Wasn't death by a thousand cuts a Pakistani strategy? Kya hua? What you chaps still don't realise is that, you are actually inflicting pain on yourself.
Islamic Republic of Pakistan : News, Discussions & Updates
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Wasn't death by a thousand cuts a Pakistani strategy? Kya hua? What you chaps still don't realise is that, you are actually inflicting pain on yourself.
@bonobashi You think that GEN BAJWA is an ANGEL
Please read this to see his and his Cronies ' Cunning mind at work within his own country
How Pakistan is splitting from deep within | ORF
Please read this to see his and his Cronies ' Cunning mind at work within his own country
How Pakistan is splitting from deep within | ORF
Once Imran bhai comes to power then "USA will use Pakistan like Hagge ka Mugga".
Doesn't matter who comes to power, Pakistan and sh!t are soulmates.
Another stupid ideology of Pakistanis is that Pakistan was a simple,innocent country which was forced into fighting "America's War".In reality,it was in Pakistan's own interest to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan,because Pak-occupied Balochistan was the next target had the invasion been successfull.And after 9/11,Pakistan fought against terrorists on its own soil,because of ideology it spread,and fighting terrorists on your own soil is a basic function of a nation state.Pakistan still got $33 bn for a job which a normal nation state should have done anyways
Pakistan is a w.h.o.r.e masquerading as a virgin and crying for sympathy after being used and dumped by yet another lover (read customer). They have a term for this type of behavior on another forum, they like to use it a lot.
How the establishment is pushing Pakistan towards another civil war
By ignoring the genuine grievances of the Pakhtun, Baloch and Muhajirs in Pakistan, the establishment is repeating the same mistakes it made that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971
Imaan Mazari-Hazir
APRIL 17, 2018
There has been a complete blackout of the Pakhtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) in the Pakistani media. The PTM, one of the largest movements in the country’s history, is a culmination of the efforts of ordinary people as opposed to a mass demonstration organized by any political party. Young activist, Manzoor Pashteen, is the latest victim of engineered social media campaigns, accusing him of being a ‘traitor’ and ‘blasphemer’. In fact, social media accounts, of Internet bots and those masquerading as journalists, have consistently strived to discredit and slander the PTM by trying to link it to Indian intelligence agencies (an age-old tactic of quelling dissent in the land of the pure).
By ignoring the genuine grievances of the Pakhtun, Baloch and Muhajirs in Pakistan, the security establishment is repeating the same mistakes it made that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971. The rhetoric that was proudly used as a propaganda tool back then is similarly being adopted now. Instead of this rhetoric and anti-state labelling, the solution to this conflict is rather straightforward, considering the basic nature of the demands of the PTM, namely ending enforced disappearances (which are already illegal under the Constitution) and safeguarding the rights of the Pakhtun as equal citizens of Pakistan.
There have been extrajudicial killings of the Pakhtun and Baloch for decades now and there has been no real change on ground vis-à-vis the security establishment’s policy towards these marginalised and oppressed groups. Now that these people have finally had enough and are demanding that they be treated with dignity, the State has decided to ignore their voices by deflecting from its own excesses.
While all this has been going on, a media channel allegedly sympathetic to recently disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif got taken off air, while both the government and the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) denied having ordered that censorship.
One wonders if this is all part of the ‘Bajwa doctrine’ — the ‘off-the-record’ briefing by the Chief of Army Staff to a select group of media personnel on the supposed threats faced by Pakistan, and how the military intended to protect the judiciary against any threats.
It is no secret that the security establishment in Pakistan has been a sacred cow, above any and all criticism, immune from accountability by elected institutions, and the self-styled custodian of Pakistan’s ‘national’ interests. As per this narrative, journalists, academics, intellectuals or anyone even remotely critical of the establishment’s disastrous policies (in supporting extremists, destabilising democracy, etc.) has been abducted at random, tortured, murdered, or has simply ‘disappeared’.
As the civil government desperately holds on to the very little power in its hands, the establishment is preparing for full-blown chaos that allows them to sweep in as the chosen messiahs for the umpteenth time in Pakistan’s history. Unfortunately for the establishment, this is perhaps the first time in our history that ordinary people have spoken up in support of civilian supremacy, clearly pointing the finger at the former for the damage it has done to the State’s institutions.
Of course, such awareness needs to be systematically crippled through new and improved propaganda tactics, including but not limited to extending support to the judiciary. The military-judiciary nexus is, however, not a novel partnership in Pakistan. After all, previously judges in Pakistan have even taken oath under military dictators.
