Best 220 quotes in «pakistan quotes» category

people who ran away are friends!

Radical and violent manifestations of Islamist ideology, which sometimes appear to threaten Pakistan’s stability, are in some ways a state project gone wrong.

Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, unanimously passed, explicitly recognized the right of the United States to self-defense and further called upon all member states 'to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks. It added that 'those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of those acts will be held accountable.' In a speech the following month, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly acknowledged the right of self-defense as a legitimate basis for military action. The SEAL unit dispatched by President Obama to Abbottabad was large enough to allow for the contingency of bin-Laden's capture and detention. The naïve statement that he was 'unarmed' when shot is only loosely compatible with the fact that he was housed in a military garrison town, had a loaded automatic weapon in the room with him, could well have been wearing a suicide vest, had stated repeatedly that he would never be taken alive, was the commander of one of the most violent organizations in history, and had declared himself at war with the United States. It perhaps says something that not even the most casuistic apologist for al-Qaeda has ever even attempted to justify any of its 'operations' in terms that could be covered by any known law, with the possible exception of some sanguinary verses of the Koran.

Rolf Ekeus came round to my apartment one day and showed me the name of the Iraqi diplomat who had visited the little West African country of Niger: a statelet famous only for its production of yellowcake uranium. The name was Wissam Zahawi. He was the brother of my louche gay part-Kurdish friend, the by-now late Mazen. He was also, or had been at the time of his trip to Niger, Saddam Hussein's ambassador to the Vatican. I expressed incomprehension. What was an envoy to the Holy See doing in Niger? Obviously he was not taking a vacation. Rolf then explained two things to me. The first was that Wissam Zahawi had, when Rolf was at the United Nations, been one of Saddam Hussein's chief envoys for discussions on nuclear matters (this at a time when the Iraqis had functioning reactors). The second was that, during the period of sanctions that followed the Kuwait war, no Western European country had full diplomatic relations with Baghdad. TheVatican was the sole exception, so it was sent a very senior Iraqi envoy to act as a listening post. And this man, a specialist in nuclear matters, had made a discreet side trip to Niger. This was to suggest exactly what most right-thinking people were convinced was not the case: namely that British intelligence was on to something when it said that Saddam had not ceased seeking nuclear materials in Africa. I published a few columns on this, drawing at one point an angry email from Ambassador Zahawi that very satisfyingly blustered and bluffed on what he'd really been up to. I also received—this is what sometimes makes journalism worthwhile—a letter from a BBC correspondent named Gordon Correa who had been writing a book about A.Q. Khan. This was the Pakistani proprietor of the nuclear black market that had supplied fissile material to Libya, North Korea, very probably to Syria, and was open for business with any member of the 'rogue states' club. (Saddam's people, we already knew for sure, had been meeting North Korean missile salesmen in Damascus until just before the invasion, when Kim Jong Il's mercenary bargainers took fright and went home.) It turned out, said the highly interested Mr. Correa, that his man Khan had also been in Niger, and at about the same time that Zahawi had. The likelihood of the senior Iraqi diplomat in Europe and the senior Pakistani nuclear black-marketeer both choosing an off-season holiday in chic little uranium-rich Niger… well, you have to admit that it makes an affecting picture. But you must be ready to credit something as ridiculous as that if your touching belief is that Saddam Hussein was already 'contained,' and that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair were acting on panic reports, fabricated in turn by self-interested provocateurs.

Serious Pakistanis try to explain away the country’s shortcomings, often attributing them to the bad hand that Pakistan was dealt by the circumstances of its birth, its hostile relationship with India, its being a victim of wars and terrorism initiated by external great powers and its misfortune in lacking leadership. Neither attempts to examine structural and systemic flaws, or is willing to acknowledge collective errors and misplaced priorities that do not go away merely by changing leaders.

Someone has done something for us. Something that we can never forget. Something that we can't do again even for our own selves.

Ruby clapped her hands in glee and gave a comedic wiggle of her head, Bollywood style. I know the song now, can even sing it, but back then all I heard was the verdant Punjabi, the striking primary colours of the five rivers, the intricate history of a complex land.

Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not just leave his corpse in Iraq but was isolated and repudiated even by the minority Sunnis on whose presumed behalf he spilled so much blood and wrought such hectic destruction. It is even more gratifying that bin Laden himself was exposed as an excrescence on the putrid body of a bankrupt and brutish state machine, and that he found himself quite unable to make any coherent comment on the tide—one hopes that it is a tide, rather than a mere wave—of demand for an accountable and secular form of civil society. There could not have been a finer affirmation of the force of life, so warmly and authentically counterposed to the hysterical celebration of death, and of that death-in-life that is experienced in the stultifications of theocracy, where womanhood and music and literature are stifled and young men mutated into robotic slaughterers.

So, a penniless Obama traveled to a country under martial law, where the U.S. State Department had issued a travel advisory. Obama then ignored the millions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, checked into the Hilton International, showered, shaved, and changed into a fresh set of thrift-store clothing to go bird hunting with the country's future prime minister.

Responsibility for collective failure or miscalculation can be avoided by lamenting the absence of good leaders. There appears little willingness to consider that Pakistan might need to review some of the fundamental assumptions in its national belief system—militarism, radical Islamist ideology, perennial conflict with India, dependence on external support, and refusal to recognize ethnic identities and religious pluralism—to break out of permanent crisis mode to a more stable future.

That was the strange problem with writing, you had discovered. Meaning never matched the words and words always evaded the thought.

Sudden and unexplained deaths of key politicians have been a recurring feature of Pakistani history since 1951. Oft en the reasons have been patently evident.

The breakup of Pakistan was the result of the autocratic policies of its state managers rather than the inherent difficulties involved in welding together linguistically and culturally diverse constituent units. Islam proved to be dubious cement not because it was unimportant to people in the different regions. Pakistan’s regional cultures have absorbed Islam without losing affinity to local languages and customs. With some justification, non- Punjabi provinces came to perceive the use of Islam as a wily attempt by the Punjabi- led military–bureaucratic combine to deprive them of a fair share of political and economic power. Non- Punjabi antipathy toward a Punjabi- dominated center often found expression in assertions of regional distinctiveness.

The average Pakistani student is brought up on a mix of dogma and mythology that does not encourage respect for facts or empiricism.

The collective wisdom in Pakistan seems to be that nothing in Pakistan’s predicament is the result of wrong policy choices made by its leaders and that the only thing Pakistanis need to do is to fend off discussion of the negatives, rather than attend to the negatives themselves.

The constant refrain of Islamizing a Muslim-majority country, coupled with the belief that this nation must always be in conflict with its largest neighbour because of religious differences, is in many ways at the heart of most of Pakistan’s current problems.

The exigencies of maintaining the West Pakistani political, bureaucratic and military elite in power were the major reason why, after Jinnah’s death, the secular Muslim nationalist path was hurriedly abandoned.

The military is Pakistan’s only institution inherited from the British Raj that has proved resilient and effective. ‘As the history of law, democracy, administration and education in Pakistan demonstrates, other British institutions in what is now Pakistan (and to a lesser extent India as well) failed to take root, failed to work, or have been transformed in ways that their authors would scarcely have recognized.

The Impression that Pakistan being an Islamic State is thereby a Theocratic State is being sedulously fostered in certain quarters with the sole object of discrediting her in the eyes of the world. To anyone conversant with the basic principles of Islam, it should be obvious that in the fields of civics, Islam has always stood on complete social democracy and social justice, as the history of the early Caliphs will show, and has not sanctioned government by a sacerdotal class deriving its authority from God. The ruler and the ruled alike are #equal before Islamic Law, and the ruler, far from being a vicegerent of God on earth, is but a representative of people who have chosen him to serve them...Islam has not recognized any distinction between man and man based on sex, race or worldly possessions..." ---Fazul Rahman, First Education Minister of Pakistan, All Pakistan Educational Conference, Karachi, Nov 1947

The notion that where one is from can be understood using what remains of that place opens up a highly sensitive and rich terrain that can help unpack belonging, especially if that place has now been rendered inaccessible by national borders.

The people have realized that Martial Law is not law. A regime not established by law is devoid of the attribute to dispense law. A regime which puts in a bunker the highest law in the land does not have the moral authority to say that nobody is above the law.

The problem with Pakistani politics is not only that the elite rule, but also that the masses want celebrities or influential people to represent them. This is a flawed mindset. By doing this, the people create the electables’, and discourage the growth of grassroots politics.

