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MINGORA/BATKHELA: Forty-seven militants, 15 security personnel and 36 non-combatants were killed and several others wounded on Wednesday in fierce clashes and explosions in the Swat valley and Malakand region. (more…)
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Pakistan is facing galloping Talibanisation: Ahmed Rashid
On Monday, April 4, veteran journalist Ahmed Rashid addressed a select crowd at Karachi’s Mohatta Palace Museum. Not surprisingly, the subject of his talk was ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan: Quest for Peace or Recipe for War?’ He argued that Pakistan was facing a major existential crisis: ‘I no longer say that there’s a creeping Talibanisation in Pakistan (more…)
ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari approved a controversial Sharia regulation for the Malakand division of the North West Frontier Province on Monday after the National Assembly asked for what seemed to be a clear concession to Taliban militants of the Swat valley to implement a peace deal between them and the provincial government. (more…)
Mela is a famous festival held in many cities of the world where the Pakistan diaspora resides. In every summer people come together to enjoy and celebrate the South Asian cultural heritage. Pakistan (more…)
Me, Sharon Chadha, sister-in-law of Punjab, doing some of my own
Photo: Courtesy of the NY Times
Taliban insurgents are teaming up with local militant groups to make inroads in Punjab….“I don’t think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue,” said a senior police official in Punjab, who declined to be idenfitied because he was discussing threats to the state. “If you want to destabilize Pakistan, you have to destabilize Punjab.”
In at least five towns in southern and western Punjab, including the midsize hub of Multan, barber shops, music stores and Internet cafes offensive to the militants’ strict interpretation of Islam have received threats. Traditional ceremonies that include drumming and dancing have been halted in some areas.
Bhanghra? Can the Taliban really be thinking they will be able to permanently ban Bhangra in Punjab???????? This I cannot believe for a second.
For those of you unfamiliar with Bhangra, it is the traditional music of Punjab. Everywhere you find Punjabis you find Bhangra. And everywhere you find anyone who has ever had a friend who is Punjabi too. Bhangra has now spread to clubs and on radio stations across Europe and North America.
Now I can imagine the Taliban finding recruits among Punjab’s poor and ignorant youth. But having experienced Punjabis now for longer than I’m willing to admit here – I am married to a Punjabi -I cannot conceive of their elders or even their more serious peers ever going down this path, not even for a second. I say this is because Punjabis have to be dominant. With all due love and respect to my in-laws and darling husband, all of whom I worship, Punjabis never ever cede control, not for one minute, not even to me!
And the Times report seems to bear me out:
The Taliban here exploit many of the same weaknesses that have allowed them to expand in other areas: an absent or intimidated police force; a lack of attention from national and provincial leaders; a population steadily cowed by threats, or won over by hard-line mullahs who usurp authority by playing on government neglect and poverty.
…Locals feel helpless. When a 15-year-old boy vanished from a madrasa in a village near here recently — his classmates said to go on jihad — his uncle could not afford to go look for him, let alone confront the powerful men who run the madrasa. “We are simple people,” the man said. “What can we do?”
My conclusion: If there is any intelligent element to be found among the Punjabis who are aligning with the Taliban, it is those Punjabis who are using the Taliban as the means to their own end. That is, they are using the Taliban, just as their fellow Punjabis have used the Taliban all along.
The Taliban might well find love and happiness among the Punjabis (as I certainly have) but if they are thinking they will ever dominate them – nope, not a chance. They will not be able to stop the Bhangra parties in Punjab. Never ever. You can’t even get them to turn the Bhangra down.
ON Saturday, March 11, a convoy of 10 double-cabin four-wheel drive pick-up trucks loaded with Taliban armed with every description of portable weapons — Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns — drove from Daggar the headquarters of Buner district to the villages of Sohawa and Dagai in Buner.
It entered Swabi district at Jhanda village, drove through the district headquarter (the town of Swabi), drove on to the motorway, exited at Mardan, drove through the cantonment of Mardan and, showing their weapons for all to see, went on towards Malakand.
