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An Islamic NATO, and Other Dreams (Part 3)

Aug 7, 2019 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Saeed Ahmad Hasan dreams, in the pages of the Islamist daily Roznama Islam, of a “NATO-like” organization for Islamic states, one which he envisions would be based on the spiritual prestige of Saudi Arabia, the economic power of Turkey, and the military prowess of Pakistan.

“The third country is Pakistan whose military power and defense production capacity is accepted in the world. Being geographically extremely important and due to the relationship with Asia’s biggest power China, it is a strong and stable state,” he says and adds: “Therefore, these three countries, jointly with other Muslim countries, should establish a joint forum [i.e., security council] which can be on the lines of the Warsaw Pact and NATO.”

Pakistan is not a “strong and stable” state. Al Jazeera recently carried a devastating article, “Why Pakistan’s economy is sinking.” Here is some of what ails the country as of July  2019:

The growth rate fell by almost 50 percent from 6.2 percent to 3.3 percent. It is expected to go down even further to 2.4 percent next year, which will be the country’s lowest in the past 10 years. The Pakistani rupee has lost a fifth of its value against the dollar since the beginning of this fiscal year. Inflation is expected to hover around 13 percent over the next 12 months, reaching a 10-year-high as well.

Then there is the issue of the ever-increasing debt, which eats up some 30 percent of the budget every year. Pakistan continues to take out loans to be able to cover repayments of past borrowing. It recently signed yet another deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout package worth $6 billion..

The Pakistani authorities have been unable to establish effective tax collection practices. Currently, only one percent of Pakistanis pay their taxes and the country has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world.

Successive governments have avoided imposing stricter controls because they have been staffed by members of the same elites that are actively evading taxes. They are able to do so not only because of government inaction but also because of widespread corruption. In fact, it is cheaper for them to bribe than to pay their dues.

Saeed Ahmad Hasan mentions Pakistan’s “strong military,” but fails to mention that spending on the army is — after debt servicing  — the largest  item on the budget, with one-quarter of annual expenditures going to the military.

The funds the military receives from what is allocated in the budget is in addition to the revenue it gets from its large business operations, which include over 50 commercial entities, generating some $1.5 billion dollars annually. It just recently moved into the mining and oil and gas exploration sector, some of which has been facilitated by Imran Khan’s government.

One can imagine the endless possibilities for corruption among the generals, with such a large non-military business empire to oversee. This rampant corruption demoralizes law-abiding businessmen, while the vast sums spent on the military are a drag on the economy. What Hasan describes as Pakistan’s strength — its military — is the main source of the country’s dire economic condition.

Hasan  then claims that Pakistan, “being geographically extremely important and due to the relationship with Asia’s biggest power China, it is a strong and stable state.” That “relationship” is nothing to boast about. China, ruthless in its pursuit of gain, has signed agreements to build railways and other infrastructure. These are not aid projects; Chinese workers will be employed, and Pakistan, using borrowed funds, will be doing most of the paying. Most of the projects in Pakistan that are part of the “Belt and Road” initiative will directly benefit Chinese exporters, by providing rail service where there had been none, for goods to pass through Pakistan. The Chinese have also agreed to expand Gwadar Port, in Baluchistan, which will be of immense benefit to China, for it will greatly shorten the routes for Chinese exporters to markets in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. A trip that is now 12,000 miles long through the Straits of Malacca will, when the port at Gwadar can be fully utilized, be only 2,500 miles long. China benefits, but it is unclear just how much the “Belt and Road” projects will benefit Pakistan.

Is Pakistan a “strong” state economically? Few Pakistanis economists think so. Pakistan’s economy has “reached the point of collapse. For the first time in four decades of research, I am deeply worried,” said Dr Kaiser Bengali, Dean of the Faculty of Management Science at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology in Karachi.

Saeed Ahmad Hasan says that Pakistan is “strong and stable.” Stable? Let’s find out how many political assassinations there have been in Pakistan in the last few decades. in 1979, there was the execution of the Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In 1988, President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq died when his plane mysteriously crashed; it is believed to have been a deliberate assassination. Prime Minister Benazir Ali Bhutto, the daughter of Zulfikar, was assassinated in 2007. In 2010, Imran Farooq, a Pakistani politician living in London, was murdered by people opposed to the political organization he was setting up. In 2011, Salman Taseer, a liberal politician and Governor of Punjab, was murdered by his own bodyguard, who disagreed with Taseer’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. In the same year, the Christian politician Shahbaz Bhatti, Minister of Minority Affairs, was murdered for his opposition to the blasphemy laws and for his defense of Asia Bibi, a Christian convicted of blasphemy. These are a representative handful. Since the murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a total of 42 Pakistani politicians have been assassinated since 1979. Given such a record of political murders, Pakistan hardly qualifies as a “stable” country.

