of hunger; they would either die a natural death or from that of a bullet from the gun of Saddam’s soldier. Ina country like that, the US had no other option but to directly invade it. They could neither send spies there, nor terrorists. They could also neither send secret agents nor blackmail them by drying up the dollar stream. Thus, the attack.
And then there was Libya. Some time ago, the US had to change the government over there and it was able to make do with just air raids. This is because Qaddafi had lifted the various bans on the US to get American favour. He had also resumed trade ties with them to that end. The Americans were able to come and go freely. Thus, it was very easy to infiltrate the country with US agents. All those people who were exiled from Libya were also brought back. All these people organised and revolted against Qaddafi. Nato’s bombers reduced the Libyan forces to nothing. All of Qaddafi’s military might amounted to naught and he had to die at the hands of his won people. But our situation is possibly even worse than that of Libya’s. If the US ever does decide to move against us, it wouldn’t need any boots on the ground or any fighter jets in the air.
Each thread of the Pakistani economy is inextricably tied to the US. Our forex reserves are in dollars. Most of our exports are to the US and to its allies. A big chunk of our forex earnings comes from these countries. Obviously, these are our earnings but they can be cut off if and when the US so wants. It doesn’t need any new excuse. As long as North Waziristan is present, they will have a readymade pretext to levy sanctions on us. The IFI’s that we are indebted to, if they insist on timely payments on our many many debts, we can be made to default in a matter of minutes. The lifeline that is extended to us sometimes by the World Bank and IMF, that too will not be there. The arms and fighter jets that we got from the US, if we don’t get the tools, parts and money to maintain them and the supply of these is interrupted, these arms and jets will turn into scrap in a matter of four months.
If such a scenario were to play out, all the airs and graces of our ruling elites will have to go. The electricity that we get for a few hours, we won’t even have the money to produce that. There already was little electricity for the loud speakers that our maulvi sahiban shout themselves hoarse through, but it will then be hard to even get batteries for them. We have no ready alternative for all the aid, loans and earning we get from the US and its allies. The anti-US elements in Pakistan have presumptuously made up their minds that China will fill that gap. But is that even a possibility? What we get from China is coming in because the US has never objected to it. We have a recent example: as soon as the US made the slightest indication about its displeasure, China promptly declined to fund the Iran-Pakistan pipeline. It is but to be expected. Why would any country preface its external friendship over its own interests? In China’s mammoth mountain-like economy, our contribution probably amounts to a square foot of grass. Why would the mountain care if that miniscule patch of green flourishes or dries up? On the other hand, the US is a significant trading partner of China and they would never jeopardise their economy which is reliant on the US for Pakistan.
What would we do of the nuclear bombs that we have amassed if the situation that I have just sketched out for you plays out, God forbid? For us, pushing us into the vortex of entropy is enough. We don’t need to be engaged in any war. We need to shelve our delusions of grandeur and get a dose of reality. Those who say that the Afghans ‘defeated’ the US, don’t they see that the US is still occupying Afghanistan? US props are still running the country. It is not Afghanistan that has destroyed the US; it is quite the other way round. The more Afghans resist and try to bleed the US, the more Afghanistan will bleed.
Those talking of the economic problems of the US needn’t worry about that. That country is the home of capital and capital creation. They can revive their economy simply by imposing a war on a country like us. If the mammoth is weakened, the itty bitty bunnies have nothing to be happy about.
The writer is one of Pakistan’s most widely read columnists.
I think we should all collectively pool some money & with that generated amount, try to find a suitable Old People House for Mr. Naji, so the folks in Pakistan could be spared of his "Seamless Eloquence" for good!
I think ur brain also think like a pappu, just like ur name. This divided nation of Sindhies, Punjabies, Baluchies and Pathans will scatter like 9 pins, if economic strangling is started by the West. Pakistan is no nation but 4 nations fighting among themselves with Punjabi Army and elite trying to monopolize over Sindh, Baluchistan, and KP (dissatisfied provinces who form 80% of Pakistan's area. SDo, it s u who shud b put in a old house.
right on pappu, that constipated look in his picture does him justice.
Would you be kind enough to show us a picture of yours to demonstrate the kind of look you consider diametrically opposite?
@Pappu Shah
@Sikander
Your comments only show, far too clearly, your hatred or contempt for the writer. You fail miserably to prove him wrong. How about some counter arguments of your own?
And, if you had no counter arguments, you could have simply called him an Indian, Israeli or US agent.
I think the writer is spot on. The moral of the story is if ghairat brigade is to succeed, then pakistans should be prepared to eat grass, and that too uncooked without beef.
With respect to the esteemed member of The Be-Gahairat Brigade, Mr. Vasan, you badly lack the ability to make some honourable choices in life; otherwise you should have known The Fact that Eating Grass is way better than your "Wise Suggesion" of Eating Poop!
It would be terrible if you are served in combination…
Writer: "This means that we have convinced ourselves that the US indeed does want to leave Afghanistan and that these people believe that the US will stick to the timetable it has given for leaving Afghanistan. But who will make the US follow this timetable? Who?"
The answer/logic is simple:
1. In almost all wars there is a tilting point at which the soldiers involved, regardless of which side they are on, limit their actions to “not being the last soldier to die.” (A deeply depressing exception to this rule was the way German soldiers fought ferociously long after it was obvious Adolf Hitler had lost World War II.)
This is that the American soldiers themselves now know that the war has become pointless, just as an earlier generation of GIs knew when the war in Vietnam became pointless.
Pointless, that is, in the sense that it can no longer be won except in the minimalist sense that — unlike in Vietnam — it might still, just, somehow, not be lost too humiliatingly.
