Ibrahim Buriro | My Elders in Pakistan Predicted Calamity. Now It’s Here. – The New York Times

By Ibrahim Buriro

Mr. Buriro is an organizer for the Awami Workers Party and a master’s student in development studies. He lives in Karachi, Pakistan.

KARACHI, Pakistan — On Aug. 24, I received a frantic call from my mother. She told me that Sabu Buriro, our village on the shore of Lake Hamal in northwest Sindh Province, was underwater after weeks of heavy rains. Just two months earlier, extreme heat had dried the lake. Now, after weeks of monsoon rains, the lake was so full that the dike protecting us from it was about to burst.

After 10 hours of travel from Karachi, where I am a student, I arrived in a village full of panic-stricken relatives and neighbors. A few army trucks came to evacuate some of the women and children while the rest of us did what we could to salvage our dried grains, our livestock and our homes. After the army trucks left, no more government help appeared. I called comrades from the city, who came with vans; for three frantic days we did what we could to help before the dike broke and floodwaters consumed the village.

My immediate family is among the millions of Pakistanis displaced by this year’s disastrous floods, which were primarily caused by record monsoon rains, made worse by global warming. But the magnitude of this disaster was made larger by Pakistan’s exploitation of nature in the name of “progress.” My country needs to abandon its excessively industrial approach to water infrastructure, lest our ecological and economic situation becomes even more tenuous.

Opinion | When I Step Outside, I Step Into a Country of Men Who Stare – By Fatima Bhojani – The New York Times

By Fatima Bhojani

Ms. Bhojani is a writer from Pakistan.

• Nov. 17, 2020

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has proposed chemical castration as punishment for rapists.Credit…Abdul Majeed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — I am angry. All the time. I’ve been angry for years. Ever since I began to grasp the staggering extent of violence — emotional, mental and physical — against women in Pakistan. Women here, all 100 million of us, exist in collective fury.

“Every day, I am reminded of a reason I shouldn’t exist,” my 19-year-old friend recently told me in a cafe in Islamabad. When she gets into an Uber, she sits right behind the driver so that he can’t reach back and grab her. We agreed that we would jump out of a moving car if that ever happened. We debated whether pepper spray was better than a knife.

When I step outside, I step into a country of men who stare. I could be making the short walk from my car to the bookstore or walking through the aisles at the supermarket. I could be wrapped in a shawl or behind two layers of face mask. But I will be followed by searing eyes, X-raying me. Because here, it is culturally acceptable for men to gape at women unblinkingly, as if we are all in a staring contest that nobody told half the population about, a contest hinged on a subtle form of psychological violence.

“Wolves,” my friend, Maryam, called them, as she recounted the time a man grazed her shoulder as he sped by on a motorbike. “From now on, I am going to stare back, make them uncomfortable.” Maryam runs a company that takes tourists to the mountainous north. “People are shocked to see a woman leading tours on her own,” she told me.”

Joe Biden’s Account of Stance on Bin Laden Raid Conflicts With Others – First Draft. Political News, Now. – The New York Times

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden suggested that he had not opposed the raid, saying he told the president in a one-on-one conversation “that I thought he should go but to follow his own instincts.” That seemed to conflict with the public memories of others who were involved in the decision and who suggested that Mr. Biden was against the raid.

Leon Panetta
Mr. Panetta, who was the director of the C.I.A. at the time and strongly supported the raid, wrote in his memoir, “Worthy Fights,” that Mr. Biden “argued that we still did not have enough confidence that bin Laden was in the compound, and he came out firmly in favor of waiting for more information.”

Robert M. Gates

Mr. Gates, then the defense secretary, wrote in his book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” that he and Mr. Biden were the “two primary skeptics, although everyone was asking tough questions. Biden’s primary concern was the political consequences of failure.”

Michael Morell

In his book, “The Great War of Our Time,” Mr. Morell, then a deputy to Mr. Panetta, characterized Mr. Biden as “unconvinced about the intelligence and concerned about what a failed mission would do” to the United States’ relationship with Pakistan.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

In her memoir as secretary of state, “Hard Choices,” released last year, Mrs. Clinton described Mr. Biden as being among the skeptics of a raid, although she touched on his role only lightly. But on the public-speaking circuit before the book’s release, Mrs. Clinton described herself as steadfastly in Mr. Panetta’s corner in support of the raid.

Yet there were several meetings leading up to the surprise attack in Pakistan, and some people appeared to give weight to different factors at different points. Mr. Panetta, for instance, wrote in his book that Mrs. Clinton “acknowledged that more time might give us better intelligence, a sentiment others advanced as well, but she concluded that this was a rare opportunity and believed we should seize it.”

Biden Says He Didn’t Oppose Raid That Killed Bin Laden – 10/20/2015- The New York Times

“When asked specifically whether he had advised against the raid, Mr. Biden said: “Let me put it this way: My advice was, follow your instincts, knowing what his instinct was.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden’s evolution continued. Before an audience at George Washington University, Mr. Biden said he never gave Mr. Obama definitive advice on controversial issues in front of other officials, mindful that he did not want the rest of the team to see a difference between his opinion and that of the president. With others around them, Mr. Biden said he suggested one more pass over the Abbottabad compound with an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone.

After the meeting in the Situation Room, though, Mr. Biden said he privately gave the president his real view. “As we walked out of the room and went upstairs, I told him my opinion, that I said that I thought he should go but to follow his own instincts,” Mr. Biden said Tuesday.”

Editorial | End the War in Afghanistan – The New York Times

By The Editorial Board
The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

Feb. 3, 2019,  632
On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress wrote what would prove to be one of the largest blank checks in the country’s history. The Authorization for Use of Military Force against terrorists gave President George W. Bush authority to attack the Taliban, the Sunni fundamentalist force then dominating Afghanistan that refused to turn over the mastermind of the attacks perpetrated three days earlier, Osama bin Laden.

In the House of Representatives and the Senate combined, there was only one vote in opposition: Barbara Lee, a Democratic representative from California, who warned of another Vietnam. “We must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target,” she said. “We cannot repeat past mistakes.”

Days later, Mr. Bush told a joint session of Congress just how broadly he planned to use his new war powers. “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there,” Mr. Bush declared. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

More than 17 years later, the United States military is engaged in counterterrorism missions in 80 nations on six continents. The price tag, which includes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and increased spending on veterans’ care, will reach $5.9 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2019, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University. Since nearly all of that money has been borrowed, the total cost with interest will be substantially higher.

The war on terror has been called the “forever war,” the “long war,” a “crusade gone wrong.” It has claimed an estimated half a million lives around the globe.

It is long past time for a reappraisal.”

via Opinion | End the War in Afghanistan – The New York Times

Oscar Win Shines Light on Pakistan Efforts to Stop ‘Honor Killings’ – The New York Times

“KARACHI, Pakistan — The latest Academy Award for a filmmaker from Pakistan is focusing attention on so-called honor killings of women in the country, with the prime minister and other senior officials vowing to strengthen laws against the practice.From Our AdvertisersOn Sunday, the filmmaker, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, won the Oscar for best documentary short for her film “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness,” which depicts the survivor of an attempted honor killing who was forced to publicly forgive her family for trying to murder her.Human rights activists in Pakistan have been pressing the state for decades to halt the attacks, in which family members believe they are restoring their honor by killing women who have eloped or had an unsanctioned relationship outside marriage. But such attacks have remained common, with more than 700 women killed in Pakistan in 2014 alone, according to statistics by the Aurat Foundation, a women’s rights advocacy group.”

Source: Oscar Win Shines Light on Pakistan Efforts to Stop ‘Honor Killings’ – The New York Times