Militancy’s HQ
Tuesday, 16 Jun, 2009
“IT has been decided that a comprehensive and decisive operation will be launched to eliminate Baitullah Mehsud and dismantle his network,” NWFP Governor Owais Ghani announced at a press conference in Islamabad on Sunday. For weeks now, skirmishes between the security troops and militants and air strikes in parts of South Waziristan Agency controlled by Baitullah Mehsud have built up the expectation that the Pakistan state may finally be preparing to take him on in a decisive battle. It is clear why: the Waziristan agencies have long been a viper’s nest. Militants based there have been involved in attacks against every conceivable target: across the Pak-Afghan border on foreign troops and the Afghan government and security forces; in the Malakand division and other areas against the Pakistan state and local rivals; and in Pakistan’s cities and towns against the state, security forces, sectarian leaders and the general population. Al Qaeda too is believed to have a substantial presence in the Waziristan agencies, and international terrorist plots, including the July 2007 attacks in the UK, have been traced back to the area. And there appears to be an almost endless supply of the dreaded suicide bombers who are trained in the area and then sent forth to wreak havoc and undermine the state’s will to fight the militants.
What is not clear though at the moment is what exactly the security forces’ plan is. Will they only go after Baitullah Mehsud and his network or will they try and clean up both South and North Waziristan Agency of all militants? The last time the militants in North Waziristan were taken on was in October 2007, but within weeks the state pushed for a peace deal after it suffered heavy losses. The deal was eventually signed in February 2008. In South Waziristan, the last round of major fighting was in January 2008, but there too heavy losses forced the state to quickly sue for peace. This time, the security forces’ strategy appears to be to cut off the three main routes leading to the South Waziristan bastion of Baitullah Mehsud and to use aerial power to pound his network. The operation underway in Frontier Region Bannu appears to be a part of that plan.
But it remains to be seen how far the state is willing to go, the losses it is willing to accept, the cost it is ready to impose on the local populations and to what extent it is ready to disrupt the various networks of militants that are intertwined. Just as importantly, the state must be careful about who it sees as its allies. Baitullah Mehsud has many rivals and enemies among the Mehsud tribe, but defeating him with the help of others only to see those others become the next menace — that must not be allowed to happen.
************************************************** ********
Peace process scuttled
Tuesday, 16 Jun, 2009
A REVIVAL of the peace process now appears a virtual impossibility, not only because the Israeli prime minister on Sunday practically scuttled it but also because the White House welcomed his negative speech as “an important step forward”. Speaking at the Bar-Ilan University, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu said his concept of a Palestinian state was that it should have no armed forces. Besides he would allow settlements to grow, Jerusalem would remain Israel’s ‘united’ capital, and the Palestinians would have to recognise his country as a Jewish state. The crucial sentence had two ‘ifs’. He said: “If we get this guarantee for demilitarisation and necessary security arrangements for Israel, and if the Palestinians recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people, we will be willing in a real peace agreement to reach a solution of a demilitarised Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state.” The words “demilitarisation” and “a demilitarised Palestinian state” and the “state of the Jewish people” and “the Jewish state” were repeated in the small but key sentence by Mr Netanyahu to emphasise that this was the central theme of his policy. The irony of it was that having himself attached conditions impossible for the Palestinians to accept for a revival of the peace process, Israel’s hawkish Likud prime minister called upon the Palestinian Authority to “begin peace negotiations without preconditions”. This duplicity received an appropriate response from PA spokesman Saeb Erekat when he said: “We ask the world not to be fooled by his use of the term Palestinian state because he qualified it.”
The much-awaited speech went totally against President Barack Obama’s clear-cut stance that Israel must halt all settlement activity and that his administration stood categorically for a two-state solution. By insisting that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s capital, Mr Netanyahu ruled out the final status negotiations, and by demanding that Israel be recognised as a Jewish state he made it clear Palestinian refugees would not be allowed to return to their soil from where they were made to flee during the 1948-49 fighting. More astonishingly, he not only rejected President Barack Obama’s call for a settlements freeze, he said the settlements should be allowed to grow, saying the settlers were “not the enemy of peace — they are our brothers and sisters”. The rebuff to President Obama’s peace efforts is obvious, for Mr Netanyahu has given the world an unabashed dose of his intransigence.
