Pakistan- is it now a Failed State?

Al Qaeda update

An in-depth examination of the evolving organism that is Al Qaeda and the US response to it- from Al Jazeera.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 /

The Future of Pakistan

CROSSED SWORD PAKISTAN : ITS ARMY AND WARS WITHIN
by Shuja Nawaz

What the future holds for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda

Shortly after 9/11, a Russian scientist named Dmitri Gusev proposed an explanation for the origin of the name Al Qaeda. He suggested that the terrorist organization took its name from Isaac Asimov’s famous 1950s science fiction novels known as the Foundation Trilogy. After all, he reasoned, the Arabic word “qaeda” means something like “base” or “foundation.” And the first novel in Asimov’s trilogy, Foundation, apparently was titled “al-Qaida” in an Arabic translation.

-A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature

Religion, Culture and Tribe are mixed up on Indian Subcontinent

A holy relic, believed to be a hair from the beard of Prophet Muhammad, was displayed before Kashmiri Muslims during special prayers on the occasion of the Islamic festival of Shab-e-Meraj at Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir.

Related;
Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

Army of Sucide Bombers?

C.I.A. Outlines Pakistan Links With Militants

India and Pakistan conflict explained by The Onion

via Sepia Mutiny

Hate Speech best seller of the Day

Jerusalem Post reviews an insane book;

Sina, who runs Faith Freedom International - an Internet forum dedicated to debunking Islam - calls himself "probably the biggest anti-Islam person alive." The publication of his latest book, Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allah's Prophet, will likely cement that position. In it, Sina suggests that Islam's central figure suffered from a series of mental disorders, including narcissistic personality disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy and obsessive compulsive disorder.

"These disorders," he says via telephone, "can explain the phenomenon known as Islam... which is nothing but one man's insanity."

Sina grew up a non-practicing Muslim. Raised in Iran, educated in Pakistan and Italy and now living in Canada, he began jousting with believers in the 1990s. What bothered him, he tells The Jerusalem Post, was not the penchant for jihad and intolerance that certain fanatical Muslims displayed, but the foundation for such ills in the Koran and core Islamic texts.

Book recommendation; In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad by Tariq Ramadan

Pakistan- One Step forward, Two Step Back

World's greatest creative Thinker?

Edward de Bono

Why businesses took up lateral thinking;

In business there is a bottom line- you’ve to think.
In politics and academic world you’ve to prove you’re right, there is no reality test.

De Bono on improving penalty kicks in soccer;

De Bono’s solution is to leave the game as it is, but to change the scoring system. “Why not make it so that every time the goalkeeper touches the ball, half a goal is scored? If a goal is scored in the normal way, that would be a full goal, of course. But if you used a ‘half-goal for a touch’ system, you would get games with a constantly fluctuating score that would satisfy the demand that the American public seems to have. I’ve tried to get the football authorities to try it, but they won’t hear of it”.

Tax Payer Money at Work

Preliminary Observations on the Use and Oversight of U.S. Coalition Support Funds Provided to Pakistan

According to U.S. embassy officials in Islamabad and unclassified U.S. intelligence documents, since 2002, al Qaeda and the Taliban have used Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the border region to attack Pakistani, Afghan, U.S. and coalition troops; plan and train for attacks against U.S. interests; destabilize Pakistan; and spread radical Islamist ideologies that threaten U.S. interests. Since October 2001, the United States has provided Pakistan with over $10 billion for military, economic, and development activities in support of the critical U.S. national security goals of destroying terrorist threats and closing terrorist safe havens. A major component of this effort has been U.S. Coalition Support Funds (CSF) reimbursed to Pakistan. The purpose of CSF is to reimburse coalition countries for logistical and military support provided to United States military operations in the global war on terror. In Pakistan, reimbursements through CSF are intended to enable the government of Pakistan to attack terrorist networks in the FATA and stabilize the border areas. It is structured as a reimbursement mechanism in which the U.S. Department of Defense (Defense) policy is to validate that support was provided, costs were incurred, and these costs were incremental to normal Pakistani military operations. We were asked to assess how CSF reimbursements have been used to meet U.S. goals in Pakistan, and what controls exist to ensure that reimbursements are for legitimate claims.