In doing the above, the Taliban broke many laws of the state of Pakistan not least those that prohibit the possession of heavy weapons; showing weapons publicly and so on. They drove through a district HQ of a district they have not yet occupied (but are well on the way sooner rather than later, given the non-governance being exhibited by the ANP non-government of the Frontier); on the federally policed motorway; through an army cantonment — as a matter of fact right past the Punjab Regimental Centre’s shopping plaza containing the usual bakery and pastry-shop run by serving soldiers — and thence through the rest of the crowded city of Mardan which is also the home of the chief minister of the province.
Must have struck the fear of God into the populace of the villages/cities/ towns/cantonments they drove through, these ferocious men who so recently humbled the great Pakistan Army! So what am I going on about, talking of the laws of the state? What state? What laws? Much shame should adhere to the various actors, or shall we call them jokers, who are prancing about on the national stage striking nonsensical attitudes and mouthing pitiable platitudes.
Just as one example, the very same ‘leaders’ of the ANP who just eight days ago admitted on TV that the flogging of poor Chand Bibi had actually happened but that it happened before they signed the (craven) deal with the Taliban, are now saying the flogging never happened! Look at Muslim Khan, the fiery spokesman of the Taliban in Swat who said, again on TV, that the woman was lucky to have got away with a beating — that she should have been stoned to death. He now says there was no beating at all.
As another, the COAS, Gen Ashfaq Kayani says several weeks after the army handed Swat over to the Taliban that it was ready to face any threat, internal or external! Can you even believe any of this? What is happening to this country of ours; how long will we live in denial; when will we realise that if we don’t act now it will all be over; that the Taliban will simply take over the state using the shock and awe that comes from killing wantonly and cruelly.
Let’s go back to the most recent ‘flag march’ the Taliban carried out from Buner to Mardan via Swabi and see its effects already furthering the Taliban’s agenda. Please go to http://buner.com and see what mayhem they are creating there, recruiting jobless youths by encouraging them to ‘take-over’ their respective areas and neighbourhoods. What, pray, would the loquacious Mian Iftikhar, the Frontier’s information minister, say about this latest in a series of coming conquests for the Taliban?
ISLAMABAD: Differences over India’s enhanced role in Afghanistan led to the drift in strategic relations between Pakistan and the United States that caught public eye after prickly Foreign Minister Qureshi pointed towards a trust deficit between the two allies and asked the senior partner for a fair treatment based on mutual trust and respect.
Background interviews revealed that strains in the relations were much more serious than met the eye and as the insiders put it the testing moment for the strategic cooperation has arrived and critical decisions by both the allies are due now.
‘The ties are in a very delicate stage and there are very few options left for both the allies – either to concede some ground to the other or to enter an all out confrontation,’ a diplomatic source opined adding things may worsen in days ahead because the Americans are known to be bad listeners and have an inclination for ‘bulldozing’ the matters.
The differences started after President Obama unveiled his strategy for the region, which among other things envisioned the setting up of a Contact Group on Pakistan and Afghanistan which involved India. Subsequently, it became clearer with the passage of time that the Obama administration was looking towards a greater role for India in Afghanistan.
Ambassador Holbrooke articulated the US thinking by calling India the ‘absolutely critical leader of the region.’ The new US policy was a major shocker for Islamabad that had yet to recover from the surprise U-turn by President Obama, who had during his election campaign promised a resolution of the Kashmir issue, but later went back on his promise.
Suspicions in Pakistan compounded with the introduction of the Peace Act of 2009 in the US House of Representatives, that attached stringent conditionalities to the proposed .5 billion annual assistance, which required Islamabad not to support any person or group involved in activities meant to hurt India and to allow US investigators access to people suspected of involvement in nuclear proliferation.
Pakistan believes that the conditionalities were out of sync with mutual desire for long term strategic relationship.
Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit termed the proposed conditionalities as unhelpful.
