Sudan under siege

Tayyab Siddiqui


On 9th July a new country will emerge on the map of the world. The Republic of South Sudan will become the 55th state on the African continent. This will be yet another success story for the strategy of the west and US to control the oil resources of Muslim countries, through a familiar pattern of aggression and sanctions against weak Muslim states.
Sudan is the largest and the poorest country in Africa with a population of 35 million with Muslim majority in the North. Southern Sudan with a population of four million is mostly animist and Christian. The inimical forces in the west kindred the fire of secession in the South in the 80s. The civil war continued for 22 years, devastating the region, killing more than two million people and displacing twice as many. Col. John Garang led the secessionist – Sudan People Liberation Army (SPLA) for 20 years against Arab Muslim North. Finally a peace accord was signed in 2005 with the intervention of the Security Council, which, inter alia, provided for referendum to determine the choice of the South.
The referendum was held in January 2011 and the South Sudanese overwhelmingly voted for independence. President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan welcomed the result. Prior to the referendum the US Congress and western media unleashed a virulent campaign against the Sudanese president blaming him of malafide intention to frustrate the results of referendum. Sudan under Bashir had been declared a terrorist state, imposed economic sanctions and the president himself was pronounced a war criminal by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The saga of referendum and eventual partition however is not over yet. There are critical issues such as demarcation of border between two countries, sharing the oil revenue and the future of the disputed region of Abyei, which needs to be settled before the emergence of new state.
Sudan produces 500,000 barrels of oil a day. South Sudan gets 98 percent of its revenue from the crude, while 45 percent of the Khartoum budget comes from oil which makes up around 90 percent of its exports. Most oil reserves are in the Abyei region bordering the North and South. The North has pipelines and refineries; the South about 75 percent of the reserves. The sharing of the oil revenue has thus complicated the picture further and become the most contentious post referendum issue. Originally referendum was to be held simultaneously in the region of Abyei but could not be held.
The unresolved status of Abyei led Northern forces to take over the border region on May 21, fuelling speculation of renewed war between North and South. The military push invited condemnation of Khartoum by the west and US, blaming it for deteriorating the security situation, through a Security Council resolution. The neo-cons found an opportunity to seek an application of a “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine as currently invoked in Libya.
Earlier on President Al-Bashir has been under intense diplomatic pressure on the Darfur issue which earned him the epithet of a war criminal by ICC in The Hague. Before the referendum, controversial reports appeared in the West blaming Khartoum for thwarting the referendum and risking an all out war rather than go for referendum. Bashir defied all the predictions and willingly accepted the secession. The South is now being encouraged to lodge claim not only for Abyei but for Blue Nile and the Kordofan states bordering the North to further destabilise Sudan.
To defuse the situation the Sudanese president has proposed a rotating administration in Abyei with joint committee taking control in Abyei and to demilitarise Blue Nile and Kordofan along with common border.
The African Union got into the fray and finally a peace agreement has been signed that provides for full demilitarisation of Abyei with deployment of Ethiopian troops as peace keeping forces. The mandate and size of troops will be determinant by the Security Council. The agreement has been brokered by Thabo Mbeki former president of South Africa. While the agreement has been signed by the leader of both North and South, trouble is still expected in the run-up to South’s independence declaration.
Looking back at the last 10 years, a definite pattern has been seen of how the West and US weakens and controls Muslims states rich with energy resources through military aggression and economic sanctions. To their eternal infamy, none of the Muslim countries or organisations have resisted or even protested these blatant hostile policies, driven primarily by Islamophobia. Their silence is simply deafening and extremely dangerous inviting evermore predatory policies against them.
The writer is a former ambassador.

Email: m.tayyab.siddiqui@gmail.com

Another economic debacle

Dr Ashfaque H Khan


Yet another debacle has occurred on the economic front, with the government failing to float its exchangeable bond in the international debt-capital market. In an act of desperation, the Pakistani economic manager had decided to launch a $500-million exchangeable bond with 10 percent shares of Oil and Gas Development Corporation (OGDC) attached to this transaction, the proceeds of which were to come by the end of the current fiscal year. It was the intention of the government to use these proceeds for retiring its State Bank debt and reducing its budget deficit to that extent.
The Pakistani team was informed by the global investors during the road show that they had little appetite for Pakistani paper at the moment, particularly in the presence of the Greek debt crisis and the unresolved issue of increase in the debt limit of the US administration. The Pakistani team did not pitch for the bond and returned empty-handed.
Why did Pakistan have to abandon its transaction? Are the economic managers aware of the consequences of such a colossal failure for the country? One thing is clear from the perspective of the economic managers: who cares about the country? They are there to improve their resumes.
What is an exchangeable bond? The country issues a normal sovereign bond with an option that the bondholder can convert the bond into common shares. The transaction under discussion provided an option to bondholders to convert their bonds into OGDC shares. The advantageous thing about such a bond is that it has the option for conversion of debt into portfolio investment.
There are many reasons for the failure of this transaction. Firstly, the timing for floating the bond was highly inappropriate. This is summertime, when investors close their books and go for vacations. Secondly, the international economic environment, particularly the persistence of the Greek debt crisis and the emergence of issue pertaining to enhancing the debt limit of the US administration have created severe uncertainty in the international debt-capital market.
Thirdly, Pakistan’s own economic fundamentals are weak. Why would anyone invest in a country’s paper whose debt is rising, budget deficit is averaging over six percent of the GDP, high double-digit inflation continuous persists for the last 45 months, and growth is slowing to an average of 2.6 percent per annum over the last four years. Fourthly, Pakistan’s relations with the IMF and other development financial institutions (DFIs) are not smooth. Fifthly, Pakistan’s relations with the United States are also on a bumpy ride. For an emerging market country, its relationships with the US, the IMF and the DFIs are critical in attracting global investors to invest in its paper.
Sixthly, Pakistan’s domestic political and security environment are not conducive to attract global investors to invest in Pakistani paper. Seventhly, the Pakistani team involved in this transaction, barring one member, was quite immature and had no idea whatsoever about the transaction. All these factors have contributed to the failure of the transaction, damaging the reputation of the country and OGDC. In order to save face, the economic team could call this transaction “non-deal road show.” But the international capital market participants are not novices. Word has already travelled across the globe that Pakistan has failed to find takers for its paper.
I am positive that Pakistan’s economic mangers are still unaware of the consequences of such a colossal failure for the country. They have no idea how they have damaged the country’s reputation in the eyes of global investors. The failure of this transaction has injected franchise risk as international fund managers will not take Pakistan seriously should it decide to float another bond. Once a country’s reputation is hurt it takes years for it to regain the confidence of global investors.
Who should be held responsible for such a debacle? Should there be accountability for the damage to the country’s reputation? The prime minister should look into this debacle. If his economic team fails to read the market and goes on to damage the credibility of the country, should he trust his own team?
Floating of sovereign bonds in the international capital market enables the country to showcase its improving credit fundamentals before global investors. It also enables international investors, credit-rating agencies, and research analysts to observe Pakistan’s economic performance on a permanent basis and allows its success to be effectively projected to global investors. It also helps the country to establish a pricing benchmark which serves as a gauge of economic and financial health of the country for a range of investors. This can also be a beacon for other investments into the country.
It is in this perspective that Pakistan floated its paper from February 2004 to May 2007. Each time the Pakistani paper was oversubscribed substantially. Pakistan emerged as one of the few countries which successfully floated a 30-year bond. This simply reflected the confidence of global investors in Pakistan’s economic management.
Floating of sovereign paper is serious business. It requires a core team at the ministry of finance, which is fully conversant with global market developments and the intricacies of the transaction. The team must know when to go to the market and how to deal with the press. Unfortunately, the timing for this transaction was not right. The team also did not handle the press properly. Failure of the transaction was predictable. Those responsible for damaging the country’s reputation must be held accountable.
The writer is principal and dean of NUST Business School, Islamabad.

Email: ahkhan@nbs.edu.pk

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A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that other throw at him. (David Brinkley)

Mission change

Dr Maleeha Lodhi


President Barack Obama’s June 22 speech announcing the first phase of the US troop pullout from Afghanistan had few surprises. But the speech lacked specifics and left key policy questions unanswered as well as a continuing disconnect between political objectives and military strategy.
Of deep concern to Pakistan was the indication in his address that the focus of US counterterrorism efforts would shift from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Without explicitly saying so, his emphasis on using ‘targeted force’ against threats, without the need to “deploy large armies overseas”, marked a move towards the so-called Biden plan. Associated with Vice President Joseph Biden, this had questioned Obama’s 2009 decision to deploy more troops in Afghanistan for counter insurgency and instead advocated a narrower counterterrorism mission, using drone technology and covert forces.
As widely anticipated, President Obama overruled the advice of his military commanders for a slower more modest force drawdown. Instead he announced a full withdrawal of the ‘surge’ force of 33,000 troops by summer 2012, starting with 10,000 troops by the end of this year. This signalled a winding down of the counterinsurgency effort he announced 18 months ago.
Citing progress on the goals he had set – refocus on Al-Qaeda, reverse the Taliban’s momentum and train Afghan security forces – Obama claimed he was beginning the drawdown from “a position of strength” with the tide of war beginning to turn.
While his senior military chiefs including General David Petraeus and Admiral Mike Mullen deemed the speed and scale of the troop reduction to be “risky”, Obama prevailed over the Pentagon because his hand had been greatly strengthened by the killing of Osama bin Laden. This development changed the calculus and provided a compelling rationale for a speedier and more substantial troop reduction.
Obama’s troop withdrawal decision was shaped more by domestic political imperatives and his looming 2012 re-election bid than considerations of strategy. This has left unexplained gaps in US policy including between political goals and the military course of the war in Afghanistan. His political considerations were dictated by war fatigue in both political parties and the growing unpopularity of the military mission among the public. With the Afghan war’s cost running at over $100 billion a year at a time of budget cuts in America, President Obama also justified his decision by what he called the need for nation building at home.
He acknowledged that peace was not possible without a political settlement and thus declared that America will join the reconciliation process, including with the Taliban, launched by the Afghan government. But this affirmation of an embryonic process – amid reports of “preliminary” US efforts to reach out to Taliban leaders – was not accompanied by elaboration of how the US planned to step up diplomacy. In not spelling out the steps the US is prepared to take to create the political conditions to advance the peace process, the speech left a key question unanswered. How will the military effort become subordinate to the political objective of seeking a settlement?
This laid bare the gap between the timeline of 2014 – when all combat troops are to be withdrawn and security responsibilities transferred to Afghan forces – and the expectation that, by then, the reconciliation process, will yield an outcome. Given the slow pace of peace talks and absent other moves that can generate a political momentum the odds to meet this expectation appear slim.
The lack of alignment – thus far – between the 2014 timeline and serious negotiations is thrown into sharp relief by the silence in Obama’s speech on whether the strategy pursued by the remaining military forces in Afghanistan will be recalibrated to allow space for diplomatic efforts. Will US/Nato forces ramp up the military effort or consider ceasing kinetic operations by negotiating local cease-fires to give the reconciliation process a chance? The speech provided no clue.
If the US persists with its fight-and-talk approach this will impede rather than encourage the opening moves towards reconciliation. There is as yet no indication that Washington is prepared to contemplate confidence-building measures with the Taliban that can produce a mutual de-escalation of violence and set the stage for serious talks. The US is still focused on setting ‘tests’ for the Taliban to meet rather than explore the possibility of an agreed stand down or ‘strategic pause’ in fighting.
This approach could further complicate what US officials privately acknowledge to be a challenge: convincing senior Taliban leaders about American seriousness to negotiate. At a time when Washington’s position has shifted to accepting an ‘inclusive’ Afghan reconciliation process and the UN’s terrorist blacklist list has been split between Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, clarity is needed about whether the US will redefine the military mission in Afghanistan to support the peace objective, rather than be at odds with it.
President Obama’s speech did not deliberately disclose anything about the ‘strategic partnership’ agreement being negotiated by Washington and Kabul. Drafts of the agreement have been exchanged between the two capitals. This apparently aims to provide bases and facilities for a US military presence beyond 2014, ostensibly comprising training personnel and a counterterrorism force. The latter will also be designed to have the capability to launch cross-border operations.
An agreement providing for an open-ended US military presence in Afghanistan has already evoked concern among regional powers. Iran, Russia and China find this unacceptable while India has reportedly shifted from an ambivalent position to one of opposition. Pakistan too has conveyed its reservations about an arrangement that has security implications including the threat of US-led unilateral strikes into its territory.
Moreover such an agreement could be a deal-breaker at the very start of talks with the Taliban, whose main demand – and reason for fighting – is to ensure the departure of all foreign forces from their country.
Of greatest concern for Islamabad is the suggestion in Obama’s speech of a switch to a counterterror strategy framed to address “terrorist safe-havens in Pakistan” and the implication that the US would not hesitate to act alone if it had to. Although the president credited Pakistan with helping to eliminate “more than half of Al-Qaeda’s leadership”, the tone of his remarks signalled more of a ‘tough love’ approach towards Islamabad.
Any shift to the Biden strategy will likely entail frequent and more extensive drone attacks in Pakistan’s border areas, even clandestine operations like the one that killed Bin Laden. This will heighten Islamabad’s security anxieties and risk inflaming tensions further. Expansion of covert operations will pitch Pakistan-US relations into uncharted terrain when ties have already hit rock bottom and are in a state of disrepair.
With no agreement on drone operations and Islamabad trying to push back on CIA activities in Pakistan, more unilateral actions can propel relations to breaking point. Whether a Biden-type plan will be feasible if relations deteriorate further is open to question.
As Islamabad mulls over the ramifications of Obama’s speech, what is already apparent is that without resetting Pakistan-US ties on the basis of reciprocity the search for a negotiated political solution in Afghanistan can turn out to be even more problematic. It is on such a settlement that an orderly American withdrawal from Afghanistan rests.
The irony is that just when US and Pakistani goals are more convergent on Afghanistan than they have been in a decade they remain separated by mistrust and mutual grievances. The Obama administration’s present approach of piling on pressure and conducting diplomacy through leaks designed to embarrass Islamabad is only fuelling more turbulence in ties. It is also counter productive to the objectives Washington wants to secure in the region.
Only by finding common ground with Pakistan and accommodating its interests rather than targeting it can the US really elicit the cooperation it needs for a ‘dignified’ retreat from Afghanistan and the achievement of its strategic objective: defeat of Al-Qaeda.

