Why the ISI prevails.....

Referring to the previous post, the ISI's involvement in the terrorist campaigns, and controlling of the Taleban is quite easily understood when some of your 'public' is kept a certain way for your objective gains. Here's a small anecdote that the BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones had reported about, which gives a good idea on one reason why:

Soon after Pakistan won its independence in 1947 the young government turned its mind to the issue of increasing the disastrously low literacy rate - to this day, by the way, most tribesmen can't read or write.

Educationalists travelled to the most remote corners of the country and one ended up right by the Afghan border in the tribal belt where the local chief, the Nawab, was a huge landowner with political power to match. A man with a really small kingdom.

"I have good news," the civil servant told the Nawab, "the federal government has allocated funds to build a school in your area."

The Nawab's response was brusque. "I don't want one," he snapped." The educationalist looked confused. "Come with me tomorrow morning" said the Nawab, "and I will show you why."

The next day the Nawab gave his guest a gun. "We are going hunting," he said, "for duck." And after a few hours the chief had bagged his fill and the ducks lay dead, many floating on an ice cold pool. Then he whistled.

It was a command. Suddenly tribesmen who had been watching the shoot hurled themselves into the freezing water, thrashing their arms, swimming and retrieving the ducks; then with their salwar-kameezes clinging to their skin they brought them back to the dry land for the Nawab's inspection.

The Nawab turned to his young idealistic visitor. "I am sorry to disappoint you," he said, "but do you really think that these men would be willing to fetch my duck if they had been to school. Just forget it.

The sad fact......this kind of attitude still remains.