Dear Osama

Living in this country require that we take what destiny, fate and our combined stupidity and greed throw our way, in our stride and move on.

I have now been a thinking state resident of Pakistan for about 20 years. My earliest recoverable memories are from school days; getting on G-3 at Regal Chowk to get back home. An open, clean city without complications for a class 9th student.

From that the next core dump that I have is the burning Karachi of 87-98 with the rangers, the corpses in bories, the ethnic killing, the extra-judicial encounters, the checkposts, the random security stops, murders, the daily rising body count, and the strikes that brought this city to standstill. I remember being stopped at every occassion, I remember questioning, is this really home?

We survived that. We lived and worked and delivered with no electricity, no transport and close to zero resources. We beat companies in and outside the region that had all of the above. And we still did it cheaper, better, faster.

I don’t remember the war of 1971 or fall of Dhaka or the misery that preceeded 16 December 1971. I was just a few months old. My father and his generation does.

So if we survived partition, surivived 71, survive the 80’s and 90’s and the sanctions in 1998 and are around as a nation with a credible presence, there must be something here, in our water, in our genes, in our people that allows us to keep our chin up when lesser nations would have give up long ago.

You have put it right. What happened last night felt like a betrayal and a violation. We were all hacked. But we have been hacked before and lived to tell the tale. It is part of our destiny, a strength and a weakness.

This is my home, no one should be able to run me out of it on account of their short sightedness. And if they do, how will I ensure that I do whatever little I can to ensure a better future for my children here (not outside).

Chin up and as you said, lets move on. We have work to do.

Beautiful words of both truth and hope! I think we as a nation have been prepared to face anything and expect “Predictable Stupidities” coming our way. Everything that happened since few months, the media had been telling us openly and we are doing the blah blah routine. When and how we can put a stop to all this. Finally, our industry is getting some motion and some recognition, how can we insure that it will stay on course.

Yesterday! I was informed by this state of Emergency by one of my client in Saudi. As I was calling him around 4 PM, he told me “Dude! are you guys safe? Looks like your country is again entering an emergency state. Aren’t you supposed to be home with your family rather than calling me from your office”. And I was speechless!

[…] Dear Osama […]

@chirand, this country is not holding any hostages so if you don’t like it you can easily move on to US, UK or Australia or any other western country you like, if you have the skills they are accepting.
Leave us the crazy types here.

Hi people,

Looking at all the events in the country for past few months from outside the country I have a few thoughts (I am just thinking out loud and trying to think a different perspective, don’t mean to offend anyone):

1. If there are 30 suicide attacks in the country, isn’t emergency justified?

2. In recent times, the “extremists” arrested by the law enforcing agencies have been released on the orders of the judiciary; so isn’t that quite an interference in the affairs? I mean yes there should be law of the land, but sometimes under extra ordinary circumstances, extra-ordinary measures need to be taken, no?

Just a thought, Pakistan isn’t going through a regular period in time. I mean looking back, if Muasharaf hadn’t been an ally with US war on terrorism, we’d be worst off, and now being an ally we are targets of the so-called extremists; so either way we were in for trouble. Isn’t that so?

Regarding media freedom, if the media promotes unrest in the population, isn’t it better to just put them off-air. Okay, free speech should be there, but at what cost?

Come to think of it, what does Muasharaf gain by all of this? Power? Money? Doesn’t he already have it? IS he afraid to lose it? With so many suicide attacks on his life, wouldn’t it be better to leave the seat anyway? So why is he doing all of this? Is there a better way out? Can (or will) our politicians fight extremists in a different way? Will there be any fewer suicide attacks? With them in power or with Musharaf out of power, will the american’s war on terror be over?

Do we really need freedom of speech amongst all other things?

I say we need more foreign exchange, more economic development, more firms like iScrybe, more forums like greenwhite, and more people like Osama and Jawwad and others comming back to Pakistan so that we can progress economically.

So tell me why should I think differently?

There is more freedom of speech in PK than in most western countries. Anyone can say anything. However, I wish more of us had worthwhile things to say.

As to the emergency and it’s impact on the tech business, the latter half is all I care about:

http://techlahore.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/the-emergency-a-non-event/

[…] Green&White - We Were All Hacked […]

So they shut down one news channel - big deal!

I really don’t see how you’re civil rights have been damaged…why all the crazy talk?