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Academic Development Program (ADP) IDSP-Pakistan
Academic Development Program,IDSP-Pakistan programing office/ House # 7-A Almashriq street Arbab Karam Khan Road Quetta/Phone #: 0092- 81-2449775,2471776 Fax #:0092-81-2447285

These articles are published by Academic Development Program of IDSP-Pakistan through using different sources.The opinions reflected by the various contributers and articles do not necessarily reflect the views of IDSP- Pakistan.

Browsing Archive: November, 2012

Reading and explaining history

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Ayesha Siddiqa 

By Ayesha Siddiqa/ Published: October 31, 2012

The writer is an independent social scientist and author of Military Inc.

The writing of history is indeed an essential art which is critical to any nation’s emotional, psychological and eventually material development. But it is also an art that is lost easily, especially when states begin to treat history writing as a process of jotting down events and doing linear interpretations....


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Development in reverse

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Rafi Ullah's Articles 
Development, population growth and a certain mindset are some of the factors that are destroying the rock art of Swat

By Rafiullah Khan
The past is not only a scarce resource but it is also the most threatened one. The threat is largely posed by the process of ‘development’. Pakistan is not an exception to this situation. This is an alarming situation because in this way the material sources of human history are being destroyed.

All the rock art sites of the Swat Valley are vulnerab...


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The water car fraud

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy 

The writer received his bachelor degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, as well as masters and Ph.D degrees, from MIT

Agha Waqar Ahmad deserves a medal from the people of Pakistan for his great service to the nation. In a few short days, he has exposed just how far Pakistan has fallen into the pit of ignorance and self-delusion. No practical joker could have demonstrated more dramatically the true nature of our country’s political leaders, popular TV a...


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Lal Masjid: rewarding an insurrection

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy 

Published: May 21, 2012
The writer teaches physics and political science at LUMS. He holds a doctorate in physics from MIT

The honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan says he is losing patience with the Capital Development Authority (CDA). In a court-initiated (suo motu) action, he wants a quick rebuilding of the Jamia Hafsa madrassa, flattened by bulldozers in 2007, after it became the centre of an insurgency. A three-judge bench of the Supreme Cou...


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Smokers’ Corner: The not so sudden spring

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Nadeem F. Paracha 

From the Newspaper | | 13th May, 2012/ Source: DAWNCOM
Right after the tragic 9/11 episode, a series of books and debates (on TV) appeared in the US and Europe trying to figure out exactly what had happened.
One of the most common expressions reflecting the bafflement that gripped western societies during the testing period was, ‘why do they hate us?’

This is when a succession of authors and academics rose angrily to suggest that ...


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Overcoming ‘Physics Envy’

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : KEVIN A. CLARKE 
By KEVIN A. CLARKE AND DAVID M. PRIMO/  Published: March 30, 2012

HOW scientific are the social sciences?

Economists, political scientists and sociologists have long suffered from an academic inferiority complex: physics envy. They often feel that their disciplines should be on a par with the “real” sciences and self-consciously model their work on them, using language (“theory,” “experiment,” “law”) evocative of physics and che...


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ISI has taken over GHQ

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Najam Sethi 

The army was constitutionally mandated to be an arm of the Pakistan state with elected civilians in control of the executive. But it has seized the commanding heights and subordinated the other organs of the state to its own unaccountable purposes.

In recent times, however, something even more sinister has been happening. This is the creeping growth of the ISI from a small arms-length intelligence directorate or department of the military (Inter Services Intell...


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Author: Why Eqbal remains current

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy 
“NEVER before had been so tragic the links between wealth and weakness, material resources and moral bankruptcy. Never before in the history of Islamic peoples had there been so total a separation of political power and civil society”.

This was Eqbal Ahmad’s anguished judgment in 1982 as Beirut became the first capital city in the world whose destruction was televized, and watched by the world week after week. As Israeli artillery and airpower systematically reduced the city to r...