But someone on the outside (or even those who continue to buy the security-centric narrative) may wonder: what is all this chaos being fuelled for? The answer lies in a bird’s eye view of two things: budget allocations and corporate interests. The army in Pakistan has numerous business interests, including in fertilizer, cement, property development, banking, dairy, poultry and the list goes on. On top of their private commercial activity, they are also allocated massive shares of Pakistan’s budget without any debate.
Let us not forget that the only transition from one democratic government to another took place as recently as the year 2013. The establishment is not going to let go of its power and influence without a fight — even if their methods of warfare push the country into a civil war. But the question Pakistanis should be asking right now is not whether they fear a civil war but whether they are willing yet again to choose chaos in the long-term for a false sense of order in the short-term?
The writer is a lawyer. She Tweets: @ImaanZHazir
LINK --- How the establishment is pushing Pakistan towards another civil war - Daily Times
By ignoring the genuine grievances of the Pakhtun, Baloch and Muhajirs in Pakistan, the establishment is repeating the same mistakes it made that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971
- 743Shares
Imaan Mazari-HazirAPRIL 17, 2018
There has been a complete blackout of the Pakhtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) in the Pakistani media. The PTM, one of the largest movements in the country’s history, is a culmination of the efforts of ordinary people as opposed to a mass demonstration organized by any political party. Young activist, Manzoor Pashteen, is the latest victim of engineered social media campaigns, accusing him of being a ‘traitor’ and ‘blasphemer’. In fact, social media accounts, of Internet bots and those masquerading as journalists, have consistently strived to discredit and slander the PTM by trying to link it to Indian intelligence agencies (an age-old tactic of quelling dissent in the land of the pure).
By ignoring the genuine grievances of the Pakhtun, Baloch and Muhajirs in Pakistan, the security establishment is repeating the same mistakes it made that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971. The rhetoric that was proudly used as a propaganda tool back then is similarly being adopted now. Instead of this rhetoric and anti-state labelling, the solution to this conflict is rather straightforward, considering the basic nature of the demands of the PTM, namely ending enforced disappearances (which are already illegal under the Constitution) and safeguarding the rights of the Pakhtun as equal citizens of Pakistan.
There have been extrajudicial killings of the Pakhtun and Baloch for decades now and there has been no real change on ground vis-à-vis the security establishment’s policy towards these marginalised and oppressed groups. Now that these people have finally had enough and are demanding that they be treated with dignity, the State has decided to ignore their voices by deflecting from its own excesses.
Let us not forget that the only transition from one democratic government to another took place as recently as the year 2013. The establishment is not going to let go of its power and influence without a fight — even if their methods of warfare push the country into a civil war
As if this situation wasn’t alarming enough, another pot is bubbling just waiting to explode. The Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) sit-in in Lahore ended after over a week with complete capitulation of the state apparatus to the organisation’s fascist designs. Their leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, is a proclaimed offender with whom the Pakistani military concluded a ‘peace agreement’ just a few months ago, after his party’s 21-day-sit-in in the federal capital. That a handful of the TLP activists, here and there, are able to bring the whole country to a standstill give the impression that Rizvi is being used to destabilise the civil government on the alleged pretext of blasphemy.While all this has been going on, a media channel allegedly sympathetic to recently disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif got taken off air, while both the government and the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) denied having ordered that censorship.
One wonders if this is all part of the ‘Bajwa doctrine’ — the ‘off-the-record’ briefing by the Chief of Army Staff to a select group of media personnel on the supposed threats faced by Pakistan, and how the military intended to protect the judiciary against any threats.
As the civil government desperately holds on to the very little power in its hands, the establishment is preparing for full-blown chaos that allows them to sweep in as the chosen messiahs for the umpteenth time in Pakistan’s history. Unfortunately for the establishment, this is perhaps the first time in our history that ordinary people have spoken up in support of civilian supremacy, clearly pointing the finger at the former for the damage it has done to the State’s institutions.
Of course, such awareness needs to be systematically crippled through new and improved propaganda tactics, including but not limited to extending support to the judiciary. The military-judiciary nexus is, however, not a novel partnership in Pakistan. After all, previously judges in Pakistan have even taken oath under military dictators.
But someone on the outside (or even those who continue to buy the security-centric narrative) may wonder: what is all this chaos being fuelled for? The answer lies in a bird’s eye view of two things: budget allocations and corporate interests. The army in Pakistan has numerous business interests, including in fertilizer, cement, property development, banking, dairy, poultry and the list goes on. On top of their private commercial activity, they are also allocated massive shares of Pakistan’s budget without any debate.