Every one of Hasan’s claims about Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan is either wrong or greatly exaggerated. It’s quite a performance, a kind of genius in reverse. But from Saeed Ahmad Hasan, writing in the Islamist daily Roznama Islam, you and I expected no less.

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Pakistan Tagged With: Gwadar Port, Saeed Ahmad Hasan


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Aug 7, 2019 at 10:37 am

    Exaggerations? Islam is built upon exaggerations and other people’s money. A recipe for fraud and bankruptcy. Islam’s oil countries are well-off because of oil, not because of a philosophy of inventiveness in Islam. Islam stifles innovation. While individual Muslims may have wonderful qualities and be hard-working and intelligent, it is not because of Islam, but in spite of Islam that they are so successful. Nothing of value can be built upon Islam’s delusions.

    How can you build something worthwhile when you start with exaggerated or erroneous information? You can’t. That’s why Islam will continue to fail and why Muslims will leave it in increasing numbers. The cognitive dissonance between a flat-earth Koran and the 21st century is pushing many Muslims past their ability to self-delude.

    • elee says

      Aug 7, 2019 at 11:09 am

      I hope you are right. I wish you were right. I for one don’t see why Muslims should desert a system that has let them loot enslave and kill for a millennium and a half and fancy they’re doing their god’s will. As best I can tell, such a spontaneous moral reformation would be unprecedented. It was not spontaneous moral reformation that freed India from the thuggees, or Spain from the Moors. Our forebears used to have ways of dealing with these things. Are the men of our times less competent than the men of, say, 1953? Less brave, less resourceful? I hope the answer is that they’re doing a lot that they don’t tell me about. Oh and do be aware that other cultures don’t attach the same value that Northern Europeans do to honest acquisition and painstaking capital accumulation; if they did, the Industrial Revolution would have happened in Arabia or Turkey. But why build when you can plunder? A billion and a half Muslims continue to fail to find an acceptable answer to that question, and we’re not supposed to judge other people’s morals or cultures, right?

      • CRUSADER says

        Aug 7, 2019 at 1:03 pm

        Capacity of humans to self delude is infinite, because the spirit inside is infinite, and one needs to be right with that spirit to ride through eternity with blessings. Otherwise, the dampens spirit will lead down the path of further destruction. Ignorance and Greed and “getting away with it” will always parallel human existence in this fallen world. Nothing changes in humans until humans change themselves — through repentance!

  2. mortimer says

    Aug 7, 2019 at 10:43 am

    Saeed Ahmad Hasan’s words about the ‘spiritual prestige of Saudi Arabia’ are yet another exaggeration. There are man Qutbist organizations that want to bring down the House of Saud.

    As Saudi women gain independence, influence and political power, the Islamic world will be moderated and then collapse as tens of millions of rebels from Islam leave it.

    Numbers are not yet available, but Islam is collapsing now. And the next generation of ex-Muslim deprogrammers will finish Islam off.

    • CRUSADER says

      Aug 7, 2019 at 1:09 pm

      mortimer, you contribute much for thought here at Jihad Watch, but nevertheless you are a dreamer caught in the windmills of your active mind, no matter how scholarly you wish to come across, you ultimately are delusional!

      Please, take your meds, you’ve been off kilter lately… yet again.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 7, 2019 at 11:01 pm

      Mortimer, just today on another thread you said that individuals cannot “deprogram” Muslims, because it is too dangerous–and that the government will have to do it in secret. (You don’t say how that would work, either).

      Even if it were not for this contradiction, you do not say why Muslims would listen to apostates, whom they believe need to be murdered.

