'I like Pakistan just fine' because of these men
Carl's comment above included:
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Well actually, you don't know I don't like Pakistan. I on the other hand do know. I asked myself that question and I believe I received an honest answer. I like Pakistan just fine. How can you not like a country that produces people like the Karachi cop and ambulance driver profiled in a video highlighted on this site some time back, or that produces hyper-brave men like the Pakistani journalist beaten to death by the ISI last year.
I posted this last year on the 'Pakistani Politics' thread, but do not have the journalist's details to hand.
Peter Oborne, one of the UK's best reporters IMHO, has been in Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital and a huge city beset with problems:
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In the last 60 years the population of Karachi has risen from 300,000 to nearly 20 million. The pressure for homes, water and food - compounded by high levels of unemployment - has lead to furious conflict between the rival ethnic groups, with around 1300 people killed in gangland violence last year.
His report is based on following an ambulance driver, employed by a charity and a shorter period with a police inspector, who states at least 100 of his officers have been killed in the past year.
The film clip on:http://www.channel4.com/programmes/u...ld/4od#3180510
The written summary is on: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/u...2011/episode-4
The links do work in the USA and a SWC viewer responded:
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They should stop making cop shows about Americans and make cops shows about Karachi cops. That was something.
The sausage factory is burning..
Some observations on the Lyari action
There is some pleasure in reading such phrases as this:
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11 rockets were fired by miscreants at the police
Link:http://docs.brecorder.com/top-news/1...in-lyari-.html
One does wonder at some of the footage, taken on the police side of the "line", with plain-clothes police, some with head coverings, joining in the firing.
Where lies the real enemy in Afghanistan?
Patrick Porter's forthright column that opens with:
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THE conflict in Afghanistan has been Australia's longest war. Measured in time and complexity - if not in blood - it has been one of the hardest. But who or what have we been fighting?
The problem, allegedly, is the Islamist extremism that found a host in the world's poorest land. The solution is to empower this broken nation to govern and secure itself....For 10 years we have tried to combat poverty, corruption and state failure by birthing a strong Afghan government. Not an easy task in a country hard to govern from the centre, and where our favoured regime is an unloved kleptocracy.....But Afghanistan is not the centre of this war. This is primarily a war over - and against - Pakistan.
He ends with:
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We wanted the war in Afghanistan to be about fighting one enemy within those borders. But we got an aggregation of other conflicts that spilled across borders, beyond our power to resolve. This may be the hardest lesson of all. Often the wars we want are not the ones we get.
Link:http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/soc...506-1y6yj.html
Patrick blogs on:http://offshorebalancer.wordpress.com
Mr Zardari comes to Chicago..