Let us not forget that the only transition from one democratic government to another took place as recently as the year 2013. The establishment is not going to let go of its power and influence without a fight — even if their methods of warfare push the country into a civil war. But the question Pakistanis should be asking right now is not whether they fear a civil war but whether they are willing yet again to choose chaos in the long-term for a false sense of order in the short-term?
The writer is a lawyer. She Tweets: @ImaanZHazir
LINK --- How the establishment is pushing Pakistan towards another civil war - Daily Times
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Kiran Stacey in Islamabad 9 HOURS AGO Print this page
In the last few months of the Obama administration, the US state department made an announcement which caused a new breach in Washington’s tumultuous relationship with Pakistan. John Kirby, then the department’s spokesman, said Congress had decided to approve the sale of eight fighter aircraft to Pakistan.
However, he added that some senior members of Congress “have made clear that they object to using foreign military financing [a form of military aid to help countries buy US weapons] to support it”. While the announcement garnered little attention in Washington, it was a much bigger deal in Pakistan: by withdrawing financing support, the US had in effect increased the price of the new F-16s from $270m to $700m, putting them out of Islamabad’s reach.
US policymakers were concerned about Pakistan’s perceived failure to tackle domestic extremism, which has had a knock-on effect in Afghanistan, where the US is engaged in its longest overseas war. But for their counterparts in Islamabad, the incident confirmed what they had believed for a while: the US could no longer be relied on as their armed forces’ primary source of advanced weapons. China's president Xi Jinping gives a speech aboard a Chinese warship last week. China is now the biggest weapons exporter to Pakistan © Reuters
As a result, Pakistan is focusing instead on the rollout of the next batch of the JF-17, the fighter jet it is developing with China, and which is catching up with the F-16 in terms of capabilities. One former Pakistani minister recalls telling colleagues the US decision confirmed his worst fears. “We have learnt over time that the Americans are terrible when it comes to honouring their promises,” he says. “This was bound to end up in divorce.”
Pakistan’s response encapsulated what had been a slow but steady shift in military procurement away from American-made weapons towards Chinese ones, or those made domestically with Chinese support.
Since 2010, US weapons exports to Pakistan have plummeted from $1bn to just $21m last year, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. During the same period, those from China have also fallen, but much more slowly, from $747m to $514m, making China the biggest weapons exporter to its southern neighbour.
The shift coincided with Islamabad’s growing suspicion about the closeness between the US and India, but was accelerated by the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in 2011, which badly damaged relations with the US. This year, relations deteriorated again when President Donald Trump suspended $2bn of military aid to Pakistan, accusing it of showing “nothing but lies and deceit” in its promises to crack down on the Taliban and affiliated groups.
The problem for Mr Trump is that he needs support from Pakistan as he recommits to the war in Afghanistan, and his officials are finding that Islamabad is less responsive than usual to the US message.
China's Wing Loong drone. It is thought that Beijing is supplying drones to Islamabad © MZTourist/Wikicommons/CC Harrison Akins, a research fellow at the Howard H Baker Jr Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, says: “The Trump administration’s decision to pursue sanctions against Pakistan, alongside Trump’s fiery rhetoric . . . can only push Pakistan further into the arms of Beijing — especially with Pakistan’s shift from US military supplies to Chinese military supplies. “In the short term, this will make the US mission in Afghanistan more difficult and costly.”
For the US, there could be longer-term consequences that stretch well beyond its complicated relationship with Pakistan. Sales of weapons systems, often backed by preferential financial terms, have become central to the way the US has managed its vast network of military alliances and partnerships — in effect, a form of patronage. But many of those countries are now advertising their ability to buy some of that hardware from other governments. Key allies such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey have signed arms agreements with Russia.
From the Philippines and Thailand in east Asia, to large parts of Africa, world leaders are also increasingly looking to China to provide the kinds of weapons they always used to buy from the US. Between 2011 and 2015, China exported 88 per cent more in weapon sales than during the previous five years, according to Sipri. “Twenty years ago, China did not have the technology to be able to compete with the west, but now there is not much difference,” says Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at Sipri. “Many countries also see Chinese supplies as more secure, as Beijing does not tend to cut them off over awkward issues such as democracy or human rights.”
