With courage, Pak people face Nature (PO)

M D Nalapat

Unlike the catastrophe in Haiti, which was extensively covered in international media, there has been much less coverage of the recent floods in Pakistan, caused by unprecedented rains. In Peshawar, on a single day (July 28) nearly 318 millimetres of rain fell, while the previous record was 217 millimetres - in an entire month. Stretching over 1500 miles and affecting nearly 25 million people, comparisons have been made between this flood and Cyclone Bhola in 1970, which hit then East Pakistan. However, while Bhola led to an estimated 300,000 deaths, the loss from the present disaster has thus far been contained at less than 2000 directly dead, although illnesses and accidents can push this figure higher during the coming weeks. Thus far less than $500 million have been pledged by foreign countries for flood relief, although close friends of Pakistan such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia can be expected to match the US contribution, thus far the biggest. Both governments need to launch an immediate appeal within their citizens to donate money for the floods, funds that should flow through agencies that have a good track record of effectiveness in their operations.

Where in 1970 it was East Pakistan that was hit, this time around the primary damage has been done in the Baloch and Pashtun territories of Pakistan. Major infrastructure has been destroyed, and livelihoods lost. The international community will need to locate $ 5 billion of civilian assistance each year for three years, if Pakistan is to regain the assets lost in a few deadly weeks last month. Although Pakistan’s main ally, the US, has given large amounts of assistance since the 1950s, the overwhelming bulk of this has gone to the military, a situation that is expected to continue under the Pakistan-friendly trinity of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CIA chief Leon Panetta, two of whom are loyalists of Bill Clinton, while the Defense Secretary is a George W Bush pick. Although Candidate Obama sought to distance himself from the Washington DC Beltway, once elected President, he ensured that his administration is 70% Clinton, 20% Bush and 10% Obama in its composition, one reason why the gloss seems to have disappeared from Barack Obama, who promised change but has thus far delivered a warmed-over version of the past two decades.

Will Turkey succumb to Wahabbism? (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Wahabbism, the radical Islam currently advancing around the globe, originated in the 18th century as a philosophy designed to counter the moderate, syncretic Islam that was the heart of Turkey's culture, and which the Ottoman Empire had disseminated among its principalities, including those in the Arabian Peninsula.

Quick to sense the potential of the new faith in weaning away regional loyalties from the Ottomans, Britain early on became a backer of the creed, thus ensuring its rise to dominance within the Arabian Peninsula by the dawn of the 20th century. Beginning in the 1980s it spread to much of the rest of the Muslim world.

Today, because of the unstinted financial support of its principal adherents, Wahabbism has become the fastest-growing faith on the planet. It has succeeded in taking over many of the institutions, as well as the physical infrastructure, of the Sunni branch of Islam. Even within the Shiite branch, it has found in the Khomeinists an ideological twin that since 1979 has controlled the largest country in the region, Iran.

Thus far, only Turkey has remained immune to its relentless advance, steeped as that country was in the Sufi traditions that underpin its culture.

Turkey is the only country in the Muslim-majority world – since the Mongol invasions of the continent nearly nine centuries ago – to have conquered territory in Europe. The memory of this still makes a majority of Europeans flinch from accepting this entirely deserving country into the European Union.

Pakistan Army Versus the State (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — In 1971, following the Indian army's defeat of Pakistan in Bangladesh and the capture of 93,000 prisoners of war, an opportunity was given to the Pakistani politicians to roll back the army's control over civilian life by curbing its powers and making it a professional force. President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto squandered that chance by his cupidity and hunger for absolute power.

Bhutto, who like Pakistan's founder M.A. Jinnah was an alcohol-loving, pork-eating ersatz Muslim, pandered to the religious extremists by imposing the will of the "ulema," or religious establishment, over not only the rest of the "ummah," or Muslims, but of all Pakistani society. During his six years in power, Bhutto crushed modern private industry through extensive nationalization and converted the Pakistan Peoples' Party into a family enterprise, a character the PPP retains to this day.

After Bhutto's hand-picked army chief, Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, took over power and hanged Bhutto in 1977 for one of the numerous murders of his enemies during the previous six years, he completed the jihadisation of the Pakistan army that had begun in 1948 with the extensive intermingling of troops and religious fanatics during the 1947-1949 Kashmir war.

Zia sensibly secured the patronage of the al-Sauds by training the Saudi Arabian army and providing Pakistani guards to secure the safety of the Saudi ruling house during the tumultuous days in 1979 when Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over power in Iran. The al-Sauds have ever since been faithful to the ancient Bedouin custom of gratitude to those that help in times of adversity, giving the Pakistan army massive financial and other backing.