Taliban's strategy in Pakistan -- drive out the landlords
Land worth billions given to Pakistani golf federation
| Why does the US side with the gentry in Latin America, Vietnam, now Muslim countries? If we were to reform ownership at home, we could export that geonomic model and win true friends everywhere. We trim, blend, and append two 2009 articles from (1) the News International, the number one English language paper in Pakistan, Apr 22, by Ansar Abbasi on a golf course click here and (2) the New York Times, Apr 16, landlordism by Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah. click here via alert reader Frank Walker. |
by Ansar Abbasi and by Jane Perlez & Pir Zubair Shah
- Land worth billions given to golf federation
Prime land worth tens of billions of rupees situated in the heart of Islamabad, the capitol city, was silently leased out on nominal rent to the Pakistan Golf Federation (PGF) by General Musharraf (ex US ally) during his last days in power for entertainment of the country’s elite.
A total of 1,200 Kanals of land that is extremely expensive and beyond the reach of ordinary Pakistanis has been leased out to the PGF on annual ground rent of just Rs 2.41 per square yard i.e. Rs 1.7 million per year, about $20,000 US for 150 acres in the center of the capital.
Sources in the Capital Development Authority claim that the said land was leased out to the powerful PGF following pressure from official quarters. These sources said there was hardly any reason to lease out this prime land for developing a new golf course when there existed another golf club adjacent to the allotted land.
Golf is associated with elite throughout the world. But leading Pakistani golf pro Taimoor Hasan is of the view that any ordinary person would have the opportunity to play in the Pakistan Golf Federation Club by only depositing a meagre fee like Rs 200.
Taimoor claimed that the next door Islamabad Golf Club had reached saturation point and the gates of the club opened at about 6:00 in the morning. However, a source in the Islamabad Golf Club said this leading golf course of the federal capital was playing far below its capacity.
The source also insisted that even the Islamabad Golf Club was being run on grants and subsidies as it did not fetch enough fee revenues to maintain its operation.
In the master plan of Islamabad, it is said there was provision of only one golf club i.e. the existing Islamabad Golf Club, which is part of the Islamabad Club. Besides the Islamabad Golf Club, the federal capital already has a 9-hole golf course at E-9, which is owned by the Pakistan Air Force officers.
Islamabad has already become notorious for being freely or cheaply available to the elite of the country. A few chosen influential classes of the society are doled out residential plots in Islamabad and a special category of people are even entitled to get two residential plots and a house as well.
JJS: Fiddling while Rome burns?
- Taliban's strategy in Pakistan -- drive out the landlords
The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by exploiting profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here. The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week.
In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power. To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops.
A landlord who fled with his family last year to Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, said his tenants called him in to tell him his fruit crop, sold at a quarter of last year’s price, would not be his. The buyer had been ordered to give the money to the Taliban instead.
Unlike India after independence in 1947, Pakistan maintained a narrow landed upper class that kept its vast holdings while its workers remained subservient. Successive Pakistani governments have since failed to provide land reform and even the most basic forms of education and health care. Avenues to advancement for the vast majority of rural poor do not exist.
The strategy executed in Swat is easily transferable to densely populated Punjab. Mahboob Mahmood, a Pakistani-American lawyer and former classmate of President Obama’s, said, “The people of Pakistan are psychologically ready for a revolution.”
Unlike the US-backed government, “The militants are promising more than just proscriptions on music and schooling,” he said. “They are also promising Islamic justice, effective government, and economic redistribution.”
“This was a bloody revolution in Swat,” said a senior Pakistani official who oversees Swat, an area of 1.3 million people with fertile orchards, vast plots of timber, and valuable emerald mines, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan” which for now remains largely feudal.
---------------------
Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
|
Also see: Why Are We Still at War?
If the generals can be a bit rational, can politicians?
We Simply Never Talk About It |
| Email this article | Sign up for free Progress Report updates via email |
What are your views? Share your opinions with The Progress Report:
| Page One | Page Two | Archive |
| Discussion Room | Letters | What's Geoism? |