Share this graphic While many countries are just discovering the benefits of Chinese weapons, Pakistan has been buying from Beijing for decades, starting after the US placed an arms embargo on it in the wake of the 1965 war with India. After that, every time Islamabad has suffered diplomatic problems with Washington supplies of Chinese weapons have risen. In the 1980s and 1990s, Beijing provided supplies and technical knowledge to help Pakistan develop its nuclear weapons, and in the early 1990s shocked Washington by selling its neighbour more than 30 M-11 missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads. But the nature of the military relationship has changed in the past decade. China is now selling the kind of high-end systems in which the US once specialised to Pakistan’s military, and is co-developing many others. A Chinese-manufactured VT4 main battle tank, which is being supplied to the Pakistani army © EPA “In the last decade, China has collaborated much more expansively with Pakistan, with the intention of providing its ally with a tactical, military-technical edge,” says Jon Grevatt, an analyst at the defence research company Jane’s IHS Markit.
Examples since 2010 include A-100 rocket launchers, HQ-16 air defence missile systems and VT-4 tanks, which are reportedly now being tested in Pakistan. But three weapons systems in particular encapsulate the new Chinese capabilities, and the way in which they threaten US influence in south Asia. The first is the JF-17 fighter aircraft. To understand why Islamabad has been so keen to develop the warplane requires a potted history of the F-16, the American-made jet, and the starring role it has always played in the melodrama of the US-Pakistan relationship.
After sending about 40 of the aircraft to Pakistan in 1983, the US cancelled a second shipment in 1990 because of concerns over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. The incident triggered fury in Islamabad, not least because Pakistan did not recover the money it had already spent on the aeroplanes — only receiving partial compensation in 1998. Pakistan officials still talk about the “perfidy” they believe the US showed in 1990. They say the recent decision not to allow them to use military aid to buy a further batch is merely confirmation the Americans are not to be trusted when it comes to weapons supplies. Selling to Pakistan
The US Air Force F-16 pilots show their close-flying skills at an airshow in Maryland © AFP $700m Approximate price to Pakistan of an F-16 jet, up from $270m, after the US removed subsidies in 2016 $5bn Value of 2016 deal for Beijing to sell eight attack submarines to Pakistan $60bn Projects earmarked for development as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Luckily for them, just as the US was making it more difficult to buy its weapons, Beijing was knocking on the door. In 2007, Pakistan flew its first two JF-17s, whose parts were made in China and assembled locally.
The jets were not as nimble or deadly as the American fighter, but cost about a third of the price. And crucially, China has shared the designs so the Pakistan’s armed forces can build their own, and even export them. “We buy weapons from the Americans off the shelf, but they won’t share technology,” says Mushahid Hussain, chairman of the Pakistani senate’s defence committee. Speaking to the Financial Times from his office in Islamabad, where his desk is adorned with Pakistani and Chinese flags, he adds: “Also, politics doesn’t get in the way of things, whereas the Americans, if they are angry with us, they stop everything.”
Pakistani protesters demand the US stops drone attacks in tribal areas in 2014 © AFP If the US thought the F-16 was irreplaceable, it received another unwelcome surprise in September 2015, when satellite images revealed that an attack by Pakistani forces on Islamist militants near the Afghan border was carried out by a drone that “strongly resembled” a Chinese design, defence experts said.
While surveillance drones are simple enough to build, say military experts, ones with armed capabilities are far less easy to develop. Washington has been so concerned about how armed drones might be used by other governments, it has refused repeated requests from Islamabad — among other countries — to buy American systems. Some in Islamabad see the development of their own drone technology — with apparent Chinese support — as a precursor to taking a more defiant stance towards the US’s own drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Recommended The Big Read China takes ‘project of the century’ to Pakistan
“Towards the end of the [Barack] Obama administration, Pakistanis would see drone attacks on their screens every night,” says Sherry Rehman, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. “This felt not just like an encroachment on our sovereignty, but an act of aggression.” China’s development of armed drones is also attracting attention in the Middle East, where countries that are barred from procuring American ones have bought or have shown interest in buying from Beijing.
Experts say they believe Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE and Egypt have all bought them in recent years. One deal in particular shows how ambitious the Chinese have become in their weapons sales. In October 2016, just a month after the US said it would not subsidise the sale of new F-16s, Beijing announced it would sell eight attack submarines to Pakistan for about $5bn — the biggest single arms export deal in the country’s history.
The deal is a shot across the American bow because it could enhance Pakistan’s capacity to challenge India in the Indian Ocean. At a time when Washington is relying on India to provide a bulwark against perceived Chinese maritime expansionism, experts say sales such as this pose a threat to that strategy.
“This is a headache for both the Americans and the Indians,” says Mr Wezeman. Pakistan's former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, sits in the cockpit of a JF-17 Thunder aircraft © AFP In Islamabad, US officials are engaged in a blizzard of diplomacy as they try to repair the rift between the two countries. “We are not walking away. We have suspended the security assistance, but our channels of communication are open,” says one senior US diplomat. But Pakistanis say they fear relations have hit a historic low. “The Americans are hectoring us in private now; even at the worst times that was not the case,” says one Pakistani official involved in talks with US counterparts. Mr Hussain says: “People are bored with the US — they have given up on the US. Let them stew in their own juice. Forget about them.”