  3. WPM says

    Aug 7, 2019 at 12:27 pm

    If China gets a strong enough foot hold in Pakistan ,the “Native Moslems” better get ready for the Chinese “reeducation camps”. The Chinese were more then willing to kill off anyone that was Chinese that buck the government policies if they belong to the wrong religious group even if that group was not aggressive against Chinese law. The Chinese will think nothing of making millions of Moslems disappear in Pakistan they do not tolerate the crybaby victimhood card that they play in the west when some Moslem go Jihad .The Chinese will think nothing of wiping out a village for the action of a few people or a family who think they can run their own Moslem Mafia style rules there at the expense of the Chinese. Just look at the trouble in Hong Kong now ,that with a population that speaks the language ,has the same culture ,is educated and hard working ,the Chinese want to use a iron fist to rule them. Does the government of Pakistan think the Chinses will put up with 5 pray period per day , special work conditions ,Islamic holidays ? Jihad , government kick backs to the local Islamic muck- e -muck? the Chinses overlords will end it all in swift hard violence . A very intolerant racist religion meets a very intolerant racist Chinese communist government that could crush the natives without losing any sleep over it .If they want to embrace each other in a death grip it would be interesting to watch .In the end the MOSLEMS WILL TRY TO BLAME THE JEWS SOME HOW ,how they will find a way logic and reason seem to be lost when you follow Islam to the letter of it idiot laws.

    • CRUSADER says

      Aug 7, 2019 at 1:19 pm

      WPM,

      You don’t think that the Chicoms will be able to legitimately DEPROGRAM the muzzies under their influence?

      • WPM says

        Aug 7, 2019 at 3:34 pm

        I think the Chinese are very capable of killing millions to further their cause(they had no problem killing millions of their own during the cultural revolution) like the Moslems. Both groups would not lose any sleep killing millions both groups the Communist Chinese government and the Moslem Jihads are both supremist who give a flying “F” for human rights, western beliefs or free speech ,private enterprise ,freedom of religion ,freedom of expression, they both only understand power thru violence or threats of violence to keep the man in the street herded to follow the party line. Both communism and Islam are dead end ideologies that cannibalize with great glee other Moslems sects or other Communist countries (look at Iran and Saudis or China and Russia).

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 7, 2019 at 11:04 pm

      Right now, China is enabling Pakistan, not conquering them.

  4. Rarely says

    Aug 7, 2019 at 12:40 pm

    Hmmm. A NATO-like military alliance between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey with other muslim-majority countries tagging along. Interesting possibilities like nukes being housed in Turkey and Saudi Arabia perhaps? What could possibly go wrong?

    • CRUSADER says

      Aug 7, 2019 at 1:14 pm

      More delusion.

      More destruction.

      More distraction.

      More devolution.

  5. No Muzzies Here says

    Aug 7, 2019 at 1:30 pm

    A treaty among savage countries? That would not look very much like NATO at all.

    • Rarely says

      Aug 7, 2019 at 3:34 pm

      One of those savage countries has nukes. Sleep better now?

  6. Angemon says

    Aug 7, 2019 at 1:57 pm

    >It’s quite a performance, a kind of genius in reverse.

    Indeed.

  7. Buraq says

    Aug 7, 2019 at 2:41 pm

    I immoral
    S savage
    L loathsome
    A anachronistic
    M manipulative

    • The unexpected voice says

      Aug 7, 2019 at 6:48 pm

      Precisely

    • CRUSADER says

      Aug 8, 2019 at 2:27 am

      Now try MUSLIM

  8. The unexpected voice says

    Aug 7, 2019 at 6:50 pm

    Turkey is very dangerous with their Islamonazi ideology, the Christian genocide in their land are still happening.

  9. gravenimage says

    Aug 7, 2019 at 11:05 pm

    An Islamic NATO, and Other Dreams (Part 3)
    ………………..

    Totally delusional.

  10. SAMB says

    Aug 8, 2019 at 5:11 am

    Many Pakistanis find themselves in South Africa(and Africa) because there is more business opportunities in South Africa. Secondly, Youtube delineates the Warcraft grade of Pakistan’s military hardware. Its aircraft is antiquated American planes and won’t withstand Muslim-NATO war! A nation in ascendency does not lose its populace to other countries because it can deal internally with stressors. Pakistan is not one of them. Political violence is the order of the day. Moreover, religious jealousy consumes this society. Any other progressive society will accommodate the deviants. Not so, Pakistan. So from which information does Ahmad extrapolate his economic theory? Within the Dar-al Islam Malaysia, the Emirates(where many Pakistanis work), Indonesia, Saudi Arabia are economically in better space…

  11. Mike says

    Aug 8, 2019 at 10:14 am

    Pakistan is so wealthy that many can afford to walk through Asia , Europe up to London to get social welfare .

    Sadiq Khan is so succesful with his London ,s responsabilities that he should think of taking the leadership of Pakistan and bring them to every big cities of the continent the normaliity of having terrorist attacks as in London . Sadiq move to Pakistan asap to give them that modernity !

  12. guest says

    Aug 8, 2019 at 4:21 pm

    You mean like a caliphate?

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