Alongside all this there was a stepped up vilification campaign against Pakistan’s premier intelligence outfit – Inter Services Intelligence accusing it of supporting Taliban. There was a perception in Islamabad that the US was subscribing to India’s position on the security situation in South Asia.
Fears that US was planning to expand drone attacks, already a sensitive issue in Pakistan, into Balochistan did not help the cause. Some sources say the US and Pakistan had reached a broad understanding in principle on ending the drone attacks in Pakistan’s territory, but Islamabad was taken aback after finding no mention of it in the revised policy.
The change in terminology being used for Pakistan and particularly the choice of the Af-Pak phrase, clubbing Pakistan and Afghanistan together, manifested the US thinking, which considered Pakistan as part of the problem.
Basit says there is no comparison between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the two needed to be looked at separately for a tenable solution.
These developments were completely unacceptable to the military establishment in Pakistan, which then convinced the government to stand up to it although President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani were the first ones to have welcomed the new Obama strategy.
Islamabad was of the view that the shift in the US foreign policy towards Pakistan was demoralizing and promoted distrust.
‘The American tilt towards India despite knowing Pakistan’s concerns about it and having evidence of Indian role in promoting instability in different parts of Pakistan was not in good taste,’ a source said.
The matter was taken up in the meetings with US Special Envoy Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Chairman US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen during their visit to Islamabad last week, where they were categorically asked about what they had done for curbing the Indian destabilizing role in Pakistan.
Admiral Mullen and Ambassador Holbrooke were further told that the shift of strategic focus from the Eastern borders to the Western borders was not possible until tensions with India were resolved and the core issue of Kashmir was addressed.
Analysts say the surprise reaction in Islamabad is being processed in Washington by their strategic planners for whom it was a revelation that things had gone awry. Pakistan has expressed the intentions to take up the issues again at the trilateral Pakistan-Afghanistan-US meeting in Washington on May 6-7.
However, it is expected that there could be a high level diplomatic or military contact between the two countries even ahead of the Washington meeting, to resolve the differences.
The seven US congressional delegations visiting Pakistan over the next three weeks for discussions on aid legislation could also talk about the thorny issues straining Pak-US ties.
Analysts believe that Pakistan would first have to put its own house in order before entering serious negotiations with the US. ‘They need to furnish acceptable proofs of Indian involvement in Pakistan; develop a credible counter-insurgency strategy; and more importantly get all of their state institutions on the same page.’
Dawn (Pakistan)
True to his reputation Richard Holbrooke is proving to be an insightful interlocutor. Other diplomats and commanders might have said it in passing but he is the first one to categorically say that India is part of the ‘AfPak’ problem, or puzzle, and also holds the key to its solution.
Terrorism, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, has its roots in religious extremism and authoritarian tradition. Pakistan, for the better part of its existence, has been ruled by dictators, Afghanistan almost always.
The tribal part of their societies, where the writ even of authoritarian governments doesn’t hold, provides the foot soldiers for jihad. The fast-proliferating madressahs indoctrinate them to kill and get killed for the glory of Islam. It is easy to say that terrorists have no religion. But a suicide bomber loudly glorifies Allah before exploding himself in the midst of a mosque congregation or an unwary crowd in a marketplace.
And the men publicly whipping a young, allegedly adulterous, woman draw strength both from our laws and tribal traditions. India, no doubt, has its own share of religious fanatics and tribal insurgents but it is also the world’s biggest democracy. Holbrooke has been perceptive in pointing out that India’s participation in the search for a solution is necessary because its national security interest is as much at stake as is that of Pakistan and Afghanistan in the face of a common challenge and common enemy.
India’s secularism, notwithstanding its scourges in the person of Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi, will surely help fight the forces that defy the ideological coaxing of Islamic or authoritarian dispensations. Being of help in neutralising terrorists would not only be in keeping with India’s democratic culture but also with the cordial relations it has historically enjoyed with successive regimes in Afghanistan and does even now.