The writer is special adviser to the Jang Group/Geo and a former envoy to the US and the UK.

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A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that other throw at him. (David Brinkley)

What would you do?


Mohammad Malick


The manner in which the armed forces of the country were publically targeted in the last 64 days has no parallel in the entire 64-year existence of this country. They were mauled by the media, ripped apart by politicians, and reviled by the man on the street. And the timing couldn’t be worse with the forces fighting a deadly war on the western borders of the country. What had initially started as simmering rage over the khaki facilitated fleeing of US defence contractor Raymond Davis blew into outright fury over the humiliatingly daring US raid in Abbottabad, which made the Pakistani security establishment look like losers, to put it kindly. And then the Mehran base incident happened.
For the people these events were discomforting proofs of intelligence failure and gross professional incompetence. But what the political elements recognised here was an opportunity to forever put the khakis back in their barracks.
Has this public criticism of the defence establishment, which has undoubtedly put it on the back foot, moved the country away from the spectre of another military-political clash, or will the force of circumstances eventually force even a hitherto reluctant army chief like Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to utter the infamous words, “...mairay hamwatno...”?
The army is under fire from all quarters. There are no two opinions about an internal rage of its own. The top brass found itself squirming at the intensity and boldness of questions raised, both by foot soldiers and officers alike, during the darbars held in the wake of OBL’s Abbottabad operation. Not so muffled opinions are being expressed about the “inexplicable tolerance” of their chief, enjoying an unprecedented three-year term extension. For their part, the corps commanders only recently publicly came out with a note complaining of “conceptual biases” against the armed forces, amongst other laments. The permanent source of succour in the past, the US military establishment, is now one of the greatest sources of irritation and posing a threat to the very existence of the defence establishment, both in terms of its structure and its operational methodologies and preferences.
The political parties want to use the current situation to constrain the armed forces forever. The media wants guaranteed security and a military-exclusionary democratic dispensation. The common man, for his part, just wants a safe and prosperous existence and doesn’t care two hoots about the form of the solution to all problems. Is the situation leading us away from a military intervention or towards it?
The popular perception holds that right now the armed forces are too deep in the hole to even think about any desperate action. The series of humiliating professional lapses have devastated their public image. Their civilian supreme commander, no matter how controversial, is one tricky variable and not someone to be taken or dealt with lightly. The US is no longer the good old buddy and wants the defence establishment to change according to Washington’s wishes. The US-led world opinion hardly appears in the mood to brook any adventurism because foreign leaderships have a lot at stake directly in this theatre, both in terms of financial and energy interests, but also taxing political consequences in their own electorates. The economy is in a shambles and with the current economic czars there is no danger of it improving in the short term. Once again: is the military possibility now an impossibility?
Contrary to the prevailing perception, we were never closer to a forced round of a khaki-inspired solution to the myriad problems being faced by the country.
The khaki and civilian minds think differently. What were unforgettable incidents for us civilians are mere tactical failures at the end of the day for the army, which need to be assessed and factored for in the future. For the strategist, these are transitory in nature regardless of their immense short-term fallout. Official statements coming out of corps commanders’ meetings reflect the growing sense of the us-them syndrome. Background interviews with the top brass reveal a sense of “hurt” at being “...viciously attacked by the politicians and the media at a time when thousands of us are laying down our lives. Do you know that since OBL, 28 young officers have already been martyred in anti-militant operations? You guys have treated us worse than the Americans,” as one highly emotional top general put it.
The army chief will either have to do something historic to justify his historic extension in office or be relegated to a position of shame amongst his peers. The armed forces have been hit as an institution and desperately need the revival of their image, and will definitely want to retake their traditional position in the power equation. The situation is fast evolving. The executive is already flaunting the orders of the Supreme Court and will definitely not obey any major orders on matters of significance, such as the NRO. Judicial mayhem is on the cards. Nobody has the numbers to democratically vote out the extremely corrupt and overbearing federal government or for that matter those ruling the roost in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. So how do you stop the pillage of national wealth? The economy is in its death throes and the present ruling dispensation does not have the ability to change its course. We are looking at disastrous inflation and unemployment down the road. Political forces are fighting it out for power and not for the people (the surprising MQM split is hardly surprisingly for the power corridors).
Unlike OBL and Mehran, it is these long-term problems that will ultimately decide the future course of events. All one has to do is to weather out the ongoing blizzard and wait for the people to start clamouring for the knight in shining armour. As for the world opinion, if the US-led world had its way then the defence establishment would soon find itself redesigned on the lines of the Japan national defence force and it is under no illusion either that the civilian equation will come to its rescue on this count. For the khakis it’s a choice of damned if we do, and dissolved if we don’t. So what would you do if you were the army?

Cross-border raids: a significant change

Munir Ahmed Baloch

A series of cross-border attacks from across the border in June, carried out by what are supposed to be Afghan Taliban, is a significant change of tactics by the manipulators of the war in Afghanistan. Thus far in June, there have been at least three raids from inside Afghanistan. Two months ago, at least 13 Pakistani security personnel were killed in a similar cross-border attack in Lower Dir. The repeated attacks, especially those from areas in Afghanistan that are under heavy deployment of US-Nato forces, imply these forces’ complicity in them.
The US-Nato forces, having the advanced technological capability to detect movements on border crossings, can prevent the attackers from sneaking into Pakistan. Pakistan is already giving away far too much in the war on terror, in terms of military losses alone. But Washington continues to insist that Islamabad must “do more.” In other words, Pakistan must accept US terms in their entirety or suffer incursions into its territory by irregular forces.
These attacks are in addition to the raids openly carried out by the United States in Fata and deeper into Pakistani territory, through drones and missiles, helicopter gunships and even land operations. The United States carries them out despite the fact that they violate Pakistani sovereignty, and thereby deepen the trust deficit which is already worsening between Islamabad and Washington.
The incursions into Pakistani territory could be sponsored by the CIA and the Indian intelligence agency RAW to keep the Pakistani army bogged down in the area. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that US-Nato forces are themselves directly encouraging and assisting these irregular forces to cross the borders into Pakistan, in an effort to pressure its army into carrying the fight against the Taliban to North Waziristan.
A spokesman of the Pakistani army recently admitted that it is under pressure from external forces to take the fight against terrorism into North Waziristan. In North and South Waziristan the locals are already taking up arms against military personnel and any expansion of the war in these areas under US pressure could start a conflagration there.
The use of drone attacks by US forces in the tribal areas of Pakistan is not only illegal and illegitimate (and Pakistan thereby has the right to approach the International Court of Justice against the attacks), but the drone strikes are extremely unpopular there, especially because they kill numerous civilians. The Pakistani parliament has passed unanimous resolutions against drone attacks in Fata. Pakistan is not at war with the United States, but it is the Americans who are acting as a hostile party against this country.
International law requires that states prevent non-state elements from carrying out sabotage and violence in other countries’ territories, or indulging in any act that can endanger those countries’ national security. Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter says that “all member-states shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purpose of the United Nations.’’
As for the “Taliban” incursions in question, there is little doubt who benefits from these cross-border raids. Aren’t these series of incursions by irregular forces a clear manifestation of the pressure from Washington that Pakistan “do more” and send its army into North Waziristan? Few people can have any doubt that it is.
Pakistan has deployed more than 145,000 soldiers in Fata, and stretching this force into North Waziristan would entail the need for this country to withdraw more forces from its border with India. India appears to support the Pakistani army’s taking on the Taliban, but on the other hand it has taken no measures to try to reduce Pakistan’s threat perception on the two countries’ common frontier. With the army already overstretched, Pakistan’s withdrawal of more troops from its border with India would weaken its military position against its traditional rival. With the history of four wars between the two countries, Pakistan can hardly be expected to agree to further withdrawal from its eastern border.
The series of cross-border attacks from Afghanistan have highlighted the supposed Taliban’s ability to move large numbers of their fighters with impunity across the border with Pakistan--along with heavy weaponry. What explains this capability is the fact that some of the trails the raiders use in Afghanistan are in areas where US-Nato forces are deployed. These raiders cross the border at official and non-official crossings that exist all along the chain of mountains that separate the two countries, and they do it with surprising ease. Given their easy access into Pakistani territory, the raiders will continue to enter Pakistani territory whenever they chose to, or are asked to.
There are two possible options in efforts to stop these raids. One is to close these entry points since sealing the entire border is a virtually impossible task. Pakistan’s failure to seal the porous crossing points with Afghanistan would mean continuing raids and attacks on Pakistan’s security forces. Every time an incursion takes place, reinforcements are required, and that puts Pakistan’s limited resources under greater stress.
Alternatively, a joint task force consisting of personnel from Pakistan and Afghanistan should be formed to oversee the crossing points all along the border between the two countries, on the basis of shared intelligence. It may not be possible to make an accurate assessment of how many insurgents are operating on either side of the border as some are dedicated fighters and some are mercenaries. Shared intelligence on their presence and their movements will help both sides forestall such attacks.
On similar lines, the ISAF, Pakistan and Afghanistan had earlier agreed to build Border Coordination Centres with the aim of preventing cross-border movements by insurgents, again on the basis of shared intelligence. Out of eight coordination centres agreed, only one is operational at present. However, with the lack of commitment of the United States to sharing of intelligence, the initiative has not made any progress. Progress in construction work on the remaining seven centres is little more than nominal, and it appears the whole concept is destined to die its own death.
During his June 10-12 visit to Islamabad, President Hamid Karzai termed the recent series of cross-border attacks from across Afghanistan as a “worrying sign” that points to a need for the two countries to work harder to remove radical elements and their sanctuaries in the border areas. He promised to take action if it became evident that these attacks originated in Afghanistan. To what extent he can be effective in stopping the cross-border raids is uncertain.

For peace to prevail

Zafar Hilaly....The writer is a former ambassador.

Barack Obama’s claim that the war in Afghanistan has ‘turned the corner’ enough for the US to begin its withdrawal hardly reflects the reality. If anything, the situation in Afghanistan has seldom seemed more parlous. There were more civilian deaths in May (368) than in any other month since 2007. Neither have the Afghan security personnel acquired a level of proficiency needed to cope with the Taliban challenge; nor will they by 2014, when the Americans plan to complete their withdrawal. Besides, the Afghan army being overwhelmingly Tajik in composition is hardly national and hence lacks stature.
Secondly, the legitimacy of Afghan state institutions has not taken root. The current parliament, for example, is being reduced to a rubber stamp with Karzai’s machinations, one of which is to have 62 opposing MPs disqualified by a special tribunal appointed for this very purpose. Moreover, Karzai has neither shaken off his image of a quisling nor demonstrated panache for leadership. Under him massive corruption has transpired with his brothers and cousins taking the lead.
In other words, the American strategy in Afghanistan has little to do with Afghanistan ‘turning the corner’ and more with Obama’s internal compulsions. The chief of which is public disenchantment with the inconclusive Afghan War; changing opinion in Congress due to the debt crisis and growing cost considerations; reduced concern about Al-Qaeda after OBL’s killing and, of course, the presidential election campaign that will soon begin.
Hence, Obama’s claim that the worst is over in Afghanistan is beguiling to say the least. Not that it fooled anyone at home or abroad. The ‘isolationist’ lobby in Congress finds the cut-back too small and the withdrawal process too dilatory, while ‘interventionists’ are appalled that he is pulling out when so much remains to be done. Abroad it is being taken as an admission of defeat.
But what concerns Pakistan more than the withdrawal plan is the language in which it was couched. ‘We will not tolerate safe havens in Pakistan and we will hold you to your commitment to fight (our) enemies’, said Obama, in nearly those words. Hillary was more forthright, ‘Pakistan must fight or else forget the cash and weapons promised’. And Gates, as he leaves office, chimed in with ‘We don’t need Pakistan either to fight or to win in Afghanistan.’
The New York Times, that repository of American-Jewish wisdom, followed with a bunch of stories hinting at the ISI’s complicity in OBL’s extended sojourn in Abbottabad. An ‘intriguing lead’ from the cell phone belonging to OBL’s courier sufficed to give the story front page coverage. Reacting with exceptional alacrity, the ISPR succinctly claimed that ‘actions on the ground (by the ISI in apprehending numerous Al-Qaeda terrorists) spoke louder than the words of the NYT’.
Soon after announcing the troop withdrawal, Obama described the current US-Pakistan relationship as ‘more honest’ than before. What he perhaps meant was that the while the people of both countries had always been honest about their mutual suspicions, the truth had finally caught up with the situation. However, this is not the time for recriminations and especially not for Pakistan since it has too much at stake to indulge in suspicions and aspersions. What then are the prospects for peace?
On Afghan peace, the US continues to reiterate that the Afghan Taliban must be prepared to concede on three things: making a break with Al-Qaeda; abandoning violence; and accepting the existing Afghan constitution.
Making a break with Al-Qaeda should not be a big problem for the mainstream Taliban leadership. The latter lost its grip on power because of Al-Qaeda’s declared war on the US and its use of Afghan territory as its headquarters until both were ousted after 9/11. Abandoning violence will test their intentions with regard to reconciliation and giving up any ambition they may still harbour to regain the control they enjoyed before 9/11. But more challenging will be accepting the existing constitution. Of course, if they decide to convert to a political force and abandon their old ambitions, then accepting the constitution will be less difficult but they may still want changes that decentralise the country in favour of more power for the provinces.
The most challenging will be the permanent military presence the US seems determined to maintain in Afghanistan. Without some resolution of this issue, it is impossible to start serious negotiations or to bring any negotiations to a positive conclusion. A trade-off on this issue will have to occur at some stage for an eventual peace settlement.
For the moment, at any rate, serious negotiations seem premature. This is not just because some tough issues may have to be discussed confidentially first to see if either side is prepared to show reciprocal flexibility, but also because we have another year of war under Obama’s withdrawal plan.
The Pentagon is going to use this period to fight the Taliban while it still has the surge troops at its disposal and the Taliban will likely hold their ground and bounce back after the combat withdrawal starts in earnest next summer. So even if there are some tactical shifts on the ground, at the political level, a stalemate will most likely persist.
Yet, it would be myopic for the Obama administration to wait another year before it signals serious interest in a negotiated peace. Another year of intense fighting would mean little to the Taliban if only because they can sit it out until the going gets easier next year. It is the US that faces a serious problem with its aggressive military strategy. A year will not make much difference to the ground situation. Indeed, the US may have to concede some ground seized from the Taliban once the Afghan army takes over and is unable to consolidate those gains, as is widely accepted to happen.
So instead of prevaricating or delaying the inevitable, the US should abandon its war strategy altogether and replace it with a peace strategy. And that will not only require showing some flexibility towards the Afghan Taliban but also a major overhaul of its underlying policy – that is, a paradigm shift to a multilateral approach. Just as its unilateral military approach has failed, so will America’s political approach if that too remains essentially unilateral when stripped of its rhetoric.
Unless this shift occurs, the key regional players, notably Pakistan, will not find enough space to help Afghanistan make the difficult transition from war to peace. These persisting problems should not however deter Pakistan from rebuilding its frayed ties with Kabul. The two countries must recognise their legitimate interest in improved relations.
Pakistan’s supreme interest lies in helping to bring about reconciliation in Afghanistan. If bilateral ties move forward, it will be a lot less difficult to counteract American unilateralism. So even if a stalemate persists for the moment, there is a lot that a regional diplomacy initiative can do in the meantime to lay the ground work for an eventual peace process.
Unfortunately, that may not happen. Having lost his patience, Obama has designated Pakistan as the next battle ground for America’s War on Terror and seems eager to launch his complement of drones and Special Ops teams. To what end is clear, but to what avail, is not. Unshackling the United States from its failed policies in the Muslim world seems a task beyond Obama.
To sum up, if the veritable Afghan knot is to be untied, the irreducible minimum prerequisites for peace would be: the Afghan Taliban transform themselves into a political force; the US abandons a permanent military presence in Afghanistan; and Pakistan helps out in the Afghan reconciliation process. All these prerequisites presuppose that the principal protagonists (Afghanistan, the US and Pakistan) can be convinced to trade off irreconcilable ambitions for a pluralistic peace.