But for Islamabad, the big change in recent years has not been the rhetoric — they have seen this kind of flare-up before — but the reduction in Washington’s leverage. The US has already cut back most of its aid to Pakistan — something it has been able to absorb in part because of Chinese money flowing into infrastructure projects as part of the $60bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Now Washington’s traditional threat that it will cancel military deals holds less sway.
“The problem for Washington is that there will come a time when you run out of levers,” says the Pakistani official. “It is best to keep options and windows open.” If Pakistan shows that Chinese support enables it to resist US demands to do more to assist the war in Afghanistan, it will set an example for other countries. “Arms sales have long been a tool of US foreign policy, to cement alliances and gain influence,” says Mr Wezeman. “Now that Chinese technology is competitive, if American allies start saying they prefer the terms offered by China, that spells trouble for the US.” Additional reporting by Farhan Bokhari
Kiran Stacey in Islamabad 9 HOURS AGO Print this page
In the last few months of the Obama administration, the US state department made an announcement which caused a new breach in Washington’s tumultuous relationship with Pakistan. John Kirby, then the department’s spokesman, said Congress had decided to approve the sale of eight fighter aircraft to Pakistan.
However, he added that some senior members of Congress “have made clear that they object to using foreign military financing [a form of military aid to help countries buy US weapons] to support it”. While the announcement garnered little attention in Washington, it was a much bigger deal in Pakistan: by withdrawing financing support, the US had in effect increased the price of the new F-16s from $270m to $700m, putting them out of Islamabad’s reach.
US policymakers were concerned about Pakistan’s perceived failure to tackle domestic extremism, which has had a knock-on effect in Afghanistan, where the US is engaged in its longest overseas war. But for their counterparts in Islamabad, the incident confirmed what they had believed for a while: the US could no longer be relied on as their armed forces’ primary source of advanced weapons. China's president Xi Jinping gives a speech aboard a Chinese warship last week. China is now the biggest weapons exporter to Pakistan © Reuters
As a result, Pakistan is focusing instead on the rollout of the next batch of the JF-17, the fighter jet it is developing with China, and which is catching up with the F-16 in terms of capabilities. One former Pakistani minister recalls telling colleagues the US decision confirmed his worst fears. “We have learnt over time that the Americans are terrible when it comes to honouring their promises,” he says. “This was bound to end up in divorce.”
Pakistan’s response encapsulated what had been a slow but steady shift in military procurement away from American-made weapons towards Chinese ones, or those made domestically with Chinese support.
Since 2010, US weapons exports to Pakistan have plummeted from $1bn to just $21m last year, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. During the same period, those from China have also fallen, but much more slowly, from $747m to $514m, making China the biggest weapons exporter to its southern neighbour.
The shift coincided with Islamabad’s growing suspicion about the closeness between the US and India, but was accelerated by the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in 2011, which badly damaged relations with the US. This year, relations deteriorated again when President Donald Trump suspended $2bn of military aid to Pakistan, accusing it of showing “nothing but lies and deceit” in its promises to crack down on the Taliban and affiliated groups.
The problem for Mr Trump is that he needs support from Pakistan as he recommits to the war in Afghanistan, and his officials are finding that Islamabad is less responsive than usual to the US message.
China's Wing Loong drone. It is thought that Beijing is supplying drones to Islamabad © MZTourist/Wikicommons/CC Harrison Akins, a research fellow at the Howard H Baker Jr Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, says: “The Trump administration’s decision to pursue sanctions against Pakistan, alongside Trump’s fiery rhetoric . . . can only push Pakistan further into the arms of Beijing — especially with Pakistan’s shift from US military supplies to Chinese military supplies. “In the short term, this will make the US mission in Afghanistan more difficult and costly.”
For the US, there could be longer-term consequences that stretch well beyond its complicated relationship with Pakistan. Sales of weapons systems, often backed by preferential financial terms, have become central to the way the US has managed its vast network of military alliances and partnerships — in effect, a form of patronage. But many of those countries are now advertising their ability to buy some of that hardware from other governments. Key allies such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey have signed arms agreements with Russia.
