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A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped," the Post quoted Musharraf as saying.

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Musharraf, according to media reports, told a news conference in New York on Thursday that he had been expressing a commonly held opinion rather than his own.

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Press Corner
Pakistan will be failed state by 2015
February 14, 2005
Rediff.com
Pakistan, affected by civil war, Talibanisation and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons, will be a 'failed' state by 2015, premier US intelligence agencies have said in an assessment report.

Forecasting a 'Yugoslavia-like fate', the US National Intelligence Council and Central Intelligence Agency, in a jointly prepared Global Futures Assessment Report, have said Pakistan would be ripe with civil war, bloodshed, and inter-provincial rivalries.

"Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction," the report said.

The former Pakistan high commissioner to United Kingdom, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, quoted the report in an article titled Will the Pakistan army invade Balochistan as per the NIC-CIA Plan? in the South Asia Tribune.

Hasan said, "The military operation that has been put in motion in Balochistan would further distance the Baloch people from rest of the country."

"Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the Central government's control will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi," the former diplomat of Pakistan quoted the report as saying.

Hasan wondered, "Are our military rulers working on a similar agenda or on something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council in joint collaboration with CIA?"

His article comes in the backdrop of growing violence between the Balochis and the Pakistani security forces stationed in the gas-rich province.

The recent moves by the security forces to evict all residents within a 15-km radius of Pakistan's biggest gas plant, Sui, and the decision to create a cantonment near it has given a fillip to the anti-Islamabad insurgent activities of Balochi groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army, media reports said.

A nation which treats its minorities that way cannot be expected to treat its women any better. Oppression of minorities and misogyny are two sides of the same coin.

The birth of Pakistan was based on the premise that Muslims cannot live peacefully with other groups, so they must have their own Islamic dominant fundamentalist state. It's really amusing to me that some criticize the former apartheid regime of South Africa (for being non democratic and discriminatory towards blacks) while Pakistan is equally undemocratic and treats non-Muslims even worse than South Africa treated blacks!

And, of course, the frat-boy Bushites, ignorant of the whole region in their usual blundering way, need bullies like Musharaff as much as he needs them. So they are now entwined in the usual dance of death.

That a moderate bastard like Musharaff is in power in Pakistan -- when I say moderate, I am comparing him to some other American proxies, like Karimov -- has everything to do with power politics and very little to do with what rban seems to believe is "Muslim" culture.

And however bad things are in Pakistan, it is absurd to call Pakistan a "failed state." Somalia is a failed state; Pakistan is not, need not be. Of course, no nation need be -- it is vicious power politics, or vicious nationalism of the kind that rban is running on, that keeps these dynamics going.

[ 17 September 2005: Message edited by: skdadl ]

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Originally posted by rban:
We all want the same thing here: justice for women and minorities, and freedom from Islamic oppression.

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No, we do Not All want the Same thing. Most progressives and leftists want freedom from All kinds of oppression, whether it uses the name Islam, Hinduism or Christianity, even certain authoritarian forms of "socialism". You're not fooling anyone here but yourself.

As for you earlier comments, it is an undeniable fact that democracies and democratic societies practice less oppression than dictatorships, especially Communist and Islamic dictatorships. Fighting 'all oppression' is a fine and noble goal, but to do so one must recognize where the vast majority of oppression occurs.

The choice we must make is stark: on the one hand, you have dictatorship and oppression, which is always wrong, and on the other side you have liberty and democracy, which is eternally right.