Waiting for a breakthrough

Tanvir Ahmad Khan

It is a measure of the lack of substantive progress between India and Pakistan over the years that any new event in the process evokes the inevitable question if there has been a breakthrough. This was the leading media question after the two foreign secretaries met in Islamabad on June 23-24 as indeed when the home/interior and defence secretaries met earlier. At the popular level, expectations have been rather high since cricket brought the prime ministers of the two countries together in Mohali. In fact, the media hype about the Mohali spirit, especially in Pakistan, had briefly created the hope that cricket would become the vehicle of some more meetings at the highest level.
It took the two countries a long time to overcome the formidable obstacle posed by the relentless Indian demand that a meaningful dialogue can be resumed only after the individuals suspected by New Delhi to have been associated with the Mumbai atrocity have been punished to Indian satisfaction. This factor has not disappeared altogether though its tyrannical grip on the inter-state negotiations has loosened. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said in Islamabad that complex issues like Kashmir cannot be resolved under the ‘shadow of gun’. This was an understandable reiteration of the fundamental truth that India-Pakistani disputes are not amenable to a military solution but she was also reassuring Indians that New Delhi had not given up the priority attached to Mumbai. Given the constraints imposed by years of anti-Pakistan propaganda in India and abroad, it was unrealistic to expect India to offer the “breakthrough” awaited in Pakistan.
There are other factors as well militating against rapid progress in bilateral relations. The internal situation in Pakistan is read differently by different groups in the Indian power structure. There is a minority view that any further weakening of Pakistan by the undiminished onslaught of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and by the resultant poor governance would not be in India’s long-term interest. But this enlightened approach is still eclipsed by the opinion that India should avoid closure of any issue till Pakistan comes down another few rungs of the ladder. Presumably Pakistan’s current difficulties with the United States strengthen this latter attitude. The failure to move forward significantly on Siachen and Sir Creek prior to the meeting of the foreign secretaries underlines the dominance of this second view.
Against the backdrop of ambivalent thinking in both countries, the foreign secretaries have done reasonably well. The optics were notably pleasant, something that should make it easier for the political leaders to take decisions; the political will to resolve issues that can be settled now or in the near future has to come from them. Since Mumbai, the confidence building measures already agreed upon had become anaemic; they have been infused with some new blood. The dust on the CBMs, particularly on trade and travel across the LoC in Kashmir could have been removed prior to the meeting of foreign secretaries but has been left to the working groups meeting next month.
There are known concerns on nuclear issues. India has been playing up Pakistan’s decision to branch out into tactical nuclear weapons and related delivery systems. The reasons that led to this decision warrant an agreed regime on the deployment of greatly expanded and better equipped conventional forces by India; there was agreement to hold experts’ meetings but without a time frame. The foreign secretaries have, however, set the stage for the foreign ministers to be more specific that should enable them to ask the Lazarus of the ‘composite dialogue’ to rise and breathe again.

The writer is a former ambassador and foreign secretary

Terror and media

As the ‘War on Terror’ continues to unfold, with its many twists, turns and loops, many of us have become addicted to the news and events that at times unravel like a lurid soap opera, complete with a cast of heroes, villains, and side characters. It is easy to forget while following these dramas that they are brought to us by people who put their own lives at risk to keep us informed and to keep the news flowing in to the desks that process it before it appears on TV screens or the pages of newspapers. Since the ‘War on Terror’ began in 2001, 31 journalists have been killed in Pakistan, according to the New York-based watchdog body, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The CPJ has also reported that Pakistan is now the most dangerous place in the world for media professionals, crawling ahead of Iraq, Somalia, and other war-torn countries.
This is not a comforting thought. The issue has also perhaps not received the degree of attention it deserves. The seminar held in Lahore and addressed by senior newsmen who sought better protection for their colleagues is therefore good news. Reporters, stringers in remote areas, and cameramen who most often come under fire need to be better protected. The authorities need to act to make this possible. But rules also need to be laid down by media organisations, especially at a time when the fierce competition to “get there first” pushes reporters into more and more dangerous situations. Insurance schemes are required and safety must be made a bigger priority. Most disturbing of all is the possible involvement of authorities in some of these acts of violence against journalists. The murder of Saleem Shahzad just weeks ago led to allegations of ISI involvement in the abduction and murder of the investigative journalist. Following strong protests from the journalist community, the government was forced to take the matter more seriously than it first intended, but still not seriously enough. The way it has been dealing with the issue of the commission to enquire into the incident does not offer much hope in terms of government protection for media persons. In many cases, the police have been known to brutally punish newsmen. The latest example of this comes from Lahore where a cameraman for Geo TV reportedly suffered a beating and his equipment was broken because he attempted to film the torture of a boy held by the police. Such acts depict a climate of brutality and must not go unpunished. Allowing this to happen can only add to the climate of violence that prevents journalists from performing their work and endangers their lives. Too many lives have been lost to brutality over the last decade. The trend must stop before more lives are lost in other such tragedies.

State of the state

Ikram Sehgal

Gen Pervez Musharraf’s personal ambitions neatly coincided with the state of the State in October 1999; despite Mian Nawaz Sharif’s “heavy mandate”, Musharraf’s military takeover was widely welcomed by all sections of society. Expected to correct the system of governance turned by a decade of ‘democracy’ into a complete farce, the premise was that if Musharraf succeeded in correcting the anomalies disfiguring democracy, Pakistan would succeed. His “A” team of technocrats ranged from “below average” to “brilliant” individuals. Muting any criticism of the “Chief Executive”, as the Chief Martial Law Administrator (CMLA) styled himself, many applauded his achievements – the establishment of the National Accountability Bureau (Nab) to target endemic corruption was particularly stupendous.
For a dictator to be successful he has to be sincere and be served by honest and efficient colleagues to articulate his policies and initiatives. His Principal Staff Officer (PSO) Lt Gen Ghulam Ahmad who ensured Musharraf’s first years had far more pros than cons, was unfortunately killed in a car crash. Surrounded by sycophants and courtiers, it was all downhill thereafter. From an international pariah, 9/11 made Musharraf the “darling of the West,” only delaying the inevitable.
Ziaur Rahman’s Martial Law in Bangladesh from 1975 to 1978 was reasonably successful, mainly because his own honesty and integrity combined well with the brilliance of his PSO, Maj Gen Nurul Islam. Rahman won generally free and fair direct presidential elections post-martial law by a wide margin. However when it came to transitioning to civilian life, he and his military colleagues failed. The ultimate and ironic tragedy is that this honest leader’s wife, Khaleda Zia, along with her two sons broke all records for corruption.
In the effort to prolong his rule Musharraf bartered away Nab’s integrity by being selective about accountability. Musharraf lost his credibility totally when in a last ditch effort to cling to presidential office by hook or by crook, he sold the country’s soul by enacting the NRO.
To quote from my article of June 29, 1995, “Why do Martial Laws fail?” “Martial Laws fail because the initiators of all extra-constitutional rule ride into town on tanks with the lofty Aim of saving the country, relying on that platonic “national purpose” to make themselves credible. They soon adjust the Aim to more material (and less patriotic) reasons of self-perpetuation. The original Aim remains publically the same but becomes an exercise in self-delusion. This diversion of the Aim means that one individual or group is simply replaced by another (or others), instead of being a transition mechanism that provides for and facilitates the process of the democratic system being repaired and renovated to reflect “the real genius and aspirations of the people” (Incidentally these were the words of president Iskandar Mirza who declared Pakistan’s first countrywide martial law on Oct 7, 1958), Gen Ayub Khan deposed him 20 days later. His Martial Law was tough, complete with Martial Law courts and punishment thereof.
While both Yahya Khan and Ziaul Haq emulated Ayub, Musharraf’s discarded the usual trappings of military courts, intelligently camouflaging Martial Law under a civilian façade. In my article “A Refined Pakistani Model” on July 17, 2008, I added “In both the models, the Army went wrong in (1) instead of using the civilian bureaucracy for governance, they targeted them and opted for technocrats (2) replaced bureaucrats wholesale with Army officers and above all (3) the Army Chiefs put their personal ambition over the national interest. The Musharraf model was refined by Gen Moeen in Bangladesh in early 2006 by keeping Army officers away from civilian governance. Unfortunately the “Bangladesh model” was only partially successful. Instead of leaving it to the Supreme Court (SC), the Army got involved in the accountability process. This tended to become selective and was compounded by allowing the military intelligence services to manipulate the political system. One major success was a clean and honest Election Commission making credible electoral rolls and cleansing the electoral system of bogus votes. In contrast, the recent elections in Azad Kashmir have shown that our electoral exercise will always be fraudulent – the bedrock of bogus votes makes democracy a farce.
Before Musharraf was ceremoniously shown the door, my article “A Failed Civilian Coup” on July 31, 2008 said, “Pervez Musharraf may be vilified for any number of reasons, no one can question his patriotism. For the sake of Pakistan, one appeals to the President to correct two major blunders immediately viz (1) repeal the NRO and (2) withdraw the Nov 3 PCO action. Whenever nations are in crisis, leaders are expected to rise above their individual agendas to secure the country’s sovereignty and integrity”, unquote. Despite a lot of rhetoric emanating from the SC, the NRO judgement has not been acted upon; Nab has not only become non-functional, it is a standing example that crime does pay in Pakistan.
Notwithstanding Asif Zardari claiming to have “educated” our military hierarchy to enjoy their material benefits rather than attempting treason. Martial Law has been imposed before, in whatever form it will be imposed in the future. Those who believe that the 18th Amendment is the ultimate deterrence are living in a fool’s world, subverting the Constitution was always treason but it did not deter earlier bouts of military rule. The intelligentsia has the naïve perception that Western democracies will never accept military rule; if this is really true, why is everyone and their uncle comfortable with the Egyptian and Tunisian Armies overturning the Constitution?
Crass materialism weakens the courage of conviction and moral obligation to one’s conscience to act above and beyond the call of responsibility. One can send others to their deaths for a higher cause but how many of us can gamble losing the comforts of living around (and even in) golf courses?
The country is not yet in a state of anarchy that the federal government seems to be. Damage control and recovery of stable governance will be that much harder if the situation rapidly deteriorates. One can only pick up the pieces if there are any pieces left to pick. To safeguard the nascent democratic system would require the president to change the present mode of governance from one of nepotism and corruption to that of honesty and integrity. But with the military hierarchy seemingly compromised, Zardari is not in any tearing hurry to do so.
The ultimate option, a refined “Pakistan model”, is the route of last resort but lessons need to be learnt from the 1999 Pakistan and 2007 Bangladesh military interventions. Uniformed personnel must support honest and capable bureaucrats in running the affairs of governance as only they can, with a few specialist technocrats thrown in. Only a swift return to democratic rule – with accountability extending to the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the military – holds hope for Pakistan.
We still do not qualify for the list of failed States, but we are trekking a fail-safe line of sorts. Unless the present democracy opts for course correction, the state of the State is such that intervention will again become a viable option, Article 6 and the 18th Amendment notwithstanding.
If we act too late, we are indeed doomed.

