My last posts drew what is, for this blog, a high number of comments (like, 9 total yaar), some of which were intriguing and offered more resources, and two of which were astonishingly dim. One commentator noted,
First off, Pakistan's split, after its military practiced ethnic cleansing and engaged in widespread human rights violations, led to the emergence of another nation-state. (Take that, man-who-sees-up-his-rear-end.) Nation-states are good at dealing with other nation-states; India's challenge, like Pakistan's and America's, is dealing with non-state actors with increased mobility, more global ambition and more ruthless tactics and technology.
I'm not predicting Pakistan breaks into two or three independent countries; I'm forewarning of the danger however remote of Pakistan fragmenting in the manner of Somalia, Iraq or Afghanistan, with the attendant violence likely to erupt and seep and ruin. Not to mention that an independent Bangladesh, grateful to India, is very different than a destabilized, ungoverned Pakistan with an open border from Kashmir to Kabul. That is a security and political nightmare.
Secondly, this confidence is absurd: India's security forces took days to respond to the attacks in Mumbai and contain them, implying that India is as lost in the face of non-state actors' violence as Pakistan is. Recent news confirms Indian security forces' inadequacy.
The better comment was by a man whose head has apparently long ago abandoned his body, who did to his higher faculties what Iranians did to the Shah, when he actually had the courage to type for all electronic time, "No community ever resorted to killing innocent passer-bys." Except, apparently, Muslims. This comment is so stupid as to merit no response from me except to draw your attention, and the commentators, to the stupidness of the comment's stupidity. Really, if I have to draw out the fact that explanation, strategy and justification are not one word in the English language, I will scream. You cannot hear it. But it will happen.
Wajahat Ali, a fixture in the internet media, now takes on the case of the Holy Land Foundation. This is brave stuff, published by The Guardian.
The Episcopal Church is splitting over, in part, the issues surrounding homosexuality.
Ex-U.S. official argues that Pakistan's military was responsible for the attacks in Mumbai. How this has all been confirmed, I am not sure. Because the Indian government said so! I do not doubt that it is likely, but I do wonder about the ease with which a full narrative has been constructed, especially when this is backed up by American intelligence agencies that recently seem to miss the obvious and end up making one bad choice after another -- why are Indian agencies any different? How can the operation still be under investigation and yet concluded?
The challenge here is not to draw a narrative that brings us to a dead-end, too: If Pakistan is responsible, then Pakistan must be punished. (Note: It doesn't matter if Pakistan is responsible. It just matters if that's what the right people say at the right time.) And that will only further increase violence in the region, and empower extremist elements in the country against that country's limited ability to fight monsters in part born of its own, well, stupidity.
Pakistan's foreign policy has alternated quite often between unthinking bombast and cruel and unusual means of shooting oneself in the foot (along with many others.) The country needs to rethink itself, but its government is to weak to begin the process in a hostile climate. That is the Pakistani tragedy, alongside a Mumbai tragedy, a broken Subcontinent that requires will, patience, endurance and sacrifice to fix. Indian aggressiveness right now is the worst possible outcome, not only because it is the outcome that the attackers wanted, though that should be enough to give some pause.
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