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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (46245)	5/21/2004 7:41:16 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

TIMES TO KRUGMAN: DON'T TRY TO SAVE THE WORLD Pretty amazing for the New York Times to run this op-ed, considering its constant citation of the change-the-world agendas of academics like Paul Krugman. It's by Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Here are the first and last paragraphs. Are you listening, Krugman? <After nearly five decades in academia, and five and a half years as a dean at a public university, I exit with a three-part piece of wisdom for those who work in higher education: do your job; don't try to do someone else's job, as you are unlikely to be qualified; and don't let anyone else do your job. In other words, don't confuse your academic obligations with the obligation to save the world; that's not your job as an academic; and don't surrender your academic obligations to the agenda of any non-academic constituency — parents, legislators, trustees or donors. In short, don't cross the boundary between academic work and partisan advocacy, whether the advocacy is yours or someone else's...Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago > One would like to think that even the exaggerated sense of virtue that is so much a part of the academic mentality has its limits. If we aim low and stick to the tasks we are paid to perform, we might actually get something done. Thanks to reader John Patten for the link. Posted by Donald Luskin at 9:59 AM \| link

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (46245)	5/22/2004 3:00:53 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Respond to of 50167

Her Majesty’s subjects —Navid Shahzad Syed Hyder Ali Bokhari, at the ripe old age of fifteen months has been directed by Her Majesty’s government to appear for an interview before a visa may be issued allowing him to travel to Britain for a holiday with his parents! They say May has never been so hot. They say it will be a long, hot, cruel summer. But they have said much that has not come true. When they promised law and order, our lives remained as vulnerable as a night-shadow and whole families were slaughtered in the darkness. When they promised us security and we went to our mosques to pray, we were as vulnerable as the swimmer with cramp trapped on a holiday beach. When they said they were liberators, we suffered the indignity, the pain of being aliens in our own lands. So why believe the weather pundits? The people see only through a hooded darkness and hear only the jeers of their tormentors. The soul is dead and what is left of the body will be denied only a sweet night’s sleep and the hope of the sighting of a wisp of a lost cloud, or fail to hear the tender whisper of a first breeze. This is a small price to pay and the weather men can be wrong. Hope and life, hand in hand. Tragedy and comedy, mixed with the precision of a Bond martini, shaken not stirred. And just when we thought the laughter would never return, it came like the first fat drop of rain from the sky and the air was filled with the smell of the wet earth and life returned to a semblance of normalcy. He weighs less than his name, stands eighteen inches from the ground and has a fourteen-word vocabulary that only his mother can understand. Jugnu Mohsin refused to give him back as she cradled him in her arms. With cheeks redder than the silk bandanna wound round his head, his small body clad in dockers and a doll-size t-shirt, he could have been anyone’s favourite toy. Syed Hyder Ali Bokhari, at the ripe old age of fifteen months has been directed by Her Majesty’s government to appear for an interview before a visa may be issued allowing him to travel to Britain for a holiday with his parents! Both adults have five-year multiple-entry visas, ample evidence of funds and have spent long years abroad at elite educational institutions. Planning a surprise, the Bokharis had hoped to travel in time to reach London for a beloved niece’s first birthday. The letter addressed to the baby dashed their hopes. Hyder, who is Lahore-based, is expected to present himself at 7.30 am on a June morning at the British High Commission in Islamabad and without ‘friends or relatives’ and in the same breath told to bring his mother with him! So what category do mothers fit into if they are neither friend nor relative? Hyder has also been told that he will not ‘be permitted to bring bags, briefcases or mobile phones with him’ but that he should ‘bring his passport and any previous passports’. Not being allowed to take in a mobile phone is a good idea since the young man could run up quite a hefty bill calling God knows where, the briefcase is a good idea too. Unless Hyder plans to sleep in it and be discovered later, adopted and given the name of Earnest so he could woo Cecily and live happily ever after as envisioned by that playwright with the Wilde name! The bag, however, is another issue altogether. Presuming that Hyder can be woken up (against his will) at five am, trundled along to the Convention Centre to board the bus leaving for the High Commission for the 7.30 deadline, it would require Herculean control to not require either a diaper change, a comforting suck at the milk bottle or a gnaw at one’s favourite teething ring during the hours that one has to wait before one is called to the glass booth. As for the ‘previous passports,’ we accept the Wordsworthian philosophy of the child being father of the man, but surely this is carrying things too far! Hyder has also been told to bring ‘details of the sponsor in the UK’ ignoring the fact that he has not cited any sponsor and his parents have shown adequate funds to finance the trip. We are well aware of the present paranoia surrounding the issuance of visas for first-time visitors. We have also been told ad nauseam about the special training received by visa officers when they are posted overseas. But to smell a rat when a parent with a bona fide visa requests permission to take their child with them is to nullify reports of special expertise, fairness or good judgment. We suspect it has more to do with the fact that little Hyder has an alias (Gola — which, as we know are dangerous things to have these days) and less to do with an overly officious decision-making process. Or could that smell possibly be a diaper rather than a rat that has met his comeuppance? Seriously though, long before 9/11 smote us in the eye, we have been meted out barbaric treatment by foreign embassies. So inured are we to being treated as third class citizens in our own country that we have forgotten what national dignity is all about. We have seen it all. The thump of state approval for the assistance extended in a global war against terrorism, the behind-closed-doors donor assurances, the glittering face of state visits and banquets fit for kings. But we the people, have been made to stand in scorching heat or bitter cold, in queues that stretch snakelike to the Margalla hills and back, only to be told that the first thirty applicants will be interviewed on the day — the rest must return to their homes or their cities and live to tell the tale another day! The Saudis mistreat us as do the Spanish; the Americans view us with endemic suspicion, the French with disdain and the British with a hauteur bordering on contempt against a people they had once colonised. Of course some of us will do a Houdini when we get to England (or wherever it is we plan to go) but the vast majority of us are law-abiding people who would no want to live anywhere but in Pakistan. In Hyder’s case, at any rate, we doubt very much he would want to abandon his Tweety-bird cot for greener pastures! The writer is currently the consultant for Beacon House National University, Lahore. Her e-mail address is: navidshahzad@hotmail.com dailytimes.com.pk