On the other hand, seething or open hostility has all along marked Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan. A common religion and common tribes straddling the long but unmarked frontier have been a source of friction rather than friendliness. Such was the beginning: Afghanistan was the only country to have opposed Pakistan’s admission to the UN and still lays claim to the loyalty of its tribes and access to its ports.
On its part, Pakistan mostly holds India responsible, and not without justification, for its strained relations with Afghanistan. That is a legacy of the partition of the subcontinent which one can see fading away as the Kashmir problem gets out of the way.
Many an accusation lies at the door of Gen Musharraf but credit must be given to him for blazing a new path to the resolution of the Kashmir dispute that cuts through the rigid stands of ‘nothing but a plebiscite’ and the ‘state is an inseparable part of India’.
Musharraf’s formula for a semi-sovereign Kashmir in which the inhabitants of the two parts of the state have the right of free movement and trade across the Line of Control was all but endorsed by a large voter turnout in a free poll. And Omar Abdullah’s aspiration for azadi also signifies a similar status. The hurdle to the resumption of dialogue leading to a settlement is the Indian allegation, not unfounded, that the terrorist attack on Mumbai was planned in Pakistan.
If India and Pakistan agree with Mr Holbrooke that the threat and enemy are common to both, Mumbai can be put behind. The onus now lies chiefly on Pakistan to show that the probe is expeditious and shields no man or agency.
Pakistan’s stake in a satisfactory conclusion to the Mumbai episode is much bigger than India’s. Besides bringing a settlement of Kashmir in sight, India might feel persuaded to encourage the Karzai government to lend support to Pakistan in checking the movement of terrorists across the hazy frontier instead of accusing it of sheltering them.
But, above all, Pakistan will be drawn into the democratic ethos of South Asia where besides India, Sri Lanka has resolutely stuck to the democratic course despite a long-ranging insurgency; Nepal has overthrown a hereditary kingship; Bangladesh has staged a forceful return to democracy, so have the Maldives — and the king of tranquil Bhutan insists on transferring many of his powers to an elected council ignoring the protestations of fealty by his subjects.
Pakistan was intended to be a nation-state, not a religious one and much less a bastion of Islam. In the words of its founder and philosopher (he had no peer, nor forerunner) the state was ‘always to be guided by the principles of justice and fair play — and I am sure that with your support and cooperation, I can look forward to Pakistan becoming one of the greatest nations of the world’.
That ideal has long been lost in the abstractions of Liaquat Ali Khan’s Objectives Resolution, Ayub’s basic democracies, Bhutto’s delimitation of the bounds of Islam and Ziaul Haq’s Hudood laws. The violent extremism issuing forth from all these actions has instead made it, in the world view, a ‘centre of world terror’.
Present-day ideologues must explain how Pakistan could be an Islamic state if it were originally meant to have a Muslim population only marginally more than other faiths.
That was to be the Pakistan for which Jinnah had struggled. It was the last-minute hard choice of ‘take it or leave it’ that resulted in the partition of Bengal, Punjab and Assam making Pakistan an overwhelmingly Muslim state. Jinnah took it with a heavy heart for he knew he had not long to live.
That is regretful. What our political leaders, and religious divines too, fail to realise is that in a taboo-ridden society, as Pakistan is, the law of Sharia would be interpreted and enforced by the likes of Sufi Mohammad, Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Omar and not elected legislative councils.
Even the divines of politics like Qazi Hussain Ahmad or haranguers on TV like Ghamidi are irrelevant. People must thank their lucky stars that a few dogged senators in 1998 blocked Nawaz Sharif’s 15th amendment bill which was to make Sharia Pakistan’s supreme law.
Had that happened the whole country would have been a vast Swat with its angry floggers but without its decent folk. Islamic values can flourish only in a secular environment. The proof of it is to be found in the mayhem and hypocrisy of the era of mere rituals that was inaugurated by Ziaul Haq.
Dawn (Pakistan)
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