For the period covering October 2001 through June 2007, the United States reimbursed Pakistan about $5.56 billion in CSF for military operations in FATA and other support in the war on terror. CSF reimbursement funds are paid directly into the Pakistani government treasury and become sovereign funds. Once they become sovereign funds, the U.S. government has no oversight authority over these funds. In response to a Defense Inspector General review conducted in 2003, DOD implemented additional guidance to improve oversight of the CSF reimbursed to Pakistan. Moreover, in 2007, the Office of the Defense Representative to Pakistan (ODRP) began playing a larger role in overseeing CSF reimbursement claims. In performing oversight, ODRP reviews the Pakistani claims and indicates that to the best of their knowledge military support was provided and expenses were actually incurred. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) then validates that Pakistani operations listed were essential to support U.S. military operations in the theater. The claims are sent to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Comptroller, who (1) performs a macro-level review comparing the cost to similar operations, and (2) assesses whether the cost categories are reasonable, selected subcategories are reasonable compared to U.S. costs, and costs are consistent with previous claims. In addition, both the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and the State Department verify that the reimbursement is consistent with the U.S. government's National Security Strategy and that the CSF payment does not adversely impact the balance of power in the region. In recent months, Defense has disallowed or deferred a significantly greater amount of CSF reimbursement claims from Pakistan.

Related;
Sharif's party pulls out of Pakistan government

Assorted

World Bank Scorpions;

Also on Monday, the bank announced the retirement of Praful Patel, its vice president for the South Asia region. This was ahead of the mandatory retirement age of 62 but for the credibility of the bank not a moment too soon. Mr. Patel is the man who presided over $570 million in corrupted World Bank health-sector projects in India, which we first reported on in January1. President Robert Zoellick would have sent a stronger signal that such performance won't be tolerated had he fired Mr. Patel outright rather than allowing him to slink out the back door. But at the World Bank, the main deeds that are punished are good ones.

The financial crises of capitalism
By Samuel Brittan

The Economics of Pirate Tolerance


The Nordic Model: Solutions for Continental Europe's Problems?

Growth Diagnostics for South Africa

A visual Strunk and White

When Should the Fed Crash the Party?

The historical roots of India’s booming service economy

Taxing gambling: Some precedents

Is the Fed on a Bender?

"Lessons from the Great Depression"

Anyone notice a problem here?

What if we'd been on the gold standard?

What happened to global food prices?

A Sports Numbers Reading List

Some of the world's earliest democracies flourished aboard pirate ships

IMF on Pakistan budget reforms

Update on Pakistan: Report on Observance of Standards and Codes - Fiscal Transparency Module;

An MTBF process has been initiated, but crucial elements of budget integration and policy transparency have still to be put in place. The development of an MTBF was initiated in 2003, and an MTBF process involving detailed activity costing and identification of ministry objectives and output indicators applied progressively from FY 2005–06.8 In phase one of the MTBF implementation, emphasis was given to establishing better costing and budget preparation techniques in the line ministries. From December 2006, however, the strategy has been changed to give primary emphasis to top-down budget control—while continuing to build up management capacity in the line ministries. The current and development budgets continue to be prepared and presented in the budget document as separate elements. Three separate call circulars are sent to ministries (for current, development, and MTBF budgets). Costs of policy objectives are shown, but further work is needed to link output indicators and budget allocations. The technical and policy basis of out-year estimates are not yet sufficiently clear in the budget documents and, in practice, out-years are resubmitted rather than being rolled over as the base data for the following year’s budget...

A program classification, based on subdetail functions, covering all ministries should be developed as part of the full MTBF rollout. The MTBF implementation is following an ambitious rollout plan. A unified classification derived from the existing COA will build on the present system and support the top-down allocation process. FAD staff suggest that the present budget classification permits evolution to a more focused program approach which will help to address a number of critical long-term change issues. Operational “programs” so defined would incorporate both development and recurrent budgets relevant to that function element. Starting from an across-the-board classification within the existing chart of accounts would contribute to several important transparency and management objectives. It would help to:

- Unify the development and recurrent budget processes—“new proposal submissions” for programs should be evaluated in a similar way to development projects, but cover both capital and recurrent spending;
- Eliminate crossover problems when the development phase of a project is complete and recurrent costs are transferred to the revenue budget;
- Provide a framework that applies to all ministries, allowing a more phased approach to establishment of effective budget management by line ministries;
- Provide a framework that applies to all levels of government, helping to coordinate cross-government programs, particularly those included in the PRSP24; and
- Set a basis for redefinition and harmonization of the roles of the Planning and Development Division (PDD)25 and the Budget Wing of the MOF.