The writer is a defence and political analyst. Email: isehgal@ pathfinder9.com

Living on the edge of civilisation

Kamila Hyat

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor

As was the case with men in ancient times, we too seem to be living on the very edge of civilisation, and are entirely caught up it seems, in waging a daily struggle for survival. The lack of electricity has meant a drastic loss in productivity - and consequent unemployment. It has also, according to medical experts in Islamabad, brought a tidal wave of psychological disorders with around 180 people arriving daily at the main city hospitals, suffering anxiety-related disorders, and mainly insomnia caused by frequent power outages.
If this is the situation in the twin cities, we can only imagine what the situation is like in other places, where loadshedding is still more prolonged and can run to 20 hours a day or more.
As a result of this crisis we seem to have been pushed to the very brink of survival. Certainly, the lives people lead here are not civilised ones. In order to survive the present heat wave, people are resorting to theft; continual theft of ice is being reported from factory units. It appears that people are trying to obtain blocks of ice that can be used to cool water or rags that they may then tie around their heads.
Others balance beds on precariously narrow balconies or roof-tops to try and get some air. To make matters worse, while we are told there is a power deficit of nearly 5000 MWs, all kinds of conspiracy theories abound as to what the reality is and whether some element of conspiracy is involved in the whole matter. There is really no way of knowing, given the swirl of confusion we live in and differing views on the matter.
But this is not the only sign that we may be falling off the brink of the civilised world. In both Karachi and Balochistan, bodies turn up at regular intervals. No one knows who is killing whom, and the violence has nationalist, ethnic, and sectarian undertones. Agency involvement is suspected.
But even as bodies litter streets or fall onto pavements in an apparent re-enactment of the final scenes of some Shakespearean tragedy no one seems especially moved or disturbed by the violence that has become a regular part of life in the country. The same holds true in the case of the bomb blasts and other acts of terrorism that take place on a virtually daily basis.
The allegations that have surfaced recently of possible links between agencies and terrorist groups, as in the case of the recent report in the New York Times of how Osama Bin Laden was protected by a ring in Abbottabad, only adds to the degree of uncertainty which affects us all. In the ongoing game of ‘Cowboys and Indians’, we do not even know who is on our side and who plays against us.
In more minor matters too we seem to have strayed away from the path of civilised behaviour. The chaos on the roads, the manner in which people in shops treat each other and the behaviour seen in so many other places, are all symptomatic of a nation that is suffering from a malaise that has for too many years been left untreated and unaddressed by those who should be offering cures.
We have seen instead a rapid collapse of governance and the order that should be imposed through the actions of those in charge of running the affairs of State. In place of this order we have lynching, beheading, floggings and the “honour” killings which have placed Pakistan on the list of ignominy in the way it treats its women.
It has also remained on the list of “failed states” put out each year by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy Magazine to document the performance of countries in various spheres. At number 12 on the list, Pakistan stands some distance away from Somalia, which takes top place, but is ranked as perhaps the most dangerous place on earth for its own people. Unsurprisingly, most other nations in the South Asian region fare considerably better than us.
The kind of disorder we are talking about now is quite visible on any return to the country from beyond its borders. At immigration counters, even those holding the green Pakistani passports struggle to gain re-entry into their own country. Many have struggled, with visas and other documentations required, to leave it in the first place. The queues are long; signs indicating specific lines are intended for families or the elderly are routinely abused.
The privileged routinely resort to nepotism in order to bypass procedure and for reasons which are entirely unclear staff at counters seems especially uncouth and unhappy about the idea of allowing citizens back into their own country with anything that resembles a pleasant demeanour.
Fist fights and fierce verbal exchanges are known to have broken out in these places and the cameras installed at checkpoints have on occasion been broken by irate passengers frustrated by the entire situation. The contrast with the smiles which greet most people at airports in other parts of the world is, to say the very least, quite striking. We need to consider why we have failed to develop a similar sense of courtesy when it comes to interacting with fellow human beings.
The descent into complete disarray has been speeded up in recent years. The map we are following seems to be leading nowhere. There is doubt in fact as to whether a map exists at all, and if so who is holding it. Sometimes is seems as though tiny pieces of a torn up map are held by different persons who have no desire to piece them together.
It is no wonder we cannot find our way to any place of significance. All kinds of diverse suggestions come up from time to time. But the fact is that if we are to move back into the realm of civilisation, we will need a drastic change in the order of things and a very serious consideration of all that
has gone wrong both in the present and the past.
Other nations scattered across the globe have been able to make a great deal of progress; the lives of their people have improved. There is no reason why we cannot set about the task of emulating them and using the potential we possess to move towards success.

Final devolution

The federal cabinet has approved the devolution of seven more ministries to the provinces, completing the devolution process two days before the deadline stipulated under the 18th Amendment. This latest round marks the third and final phase of the implementation of the 18th Amendment and brings the total number of devolved ministries to 17. However, a large number of the ministries’ functions have been retained and reassigned either to the cabinet, or planning and inter-provincial coordination divisions. These exceptions, reportedly made for ‘technical reasons,’ such as the need for central planning of projects that go beyond provincial borders, will surely spark political problems. Interestingly the ministers of the devolved ministries are to stay in the cabinet on account of what the prime minister termed their valuable services. And people will of course continue to bear the burden of the perks and privileges these cabinet members will continue to enjoy.
Apprehensions are already rife that the transfer of assets to the provinces might be hampered. In this regard, the Punjab chief minister has sent a letter to the prime minister seeking a meeting of the Council of Common Interests. It seems the federal government wants to retain institutions of ‘national importance’ while the Punjab government wants complete devolution in “letter and spirit.” For instance, the devolution of the Sports Ministry means nothing if the PCB is excluded, which the federal government wants to retain in the ‘national interest’. Similarly, while the Ministry of Minority Affairs has been devolved, the centre wants to retain the Evacuee Property Trust Board. Conflict also surrounds the Workers Welfare Fund and the Employees Old Age Benefit Institution under the Labour Ministry. The provinces still have to sort out a way of distributing funds, and while proposals were considered on the basis of the NFC Award, nothing could be finalised, and the federal government has finally decided to share ownership of the WWF and EOBI with the provinces. The completion of the final phase of devolution marks a stride towards realising the promise of the 1973 Constitution. But while the formal process is complete, there is no denying that provincial authorities lack the capacity to discharge their added responsibilities. However, it is also important to consider that the provinces won’t acquire this capacity until they are assigned this task. Devolution will surely pose some teething problems but these problems can, and should, be solved through sober dialogue and sustained and sincere efforts at capacity building.

What’ll the next elections be about?

Ayaz Amir

The clock is ticking, and before we know it, before we’ve done our homework – because being Pakistanis we are not very good at boring stuff like homework – the next elections will be upon us. But for the life of me, although I’m trying hard to figure this out, I haven’t the faintest idea what we’ll be talking about, the issues that will be agitated, the great positions that will be taken.
I think the elections will turn upon incumbency, the goodness or badness of the present order, which really boils down to the person we all love to hate: the occupant of one of the worst pieces of architecture, the Presidency, in a capital that Ayub Khan should never have built.
It’s quite a line attacking the occupant because the familiar things we know about him, and the world too knows about, make for an easy target. But if it is just this, and nothing else, nothing that can count as an alternative narrative – forgive the social science slang – the ground is going to be pretty thin on which to enter the elections.
At the risk of upsetting the chattering classes whose feelings on incumbency are well known – there is no shortage of people who seem about to suffer a stroke when incumbency is discussed – the demonisation of a single target, and I know I am speaking in code, may not quite be the trick that turns the elections.
People are fed up of the political class. But this affects everyone in the political pecking order, not only the president and his party but everyone holding political office – which covers quite a bit of the political spectrum.
It is not enough to say...ah, this corruption and mis-governance will ruin us. It is also necessary to go a step further and present an alternative. If this is bad, what do I have to offer? And if a compelling alternative is not available, or you lack the wit to frame one, demonisation works only up to a point. The human ear can only take so much of criticism and denunciation.
Not to forget another point: familiarity takes the edge off demonisation. When Zardari declared his candidacy it struck a note of disbelief across the country. Zardari as president: it sounded too preposterous to be true.
I once happened to visit that remarkable seat of learning called the National Defence University – won’t call it a white elephant any more – and I remember several near-apoplectic officers in uniform pointing to a photo of the Supreme Commander on a wall, barely able to hide their indignation. If they could have done it, the photo would have been pulled down. Such were the feelings the Supreme Commander aroused.
And there were stalwarts of civil society – I suppose there is no escaping this term any more – retired civil service and foreign office stars who would go red in the face discussing the incumbent when he was elected. If anyone proffered the opinion that it was best and proper for his term to finish, swift would come the response: could the country afford the horror of a Zardari presidency?
And media jihadis – a small, dedicated band of them, with rolling eyes and solemn faces – were setting deadlines about imminent and inescapable change at the top, one of my media friends making that famous prediction about an ambulance coming round to the Presidency when the hour of change struck.
After nearly three years the hard edges of that early disdain have worn off. Since wonders will never cease, what people just could not digest then, they are getting used to now. Of course, not a day passes without the mantra that the country is going to the dogs. But there is no denying the obvious. The president is still around.
Not only that, he is gaining a reputation for slick cleverness. Previously, in the public imagination, his CV began with the word corruption and ended with it. The staple of the presidential broth remains corruption. But to that have been added other ingredients, cleverness being one of them.
Those in the business of politics – and politics is the foremost passion in the Islamic Republic, that and the drumbeats of false piety – have to realise one thing: wishes, alas, are not horses. And merely expressing the wish for change is not going to deliver it. The political class, if it is so keen about it, will have to work for change. But there are precious few signs of anything along those lines happening.
The PML-N was the party in waiting. It is still the party in waiting. But to enter the lists next year and grab the prize on offer it will have to put things together. What will be its clarion call, the bugle it will sound? It has to go to the electorate with something compelling. A one-point agenda of Zardari-baiting – this is my feeling, and I could be wrong – is not likely to be enough.
After all, having been in office in Punjab it is its performance there that will count. What has it to show for itself? This is the challenge before it: putting together a stirring election narrative, something that touches people, making them think daring thoughts.
How much of a factor will Imran Khan be? More and more people predict that the young are going to root for him. Perhaps they will, because the established parties – and let me not name names – have engendered a sense of weariness and anger. I keep meeting people who shake their heads and say that the burger crowd in cities – denizens of Defence, etc. – will go Imran Khan’s way. But does he really have that spark which will set people on fire? Will “electable” candidates gather around him?
Looking angry and always looking angry is one thing, but then you should also have something to say...something beyond the regular broadsides against corruption and its attendant ills.
If the president has to be beaten at his own game, his opponents will have to be smarter than him. It has not paid to underestimate him. It will not pay merely to mutter imprecations against him. The arrows shot at him have done him little harm. Some sharper ones have to be found.
If a week is a long time in politics, three-and-a-half years in power in the context of Pakistani politics is almost an eternity. Powerful governments with convincing majorities have not been able to last as long. What we are seeing is a party with no majority in the National Assembly cobbling together the most unlikely alliances and sticking to power.
There is not much on the credit side of the PPP government but sometimes, when the odds are stacked against you, mere survival becomes the highest virtue. Would anyone two years or a year ago have given the president the ability to complete his term? But on this score, if no other, he has proved his detractors wrong. This must be taken into account when we take stock of the current situation or lay any bets on the shape of things to come next year.
The past, in one crucial respect, has already been stood on its head. Who could have thought that of all the forces on earth the PPP, historically an anathema for the armed forces, would emerge as the foremost defender and champion of the army and what we call the agencies? Time was when it was rumoured about Gen Kayani that he was averse to meeting the Supreme Commander alone, without witnesses. How distant that time seems.
I know this is pretty depressing stuff. But the point is worth repeating that mere frothing at the mouth is of little use in this most practical and merciless of games called politics.