************************************************** ********
Anti-terrorism force
Tuesday, 16 Jun, 2009
IN stating that the “police are not trained to counter terror attacks” and referring to the need for a new security force dedicated to fighting terrorism, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif has made a valid point. The methods pursued by the extremists at work in Pakistan resemble a form of urban warfare where it is not easy to tell a terrorist from a civilian. All a militant has to do to pass for a non-combatant is to temporarily abandon his weapon. This allows terrorists to melt at will into the civilian population, making the countering of possible attacks doubly difficult. While the military operation has certainly achieved some success, it is also certain that the army cannot maintain an indefinite presence in the affected areas — particularly with the military action being expanded to Fata. Once active military presence is withdrawn and displaced populations start returning, the task of ensuring law and order will, under the current circumstances, fall primarily to the police. But the police force in the conflict areas is already demoralised and suffers from issues endemic to the country’s civilian security apparatus such as the lack of training, funding and operational resources.
There is, therefore, a need to constitute a new security force trained specifically to counter terrorism. In this regard, it is encouraging that the government has announced the intention of setting up such a force in Swat. Such a force would be of use wherever there is evidence of militant or terrorist cells. To achieve long-term success, however, the intelligence-gathering network feeding the anti-terrorism force will prove of pivotal importance. The ability to tell a terrorist from a non-combatant will depend on local knowledge and require an ear-to-the-ground approach. The conduits of information available to the police must therefore be utilised to the fullest, for the police already have a wide network of informants and local knowledge. And while the anti-terrorism force must work in conjunction with the police, the two bodies must also remain distinct from each other to avoid issues of jurisdictional and operational overlap. Moreover, the police force must urgently be bolstered with resources and trained staff.
************************************************** ********
OTHER VOICES - Sindhi Press Budget lacks relief aspect
Tuesday, 16 Jun, 2009
THIS is the second budget of the PPP government. With revenue receipts estimated at Rs1.37tr, the budget envisages a total deficit of Rs722.5bn, 4.9 per cent of GDP. To meet this deficit, Rs264.9bn in external financing and Rs457.6bn in expected internal financing will be used. The government announced an ad hoc relief allowance of 15 per cent of pay of government servants. The common man expects some relief in terms of prices, job opportunities and services. It has been witnessed that whatever allocations are made for the poor, benefits do not trickle down. All this remains on paper. In reality problems are not mitigated.
The new budget carries a proposal for setting up a ministry of human rights, this is a welcome gesture. Would it be possible for this ministry first of all to look into the lack of poverty alleviation? This is a major human rights issue in Pakistan. As far as Sindh is concerned, there are certain proposals which would increase differences between Sindh and the federal government. Allocations have been made for the Thal canal and Bhasha Dam. The people of Sindh have reservations about Bhasha Dam, but they accepted it as they preferred it to the Kalabagh Dam. The case of the Thal canal is quite different. The Sindh Assembly has passed resolutions, while the PPP and other politicians who are in power today have been moving such resolutions in the assembly against the Thal canal. The incumbent Sindh chief minister had been head of the Anti-Thal Canal Committee which organised big rallies throughout the province against this water project. The people of Sindh had rejected Gen Musharraf’s Water Vision 2020 due to such controversial schemes. Allocating funds for this project compels people to think that the PPP is following Musharraf’s policies.
Kawish
Sindh and other provinces have to sustain financial losses as the issue of the NFC award remains unresolved. The PPP government has completed its two years, but no move has been made in this regard. At the micro level, there is nothing for the poor as prices have not been reduced. There is nothing for the common man in the new budget except for a price hike.
We have a long history of this. Unelected governments have ruled for so long that elected governments have to bear the burden of the former’s policies. People are not getting any relief, one of the major reasons might be the mistakes committed by dictators in the past and the fact that elected governments fail to address and correct these ills. At least there should be some indications that things are moving in the right direction. Salaries of government employees were increased in the last budget also but the inflation increased manifold.
In this budget there is no relief for the common man, while funds have been proposed for controversial projects and no measures have been taken to remove the sense of deprivation among the smaller provinces. — (June 14)
Selected and translated by Sohail Sangi