The reality of the Islamic metaphysical world was not taken seriously despite the fact that Iqbal, who was the ideological founder of Pakistan, had shown much interest in Islamic philosophy, although I do not think that he is really a traditional Islamic philosopher. He himself was influenced by Western philosophy, but at least was intelligent enough to realize the significance of Islamic philosophy. The problem with him was that he did not know Arabic well enough. His Persian was very good, but he could not read all the major texts of Islamic philoso- phy, which are written mostly in Arabic. Nevertheless, he wrote on the development of metaphysics in Persia, and he had some philosophical substance, much more than the other famous reformers who are men- tioned all the time, such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan or Muh:ammad ‘Abduh.

The obstinate refusal to consider reform proposals and the insistence on rewriting history rather than learning from it have trapped Pakistan in a vicious circle. Instead of acknowledging bad decisions and moving away from them, Pakistan’s policymakers deny their bad choices; they then make further wrong decisions to support their denial, with further consequences and further denials. It is, based on the criteria defined by Tuchman, classic folly.

The real reason for Father Braganza's laughter was the history of Amrapur. It was a quaint town, nestled amidst barren mountains. The Hindus and Muslims living there were perpetually warring with each other, reacting violently at the slightest provocation. It had started a long time ago, this squabble, and had escalated into a terrible war. Some people say it started centuries ago, but many believe it started when the country gave one final, fierce shrug to rid itself of British rule. The shrug quickly became a relentless shuddering, and countless people were uprooted and flung into the air. Many didn't survive. Perhaps the mountains of Amrapur absorbed the deracinating wave. People weren't cruelly plucked from the town. They remained there, festering, becoming irate and harbouring murderous desires. And while the country was desperately trying to heal its near-mortal wounds and move on, Amrapur's dormant volcano erupted. Momentary and overlooked, but devastating. Leaders emerged on both sides and, driven by greed, they fed off the town's ignored bloodshed. They created ravines out of cracks, fostered hatred and grew richer. The Bhoite family, the erstwhile rulers of the ancient town, adopted the legacy of their British rulers---divide and conquer.

There were always a few words that his flamboyant English insisted he mispronounce: words, I often imagined, over which his heart took hidden pleasure when he had got them by the gullet and held them there until they empurpled to the color of his own indignant nature. "Another" was one of them--I cannot count how many times each day we would hear him say, "Anther?" "Anther?" It did not matter whether it was another meal or another government or another baby at issue: all we heard was a voice bristling over with amazement at the thought that another could exist. It seemed his patience could not sustain itself over the trisyllabic, tripping up his voice on most trisyllables that did not sound like "Pakistan"--for there was a word over which he could not slow down, to exude ownership as he uttered it!

There is no clear evidence that Pakistan was involved in the Taliban's inception per se, but it certainly featured in the Taliban's transformation from a movement of clerics from within the Jihad driven by their local agendas and supported by their peers to an organized political unit with countrywide objectives.

The sanction of force stands behind the medley of personal orders and regulations of Martial Law. The sanction of the people's consent stands behind the hierarchy of laws. In one situation, the population is regimented into acquiescence. In the other, the population voluntarily establishes a contract with Parliament. For this reason, one is called a regime and the other, a government. Martial law rests on the sanction of force and not on the sanction of law.

The South Koreans built a self-sustaining economy with a cumulative aid input from the US of only $15 billion since 1950 by avoiding confrontation with America and by cooperating with erstwhile enemy Japan. Pakistan received $40 billion in bilateral US aid over the same period. Instead of utilizing aid as a catalyst for indigenous growth, Pakistan has ended up becoming dependent on aid. Donor funding serves as a substitute for revenue generation while wars and terrorism have deterred investment.

So long as there are forces of other countries in a place where they have no right to be, irrespective of our rights." (said this to the countries supporting Pakistan's aggression on Kashmir)

There was a time when I was lucky enough to believe that 'There's this girl in Pakistan' would be the worst five words that Al ever said to me. Years later, they would be totally eclipsed by 'They can't find a heartbeat'.

The wounds will take decades to heal, centuries to overcome the trauma.

Things taste sweeter when you have some hunger left to linger. You feel it hunting your head for buried things; digging into the fractures of your breath warm and greedy.