After the 18th Amendment

Dr Fouzia Saeed

They say that in China you find Chinese, in India you find Indians, in America you find Americans, but in Pakistan you find Punjabis, Sindhis, Baloch, Pakhtuns, and so on. It is one of those quips you find around the world that poke fun at the idiosyncrasies of individual countries. In the case of Pakistan, it’s no joke. Why have we failed to become a nation 64 years after independence?
Things have come to a point many people, especially in Balochistan, are unwilling to fly the Pakistani flag, not even on Independence Day on Aug 14. Then there are those in that restless province who refuse to call themselves Pakistani. A similar situation exists in some parts of the two other “smaller provinces,” Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. There are “freedom movements” with the objective of the secession of the province in question. There are ethnic and other tensions which manifest themselves in the form of violence and militancy. Regional causes become rallying points for people who in many cases are merely voicing resentment against the Centre, and these resentments are used by local political groups for use against rival organisations.
It was centralised decision-making and centralised control over resources that resulted in this resentment against the federation, which often borders on hate now. The federation has increasingly alienated itself from the federating units. It is necessary to view the current process of devolution from this perspective.
The passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution was a major step towards addressing many long-standing grievances of the provinces. Provincial autonomy has been a demand for decades, but no one wanted to touch the subject. It is not difficult to see why. The forces that kept the centralised systems intact had grown so big and so strong that no one could oppose them.
The process of the implementation of the amendment showed just how rotten our centralised system had become. Over the past year, we have witnessed leading politicians, bureaucrats and several other players acting shamelessly to undermine the Constitution. They dragged their feet, they picked fights and they launched campaigns of disinformation to stop what a process that had formally become a part of the Constitution. Some of them who continued to enjoy centralised power with the “right” kind of backing were able to save themselves in the last round of devolution.
Overall, we see that massive good was achieved by devolving 17 ministries and shifting several themes to the federal list where now the provinces will jointly take decisions with the federation. Hats off to the parliamentarians of the Constitutional Reform Committee and the Implementation Commission. Senator Mian Raza Rabbani served as an experienced and credible captain who guided his small and vulnerable ship through rough tides and storms and brought it to its destination safely, and on time.
There will still be issues that will require wrapping up. Now is the time for the provinces to take centre stage. It is time for them to prove that they can handle the responsibilities that they had been demanding all this time. The provinces need to strategise, engage their expertise among their people, build their teams, energise them and move on.
Our eyes are now set on the performances of the provinces. We hope that issues of poverty and security have local solutions. We expect to see a process whereby the provincial governments prepare themselves to take on the additional responsibilities. However, it is important at this time for the central government to become a facilitative agent.
It seems that Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa will show results soon. We hope that its people can set examples for the other provinces. Punjab has expertise and a leadership which is loyal to the province. However, the provincial government’s withdrawal from the devolution process at the very end raised concerns. We hope that they will not only take the process forward with full vigour but will also initiate action to decentralise institutions that have saved themselves from devolution in the last round of cabinet approvals.
We need a good one-year process where provinces mobilise their own experts to make strategies for them. The provincial thinking might come up with more creative solutions to the problems that have persisted for years. It is now the turn of the provinces to show innovation, sincerity and commitment to resolve the issues of their people.
The mindset of the Centre also persists in the provinces. The landlords are not the only ones with a feudal mindset of control and suppression. This is a common phenomenon among politicians, police officials, bureaucrats, religious leaders and male heads of households. Similarly, the centralised mindset is not only the problem of people at the federal level but is also found in many influential leaders in the provinces. It is this centralisation mindset that prevented the provinces from being satisfied. They have stopped all attempts to decentralise their powers. What we expect is not just a shift of centralised thinking from the power base in Islamabad to the power bases of the provinces, we also expect a transformation from the mindset of centralised governance to an appreciation of devolution and empowerment. We have to realise that devolved powers can give us more strength in the long run, and therefore it is the mindset as well as the governance structures that needs to change. We will not get a better opportunity to do this than right now when a major step has already been taken.

Misusing the Indus treaty

Asif H Kazi

Prof John Briscoe of Harvard University has identified India’s various unfair dealings with Pakistan in water-sharing. He has said that India must not interpret the treaty with the sole objective of punishing Pakistan.
There is growing feeling in Pakistan that while India is increasingly building dams on its western rivers, it is simultaneously engaged in activities aimed at stopping Pakistan, the lower riparian, from building storage dams on Pakistani rivers. In the case of its upper riparian neighbour, Nepal, India has even deployed heavy artillery to partially destroy dams which were being constructed by the Nepalese. India’s water strategy thus boils down to construction of more and more dams on cross-boundary rivers inside its own territory while obstructing dams in lower-riparian neighbours and destroying those in upper-riparian Nepal.
Pakistan’s farmlands have been deprived of the uses of the waters of three eastern rivers, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. The flows of these rivers were allocated to India under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. Authorities on the subject accept that when rivers and canals in Pakistan’s demarcated area were classified as Pakistan’s assets under the Partition Act, 1947, it meant only one thing: that these rivers and canals were to continue to receive water in the same way as before. Under the treaty, Pakistan was to enjoy the unrestricted use of the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab. However, exceptions were inserted as annexures which allowed India to develop and use certain specified quantities of water of the three western rivers as well.
Annexure E established Indian storage limits on the western rivers, which add up to 3.6 MAF (million acre feet). If Indian dams under rapid construction since then were to impound this storage water during high flood periods, as specifically defined in the treaty, Pakistan could live with the situation. However, India deliberately followed a pattern of filling water behind Baglihar Dam constructed on the Chenab River by impounding flows in the low-flow month of September, a clear breach of the treaty which prescribes the filling period as being from June 21 to Aug 31.
Ironically, the 3.6 MAF of Indian storage share exceeds the sum total of the entire flow of the three remaining rivers entering Pakistan during the low-flow months of December, January and February. Thus the 3.6 MAF of storage creation, combined with its operational control over impounding and releases by India could mean completely drying up Pakistan’s three rivers for as long as three months. The consequences of this will be disastrous.
Obviously, the foregoing was not the intent of the Indus Waters Treaty. And it is precisely for this reason that Pakistan has been insisting that India adopt well-known dam design features, especially for the outlets, which can easily ensure that the reservoir operators would not be able to manipulate flows of the western rivers at their own sweet will. India is opposing this using as an excuse the need for the prolongation of the reservoirs’ lifespan through sediment flushing.
Prof Raymond Lafitte of Switzerland, the neutral expert on the Bhaglihar Dam dispute who gave his decision in favour of India, has acted as a pure professional engineer since he is trained to look at projects in the strictest sense of their operational efficacy and economic performance. Taking it for granted that the upper riparian would not resort to immoral or unethical practices, he failed to take into account the psyches and mindsets of the litigants in the context of their historic rivalry. Had he kept these factors in view, he might have concluded that, in the absence of spirit of cooperation, the only checks on an upper riparian to keep it from doing harm to the downstream country were constraints, as were proposed by Pakistan, in the shape of “minimum needed sizes of water outlets to be located at the highest levels” to prevent emptying and refilling of reservoirs at will.
In respect of India’s Kishenganga River (which takes the name of Neelum when it enters Pakistan), the treaty allows India to construct a hydroelectric project with storage within a certain limit, on a tributary of the Jhelum River. But it does not permit diversion of flows to either another tributary or to a storage such as Wullar Lake on the main Jhelum. Even when the permitted storage dam is constructed on the Kishenganga River, Paragraph 21(b) of Annex E makes it obligatory to deliver a quantity of water downstream of the hydropower station into the Kishenganga during any period of seven consecutive days, which shall not be less than the volume of water received in the river upstream of the project in that period. Such elaborate provisions have been embodied with the sole purpose of causing minimum changes in the natural river flow of these rivers to protect Pakistan’s interests.
In violation of these specific provisions, the proposed Kishenganga project violates the treaty in a most glaring way. Firstly, the hydroelectric plant is not located on the Kishenganga but way off the channel at the end of a long tunnel that discharges into another tributary. And, secondly, the recipient tributary ultimately outfalls upstream of the Wullar Lake, and this completely changes the patterns of the flows of both Kishenganga and Jhelum Rivers.
The position taken by the Pakistani government, as reported by Khalid Mustafa in The News of June 15, will not lead us anywhere. The news item says that whichever of the two countries completed their project first will be the winner in the eyes of the Court of Arbitration that recently visited Pakistan to verify, inter alia, our project status. Such a competitive race is a confusion being created which diverts attention from the real issue, that the treaty absolutely forbids India from undertaking their project.
As regards the Wullar Barrage Project, India again cannot undertake any construction under the treaty that would develop storage for whatever purpose, under Paragraphs 7 and 9 of Annexure E, on the Jhelum Main River. The very basic provision under the treaty is to restrain India from changing the river’s flow pattern (both quantity-wise and time-wise).
Several foreign experts have held the view that the highly sensitive and charged water issues between Pakistan and India have emerged out of the way the 1947 partition lines were drawn. A seemingly minor change, but one with far-reaching consequences, was introduced in the partition map, in violation of all principles laid down by the British government. It came about at the very last minute when, upon the insistence of the Indian leaders, the partition award turned over to India three vital districts that were originally allocated to Pakistan, with the sole objective of providing India with access to Kashmir. The three remaining western rivers on which Pakistan now relies upon all originate in or pass through Kashmir before entering Pakistan. In other words, India, after having obtained the waters of the three eastern rivers through Indus Waters Treaty, is now trying to take control of our three western rivers as well.

The writer is honorary vice-president of the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD)

Endgame in Afghanistan

Dr Muzaffar Iqbal


The United States has never admitted defeat; this is perfectly in line with its self-image. No super power can ridicule the very notion of its “superness” by admitting defeat. This unwillingness, however, does not change the verdict of history: Vietnam was a humiliating affair; Iraq has been a mixed situation; Bush was able to remove Saddam Hussein but that led to the emergence of the first Shia dominated Arab state in modern history and no one knows how this will change the entire Middle East equation.
Afghanistan is, however, neither Vietnam nor Iraq. Thus when President Barack Obama admitted that American involvement in Afghanistan is no more financially viable – though not in these words – he admitted defeat, albeit American style. For an American president to admit what he admitted, after ten long years, is another characteristic of the American attitude toward the dictates of history.
What the president said after ten long years was already commonly known without spending the hefty sum of 500 billion dollars. History bears witness that no one has been able to rule that rugged country called Afghanistan whose inhabitants have fought outsiders as a profession carried down from father to son for centuries. Afghanistan remained defiant to the British colonisers, it proved to be an impossible land for the Soviets and now the Americans are planning to call it a day.
President Obama is making no concession to the Afghans in his decision to pull back American troops; his second term is his most obvious personal consideration while he has America’s economy as his national consideration. Furthermore, in making his announcement against the desires of his generals, he has proven one more time that America is a country with an army, not an army with a country, as is the case for Pakistan. Wars are hugely costly and after ten years, America has accomplished in Afghanistan is no more than what any other occupier has accomplished there as history reveals.
One has to admit that the ragtag Taliban have once again proven that faith is stronger than weapons; that no one, not even the lone superpower, can overcome those who possess faith. All that Taliban have to do now is bide time and continue to do what they are doing and the future is theirs’. What would they make of that future remains to be seen but one thing is clear: the newly trained Afghan army will collapse like a house of cards and the Taliban will simply sweep through the country just like they did last time. If they have gained any wisdom, they will make much more of their victory this time around.
Before we get to that point, however, there are numerous “ifs” and “buts”. To be sure, the puppet regime will want to prolong its hold. It will offer permanent bases to the departing occupiers; it will raise a lot of helpless cries about the future of the country, but none of this is unknown to the Americans; they know what could not be achieved with $500 billion and 130,000 soldiers will not be achievable with a fraction of that amount both in money and in troops. In addition, even the most protected military base will always remain an easy target of a resurgent Taliban force.
No matter what decision America eventually makes, the entire equation is about to change because the proverbial hen laying golden eggs will depart and with it, a most ludicrous business for the generals in Afghanistan and Pakistan will come to an end. They must now find another paymaster.
In a world dominated by the green buck, no one is going to talk about the human cost of this war, especially of the Afghans. To be sure, the country has been destroyed and its population traumatised. However no one has been counting the ‘non-white’ dead bodies. So, no one really knows the cost of war to the Afghans, but with their faith stronger than the mighty mountains which enclose this beautiful land, their wounds will heal in good time and their villages will gain a degree of tranquillity and stability.
The American pullout from Afghanistan has tremendous challenges for Pakistan. If all goes well, by 2014 Pakistan would already be in the hands of a second civilian government. The authority of the generals would have further weakened and hopefully, there will be a way to reconfigure Pakistan’s political, economic and military priorities in the wake of American withdrawal from Afghanistan. It has been so long that it is almost impossible to imagine Pakistan’s main security and military agenda without the Afghan war. But one must attempt to foresee possible scenarios.
Without a war in Afghanistan and with a reduced animosity with India, Pakistan can drastically cut its defence spending. A wise and stable civilian government may be able to curtail the power of the generals. This power can only be curtailed if there is a strong civilian rule and the judiciary is functioning autonomously. A strong civilian rule requires a very representative parliament not beholden to a lion of Punjab or Sindh and that is exactly what Pakistan is lacking since its birth: it has failed to evolve a political culture which is independent of a political lord. Just like Afghanistan cannot function without war lords, Pakistan has never been able to function without political lords.
There is, thus, an urgent need for a few individuals to come forward and attempt to establish a mechanism through which a new political force can come into existence. All the factors are in place for this new force to evolve: a relatively young and educated population, a chronic political disorder; a sense of hopelessness which can be converted into an action plan, and an opportunity the like of which has never existed before as people are now sick and tired of the faces which have dominated Pakistan’s politics for as long as one can remember.

The writer is a freelance columnist.

