Zardari Under Pressure to Send Warning to London

I filed this story last night. It made the front page, but got taken into another story and ended up essentially as a picture caption. It happens…. But anyway, I thought it said something interesting about the way Pakistan works. The military appears to be putting pressure on Zardari to make a stand over Cameron’s comments, but the civilian government would rather let the matter fade gently. As today has worn on it seems that Zardari has decided to press on with the meeting, although he remains under pressure to cancel. Anyway, here’s the story

PAKISTAN’S President is threatening to cancel a Chequers summit with David Cameron after the Prime Minister accused his country of spreading terrorism, escalating a bitter diplomatic row.

Relations between the two countries have already been soured by the clumsy allegations made by Mr Cameron during a visit to Pakistan’s arch-rival India.

Yesterday(THU), a senior Pakistani official said President Asif Ali Zardari’s visit was now in doubt.

“Our president is now giving serious consideration to cancelling his proposed visit to London next week,” he said.

“He is under considerable pressure from his senior officials to cancel his planned meeting with Mr Cameron at Chequers as a protest against the prime minister’s comments in India.”

The row with Pakistan has overshadowed Mr Cameron’s trip to India.

On Wednesday, during a question and answer session in Bangalore, he accused Pakistan of double dealing, by aligning itself with the West in the war on terror while elements of its military retained ties to extremist groups.

Mr Cameron said: “We can not tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world.”

Aides had to later clarify that he was not accusing the Pakistan government of spreading terror.

His remarks brought a rapid denial from Islamabad.

“Obviously, we are saddened by Prime Minister Cameron’s remarks in Bangalore to an Indian audience. These remarks are contrary to the facts on the ground,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told a news briefing.

The issue has also highlighted a faultline within Pakistan’s elite.

Hardliners in the powerful military establishment want Zardari to take a stand while pragmatists within the civilian government would rather let the controversy fade, excusing the words as a simple mistake by the inexperienced leader of a key ally.

Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general, said President Zardari would be under enormous pressure from the military and intelligence services to send a clear signal to London.

“This is the way it works,” he said.

“The way that Pakistan seems so upset by this statement, it may very well make him cancel his trip.

“It was very badly timed and not at all discreet, especially to make this statement in India.”

A senior government official insisted there no plans to cancel but admitted the comments would make the trip more awkward.

“Basically there is domestic pressure after these comments,” said the official.

“But President Zardari understands that while Prime Minister Cameron’s comments were unkind and the venue was inappropriate – by which I mean India – the UK and Pakistan are unified in the common goal of defeating terrorism.”

Mr Zardari is due to travel to the UK after visiting France, meeting Mr Cameron at Chequers on August 8 to discuss trade, the war on terror and the role of Britain’s Pakistani community.

Pakistan’s Miserable Week

Not a great week for Pakistan:

• Monday: Wikileaks story breaks with hundreds of documents alleging that Pakistan’s intelligence service is working with Taliban and al Qaeda extremists
• Wednesday: Worst plane crash in country’s history with 152 people dead. David Cameron accuses Pakistan of exporting terrorism – and says it in India while flogging £500m of warplanes to New Delhi
• Thursday: At least 200 people dead in worst flooding in memory. Hamid Karzai weighs in against Pakistan

Let’s just hope that Salman Butt can give the country something to cheer about.

Sudan’s Groundhog Day

Sudan has reappeared briefly in the op-ed pages, first with Dave Eggers and John Prendergast urging US intervention to prevent a return to war following the South’s referendum on seccession. Now Marc Gustafson has responded with a pursuasive argument that once again the Sudan advocacy movement has exaggerated the risks and drawn the wrong conclusions…

If anything has been learned from the past decade of foreign policy, it is that doomsday predictions of inevitable destruction can easily grab headlines and persuade policymakers to make decisions based on fear rather than knowledge. In Sudan, the peace agreement, and by extension, the referendum, are products of many years of negotiation and involvement from local, regional, and international partners.

The best role for the American government is to continue using its financial and human resources to support the process of mediation, but not try to guide it.

I was recently upbraided by a high-profile Sudan campaigner for focusing too much on criticising the advocacy movement. But it does seem to me that the same mistakes are still being made by the activists, as Gustafson points out, and we haven’t learned the lessons of previous interventions.

Postcards from Hell 6: Cherries in a box

I made the mistake of leaving these cherries out of the fridge so they went a bit soft. But the glorious thing is not the cherries themselves, but their packaging. Lined up in neat rows like chocolates in a box, how can you possible resist?

Postcards from Hell is my ironically titled list of things that are cool about Pakistan, my new home, or which contradict the notion that the country is some sort of failed state

Postcards From Hell 5: Rose Petals

Baroness Warsi visited her ancestral village yesterday, the place that her father left 50 years ago in favour of England. She received a rock-star reception, with cheering, drumming and great cries of “zindabad”. But the best thing about it was the fistfuls of fragrant rose petals that showered her arrival. More great clouds of pink were thrown in the air as she took the podium to address the crowd. As the hot afternoon wore on, and more feet trampled the ground in front of the balcony where she stood, the crumpled petals sent up an intense scent lending proceedings a rather magical air.

Postcards from Hell is my ironically titled list of things that are cool about Pakistan, my new home, or which contradict the notion that the country is some sort of failed state

Postcards from Hell: 4. Hospitality

This will be old hat to those of you who know Pakistan. But anyone who believes it is a failed state peopled by Western-hating suicide bombers will be surprised to learn that Pakistanis have taken the art of hospitality to a completely new level. Barely a day goes by without an invitation to a dinner, tea or meat roasting from someone that I met in a lift weeks ago. No interview is conducted until I have been completely and fully rehydrated. And no meeting starts without a plate of biscuits, at the very least. Nothing is too much trouble and the whole thing is pretty humbling for an Englishman who gets nervous when he has more than two unrelated people in his house at the same time.