From the Philippines and Thailand in east Asia, to large parts of Africa, world leaders are also increasingly looking to China to provide the kinds of weapons they always used to buy from the US. Between 2011 and 2015, China exported 88 per cent more in weapon sales than during the previous five years, according to Sipri. “Twenty years ago, China did not have the technology to be able to compete with the west, but now there is not much difference,” says Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at Sipri. “Many countries also see Chinese supplies as more secure, as Beijing does not tend to cut them off over awkward issues such as democracy or human rights.”
Share this graphic While many countries are just discovering the benefits of Chinese weapons, Pakistan has been buying from Beijing for decades, starting after the US placed an arms embargo on it in the wake of the 1965 war with India. After that, every time Islamabad has suffered diplomatic problems with Washington supplies of Chinese weapons have risen. In the 1980s and 1990s, Beijing provided supplies and technical knowledge to help Pakistan develop its nuclear weapons, and in the early 1990s shocked Washington by selling its neighbour more than 30 M-11 missiles, capable of carrying nuclear warheads. But the nature of the military relationship has changed in the past decade. China is now selling the kind of high-end systems in which the US once specialised to Pakistan’s military, and is co-developing many others. A Chinese-manufactured VT4 main battle tank, which is being supplied to the Pakistani army © EPA “In the last decade, China has collaborated much more expansively with Pakistan, with the intention of providing its ally with a tactical, military-technical edge,” says Jon Grevatt, an analyst at the defence research company Jane’s IHS Markit.
Examples since 2010 include A-100 rocket launchers, HQ-16 air defence missile systems and VT-4 tanks, which are reportedly now being tested in Pakistan. But three weapons systems in particular encapsulate the new Chinese capabilities, and the way in which they threaten US influence in south Asia. The first is the JF-17 fighter aircraft. To understand why Islamabad has been so keen to develop the warplane requires a potted history of the F-16, the American-made jet, and the starring role it has always played in the melodrama of the US-Pakistan relationship.
After sending about 40 of the aircraft to Pakistan in 1983, the US cancelled a second shipment in 1990 because of concerns over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. The incident triggered fury in Islamabad, not least because Pakistan did not recover the money it had already spent on the aeroplanes — only receiving partial compensation in 1998. Pakistan officials still talk about the “perfidy” they believe the US showed in 1990. They say the recent decision not to allow them to use military aid to buy a further batch is merely confirmation the Americans are not to be trusted when it comes to weapons supplies. Selling to Pakistan
The US Air Force F-16 pilots show their close-flying skills at an airshow in Maryland © AFP $700m Approximate price to Pakistan of an F-16 jet, up from $270m, after the US removed subsidies in 2016 $5bn Value of 2016 deal for Beijing to sell eight attack submarines to Pakistan $60bn Projects earmarked for development as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Luckily for them, just as the US was making it more difficult to buy its weapons, Beijing was knocking on the door. In 2007, Pakistan flew its first two JF-17s, whose parts were made in China and assembled locally.
The jets were not as nimble or deadly as the American fighter, but cost about a third of the price. And crucially, China has shared the designs so the Pakistan’s armed forces can build their own, and even export them. “We buy weapons from the Americans off the shelf, but they won’t share technology,” says Mushahid Hussain, chairman of the Pakistani senate’s defence committee. Speaking to the Financial Times from his office in Islamabad, where his desk is adorned with Pakistani and Chinese flags, he adds: “Also, politics doesn’t get in the way of things, whereas the Americans, if they are angry with us, they stop everything.”
Pakistani protesters demand the US stops drone attacks in tribal areas in 2014 © AFP If the US thought the F-16 was irreplaceable, it received another unwelcome surprise in September 2015, when satellite images revealed that an attack by Pakistani forces on Islamist militants near the Afghan border was carried out by a drone that “strongly resembled” a Chinese design, defence experts said.
While surveillance drones are simple enough to build, say military experts, ones with armed capabilities are far less easy to develop. Washington has been so concerned about how armed drones might be used by other governments, it has refused repeated requests from Islamabad — among other countries — to buy American systems. Some in Islamabad see the development of their own drone technology — with apparent Chinese support — as a precursor to taking a more defiant stance towards the US’s own drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Recommended The Big Read China takes ‘project of the century’ to Pakistan
“Towards the end of the [Barack] Obama administration, Pakistanis would see drone attacks on their screens every night,” says Sherry Rehman, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. “This felt not just like an encroachment on our sovereignty, but an act of aggression.” China’s development of armed drones is also attracting attention in the Middle East, where countries that are barred from procuring American ones have bought or have shown interest in buying from Beijing.
