Pakistan - News and Discussion -7

[Naresh]

<b>The making of a legend</b>

Cheers <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Naresh]

<b>That money’s sunk</b> <!--emo&:flush--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' /><!--endemo-->

The performance of PTCL during the current monsoon season has been dismal. Thousands of telephones are lying dead all over the country thus causing considerable inconvenience to subscribers who are having to rely on the more expensive cellular phones, if available. It is a good thing that the government has successfully privatised PTCL and a highly reputable operator (Etisalat) is now managing this gigantic company. However, the subscribers fail to understand why some bit of rain should affect the functioning of telephones as cables are meant to be completely waterproof.

<b>The answer perhaps is that during the last many years (pre-privatisation), PTCL purchased huge quantities of cheap and substandard Chinese equipment which is now failing. The Chinese used PTCL as a dumping ground and PTCL was attracted by lower prices and it did not take into account the consequential losses. Equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars will now have to be scrapped and the consumers will have to suffer the pains of the replacement phase. - ENGR. MOHAMMAD RIAZ, Lahore, August 9.</b> <!--emo&tupid--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/pakee.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pakee.gif' /><!--endemo-->

Cheers <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Guest]

Posted Monday, Dec. 8, 1947
<b>Sick</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mohamed Ali Jinnah is a skillful political leader who cannot be bothered with economics. When Pakistan was still a Moslem dream, a correspondent repeated to Jinnah the Hindu argument that Pakistan would not work because the proposed state lacked coal, industry and other economic resources. Answered Jinnah: <b>"Why should they care if I starve?" Last week, after less than four months of independence, Pakistan was an economic wreck, and serious social unrest was rising.</b>

<b>If Pakistan's government had a budget, no one could find out what it was. The country started off with about 200,000,000 rupees ($60,000,000) from the Reserve Bank of India, but that was long since spent. Two weeks ago the British Overseas Airways Corp. was paid by Pakistan Government check on the Bank of India for transporting 30,000 officials and their families from Delhi to Karachi. The check bounced. B.O.A.C. subsequently got its money, but other creditors are still waiting anxiously. Civil servants in Karachi have had their salaries cut and their housing allowances stopped.</b>

Pakistan is getting coal only by paying three times the market rate. At that, its railroads have only enough for 20 days' restricted operation. They are now carrying no freight—only refugees. Indian warehouses are glutted with textiles intended for Pakistan, which cannot make its own and now cannot pay for shipments from India.

Jinnah's government, living on day-to-day receipts, has tried some desperate salvage measures. It imposed a $5-a-bale export duty on raw jute moving from East Pakistan to the jute mills of Calcutta (in India). The tax violated a temporary free-trade agreement between the dominions. This would probably provoke retaliation from India, which could stop sending all coal and manufactured goods to Pakistan.

Khan's Lunch.<b> India is spending $500,000 a day to take care of refugees; Pakistan cannot begin to match that.</b> As a result, the Moslem refugees have become a fertile field for leftist agitators against the conservative Jinnah.

<b>In West Punjab, Communist Party-Liner Iftikharud-Din was named Minister in Charge of Refugees, to keep him quiet. But he began urging refugees to demand division of the land, including estates of Moslem landlords, who are among Jinnah's chief backers. One procession of refugees, parading through Lahore, burst into the kitchen of the fat, well-fed Khan of Momdot, Premier of West Punjab and a Jinnah man. Outraged at the contrast between his food and the four thin cha-pattis (wheat pancakes) issued to each of them each day, the demonstrators paraded the Khan's lunch through the streets</b>.

Iftikharud-Din later got himself elected, against Jinnah's opposition, president of the West Punjab section of the Moslem League. This leftist victory, declared a conservative Moslem leader, <b>"has created a serious danger to the Moslem League and . . . Pakistan. There can be no compromise between Islam and any other world philosophy or life system, be it communism, fascism, capitalism or parliamentarianism."</b>
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<b>Jinnah has been sick abed for three weeks. The Pakistan Ministry indignantly said: "There is absolutely no truth in the rumors that Qaid-e-Azam [the Great Leader] is seriously ill." They could scarcely say the same about the state over which Jinnah presided</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<b>ISI to launch AIDS war on Indian soldiers! </b>
By N K Pant, Sify.com
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14286598

[Guest]

<b>Pakistan's Separate Peace</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Wednesday, September 13, 2006; Page A1
SECRETARY OF Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld didn't say who he was thinking of when he warned in a controversial speech last month about people who think that "countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists." In fact the most obvious candidate is that enduring favorite of the Bush administration, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Mr. Musharraf, whose country has been the main base for leaders of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban since 2002, last week concluded a peace deal with tribal leaders in North Waziristan, a territory near the border with Afghanistan. The Pakistani strongman agreed to withdraw his army from the area and release prisoners in exchange for promises by militants not to attack the Pakistani army or set up a parallel government.

The Pakistani tribesmen also promised to stop cross-border attacks into Afghanistan and to disarm the many foreign terrorists in their midst -- but few analysts expect them to follow through on those pledges. Instead, both North and South Waziristan -- where a similar truce was agreed on earlier -- are likely to become territories where members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban operate without fear of challenge.

<b>Why would Mr. Musharraf strike this deal? The simple answer is that his army was defeated in its attempt to eliminate the al-Qaeda sanctuary by force; since launching the campaign in 2003, it had suffered more than 500 killed. Mr. Musharraf, who tried to dress up his maneuver by visiting Afghanistan the next day, said he was worried about a full-scale uprising in the area. Though he didn't say so, the general is surely hoping that the truce will add to his personal security: He has survived at least two assassination attempts by al-Qaeda</b>.  <!--emo&:drool--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/drool.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='drool.gif' /><!--endemo-->

The cost of his decision will be borne by American and NATO troops in Afghanistan, whose commanders already say that the ability of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to retreat to Pakistan greatly complicates the challenge of defeating their escalating attacks. So why did Vice President Cheney call Mr. Musharraf "a great ally" just days after his separate peace? Administration officials seem more willing to forgive their autocratic friend than they are domestic critics of the war on terrorism.
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