31. Actual outcomes as well as forward estimates should be included in the MTBF presentation. Given the expected improvement in availability of data, it should be possible in the near future to meet the fiscal transparency code requirement that the budget and MTBF estimates should (in addition to the MTBF out-years) show actual outcomes for two years previous and provisional data for one year previous to the budget year. Allied to this, the budget documents should include summary tables showing original budget versus actual outcomes over several years.
32. The methodology for preparing MTBF out-year estimates should be clearly specified. Clear technical specifications for calculation of out-years will both improve the efficiency of budget preparation and improve transparency and accountability of the budget. Specification of technical parameters (such as price) and policy for the estimates will permit an analysis of factors causing changes in the estimates in the following year— most importantly, separating price changes from introduction of new policies. In turn, this will limit the need for data entry to establish baseline ceilings for following years’ budgets, since the first out-year can be automatically entered as data for the next budget year in the roll-over process.

See also Bill Dorotinsky's comments to my comments.

What's your favorite national anthem?

Indian national anthem via Sepia Mutiny.

Related;

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, is reported to have said in 1947: "In due course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims - not in a religious sense for that is the personal faith of an individual- but in a political sense as citizens of one state.

Assorted Pakistan

Demand Analysis For Tax Reform In Pakistan
Angus Deaton and F. Grimard

Abstract: Pakistan, like many LDCs, derives most of government revenue from indirect taxation. However, the system of taxes and subsidies has grown up piecemeal over the years. Previous exercises in price reform for Pakistan have been forced to make very restrictive assumptions about consumer preferences, and have typically used demand systems that prejudge what are the desirable directions of price reform. In this paper, the methodology of Deaton (1988, 1991) is extended and applied to the 1984-85 Household Income and Expenditure Survey. A theory of quality variation based on separable preferences is developed, and the implications for welfare and empirical analysis laid out. The prices of oils and fats and of sugar do not vary very much in the survey data, and the symmetry and homogeneity restrictions from the theory play an important part in obtaining sharp estimates of own and cross-price elasticities. The parameter estimates suggest that there are significant cross-price elasticities between the high-calorie foods and the presence of these substitution patterns means that the effects of potential price reforms are quite different from those that would be estimated using the traditional assumptions. Based on demand patterns alone, it would be desirable to raise government revenue by raising the consumer price of rice. However, in Pakistan it is not generally possible to decouple the producer and consumer prices of rice.

Zakat and Inequality: Some Evidence from Pakistan

This paper presents empirical evidence on the extent to which zakat---a form of religiously-mandated charity under Islam---achieves its intended objective in Pakistan. Detailed income and expenditure data from Pakistan's Household Income and Expenditure Survey for 1987-88 are used to construct two income distributions---one containing the distribution of income which would have obtained if relevant forms of charity were not given, and one containing the distribution of income which obtains under a regime in which such charitable giving takes place. Atkinson-Kolm-Sen (AKS) ethical relative indices of income inequality are computed for Pakistan and each of its four provinces, for each of these two income distributions, and are compared over a range of parameter values. Evidence is found that zakat does redistribute from the better off to the worse-off, and so achieves some reduction in measured income inequality in Pakistan. Both intra-province and inter-province components of over-all inequality decline, though the amount of change is generally small. These conclusions are shown to be robust to a wide range of normative values the investigator may select.

An Islamic Perspective on Inequality in Pakistan;

This paper examines the distribution of income in Pakistan, and in each of its four provinces, from an explicit and formal Islamic perspective. A cardinally significant Atkinson--Kolm--Sen relative index of inequality reflecting that perspective is proposed and computed from the full HIES data series for the years 1984-85, 1985-86, 1986-87, and 1987-88. There is evidence of a significant decline in overall inequality in Pakistan from 1984-85 to 1987-88, but the level of inequality remains very high. Inter--province and inter--urban/rural differences in inequality profiles within Pakistan and each of its provinces are found to be generally less significant than intra--province and intra--urban/rural differences.

World Bank warns Pakistan economy may collapse

Economic threat to democratic transition

High Global Commodity Prices Impact Pakistan Economy;

There is not yet a crisis, but the economic picture for Pakistan is not good”, said Patel. “International prices have continued to rise, but policies and administered prices have not kept pace in Pakistan. During the past few years growth has been robust and there has been significant poverty reduction. There is a good economic foundation, but the growth can only continue if Pakistan adjusts to the new global reality, which includes high prices for oil, commodities and foodstuffs such as wheat. Countries around the globe – including the U.S., Japan and the EU are facing the same reality.”

LSE Blog

Lahore School of Economics Blog

Pakistan wants to negotiate with terrorists

Faced with a sharp escalation of suicide bombings in urban areas, the leaders of Pakistan’s new coalition government say they will negotiate with the militants believed to be orchestrating the attacks, and will use military force only as a last resort.

-Pakistan to Try New Approach to Militants

Pakistan Fact of the Day

Reported Crimes in Pakistan

Also have a look 'crimes by type'- the majority are in the others- what are they?

Bollywood ban to be lifted in Pakistan