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Eqbal Ahmad

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy 

When holy warriors wage their jihad, the first casualties are those whose cause they claim to represent. The poor and oppressed become further disempowered, and are ultimately crushed under tanks or blown up by cruise missiles

“Never before had been so tragic the links between wealth and weakness, material resources and moral bankruptcy. Never before in the history of Islamic peoples had there been so total a separation of political power and civil society”.

This was Eqbal Ahmad...


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Rohrabacher’s “Blood Borders” in Balochistan

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : C. Christine Fair 

On February 9, 2012, the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs convened a hearing on "Baluchistan" [sic], chaired by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R – CA). I, along with Messrs Ralph Peters, T. Kumar, Ali Dyan Hasan and Dr. M. Hosseinbor, testified as a witness in that hearing.

When I agreed to participate, I was told that the hearing was intended to be a ...


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Arundhati Roy: 'The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution'

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Arundhati Roy 
The prize-winning author of The God of Small Things talks about why she is drawn to the Occupy movement and the need to reclaim language and meaning

Arundhati Roy.


Arundhati Roy: 'The expropriators should have their wealth expropriated.' Photograph: Sarah Lee

Sitting in a car parked at a gas station on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, my colleague Michelle holds an audio recorder to my cellphone. At the other end of the line is Arundhati Roy, author ...


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Memogate: Man who delivered memo wants US to leash ISI

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012,
Washington: Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, who is at the centre of the “memogate” controversy, has alleged that ‘S Branch’ of Pakistan’s military-run ISI is so powerful that it can’t be controlled by anyone and wants the US to take the lead in leashing it.

Saying that the branch along with CT (Counter-terrorism) section were critical wings of the ISI, Ijaz alleged that the S Branch conspires intervention in other countries like Afghanistan as well as manipulate...


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Occupy London is 50 days old – now it's time to Occupy Everywhere

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012,
We're undeterred by recent criticism, and determined to rise to the challenge of accountability – unlike the banks

A protester sits outside at the Occupy London camp at St Pauls cathedral

tester sits outside at the Occupy London camp at St Pauls cathedral. Photograph: Jack MacDonald

Occupy London is 50 days old on Monday and it's time to take stock. Unlike those occupations across the world that started off small and were able to expand gradually, our occupation was born in the full glare of the media on 15 O...


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Conference: ‘Indigenous languages the worst victims of globalisation’

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Umer Nangiana / Azam Khan 

Published: November 18, 2011

" Recent globalisation is a modern face of capitalism, which is always coercive in nature and increases insecurity," Dr Ejaz Akram of LSE.

ISLAMABAD: 

Globalisation, the linking and shrinking of the world into a global village, has affected indigenous languages badly, as more than 2,400 of the world’s 7,000 languages face extinction. At least 23 of 66 languages in South Asia are end...


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In Search of Divine Truth

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Ayesha Jalal 
Striving for beauty through proximity to God is a theme that has always permeated Muslim poetry in different historical contexts. Here’s a look at poetics and ethics in Islamic art.

By Ayesha Jalal | From the Nov. 25, 2011, issue.

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Let the beauty we love be what we do, there are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
 
Thus Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet, who has been the object of popular venerati...

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Cells That Read Minds

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : SANDRA BLAKESLEE 
On a hot summer day 15 years ago in Parma, Italy, a monkey sat in a special laboratory chair waiting for researchers to return from lunch. Thin wires had been implanted in the region of its brain involved in planning and carrying out movements.
  Cells That Read Minds
Published: January 10, 2006

Every time the monkey grasped and moved an object, some cells in that brain region would fire, and a monitor would register a sound: brrrrrip, brrrrrip, brrrrrip.

A graduate student entered the ...


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L'affaire Mansoor Ijaz

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Najam Sethi 
An article in a British paper last month by Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American businessman with political connections in Washington, has taken a toll of the civilian government of President Asif Zardari in Islamabad. The irony is that it was written to strengthen Mr Zardari against encroachments by General Ashfaq Kayani.