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (46245)	5/22/2004 3:11:51 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50167

And dissent by our paper..on Surrender or die, terrorists warned! dailytimes.com.pk Editorial today- Use military force through a political strategy (A democracy is characterised by one simple thing that is ability to dissent and not being punished, in Pakistan today we do that every day, those who claim that I do not criticise Pakistan enough and go after ME much more fail to se freedoms that we enjoy the others in the Islamic world do not. our quasi democracy has seen a many a bloodless coups, we have condemned atrocities of our soldiers in Bangladesh, we have been apologetic, remorseful for the acts committed, not like Halebja or Hama or most of these countries that election and dissent lead to tongues being cut). Use military force through a political strategy General Pervez Musharraf has again expressed his resolve to root out terrorist elements from the tribal areas using a combination of political and military means. He has also dismissed the ‘misconception’ that the government had withdrawn in the face of tribal insurgency and effected a compromise to save face. “Al Qaeda terrorists will be eliminated from the tribal areas by political and military means. We will not compromise on our fight against terrorism,” he thundered. Well spoken, sir. But we must be forgiven our scepticism because of a number of factors. Consider. When the military build-up in South Waziristan began, we supported the move not only because in today’s world a state cannot live with the anachronism of areas that lie outside its jurisdiction but also because the area, without doubt, housed elements that are a clear and present danger to Pakistan. Nonetheless, we advised at that point that any military activity must be undertaken carefully and should seek to target undesirable elements by isolating them. But as things unfolded, it became clear that the operation had been undertaken with poor preparation and on the basis of flawed intelligence. The government’s actions betrayed confusion over the aims of the operation (military-first, political-later, or vice versa). But even at the operational level, the performance left much to be desired. The operating troops had no idea about the extent of local support to the Al Qaeda-Taliban elements which resulted in heavy casualties to the army and paramilitary troops. There were multiple strategies going the rounds but they were more at cross-purposes than supplementing each other. Even the secret deal which has now become a matter of contention remains secret enough to allow both sides to interpret its provisions differently. The FATA MNAs who were instrumental in stitching the deal as well as the wanted former Taliban commander Nek Mohammad say the deal did not include registration of foreign elements in the area. Nek also said immediately after the much-publicised ceremony at Shakai that he had not surrendered to the troops and that the government had sued for peace. He has now gone back on the ‘deal’ and says he is free to do as he pleases. The issue of the presence of foreigners has also caused much confusion. The recent lashkar put together to bring them in says the foreigners have left the area for fear of a crackdown. The rightwing parties say two different things in the same breath — there are no foreigners in the area and the foreign elements that are there have married local women and are settled since the first Afghan jihad. But clearly this is a red herring. Even if it is accepted that there are no foreigners in the area in the sense of Al Qaeda elements, why cannot the foreigners that are settled in the area get registered with the government? There is also the equally important question: where are these ‘settled’ foreigners? Meanwhile, US troops in Afghanistan have violated Pakistani territory for the third time in less than a month. This indicates there is no coordination between troops operating on both sides of the border; also, that the US army does not think the Pakistan army is doing an effective job of hunting down Al Qaeda-Taliban elements. The lack of coordination becomes even more visible from the latest report which says the company commander of Tochi Scouts refused to talk to the Americans after they entered Pakistani territory. This incursion business is dangerous and if it is not stopped at the highest level it could provoke an armed clash between Pakistani and US troops. The funny thing is that the idea of joint patrolling along the border was dropped early on because of issues of sovereignty and other political pressures on the Pakistani side. But given the situation, there is clearly a need to re-visit the issue and devise procedures that can prevent things from getting out of hand. This is also important because General Musharraf’s reasons for sending the army into the tribal areas were premised on the logic that it was better to have our troops man the area and prevent it from being used as jumping off ground by undesirable elements to mount attacks on the western side of the Durand Line rather than get American troops to do the job. Islamabad needs to emphasise this point to those who are opposed to the operation. How should the government go about this? There are two aspects here: the strategic and the tactical. The strategic pertains to the overall politico-military operations, the tactical to the operational efficacy of the troops. On both counts the performance needs to be improved. Politically, the government needs to sit down with the MMA and tell the alliance clearly and firmly the dangers inherent in its current approach. It must, if necessary, arm-twist the MMA to use its influence in the tribal areas to dissuade tribesmen from sheltering undesirable elements. Indeed, it would be good to form a committee with representation from all political parties and involve its members in the conduct of this operation. The importance of a political consensus in this case can hardly be overemphasised. There is also need for a longer-term strategy to inject development funds in the area and introduce the reforms that have been withheld, including General Musharraf’s own devolution plan. This would help break the traditional patterns of power in the area and bring forth new actors beholden to the government for their empowerment. At the operational level, the army should not fall into the kind of trap it fell into last time round. It must improve its intelligence and ground coordination. It should use air power whenever and wherever necessary instead of simply relying on ground troops. And it must secure the likely escape routes before moving in for the kill. But it is important to note that military power will only succeed in and through an effective political strategy and not as a stand-alone device. Resolve is good, but it must be backed with credible operational plans. On both counts, the government has been lacking so far. * dailytimes.com.pk