Matt Yglesias

20 Responses to “Change Pakistanis Can’t Believe In”

1. gbh Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 9:01 am

   Matt,
   You say he is both the prime minister, and President. He is President only I believe.

2. Richa Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 9:03 am

   Matt, Zardari is coming in as President, not as Prime Minister of Pakistan. Please correct the error in your post. Thanks.

3. rapier Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 11:17 am

   Don’t take stories like this as gospel or the very last word. Still, it’s good to take a look from other sides.

   http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JI06Df01.html

4. rk366 Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 11:18 am

   Zardari is the next president , not prime minister.

5. Asim Ahmed Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 3:58 pm

   Being a Pakistani i will mark this day as black day bcoz mr ten percent became president of our country.

6. joe from Lowell Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 8:19 pm

   So the choice is between somebody named Mr. Ten Percent controlling the Pakistani army, and the Pakistani army pretty much running things by itself.

   Great. All I know is, we need to send them billions of our dollars for armaments.

7. Richard Steven Hack Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

   I have a suspicion now that the neocons are trying to gin up a war with Pakistan. That is why the Pentagon has been attacking across the border recently. They KNOW it will enflame the Pakistani population, and encourage the militants to attack the Pakistani government, while at the same time weakening the Pakistani government.

   Either that, or the people in the Pentagon are the most incredibly stupid humans on Earth. While I could believe the latter to be the case, I still think the intent now is to either push the Pakistanis into attack the territories or face an actual attack from the US.

   In other words, the neocons have decided to do what they did after 9/11 – threaten a government with invasion if they don’t cooperate. They actually did this to Pakistan, and Mushy caved in but never really did anything (because, in fact, the Pakistani government CANNOT do anything about the militants in the territories). Now they’re going to try it again.

   The result will be either that the Pakistani government grows more resistant to the US pressure, or they cave in and try to take out the militants – which means sooner or later the government falls and the militants win.

   Either way, the US ends having a “justification” to invade Pakistan, just like they used Al Qaeda as a “justification” to invade Afghanistan. The real reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan had nothing to do with Al Qaeda – it was for heroin and oil pipelines – and of course, war profiteering.

   A war with Pakistan would be very expensive – and very profitable.

   It doesn’t matter whether McCain or Obama wins – they are as one in this area – unending war for the rich.

8. Richard Steven Hack Says:
   September 6th, 2008 at 9:14 pm

   You should also take note of this – which so far has been ignored by the MSM:

   Pakistan cuts supply lines to NATO troops in Afghanistan
   http://news.antiwar.com/2008/09/05/pakistan-cuts-supply-lines-to-nato-troops-in-afghanistan/

   Pakistan cuts supply lines to Nato forces
   http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=17051

   Money Quotes:

   BARA: In a major development, the federal government on Friday announced disconnection of supply lines to the allied forces stationed in Afghanistan through Pakistan in an apparent reaction to a ground attack on a border village in South Waziristan agency by the Nato forces.

   Political authorities of the Khyber Agency claimed to have received verbal directives to immediately halt transportation of all kinds of goods meant for the US-led Nato forces in Afghanistan for an indefinite period.

   Authorities claimed the decision was taken in the wake of the growing unrest in the Khyber Agency that provides for the only ground link of the country to the war-torn Afghanistan. “Until now, drivers of the vehicles carrying goods meant for the foreign forces in Afghanistan were directed to reach the tribal agency between 7am to 10am, which were then escorted to the border town of Torkhum by the Khassadar force,” the authorities told The News.

   The authorities claimed that due to repeated attacks on the personnel of the Khassadar forces during the last one week and abduction of a few personnel, it had become difficult for the security forces to provide foolproof security to the supply lines.

   Independent sources, however, claimed that the government feared retaliation by the tribesmen against a recent ground attack conducted by the Nato forces in Angoor Adda of the South Waziristan Agency that triggered condemnation from various quarters, including the government of Pakistan itself.

   NWFP Governor Owais Ahmad Ghani had likened the attack to an aggression against a sovereign state, saying the people of the country expected the Pakistan Army to give a befitting reply to the attack. He said that some twenty innocent people lost their lives — most of them were women and children.

   The US government had accepted responsibility for the attack but did not offer any apology for the same and instead announced to launch more such attacks against the militants across the border, if so required in future.

9. Reality Man Says:
   September 7th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

   There probably won’t be real change in Pakistan unless one of two things happen 1) an extremely popular Pakistani civilian politician grows powerful and popular enough with a real movement behind him to undertake a complete takeover and cleaning out of the Pakistani military and security services or 2) a popular general takes over the military and starts cleaning house in a definitive way and purging out the militants and wannabe dictators. I don’t see either of these things happening soon.

10. Jon Kay Says:
    September 8th, 2008 at 12:04 am

    Reality Man:
    No, neither’s true. The fastest way of general improvement we inow of is to have a democracy around for at least fifty years. Each time there’s a peaceful change of power, it happens by somebody promising improvement, and sometimes it happens. It’s slow. Asif Ali Zardari has promised constitutional reform, an important thing; let’s hope it happens. My hope is that somebody delivers education reform sometime soon to cut down on lure of the Madrasses for being there with teachers teaching.

    And that’s the best way we know of. All the other options are noticeably worse. The lure of the Great Man has only delivered broken constitutions and millions of broken people. Real improvement in real societies HAS to be slow. It’s the way it it.

    Early democratic America and Britain both started as cessools of corruption by modern standards, but got mostly slowly better.

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