2. According to an internal army report that was leaked to the Washington Post, General McChrystal says that "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." Success is still possible, according to McChrystal, but only with tens of thousands of additional troops.
McChrystal's report is presenting a political problem for President Barack Obama and his administration.
On the one hand, Obama's rhetoric during the campaign was extremely strident and warlike towards Afghanistan. He claimed that President Bush had invested too much in the Iraq war, and vowed to retreat from Iraq, while investing more troops in Afghanistan.
On the other hand, Obama's Democratic party is very wary of supporting new troops for Afghanistan, and many on the far left would like an immediate American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Writer sketches a false dream: "Those who say that the Afghans ‘defeated’ the US, don’t they see that the US is still occupying Afghanistan? US props are still running the country. It is not Afghanistan that has destroyed the US; it is quite the other way round. The more Afghans resist and try to bleed the US, the more Afghanistan will bleed."
Answer is even simpler:
I think the writer has wrongfully assessed the Afghan landscape. Even with tens of thousands of US soldiers on ground in Afghanistan, the US is fast losing out to the Taliban who are again establishing consulates in the Middle East and foothold in and around Kandahar. The US, however, is losing even a bigger war at home where a veteran dies by suicide every 80 minutes.
A suicide epidemic has hit recent veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the United States. Margaret C. Harell and Nancy Berglass while writing for the Centre for a New American Security argued that the US was losing the battle owing to the spike in veteran suicides. So keep your eyes wide open and see who is bleeding.
Writer pushing Pakistanis into a collective-grief: "If such a scenario were to play out, all the airs and graces of our ruling elites will have to go. The electricity that we get for a few hours, we won’t even have the money to produce that. There already was little electricity for the loud speakers that our maulvi sahiban shout themselves hoarse through, but it will then be hard to even get batteries for them. We have no ready alternative for all the aid, loans and earning we get from the US and its allies."
Figures speak for themselves, Answer:
Pakistan is a $175 billion economy. Since 2002, the US has provided on average $825 million annually in economic assistance to Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistani expatriates have remitted on average $1 billion each month in 2011, making remittances an order of magnitude higher than what the US has been providing to Pakistan. I would argue that Pakistan’s economy owes much more to what the expatriates contribute than what comes in charity from the United States.
Refusing aid and other assistance is a prerequisite for Pakistan’s economic recovery. The billions of dollars in aid have distorted markets in Pakistan and have subsidised the civil and military elite. Pakistan’s foremost economists, such as S. Akbar Zaidi and others at the Planning Commission in Islamabad, have argued for a secession of aid as a precondition for restructuring Pakistan’s economy to make it self-sufficient over time.
Pakistan’s elite and middle class have to rise to the occasion to help resuscitate the faltering economy. Pakistanis have to pay taxes so that their government can refuse aid from others. Unless Pakistanis demonstrate the willingness to carry their own weight by paying taxes, there is no hope of an honourable existence for Pakistan in the community of nations.
I don't always agree with Mr. Naji's conclusions, but on this occasion, he is raising some thought provoking issues. Instead of attacking him personally, it would be prudent to address the issues (fears) raised by Mr. Naji.
The problem you pakistanis have is your mindset. Eventhough, pakistan was created by the name of islam and you people claim that you are the leaders of islamic world because you have atomic bomb and military, you scare alot. You people dont belive in Almight Allah and dont have the gut to resist against America and when Afghans are fighting, you label them as backward people without infrastructure and bla bla bla. Try to be a real pakistani and muslim and leave hypocirsy and dont think alot about money. America knows that you pakistanis sell your …………….for dollars thats why they are palying with you and due to your so called military policy we afghan are also suffering.
Once again very few in this unfortunate wretched country would understand the wisdom and frustration of people like you. I see no ray of hope because the brainless 'pappus' are a majority in this country.
Why attack Pakistan? Common attack Hindustan…
A very good article written and based on the harsh reality on ground. We must be realistic and defend our homeland by devising the right strategy.
I agree with you fully. But we also have to learn our true history. Majority of Pakistanis insist all wars except 1971 against India were won; even Kargil. If we have been winning wars all along our strategy would require hardly any change. Everyone learns from past mistakes. Why can't we?
Those who have been fooling themselves about history are least likely to devise the right strategy.
The fact is Nazir Najis mates and overlords in PPP have been in power for the last 4 years and have made no impact on the common man and the strategic policy direction of the nation itself. The reason being the moran's are to busy screwing the system and filling up ther coffers. Look at Turkey – Erodogan managed to turn things around in his first stint in government and then once things improved started clipping the wings of the army cause the people were backing him up. Whereas PPP, PLMN and co are just bloody useless – when we have these morans we dont need any outside enemy. Naji will just keep writing his dribble on tap for his PPP masters.
The logic provide by this write for the attack on Iraq is so convoluted that it almost sound childish. If we go by his logic then U.S. should attack North Korea. The only reason that North Korea has not been attacked is becuase it has nuclear weapons.
The moral of the story is if you have nuclear weapons, you will never be attacked by any country.
Jawed
Our basic problem is we have lost our ability to see realities . Our convoluted minds make us see things that are not there , and not see things that are
there . The realities which the author has highlighted our deluded minds can neither see nor accept . That is why all our discussions on national
problems end in a blind alley . We cannot think of any solutions because we are
out of touch with realities .
Why can't we see the the ridiculous scene of a man ranting about his 'ghairat ' with
a begging bowl in his hand ?
Why can't we see a society inundated in a cesspool of corruption and moral decripitude claiming that it has the perfect code of life and is divinely assigned the the task of transforming the whole world into a heaven on earth .
If all in Pakistan were athiest, there would be no troubles in Pakistaniland…
Comments are closed.