Mr Ijaz claims that shortly after the US Navy Seal raid to extract OBL from Abbottabad on May 2, the Zardari government felt threatened by General Kayani and sought ou...

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Pakistan’s security thinking

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy 

http://i1.tribune.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/291707-ProfessorIjazKhanNewagain-1321283293-349-640x480.JPG

Security is a concept that changes with the times, responding to systemic changes in human governance, priorities, technology, economy as well as sociology. The most important question is what you want to secure. A related question is defining the ‘what’ in the above question. Pakistan appears to be unable to respond to these issues.

The international system based on state sovereignty has undergone sea changes. Sovereignty as “exclusive jurisdiction over a piece of territory” (M...


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Killings in Balochistan continue

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012,

When people all over Pakistan will be celebrating Eid-ul-Azha, the people of Balochistan will be mourning their loved ones. The responsibility for this lies with the Pakistan military, its intelligence agencies and the Frontier Corps (FC). The entire nation should be ashamed of the brutalities unleashed by the military against its own people in Balochistan. Javed Naseer Rind, a young journalist, was abducted in September and his tortured, bullet-riddled body was found the other day in...


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What the Pakistan Army should do

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Khaled Ahmed 

Published: October 29, 2011

The writer is Director at the South Asian Media School in Lahore khaled.ahmed@tribune.com.pk

A recent All Parties Conference (APC) has formally handed over foreign-cum-Taliban policy to the army. What the political parties are after is one another’s scalp: their default position is plotting the downfall of elected governments. The Pakistan Army is now in a precarious position of either taking the country out of the terrorist mess or repeating past blunders. If...


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Militant liberal

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Nadeem F. Paracha 

Illustration by Faraz Aamer Khan/Dawn.com

For over two decades, Pakistan’s socio-political landscape has been dominated by narratives and actions of the religious right.

Those concerned by the right’s onslaught and dominance have bemoaned the decline and defeat of the country’s ‘moderate’ and liberal polities, rightly complaining that their voices have been drowned.

The religious right’s growing intolerance, intimidation and sometimes outright violence (ever since the 1980s), ha...


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حق مغفرت کرے عجب

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Report by BBC Urdu 
محمد حنیف

بی بی سی اردو ڈاٹ کام، کراچی

مولانا طفیل جماعتِ اسلامی کے بانی ارکان میں سے ...


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Politics and the judiciary

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Mushtaq Gaadi 
“The doctrine of independence is not to be raised to the level of dogma so as to enable the judiciary to function as a kind of super-legislature or super-executive.”

Alladi Krishnaswami Ayyar, member of the drafting committee of the Indian constitution.

THE survival and consolidation of parliamentary democracy in Pakistan hinges on how the emergent judicialisation of politics is dealt with and curtailed in the near future. Judicialisation refers to the profound shift in power away fr...


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Obama’s Af-Pak strategy: tossing away the COIN

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Dr Mohammad Taqi 
The Pakistani planners apparently lauded the UN separation of the Taliban and al Qaeda on the sanctions blacklist. This distinction does not necessarily mean lifting the sanctions; it in fact sets the stage for further sanctions against al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, especially the India-oriented Punjabi jihadist groups based in Pakistan’s heartland


In his speech on June 22, 2011, Barack Obama outlined the drawdown of the US forces from Afghanistan. He declared his plans to pull o...


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The supreme praetorian state of Pakistan

Posted by ADP on Friday, November 2, 2012, In : Ahmad Ali Khalid 
The nuclear weapons programme should have marked the end of Pakistan’s praetorian state, but it has only entrenched it even further and emboldened it to pursue proxy-based warfare that has come back to hurt Pakistan


Pakistan is not a republic, nor is it a theocracy; rather it is a praetorian state. A praetorian state is one where political power is concentrated in the hands of a select elite within the military. Hasan Askari Rizvi, a prominent analyst, writes: “Pakistan can be desc...


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