Mismanaged state, resilient society

Shafqat Mahmood


Finally, enough is happening on the political front to push security related stories into the background. The Pakistan People’s Party did whatever it took to gain a majority in the Kashmir elections and surprisingly, the MQM decided once again to quit the ruling coalition. Is there any connection between the two?
On the face of it, yes, because the reason given by the MQM leadership is the postponement of polling in Hyderabad and Karachi. But, was this the only reason, considering that more serious matters in the past have not led to such a strong reaction?
It is obvious that some problems were simmering in the background and have come to the fore in this latest disagreement. And it does not require deep analysis to figure out that the political tug of war in Karachi is at the heart of it.
Mr Zardari has a crafty way of undermining his opponents and he must be doing it in Karachi too. This probably includes empowering the Baloch and Pakhtuns and redrawing the Karachi administrative map to reduce the MQM’s hold on the city. There are also rumours that Zulfikar Mirza is on his way back to perhaps the top position in the province. This must be an anathema to the MQM.
There are conspiracy theories too regarding the MQM’s decision. It does not take long in the fraught national atmosphere for people to start speculating that this is the first step in a long anticipated removal of the federal government by the military. But, as in most such theories, there is no hard evidence other than that the country is in a rapid slide downhill.
This too is not new. We have been sliding down for some time but it must be a long slide as the end is nowhere near. Some would argue that actually, on the ground, things are not so bad. The farmers have never made so much money. The banks and industries, by and large, seem to be doing well. And, exports and remittances are up. So, what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that while the non-governmental sector is showing surprising resilience, the government is bereft of ideas and is just meandering along. Beset with huge power shortages, inconsistent policies, decaying infrastructure and more, the private sector is still able to stand on its feet and make money.
And, overseas Pakistanis are not ready to give up on their country. Some living here may be seeking alternate citizenships and investing money in properties abroad, but those of our compatriots actually living there see no reason to stop sending their savings back home. This has become an unexpected bonus with remittances this year totalling $11.2 billion.
This strength of the citizenry is not reflected in the government, which dithers on taking hard decisions to improve the economy or governance. Public finances are an absolute mess with a shortfall of over a trillion rupees in the budget and no rescue in sight. The Americans are cheesed off and their assistance has been reduced to a trickle. And, perhaps their anger has given the IMF the autonomy to cut off further financing.
So, how will the gap be filled up and from where? Government borrowing from the banks has already squeezed the private sector and there is a likelihood of further reduction in this. Domestic savings would thus be mopped up by the government. The public sector development programme has been cut to the bare bones. The only other alternative would be the printing of money and that would add to the price hike that is crushing the middle classes and the poor.
This could have been avoided if the government had the guts to tax the elite and this is true for the federation and the provinces. Some effort has been made in Punjab to create new revenue avenues but overall the performance of all governments is below par. Politics and voter backlash are actually hampering any possibility of improving public finances.
The much trumpeted, and rightly so because it is a fine document, Economic Growth Strategy devised by Nadeem ul Haq in the Planning Commission is finding no takers in the government. The top leaders do not have the intellectual capacity, attention span, or even the desire to understand it.
But the real problem is that our economic managers, all fine minds with the right ideas, have little or no political clout. They are new comers to the hierarchy of power at the federal level, and are only tolerated because there is no one in the PPP who can handle economic management. Their ability to push through difficult but necessary measures is virtually nonexistent. The stalemate in economic decision making is thus likely to persist.
The area of governance is a bigger mess with the state’s ability to maintain order, provide justice, and deliver services going down at a rapid pace. Unlike the intricacies of economic management, everyone in power, at some perceptual level, understands this but remains strangely paralysed in doing something about it.
Partly, they don’t know how but there is no shortage of donor money to hire experts to guide them. There are rumours that another Civil Services Commission is being formed to look at the structure of government and suggest ways to make it more effective. Whether this is correct or not, if the fate of this commission is going to be the same as that of earlier such bodies, then what’s the point.
Unless there is a genuine commitment to governance reform, at the federation and provinces, no amount of good advice will have any effect. The problem with structural reform is that it does not have an immediate political impact. It takes time to make a difference and politicians have little patience for that. They would rather build monuments that everyone can see and appreciate.
So, to revisit the point made earlier, the people of this country at all levels have much to offer. Even in these difficult times, with high inflation, a power crisis, decaying state organs, and fear of terrorism, they are not only surviving but through their ingenuity, thriving. If only the political managers of the state had the vision and commitment to top this people’s energy with better governance.
This is a cross we have to bear because there is no choice other than democracy. Elections will keep throwing up people with little understanding of how to manage the state but over time, it will get better. Already, many of the younger people coming into politics are of a much higher calibre and this trend may continue.
The challenge is to survive these difficult and dangerous times and hope that in the long run our democracy will mature and the leadership would have better ability to manage the state. Hopefully, at a state level we can then prove the economist John Maynard Keynes wrong who said that ‘in the long run, we’ll all be dead’.

Obama’s questionable drawdown

Shamshad Ahmad


President Obama is beginning to do something concrete to earn his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, or so it seems. His June 22 speech on the US troops drawdown was the anticlimax of the one he delivered in the Oslo ceremony in which he received his Nobel Prize. He was then proclaiming the concept of “just war” as an ethical aspect that ennobles human activity. Obama on that occasion was sounding fury and smelling gunpowder as the Nobel Laureate president of a superpower that has been tirelessly fighting wars ever since the Second World War.
It was certainly not the speech that the Nobel Committee had expected to hear, nor the one that Obama himself would have imagined delivering six years ago when as a state senator he had vocally opposed the Iraq war.
In his inaugural address on Jan 20, 2009, the new Democratic president had belittled his Republican predecessor’s eight years as a “bleak chapter” in American history. He had spoken of costly wars, global image erosion, and shattered economy as his “terrible legacy” of multiple challenges, and promised a new America for Americans, as well as for the world at large.
He had pledged that besides ending the war in Iraq, he would bring the Afghan war to its “logical conclusion.” He promised to pursue a fresh doctrine of “security through peace, not war.” His words brought relief across the globe on the prospect of change in America’s policies and outlook.
Just days before receiving his Nobel Peace Prize, however, he owned his predecessor’s war in Afghanistan by ordering a surge of 30,000 troops for deployment there.
The promised change is nowhere in sight. Obama has yet to deliver on his promise for peace. Since entering the White House, Obama escalated CIA-operated drone attacks in Pakistan. Even though they were aimed at suspected Al-Qaeda or Taliban havens, they killed many innocent men, women and children. Even if they had the vague consent of Pakistan’s rulers, they constituted a violation of the UN Charter. Under the Charter, no country, however powerful or dominant, can resort to pre-emptive or preventive use of force, or to any punitive action, unless it is authorised by the UN Security Council within the scope of Articles 42 and 51 of the Charter.
It took him almost two years to take the first practical step towards peace in Afghanistan. President Obama’s announcement of a substantive military withdrawal from Afghanistan beginning with 10,000 troops this year, and another 23,000 by the end of next summer, is ostensibly a major course reversal in the decade-old Afghan conflict.
Interestingly, the 33,000 to be withdrawn just before the presidential election next year is the same number Obama had sent as surge troops in December 2009, as part of what was then claimed to be “an effort to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and hasten an eventual political settlement of the conflict.”
But more than anything else, the surge appeared to be a politically motivated gambit; the additional troops were sent to the war theatre only to enable Obama to announce with fanfare a large withdrawal closer to the presidential election. It seems the Afghan war is now all about American politics.
Obama could have made the peace move two years ago. He could have averted the violence, bloodshed and displacement in Afghanistan produced by the surge, as well as the huge cost involved in the exercise. And it would have certainly saved his party from last year’s humiliating defeat in the midterm election.
President Obama now seems to be returning to his earlier convictions. His AfPak strategy was based on the recognition that military force alone was not a solution to the problems in this region. He had also been saying that military force would not end the war in Afghanistan, and that an “exit strategy” with a broader approach involving an effective coordination of military, diplomatic and developmental efforts would be needed for resolving the conflict in Afghanistan.
After prolonging the military conflict at huge cost in lives and dollars, Obama now admits “peace cannot come to a land that has known so much war, without a political settlement.” Who, then, is responsible for not pursuing a non-military approach? Had he started the talks with the Taliban two years ago, by now there would at least have been a clearer direction for the peace process in Afghanistan.
The sole superpower can still come out of its belligerent mode. But the problem with America is that it does not learn lessons. No other country in the world has done greater damage to its global prestige and credibility because of its misdirected policies and misplaced priorities. While most of these policies have been a bane to the world, they have not brought any real political dividends to the US either.
The United States has never practised what it preaches to the world. Its record of keeping corrupt regimes and military dictatorships in power in many countries is too well-known to be recounted. After the Second World War, the US took upon itself the responsibility of reshaping the world. It fought wars in Korea and Vietnam in the name of “freedom” and still keeps troops in Japan, Germany and Korea, and a network of military bases and installations virtually in every region of the world, including the Persian Gulf sheikdoms and Iraq. Any similar plan for Afghanistan will be a sure recipe for indefinite prolongation of the Afghan conflict.
The Afghans have a fierce sense of independence, and have never been pacified by foreign forces. Historically, no prolonged military occupation has ever worked in Afghanistan. The experience of centuries, especially of the last three decades, should make one thing abundantly clear: no reconciliation imposed from outside will work in Afghanistan, and no exit strategy will succeed through the tactic of further deepening the ethnic divide in this war-torn country. Durable peace in Afghanistan will come only through genuine Afghan-led reconciliation between Afghan factions, with no selectivity or exclusivity.
So it is important that the transition process does not ignore the Afghan demographic realities and is not weighted in favour of or against any particular ethnic group. The US now recognises the Taliban as part of the Afghan “political fabric” and reportedly has already been holding preliminarily meetings with Taliban “representatives” under German sponsorship. One only hopes the Taliban are represented by genuine interlocutors in these talks with complete authority and full credentials as representatives.
The good thing is that the preconditions that both sides were seeking to set for the talks no longer seem to be obstructing the process of negotiations. They would now be pursued as the outcome of the peace process. A final peace settlement will be predicated on a mutual agreement leading to US commitment for withdrawal of all foreign forces within an agreed timeframe in return for a verifiable Taliban commitment to severance of all ties with Al-Qaeda and likeminded groups. Afghans alone must be the arbiters on their domestic governance issues.
The process is not going to be easy. But it is worth undertaking it. It is never too late to pursue peace.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Is devolution too dull?

Afiya Shehrbano


One of the most forceful influences of globalisation has been the free-flow of information. This in turn has carved out a new and compelling role for a whole host of new age information-providers – these include junket journalists, PhD students, fellows at various think tanks, anthropology teachers at foreign universities, novelists who have green cards but also vacation houses in Pakistan, even the tableeghis and pietists who run seminars and counsel overseas Pakistanis while on tour. All these have become sources that often speak and write representatively for and about Pakistan at international levels.
Simultaneously, the hunger for more and speedy information which must be updated on the internet face page every hour, has injected a new confidence in foreign correspondents who have embedded themselves in Pakistan over the last decade. Their coverage of what could possibly be sexed up as the last ‘ideological war’ as opposed to the routine, intrastate ethnic or material based civil wars being fought around the world, has anointed correspondents a special status in the media world.
Often, routine situational analyses have morphed into blogs and then graduated into career-enhancing publications on and about Pakistan. These tend to be based on their embedded experiences along with some quotes from the native chattering class and dependent on sources provided by local journalists. The occasional anthropological factoid is thrown in for effect and this qualifies as the new authoritative work on the country and its society. Nearly all of the above ‘sources’ focus almost exclusively on Islam and its nexus with politics and the state, specifically the military.
Local authors have caught onto the opportunities afforded by the globalised media that allows anyone with a laptop to become an authority on the political. However, the native journalist and social commentator doesn’t have it so easy. Precisely because their dependence is on local readership, they cannot really pull too many exaggerated or misleading stories without getting exposed or risking their legitimacy – even if it is a limited commodity these days – and sadly, in some cases, even their lives. But the local voice is drowned these days with the competition from the sources cited above.
In many cases, the need to counter misrepresentation or narrow interpretations of Pakistani society has led to a whole wave of reactionary or corrective literature that seeks to rescue the ‘real Pakistan’, the moderate Muslim, the average tea-sipping man in the streets, the small joys of being poor or, reclamation literature exposing our victim-status due to our colonial history and listing the dangers we face from current designs of imperial powers. It has led to supra-nationalism, hyped patriotism, chauvinistic redefinitions of the constitution and historical rewritings of the emergence of Pakistan, while manufacturing paranoid fabrications of who qualifies as its true saviours.
In the opportunism afforded by the global political spotlight on Pakistan, what has completely gone unnoticed is the mundane and ordinary. The peoples’ movements in this country, just in the last few years, have been completely overshadowed by the twists and turns of military and foreign policies and the press it gets. Routine every day struggles of the peasants of Okara, the fisherfolk in Sindh, the lawyers movement, the lady health workers, the devolution of the federal powers and major restructuring of the country’s governance seem not to warrant any anthropological interest, nor mass prayers, no donor interest, nor plots for stories, not even calendar days by NGOs, such as ‘women’s day’ or ‘literacy day’ or ‘environment day’. As much as a new generation of youthful policy ‘experts’ mock grand narratives, they also refuse to turn attention to lesser narratives which have tremendous direct and strategic implications for being Pakistani.
The 18th Amendment is an example of a people’s demand, just as the movements listed above; it is both secular (by which I mean, neutral as far as religious identity is concerned, even though the committee succumbed and added some irrelevant connection for effect) and democratic (by which I mean it has gone through an imperfect but inclusive and parliamentary process). Interventions by civil society and a legal case thrashed out in court have all been features of this process. Even the argument that the course was not debated enough is testament that the path to devolution is intrinsic to democracy.
To err on the side of caution has become an ailment almost. Every time we inch towards democratic norms and structural changes to the very federation, the recalcitrant insist it’s a larger conspiracy and unworthy. This fear of change earlier coloured the response of some commentators towards the lawyer’s movement which predated the Arab Spring we see surging today. Yet the call from many a liberal was to be cautious and mark boundaries around the influence of the movement.
Similarly today the process of devolution is being underplayed due to pragmatic and bureaucratic concerns and real as these may be, accountancy is just half the story of devolution. The other part is about power and its distribution and towards that, this moment needs a fairer response, analysis, and plan on how to make it work for us in the provinces.
Post Bin Laden, some hysterical calls for Pakistan to be expelled from the comity of nations (is there a separate orbit in space reserved for bad nations?) simply reinforce the idea that it is our power elite who decide our fate and that the only relevance we have is with reference to our foreign policy.
It’s time for us to reclaim our own domestic governance issues and dialogue with our local representatives on how to make livelihoods work. The military and the religious actors have failed us – that is clear. Perhaps it is time for international and local experts to turn their attention away from these and look also towards the relevance of mundane, ordinary local political expression and their direct relevance to the Pakistani people.

The writer is a researcher based in Karachi.

