MAQzine

Pakistani youth in danger of radicalisation: study *Brookings report says US should make socio-economic aid conditional upon Pakistan’s ability to spread benefits to masses instead of tying it solely to terrorismBy Khalid HasanWASHINGTON: Pakistan’s potential for youth radicalisation is high, given a poor education system stratified along socio-economic lines and disparate economic opportunities across society, according to a study published by the Brookings Institution.Authored by Pakistani scholar and journalist Moeed Yusuf, the study, titled ‘The Prospects of Youth Radicalisation in Pakistan: Implications for US Policy’, finds warning signals that increase the likelihood for young members of society being lured towards extremist causes. The prospects of this are increased because of the presence of an extremist infrastructure, the impeccable organisational discipline and widespread social networks of Pakistan’s Islamic political and militant outfits, a failure of the moderate forc...

By Karamatullah K. Ghori Barack Obama may be poles-apart from Bush on so many other things but shares his perception of fighting the enemy on its terrain. — Photo by AP Pardon the Pakistani news media going gaga over Washington’s plans to beef up, extraordinarily, its diplomatic presence in Pakistan. The plans are staggering and stupendous, for want of more descriptive adjectives. But they are, for the record, just geared to Washington’s diplomatic stake in Pakistan, lest the Pakistanis routinely clobbered in the ‘civilised western world’ for their outbursts of emotions over supposedly petty little things. ‘The Americans are coming, and coming big,’ according to media pundits in Pakistan. And none should blame them for going over the top because the figures being bandied about are, to say the very least, flabbergasting. What’s on the drawing boards in Washington and Islamabad are the blue prints for vastly increasing the number of American personnel manning one of the most imp...