Experts say they believe Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE and Egypt have all bought them in recent years. One deal in particular shows how ambitious the Chinese have become in their weapons sales. In October 2016, just a month after the US said it would not subsidise the sale of new F-16s, Beijing announced it would sell eight attack submarines to Pakistan for about $5bn — the biggest single arms export deal in the country’s history.
The deal is a shot across the American bow because it could enhance Pakistan’s capacity to challenge India in the Indian Ocean. At a time when Washington is relying on India to provide a bulwark against perceived Chinese maritime expansionism, experts say sales such as this pose a threat to that strategy.
“This is a headache for both the Americans and the Indians,” says Mr Wezeman. Pakistan's former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, sits in the cockpit of a JF-17 Thunder aircraft © AFP In Islamabad, US officials are engaged in a blizzard of diplomacy as they try to repair the rift between the two countries. “We are not walking away. We have suspended the security assistance, but our channels of communication are open,” says one senior US diplomat. But Pakistanis say they fear relations have hit a historic low. “The Americans are hectoring us in private now; even at the worst times that was not the case,” says one Pakistani official involved in talks with US counterparts. Mr Hussain says: “People are bored with the US — they have given up on the US. Let them stew in their own juice. Forget about them.”
But for Islamabad, the big change in recent years has not been the rhetoric — they have seen this kind of flare-up before — but the reduction in Washington’s leverage. The US has already cut back most of its aid to Pakistan — something it has been able to absorb in part because of Chinese money flowing into infrastructure projects as part of the $60bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Now Washington’s traditional threat that it will cancel military deals holds less sway.
“The problem for Washington is that there will come a time when you run out of levers,” says the Pakistani official. “It is best to keep options and windows open.” If Pakistan shows that Chinese support enables it to resist US demands to do more to assist the war in Afghanistan, it will set an example for other countries. “Arms sales have long been a tool of US foreign policy, to cement alliances and gain influence,” says Mr Wezeman. “Now that Chinese technology is competitive, if American allies start saying they prefer the terms offered by China, that spells trouble for the US.” Additional reporting by Farhan Bokhari
Indian aggression triggers fears of war
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has been fearing a war with India for the last two years amid New Delhi’s aggression, officials said.
Senior officials at the foreign ministry told The Nation that India had never responded positively to Pakistan’s efforts to improve the ties since the 2016 killing of Kashmiri freedom fighter Burhan Wani.
“India is responsible for a war-like situation [with Pakistan]. They have been the aggressors but are playing as victims. For the last two years, Pakistan has feared a war with India due to their excesses,” said one official.
He added: “Whatever contacts we had with India during this tense period, we urged them to stop violating the ceasefire agreement but every time they escalated the tension. We are in contact with the influential countries to stop India from crossing the limits. A war would ruin the whole region.”
Another Hazara killed in Quetta
A Shiite shopkeeper was killed in a drive-by shooting Wednesday in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta, police said.
Police chief Abdur Razzaq Cheema said gunmen riding on a motorcycle opened fire at an auto parts shop, killing the shopkeeper on the spot. Cheema says the shopkeeper was from the Shiite Hazara community and that it appeared to have been a targeted killing.
It was the fourth attack in recent months targeting the country's Shiite minority. No one has claimed the attacks, but they bear the hallmarks of Sunni extremists, who view Shiites as apostates deserving of death.
Pakistan’s debt-to-GDP ratio to hit 15-year high
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s public debt in terms of total size of the economy is estimated to jump to a 15-year high of 70.1% by the end of PML-N government’s tenure, exposing the country to many risks and giving less room for human development spending.
The Ministry of Finance finally acknowledged before the federal cabinet on Tuesday that the public debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio was estimated to peak at 70.1% by the end of fiscal year 2017-18 in June.
The high ratio violates the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation (FRDL) Act of 2005.
Finance Secretary Arif Ahmad Khan gave a briefing on broader contours of the economy and the budget including the debt situation. In absolute terms, the public debt, which is a direct obligation of the finance ministry, will be Rs24 trillion by the end of June 2018.
The 70.1% debt-to-GDP ratio was 10.1 percentage points higher than the limit set by parliament and 20 percentage points higher than sustainable levels for developing countries like Pakistan.
Under the amended FRDL Act, the public debt-to-GDP ratio had to be brought down to 60% by the end of fiscal year 2017-18. The 70.1% ratio violated the law.
Parliament had approved a budget deficit target of Rs1.479 trillion or 4.1% of GDP for the current fiscal year. But the finance ministry told the cabinet on Tuesday that the deficit would increase to Rs1.9 trillion or 5.5% of GDP.