De-radicalisation

Ikram Sehgal


Pakistan has been in the grip of extremism of one sort or the other – ethnic, linguistic, sectarian and religious – almost since its birth. Six decades after independence, we continue to struggle with basic issues relating to identity, democracy and constitutionalism. Elections are always a saga of fraud and violence. Student militias and weapons were introduced into our universities in the 1970s, the rampant murders of political opponents and deteriorating law-and-order situation transformed Pakistani society into a fertile ground for what has become one of our biggest headaches. Contrary to popular perception, radicalisation is not confined to religion alone. Anyone can be a radical – i.e., a minister, a driver, an officer or a cleric – ignorance being the basic factor behind radicalisation.
Pakistan today is perceived by the international community as one of the most radicalised nations. After driving the Soviets out, the Mujahideen groups, which had poured from all over the world into Afghanistan to fight the infidels, indulged in years of infighting among themselves. Forsaken by their own countries and with nowhere to go, many crossed over into Pakistan and settled in the border areas. They have played a significant role over the years in radicalising local groups. Tribesmen in Fata have been influenced throughout history by events in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s history of political chaos, economic mismanagement and exploitation of religion has spawned disillusionment among the masses. Without a robust political platform, the youth were especially affected. This situation was tailor-made for religious organisations, those with a radical bent, providing a platform leading young people in directions without a sense of balance in their lives. Religious and political extremism has flourished like never before.
The Federally Administered Tribal Areas and parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are the most radicalised areas. This malaise is afflicting us because of a weak and outdated system of governance, influence of the Islamist political parties, lack of public participation in political and governance process. Other factors are lack of development and progress, widespread poverty, acute unemployment, inflation, food insecurity and absence of social justice for people. Some structural causes related to the war on terror have resulted in resentment in people and radicalism on both sides of the Pakistani-Afghan border. These include the Taliban’s exclusion from the Afghan government and Pakistan’s policies as a key US ally are seen as being harmful to Pakistan, the government’s failure to halt US drone attacks and the issue of Afghan refugees.
Analysts and counterterrorism practitioners believe that if the extremism and terrorism threatening almost every country in the world is to be defeated, there is a need to go beyond security and intelligence measures. Proactive measures must be taken to prevent vulnerable individuals from becoming radicalised and rehabilitate those who have already embraced extremism. De-radicalisation is the process of changing an individual’s belief system, rejecting the extremist ideology, and embracing mainstream values. This concept is manifested in the counter and de-radicalisation programmes to demobilise violent extremists and their supporters in many countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Most of these programmes have been influenced by work on de-radicalisation and reintegration of former terrorists being carried out in Saudi Arabia. The success of the Saudi strategy is composed of prevention, rehabilitation, and aftercare programmes. Increasingly, using unconventional and “soft” measures to combat violent extremism has borne some very positive results. The Saudi authorities claim a rehabilitation success rate of 80 to 90 percent. Only 35 individuals have been rearrested for security offences. Their rehabilitation campaign seeks to address the underlying factors that facilitate extremism and prevent further violent Islamism. Others in the region, including the United States in Iraq, have adopted a similar approach.
To its credit, the Pakistani army has started de-radicalisation programmes on its own. A school has been set up in the Swat Valley aimed at de-radicalising young children who were either forcibly or voluntarily mixing with various militant groups operating in the country. Organisers of this first of its kind boarding school in Pakistan say it is providing a small but valuable window into the backgrounds of Pakistan’s young fighters and the ultimate causes behind their joining the militants. The centre is called “Rastoon,” meaning “Place of the Right Path.” There are other centres in the Swat Valley – another one for men, one for women and one for adolescents. Officers at this school, aided by psychologists, have spent months researching whether and how Taliban helpers and sympathisers could be de-radicalised.
More resources need to be allocated because of the growing number of child fighters. As opposed to people in older groups, children are extremely vulnerable to the militant threat because of their innocence. They can be manipulated and brainwashed by a group’s ideology without much effort. In her article “Pakistan’s Child Fighters,” Kulsoom Lakhani makes a case for this centre, “as a pilot school, to apply best practices from successful programmes of rehabilitating child soldiers in other countries. For example, in Sri Lanka, the government established numerous transit centres as part of a complex programme to rehabilitate former child soldiers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The ICC, along with the Sri Lankan Cricket Association and UNICEF, have partnered a programme using cricket to rehabilitate and engage these children”. Before he became adjutant general of the Sri Lankan army, my course mate from 34th PMA Long Course, Maj Gen Ananda Weerasekera, was the head of the Rehabilitation Programme for the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) hardcore who had surrendered at the end of a particularly tough and bitter counter-terrorism campaign in the early 80s. Thanks to him and the late Maj Gen “Lucky” Vijayratna (killed in action) and Maj Gen Siri Peiris, who became chief of the general staff of the Sri Lankan army, two other course mates of mine, I was lucky to have witnessed the programme at first-hand.
An excellent paper on Counter-Recruitment Initiative (CRI) was presented by Hans Giessmann of the Council of Counter-terrorism of the World Economic Forum (WEF), urging global leaders to promote the creation and dissemination of counter-terrorism initiatives within identity-based communities to separate terrorists from the larger groups, especially of ethnic or religious peers which terrorists take hostage for legitimising violence against innocent people and for propagating their case in communities they claim to protect. Promoting tolerance, dignity, respect and empathy, CRI proposes to preventing people from becoming attracted, radicalised and ultimately recruited, by addressing the grievances which make people susceptible to hate speech and the propaganda of terrorist networks.
To win the ideological battle the bane of poverty, one of the prime factors fuelling radicalism, must be addressed. The ranks of militants have swollen because of social and economic inequalities in our society, the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the erosion of the middle class. That radical clerics are behind radicalism may be true, but it is not the whole truth. The government must take pragmatic measures to empower the masses by broadening the country’s economic base and addressing the inequalities in society.
(The gist of the paper prepared for the seminar on De-radicalisation organised by the Pakistani army in Mingora, Swat, on July 4-7, 2011.)

The writer is a defence and political analyst.

Time to move on

Raoof Hasan

The booklet Opportunities in the Development of the Oil and Gas Sector in South Asia, published by the Institute of Strategic Studies in 2004, is based on a speech by Usman Aminuddin. The former minister of petroleum and natural resources is a man of expertise and capacity who is full of ideas. I was struck by the concluding statement in the booklet: “Hydrogen and fuel-cell technology represents a strategic choice for energy deficient-countries like India and Pakistan...The launch of a South Asia hydrogen and fuel-cell technology platform through the South Asian Infrastructure Fund (SAIF) could lead to a long-term South Asian strategy for hydrogen and fuel cells to guide the transition to a hydrogen future in the next 20-30 years...This vision on which many countries of the world are working is a vital area of cooperation between the governments of India and Pakistan. This is a vision of peace and prosperity for the poor masses of both countries.”
Fast-forward to June 2011 and Dr Shireen Mazari is giving a talk from the STR platform on “The security route to cooperation.” Of the four initiatives, or CBMs as she calls them, the first is intrinsically similar in spirit to the one proposed by Mr Aminuddin back in 2004. After “some movement on Kashmir,” of which she discerns signs within the Indian civil society and human rights organisations, and after display of political will by the governments of India and Pakistan for settlements to the Siachin and Sir Creek issues, Dr Mazari unveils the centrepiece of “the security route to cooperation” between India and Pakistan: joint nuclear-power generation. She says by way of explanation: “After all, both Pakistan and India are conventional energy-deficient states and both are overt nuclear powers. So, there is no reason not to cooperate in the field of civil nuclear energy, with both countries sharing joint control of the relevant technology.” She also says that “the civil reactors built jointly for this purpose could be along the Indo-Pakistani border which would, in turn, add to their security also. Civil nuclear cooperation is not just a CBM, but an actual economic multiplier.”
Interestingly, according to Dr Mazari’s paper, the International Atomic Energy Agency has also advocated Multilateral Nuclear Approaches (MNAs) in the field of civil nuclear power generation projects. An IAEA study on the issue was published as a result of experts’ deliberations in 2005. The conclusions of this study were very interesting and useful from our perspective. Identifying the twin objectives of “Assurance of Non-Proliferation” and “Assurance of Supply and Services,” the report concluded that perhaps “the best way to satisfy both these objectives simultaneously was to adopt multilateral approaches.”
Pakistan has repeatedly projected its need for nuclear power generation. At the April 2010 Nuclear Summit in Washington, a Pakistani official stated: “Pakistan has legitimate needs for power generation to meet the growing energy demand of our expanding economy. Civil nuclear power generation under IAEA safeguards is an essential part of our national energy security plan to support sustained economic growth and industrial development...As a country with advanced fuel-cycle capability, Pakistan is in a position to provide nuclear fuel-cycle services under IAEA safeguards and to participate in any non-discriminatory nuclear fuel-cycle assurance mechanism.” Almost the same holds true for India in terms of need and competence in the nuclear field. Does it, therefore, follow that the two should proceed further with doing the obvious as a joint venture?
The requirement becomes even more urgent because, according to Dr Mazari, “the present nuclear deterrent between Pakistan and India has moved the two countries out of a zero-sum environment towards a positive-sum environment where both have everything to lose in case of a nuclear war – whatever the causes of the outbreak – and, therefore, both should recognise mutuality of interests, instead of seeking to play a game of brinkmanship with dangerous doctrines like “limited war” and “Cold Start.”
Interestingly, it is the US again that is trying to alter the rules of the game in the nuclear proliferation field by seeking India-specific alterations for ensuring its membership of the suppliers’ cartels relating to WMD. But, according to Dr Mazari, “country-specific moves for India would ultimately result in criteria-based exceptions, as otherwise such moves would be regarded as Pakistan-specific, which cannot be viable in the long run.”
The convergence of ideas between Usman Aminuddin and Dr Mazari is not just coincidental. It has enormous substance to it in terms of a genuine move towards bringing progress to this war-torn part of the world. Whether it is Usman Aminuddin’s “hydrogen vision” or Dr Mazari’s “security route to cooperation,” they add substantially to efforts already underway in the shape of “Track-11” and “Aman ki Asha.” We need to review them positively by untangling ourselves from the web of hatred that our leaderships have systematically built around us, burying us under its debris through decades. It is time to move away from enmity and embrace the desire to initiate efforts for relieving the two countries of the burden of an undesirable past and stepping into a future that would unfold the prospect of sustainable peace.
But bilateral cooperation emanates from political will. Unfortunately, of that there is enormous dearth on both sides. While the Indians are stuck with the post-Mumbai mindset and refuse to budge, the Pakistani leadership is mired in the whirlpool of deep-set corruption and its persistent efforts to save itself through means that are mostly unconstitutional and immoral. Time really has come when the right to rule has to be taken away from the traditionally corrupt leaderships which use the instruments of hatred to prolong their hold on power and, instead, pass it to a new generation of transparent and dedicated individuals who come with the desire to serve the cause of the poor and the needy by working for peace.

The writer is a political analyst. He is also an adviser to Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf.

Media’s ‘army bashing’

Babar Sattar

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

There are three main arguments against condemning the khaki high command. One, casting aspersions on the institution lowers troop morale and undermines efficiency, as no military can fight without public support. Two, arraigning our military high command at this time will weaken its ability to effectively preserve Pakistan’s national interest linked to the future of Afghanistan while negotiating with the US and regional stakeholders as the Afghan war enters end stage. And three, the media is sowing discord within the nation and journalists cannot be allowed the audacity to charge-sheet guardians of our national security.
The first two arguments merit consideration. The third is simply preposterous. That concerns about the adequacy of our security policy and operational tactics are genuine is undeniable. There is need to generate enough heat to make the status quo uncomfortable and encourage reform of our security policy and policy making mechanisms, but not too much that lights a fire and starts to burn the institution down. Who then bears the responsibility to ensure that vital state institutions, that attract public criticism due to their conduct, do not end up being pilloried? At what point does criticism transform into vilification? Is there any objective criterion that can distinguish one from the other, or is it a matter of subjective assessment and personal taste? Has the Pakistani media been reckless in bashing the generals?
Before determining the responsibility of the media in striking the right balance between critique and condemnation let us appreciate the following facts. One, media is not a monolith and does not speak with one voice. Other than the state itself, there are no hidden hands strong enough to influence the media on the whole. That is why, to the chagrin of many, what generally emanates from the media is debate and disagreement as opposed to monotonic lullabies. So when the media does end up speaking with one voice, it is no grand conspiracy but the reflection of a growing national consensus on an issue.
Two, media does not set the agenda for national debate. It is reactive in nature and only responds to events as well as the state’s acts and omissions in relation to them. It is for state institutions and the government to put forth a narrative around which the debate revolves. A situation where a variegated media is seen as spearheading national debate can only be the consequence either of a non-existent state narrative or a state narrative so incoherent or flawed that it fails to shepherd pubic debate. It was clearly the failure of our civilian and military leadership to posit a credible narrative in the face of serious questions of security policy reform and military accountability, raised by the dramatic events of the last two months that provoked harsh criticism.
But despite the absence of any reassuring response from the ruling regime and the military, there are already voices from within the media advocating the need to taper criticism. This caution might be sensible, but self-restraint must not be allowed to encumber the constitutionally guaranteed right of citizens to free speech and information. Further, any public office holder exercising state authority is a fiduciary accountable to the people of Pakistan, notwithstanding whether such office holder wears khakis or civvies.
In the past our media has been guilty of indulging in self-censorship and applying a deferential standard when it comes to holding khakis accountable, whether out of fear or misconceived notions of national interest. Therefore a debate on whether there ought to be a debate about national security policy, decisions of security policymakers and actions of law enforcement agencies is in itself a step forward. Discussions about what constitutes our national interest, what is the best way to promote it, and whether law enforcers can be allowed to flout the law and usurp civil liberties under the garb of national security belong squarely within the public domain.
The media and the civil society are now asserting constitutional rights to retrieve vital public space for debate. And this is no passing phase. Questions about national security and the conduct of security agencies are legitimate questions of public importance. We must create and retain a marketplace of ideas wherein the strength of an argument determines its merit without any outside policing of what constitutes acceptable ideas and criticism.
The broad focus of the discussion about security policy and agencies has been three-fold: one, the accountability of individuals responsible for security lapses as well as extrajudicial killings of civilians; two, review of Pakistan’s national security policy and need to plug the holes creating external and internal security vulnerabilities; and three, fixing the civil-military imbalance that continues to threaten democracy.
Maybe it is time to get realistic and defer the third objective as the Zardari regime is solely interested in continuing to make hay within a circumscribed sphere and secure another term in office. The constitutionally mandated civilian control of the military cannot take effect so long as the civilian government is not interested in exercising its due authority and accepting the responsibility that comes along.
On the other two fronts there has been progress. Despite initial reluctance, an accountability mechanism has been put in place with constitution of the Abbottabad and Saleem Shahzad Commissions. It is imperative that our civilian and military leaders extend unequivocal support to the work of these commissions to ensure that the factual findings of these inquiries lead to individual accountability, and recommendations become the basis of policy and institutional reform.
But this will not happen without vigilant oversight of the media and the civil society. Old codgers - custodians of the warped mindset responsible for our ailment - are once again vocal, stirring up fear and suspicion and counselling that we must not wash our dirty laundry in public, truth must be kept hidden and inquiry reports must not be made public. This argument must be rejected.
History bears witness that there can be no accountability without disclosure. Anytime that a nation has chosen to shroud the truth or impede civil liberties in the name of national security, it has done so at its own peril. The honour and credibility of the Pakistani army will not be sullied because a few of its own are found guilty of crimes and errors, but only if it allows a misdirected espirit de corps to engage in cover-ups and obstruct due process of law.
Pakistan is caught in the middle of a very complex security situation wherein the US and other regional actors have interests that do not necessarily converge with ours. We must have no misconceptions that to the extent the US-led forces fail to accomplish their declared objectives in Afghanistan (which they will), Pakistan will become the scapegoat identified as the villain responsible for such failing. We thus urgently need to define our vital security interests linked to the future of Afghanistan as it will not only impact our external security but also determine the future of the insurgency/militancy raging across Pakistan. And for this we need a vibrant public debate to evolve a national consensus.
Such debate and criticism of the existing security policy must not be viewed as media bashing of generals. And neither should criticism of generals be presented as a manifestation of provisory support for troops. An informed national consensus over our approach toward the US war in Afghanistan and the militancy within Pakistan will strengthen the ability of our military to do its job. So long as our generals do not attempt to expropriate the citizens’ right to define what constitutes our national interest, or appear mightier than the law, they will always find the media and the nation standing beside them.

