Pakistani politics (catch all)

**omarali50** · 12-04-2012

Not sure where this fits, but my latest article is about the Shias and their future in Pakistan

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksd...tan-.html#more

**davidbfpo** · 01-12-2013

A curious article from The Economist: 'The mystery of Tahir ul Qadri'; which opens:

WHO and what is Tahir ul Qadri? And, more importantly, who is behind him? Those are the questions now racing through political Pakistan, with no firm answers. The religious cleric, previously a minor figure politically, has been living in Canada since 2006, where he acquired Canadian citizenship. Since he arrived back in Pakistan last month, however, Mr Qadri has caused a political sensation with his demands that Pakistan's democratic system be reformed. He wants to throw the “criminals” out of Pakistani politics, the implication being that doing so would leave very few of today’s politicians still in business.

Mr Qadri seems to have unlimited funds available to him and a huge and growing following. A rally held on December 23rd in Lahore, the provincial capital of the politically all-important Punjab province, attracted hundreds of thousands of people. (Mr Qadri claimed it was a crowd of two million.) Now he is to march on the capital, Islamabad, aiming to take four million people to that small and usually serene city on January 14th.

Link:http://www.economist.com/blogs/banya...stani-politics

Having heard him speak, to a UK conference of the faithful, he is a good speaker and can drift into very direct criticism of Saudi Arabia / Wahhabism.

Added

A different viewpoint in a BBC report, indicated by the headline 'Tahirul Qadri - Pakistan's latest political 'drone'?':http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20998010

**omarali50** · 01-14-2013

Meanwhile in other parts: http://www.brownpundits.com/2013/01/...-alamdar-road/

**omarali50** · 03-15-2013

My article about Pakistan's creation myths and some problems arising therein

http://pragati.nationalinterest.in/2...-consequences/

the last para got cut due to space issues, so I will post it here:

The argument is not that Pakistan exists in some parallel dimension where economic and political factors that operate in the rest of the world play no role. But rather that the usual problems of twenty-first century post-colonial countries (problems that may prove overwhelming even where Islamism plays no role) are made significantly worse by the imposition upon them of a flawed and dangerous “Paknationalist-Islamic” framework. Without that framework Pakistan would still be a third world country facing immense challenges. But with this framework we are either committed to ideologies that further undermine existing cultural strengths, sharpen existing religious divisions (including the Shia-Sunni division) and most important, do not have any blueprint for actually running a modern state. Or we are condemned to hypocritically mouthing meaningless and even destructive Paknationalist and Islamist slogans while actually trying to do something else. Damned if we do and damned when we don’t even mean to do it.
History was old and rusted, it was a machine nobody had plugged in for thousands of years, and here all of a sudden it was being asked for maximum output. Nobody was surprised that there were accidents… (Salman Rushdie, Shame)

**davidbfpo** · 03-24-2013

The long mooted return from exile in the UK to Pakistan of General Musharraf has finally happened, he landed in Karachi a hour ago. His status is rather strange:

He faces a string of charges including conspiracy to murder, but on Friday the Pakistani authorities granted him protective bail in several outstanding cases, freeing him from immediate arrest once he sets foot in Pakistan.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21914946

One Pakistani paper comments on the benign influence of Saudi Arabia:http://etribune.express.com.pk/Displ...11201303240041