Defence, debt to eat up half of proposed Rs5.237 trillion budget for 2018-19
ISLAMABAD: The federal cabinet has approved an expansionary fiscal policy that offers little for development but gives away more than half of the estimated budget of Rs5.237 trillion for new fiscal year to meet the growing needs of defence as well as debt servicing.
The cabinet on Tuesday approved Rs1.1 trillion for regular defence budget and another Rs100 billion for Armed Forces Development Programme (AFDP) – a sum of Rs1.2 trillion that is equal to 23% of the proposed total budget of Rs5.237 trillion.
Another amount of Rs1.607 trillion or 30.7% of the proposed budget has been earmarked for debt serving. The original debt servicing cost in the outgoing fiscal year was Rs1.364 trillion which has now jacked by Rs243 billion or 17.8% for the next year.
“The defence and debt serving would consume 53.7% or Rs2.8 trillion out of Rs5.237 trillion,” a cabinet minister told The Express Tribune. The Rs5.237 trillion overall size of the budget is 10% or Rs484 billion higher than the previous year’s original budget approved by parliament in June last year.
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has been fearing a war with India for the last two years amid New Delhi’s aggression, officials said.
Senior officials at the foreign ministry told The Nation that India had never responded positively to Pakistan’s efforts to improve the ties since the 2016 killing of Kashmiri freedom fighter Burhan Wani.
“India is responsible for a war-like situation [with Pakistan]. They have been the aggressors but are playing as victims. For the last two years, Pakistan has feared a war with India due to their excesses,” said one official.
He added: “Whatever contacts we had with India during this tense period, we urged them to stop violating the ceasefire agreement but every time they escalated the tension. We are in contact with the influential countries to stop India from crossing the limits. A war would ruin the whole region.”
Another Hazara killed in Quetta
A Shiite shopkeeper was killed in a drive-by shooting Wednesday in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta, police said.
Police chief Abdur Razzaq Cheema said gunmen riding on a motorcycle opened fire at an auto parts shop, killing the shopkeeper on the spot. Cheema says the shopkeeper was from the Shiite Hazara community and that it appeared to have been a targeted killing.
It was the fourth attack in recent months targeting the country's Shiite minority. No one has claimed the attacks, but they bear the hallmarks of Sunni extremists, who view Shiites as apostates deserving of death.
Pakistan’s debt-to-GDP ratio to hit 15-year high
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s public debt in terms of total size of the economy is estimated to jump to a 15-year high of 70.1% by the end of PML-N government’s tenure, exposing the country to many risks and giving less room for human development spending.
The Ministry of Finance finally acknowledged before the federal cabinet on Tuesday that the public debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio was estimated to peak at 70.1% by the end of fiscal year 2017-18 in June.
The high ratio violates the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation (FRDL) Act of 2005.
Finance Secretary Arif Ahmad Khan gave a briefing on broader contours of the economy and the budget including the debt situation. In absolute terms, the public debt, which is a direct obligation of the finance ministry, will be Rs24 trillion by the end of June 2018.
The 70.1% debt-to-GDP ratio was 10.1 percentage points higher than the limit set by parliament and 20 percentage points higher than sustainable levels for developing countries like Pakistan.
Under the amended FRDL Act, the public debt-to-GDP ratio had to be brought down to 60% by the end of fiscal year 2017-18. The 70.1% ratio violated the law.
Parliament had approved a budget deficit target of Rs1.479 trillion or 4.1% of GDP for the current fiscal year. But the finance ministry told the cabinet on Tuesday that the deficit would increase to Rs1.9 trillion or 5.5% of GDP.
Defence, debt to eat up half of proposed Rs5.237 trillion budget for 2018-19
ISLAMABAD: The federal cabinet has approved an expansionary fiscal policy that offers little for development but gives away more than half of the estimated budget of Rs5.237 trillion for new fiscal year to meet the growing needs of defence as well as debt servicing.
The cabinet on Tuesday approved Rs1.1 trillion for regular defence budget and another Rs100 billion for Armed Forces Development Programme (AFDP) – a sum of Rs1.2 trillion that is equal to 23% of the proposed total budget of Rs5.237 trillion.
Another amount of Rs1.607 trillion or 30.7% of the proposed budget has been earmarked for debt serving. The original debt servicing cost in the outgoing fiscal year was Rs1.364 trillion which has now jacked by Rs243 billion or 17.8% for the next year.
“The defence and debt serving would consume 53.7% or Rs2.8 trillion out of Rs5.237 trillion,” a cabinet minister told The Express Tribune. The Rs5.237 trillion overall size of the budget is 10% or Rs484 billion higher than the previous year’s original budget approved by parliament in June last year.