As I say, old hat or the naive cliches of a new arrival in Pakistan, whichever you prefer. Or both.

Anyway, at least this little story has made some good headlines around the world, reminding people that there is more to this country than most of the stuff you read in the papers…

A hotel cleaner who earns just £200 a year has been hailed a national hero in Pakistan after he returned $50,000 in cash left behind by an absent-minded guest.

Essa Khan found the bag of notes stuffed in a safe deposit box while carrying out a routine inspection of a room vacated by a Japanese NGO worker before another guest arrived.

I’m no expert, but I’m pretty confident that wouldn’t have happened in a failed state.

Postcards from Hell is my little list of things that are cool about Pakistan, my new home, or which contradict the notion that the country is some sort of failed state

Explaining Away Terror

Great piece in The Daily Times today by Hasan-Askari Rizvi on the failure of many Pakistani leaders to recognise the domestic nature of terror attacks. Instead they continue to reach for narratives that suggest a global conspiracy against Islam rather than accept the threat posed by Muslim extremists. At the same time, leaders in Punjab refuse to accept that their region is home to terror groups. As a result, recent terror attacks have been blamed on anyone but the real culprits…

• A Muslim cannot engage in terrorism targeting ordinary people, places of worship and shrines. One implication of this statement is that such acts must have been conducted by non-Muslims
• The paid agents of Pakistan’s foreign adversaries, rather than militant Islamic organisations, engage in such activities to destabilise Pakistan
• Various US agencies working in Pakistan and Afghanistan resort to terrorism or buy off people for terrorism to destabilise Pakistan and thus create a justification for the US and other western countries to take control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
• Attacks or bombings are a reaction to Pakistan’s involvement in US-led efforts to eliminate trans-national terrorism, which does not serve Pakistan’s interests
• These incidents are a reaction to Pakistan’s military action in the tribal areas and US drone attacks. If US troops withdraw from Afghanistan and there is no US military activity in Pakistan, terrorism will stop. The Taliban and other militants are not anti-Pakistan; they are fighting against foreign presence in the region

Tackling the problem will mean jettisoning such conspiracy theories or rationalisations.

Postcards from Hell: 3. The Media

Pakistan’s media houses have plenty of problems. The government is planning new laws that will restrict reporting of terror attacks and limit criticism of government. Reporters face risks every day as they go about their work. So far, six have been killed this year making the country the third most dangerous in the world for journalists. But you’d never know about those problems from reading the papers. Boisterous, bubbly and bursting with criticism of the government, their vast circulations would be the envy of Western papers. And they are not the sort of publications you’d expect in a failed state.

Postcards from Hell is my little list of things that are cool about Pakistan, my new home, and which contradict the notion that the country is some sort of failed state

Postcards from Hell: 2. Murree Beer

 

Murree beer may remind me of sixth form home brew experiments – and I gather their whisky is not what it used to be – but if there’s one thing I know about failed states it’s that they tend not to brew their own beer or distill their own spirits. In failed states, the committed imbiber has to buy Ethiopian gin. And drink it on a hotel rooftop mixed with luke warm Fanta.  The story of the Gin Fanta can wait for another day. For now, rest assured that this ice cold Murree is being drunk in a comfortable hotel bar (albeit sort of secret) while watching Pakistan play Australia in the T20 cricket. Not at all how you’d imagine a failed state to be.

Africa United?

I’ll be honest. I love that Shakira song. It’s trite and filled with stereotypes from grass skirts to bumshaking dances – and I know I shouldn’t like it. For as Brendan O’Neill points out at Spiked Online it captures everything that is wrong and patronising about this “African” World Cup…

Ever since the opening ceremony, when Shakira did tribal dancing and sang ‘waka, waka Africa!’ (‘shine, shine Africa!’), we knew this World Cup would serve up a massive dollop of patronising guff about Africans.

And so it proved. When Ghana reached the quarter finals, they were no longer a national team – they were AFRICA. Never mind that the team has a long-standing rivalry with regional powerhouse Nigeria, or that Ghana’s supporters will long remember defeat by Cameroon in the 2008 Cup of Nations that deprived the Black Stars of reaching the final on home soil, African football fans are supposed to behave according to different norms.

Personally, I struggled last night to decide which team I hate more: Germany or Argentina. A lifetime of sporting disappointment (and cheating Argies) colours my judgment. I desperately want Spain and the Netherlands to fail so that the select group of winners – of which England is an increasingly aberrant member – is not enlarged. The notion that I might switch allegiance once my own team is knocked out, that I might put continental pride first, is bonkers. A host of occasionally bigoted factors comes into play. That’s what football fans do. Ultimately it’s tribal.

So why should it be different for Africans? As Elizabeth Ohene, a Ghanaian points out…

As for the Super Eagles of Nigeria, if they were simply the Super Eagles, they would be easy to love. But the Nigeria bit makes it so difficult to stomach; who on this continent doesn’t find the Nigerians insufferable? They are loud, and there are frankly too many of them.

If there is one thing that unites the people of Africa, it is a love of football. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that somehow Africans are different to the rest of us. Egyptian and Algerian fans almost started a regional war during their world cup qualifier. So too Chad and Sudan.

However, the alternative narrative – that the continent is filled by exotic tribes whose differences could be solved if only they could play a bit of footie together – is desperately appealing to a world that has no idea how to help in Somalia, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the rest. What an uplifting, idealistic and happy thought. It is the sort of thing that would make a nice Coca Cola commercial. And that’s probably whyI have set Waka Waka as the ringtone on my phone. Even though I know it’s sentimental bullshit that borders on racist.