This arrogant, conceited history strides with her head in the clouds and never looks down. She does not realize how she crushes millions of people beneath her feet. The common people. She doesn't understand that one may cut a mountain in two, but people? It's a hard task, Bhai, to cute one people in two. They bleed.

This arrogant, conceited history strides with her head in the clouds and never looks down. She does not realize how she crushes millions of people beneath her feet. The common people. She doesn't understand that one may cut a mountain in two, but people? It's a hard task, Bhai, to cute one people in two. They bleed." A deep sigh coursed through the gathering. Master Fazal said, "History will keep on marching like this. The names of a few people will stick to her fabric. She will register those. there was Hitler, there was Mussolini, Churchill and Joseph Stalin, among others. this time the names maybe Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jinnah, Subhash Bose! But the names of the lakhs and crores who have lost their lives will be nowhere. They will be mere numbers in which all of us will be included!".

We are humans, they say we are mortals. Though we do live once but can last forever.

Unlike other countries, where the apex court is only the court of final appeal in criminal matters, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acts politically to directly make pronouncements in response to media articles or petitions by political rivals. One need not be convicted of disloyalty to the state after due process of law when innuendo, fabricated media reports and public comments by Supreme Court judges can suffice to tarnish reputations and cut public support.

We'd become Japs, Jews, Niggers. We weren't before.

We should have realized it sooner, at least my father should have, that there was no coming back. Not in September when the riots died down, not in October when the subcontinent still lay in shock, not even in November as he had hoped and promised us. Lahore was now lost forever

What appears strange and complex becomes stranger and more complicated once you begin to investigate it. That's the true nature of the world.

What unified the Balochis in their quest to regain self-determination, which resulted in the ‘existing state’? On the one hand, authoritarianism, militarization, and conquest has robbed them of their history and put them into the do or die situation. On the other hand, natural resources which would allow the citizens at large to achieve a respectable existence have been controlled by the military or political elites, well connected to feudal political elites in Pakistan.

When the British left, India was a multireligious, multiregional, multiethnic country, exploited, backward, and poor from colonialism.

When we build a city, we take our grandest dreams as well as our deepest anxieties and set them in concrete for the next generation.

Why have the English remained to English? Throughout India's history conquerors have come from elsewhere, and all of them --- Turk, Arab, Hun, Mongol, Persian --- have become Indian. If --- when ---this Pakistan happens, those Muslims who leave Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad to go there, They will be leaving their homes. But when the English leave, they'll be going home.

With the potentially disruptive issue of the role of Islam in the state temporarily out of the way, the praetorian guard and its mandarin friends sanguinely accepted the constituent assembly’s stance on fundamental rights. As they knew only too well, the proof of the pudding lay in the eating.

Yet we all know that the Islam advocated by the fundamentalists bears little resemblance to the great religion upheld by Muslims for centuries. In surat 5 of verse 32, the Koran teaches that anyone who kills an innocent person kills all humankind, and anyone who saves a life saves all humankind.

Before coming here I had a minor back problem and I thought whenever I play Pakistan I get a back problem.

The three flower shops were obliterated. The petals of the once-dewy flowers and their sellers' flesh burnt together. The people reacted and, unlike the birds, they did not react in unison. They ran towards the narrow streets near the masjid, trampling over the old and limping beggars. They pushed and shoved and cursed and cried. The birds circled in the air, pitying the humans who had lost their humanity.

We have undoubtedly achieved Pakistan, and that too without bloody war, practically peacefully, by moral and intellectual force, and with the power of the pen, which is no less mighty than that of the sword and so our righteous cause has triumphed. Are we now going to besmear and tarnish this greatest achievement for which there is no parallel in the history of the world? Pakistan is now a fait accompli and it can never be undone, besides, it was the only just, honourable, and practical solution of the most complex constitutional problem of this great subcontinent. Let us now plan to build and reconstruct and regenerate our great nation...

West Pakistani soldiers, politicians, and civil servants dominated Pakistan’s government. Within a year of independence, Bengalis in East Pakistan were rioting in the streets, demanding recognition of their language, Bengali, as a national language. Soon thereafter, in the western wing of the country, ethnic Sindhis, Pashtuns (also known as Pathans), and Balochis also complained about the domination of the civil services and the military’s officer corps by ethnic Punjabis and Urdu-speaking migrants from northern India.