Defeating the ideology of terrorism

S Iftikhar Murshed

Little Sohana was kidnapped from Peshawar’s Hashtnagri vicinity on June 19. She was drugged and a suicide jacket was fastened to her body. The nine-year-old was then taken to Darra Islam in Lower Dir and left near the Frontier Corps check post with instructions to detonate the explosives. Instead, the terrified child ran towards the soldiers and, sobbing uncontrollably, told them about her harrowing ordeal. Sohana thus saved not only her own life but also that of many others. The horrifying incident has already faded from public memory but the ideology that prompted such savagery continues to thrive.
At the international conference in Tehran on the “Global Fight Against Terrorism” President Zardari mumbled: “Pakistan supports the idea of a counter narrative to win the battle for hearts and minds. It is only by defeating terrorists on the ideological front that victory can be achieved.” Such words have been heard before but nothing substantial has been done in the three years that the PPP-led government has been in power.
As the president rambled on about the need for the ideological conquest of terrorism, he was not even aware of an unprecedented meeting on June 13 of some 300 prominent ulema (religious scholars) at the Nizamia madressah at Eidak in the Mir Ali district of North Waziristan. The participants risked their lives to unanimously declare all forms of terrorism, and in particular suicide attacks, as anathema to Islamic tenets.
The ulema also decreed that it was forbidden to declare anyone a kafir (non-believer) or a munafiq (hypocrite) no matter what his personal beliefs. The ruling is completely in accord with the Quranic passage: “...and do not – out of a desire for the fleeting gains of this worldly life – say unto anyone who offers you the greeting of peace, ‘Thou art not a believer.’” This poses a formidable challenge to Al-Qaeda’s concept of takfir under which deviants from their literalist interpretation of Islam are considered apostates and therefore worthy of being killed.
If the government is at all serious about defeating the ideology of terrorist violence under the guise of religion then it must first understand and then deconstruct the false narrative on which Al-Qaeda and its affiliates base their so-called jihad. Extremist outfits have perverted the concept of jihad to imply “holy war” – a term which does not exist in Arabic. According to Professor Abdel Haleem of the London University, the word “which is specifically used in the Quran for fighting is qital. Jihad can be by argumentation, financial help or actual fighting.”
The first Quranic revelation allowing Muslims to fight came in 622 in Medina. However the permission, which had nothing to do with the propagation of the religion, was conditional and was restricted to fighting only in self-defence. This stress against aggression is reiterated in several passages of the Quran. Al-Baydawi, who is considered “the soundest and most authoritative commentator of the Quran,” defined aggression as: “initiation of fighting, fighting those with whom a treaty has been concluded, surprising the enemy without first inviting them to make peace, destroying crops or killing those who should be protected.”
The Quran does not allow any deviation from the norm that the only justification for war is to repel actual aggression or to pre-empt an attack. Hostilities must be terminated should the aggressor subsequently incline towards peace. Fighting in self-defence is further restricted to “those who fight against you” i.e., only combatants are to be fought and civilians must not be subjected to any form of violence. Furthermore, the damage inflicted on the aggressors must never be excessive and always proportional to the harm they have caused. There cannot be a stronger condemnation of terrorist violence and, in the contemporary context, also the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Despite the emphatic renunciation of violence and aggression by the Quran, Al-Qaeda and its associates have managed to construct a narrative based on the fanciful doctrine of abrogation advanced by a few Muslim theologians. The concept relies on two or three Quranic passages particularly verse 106 of Surah Al-Baqara which states: “Any message which We annul or consign to oblivion We replace it with a better or a similar one...” The word “message” (ayah) in this formulation relates to the earlier scriptures and this is obvious from the preceding verse which declares that the Jews and the Christians will never accept any scripture subsequent to their own. All that is stated here is that the Quran has superseded the Bible.
However, “ayah” is also used in a more restricted sense to denote any of the verses of the Quran because they unfailingly contain a message and this is the basis of the doctrine of abrogation. It assumes that some of the earlier verses of the Quran were cancelled by subsequent ones during the 23 years that the process of revelation lasted. The ridiculous implication is that God made His commandments known but then had second thoughts and amended His earlier pronouncements. Some of the greatest Muslim theologians notably Abu Muslim al-Isfahani cite the Quranic passage “There is nothing that could alter His words...” to reject the doctrine of abrogation.
It is this absurd doctrine on which the ideology of terrorism in the name of Islam is largely based. The passages of the Quran forbidding aggression and violence are assumed to have been annulled by later verses pertaining to fighting. These are taken out of context to justify indiscriminate slaughter and suicide bombings in violation of the indispensible principle of Quran-interpretation that its verses cannot be isolated and have to be interpreted against the entire corpus of revelations pertaining to a particular subject.
The intellectual incapacity or, even worse, unwillingness of the government to expose the deceitful narrative that underpins extremist violence has enabled groups such as the Hizb ut-Tahrir to influence powerful elements of Pakistani society. Though some analysts believe that the Hizb ut-Tahrir is not a terrorist outfit, its agenda is no less deadly. It is built around the military overthrow of governments in Muslim majority countries in order to enforce its own interpretation of Islam. Its approach is gradual and is based upon the contamination of influential segments of society, particularly in the military, with its perverse ideology.
One of its internal documents cited by Maajid Nawaz, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir till May 2007 and currently director at the London-based counterterrorism think tank Quilliam Foundation, states that the first step is the indoctrination of those in authority and “after this the military would be capable of establishing the authority of Islam. Hence a coup d’etat would be the manifestation of a political change...” Against this background the recent detention of Brig Ali Khan and the interrogation of other army officers for their alleged involvement with the Hizb ut-Tahrir become alarming.
Hizb ut-Tahrir operatives are highly educated and are committed to waging “an intellectual warfare of ideas and narratives” aimed at establishing an Islamic caliphate. Thus Maajid Nawaz, who was educated at London University’s School of Oriental Studies and at the London School of Economics recalls that the Musharraf regime also arrested Hizb ut-Tahrir sympathisers in 2003 and then confesses: “Regrettably, I had helped recruit some of these officers while they were studying at the famous Sandhurst military academy in the UK.”
Al-Qaeda and outfits such as the Hizb ut-Tahrir strive to monopolise the interpretation of Islam and build an ideology based on the distortion of its tenets. This can only be defeated by the actual message of the Quran. The nineteenth century reformer, Jamal-ad-Din Afghani understood this only too well when he wrote: “Every Muslim is sick, and the only remedy is the Quran.”

The writer is the publisher of Criterion quarterly.

Before the deluge

Ghazi Salahuddin

We, the poor scribes who chronicle the sorrows of this troubled land, are tired of locating Pakistan at a crossroads. And while we recycle our thoughts, that familiar adage – the more it changes the more it remains the same – asserts itself. Some expressions keep popping up in our elegiac compositions. Perhaps the trophy would go to the lines from Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Or, the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.
But hasn’t the tide turned? Is this not a new ball game? Trying to grasp the meaning of what is happening to Pakistan, I am tempted to rephrase the well used adage and say that now, the more things change, the more they cannot remain the same.
For instance, relations between the United States and Pakistan cannot remain the same. There are indications that the US is changing its strategy to deal with terrorist activities in the region. Besides, its decision to draw down troops in Afghanistan will have its consequences. Tensions between Pakistan and the US have been mounting and Pakistan is reviewing its anti-terror cooperation with its long-term ally.
That old equation between the civilians and the military, with the army in the driving seat, is under stress. The army leadership was very much on the defensive after the Abbottabad operation and the unprecedented rash of criticism of the military, including by the leaders of the party that is in power in the Punjab, gained a new dimension when investigative journalist Saleem Shahzad was found dead after being tortured. This time, fingers were pointed towards ISI.
On Wednesday, a preliminary investigation report on the Mehran base attack was tabled before the National Assembly Standing Committee on Defence. According to reports, defence authorities informed the committee that insiders were involved in the attack mounted by a group of terrorists. This had been widely suspected, raising more questions about the professional and operational integrity of the armed forces.
Even if the army is able to reassert itself in some dramatic fashion, which is very much a possibility in the light of the deepening paralysis in the civilian administration of the state, it will not be an action replay of previous interventions. The stage is being set for a new thriller and perhaps even the leading players are not sure about the roles they will be assigned. It could also be a street theatre, with a cast of thousands. Or a black comedy because the lights are generally out.
It is interesting how separate enactments, apparently unconnected to a central theme, are forcing the pace of the narrative towards a chilling climax. It appears that the opening scene in this serial was the Abbottabad operation, fitting for a Hollywood spectacle. Equally action-packed was the Mehran base terrorist attack in Karachi. The Saleem Shahzad episode provided more depth to the story.
Our gut feeling that what we are living through could be a tale of horror was confirmed by that video recording of the killing of an unarmed young man by a group of on-duty and uniformed Rangers in a public place in Karachi. The Kharotabad encounter was filmed from a distance and was not in sharp focus like the Karachi killing.
In this gripping narrative of our lives, told in disjointed and random eruption of events on different locations, we were treated to another representational incident that took place in Karachi during the last weekend. There was a gunfight at a dance party in which six persons were killed. One of them was Taleh Bugti, a grandson of Akbar Bugti. It is not hard to imagine the entire scene. But it is not easy to comprehend its significance in the context of the overall situation.
A depiction of what may have happened in a gathering of young boys and girls from wealthy and powerful families who need to distract themselves with drugs and booze should glaringly stand out in a story that is mainly about the dispossessed multitude. If separate segments were to be given separate titles, this may be called: ‘Before the deluge’.
I detect another symbolism in the shoot-out in the Defence Housing Authority in Karachi. We identify Bugtis with the rugged and lawless environs of Balochistan. It is a measure of what is happening to this country that Karachi provides an appropriate setting for tribal princes to live it up without mending most of their ways.
According to one newspaper report, the Bugti family had rejected the account of the clash as noted in the FIR. When an elder of the family was asked whether they would file their own FIR, the reply was: “We are Baloch. We do not lodge FIRs. We take revenge”. Come to think of it, revenge is the story of Karachi and it is not restricted to the tribal and feudal families.
I do realise that in selecting these vignettes to tell the story of today’s Pakistan, I have left out many more indicators of our alarming descent into chaos. There is, for instance, the energy crisis and the mayhem caused in Karachi by the conflict between the KESC and the protesting trade unions. What is happening is unbelievable and the fact that the higher authorities have not resolved this issue is a sign that there is absolutely no governance and non-state actors have taken over.
In the midst of all this gloom, there is, however, an interlude of hope. With the implementation of the historic 18th Amendment, the concept of provincial autonomy is finally put into practice. Friday, the first of July, was marked as the day of provincial autonomy. Senator Raza Rabbani almost personifies this success. Addressing his last press conference as the Chairperson of the Commission on the Implementation of the 18th Amendment on Thursday, he underlined the importance of the devolution of 17 ministries and their departments to the provinces.
Though this is surely a great achievement, there are bound to be doubts about how the political concept of provincial autonomy would work in the present and evolving circumstances. Much will depend on how problems that arise in the process of implementing the 18th Amendment are resolved by the federal and the provincial governments. Incidentally, devolution to the local level is considered the bedrock of democracy and the present leadership does not seem anxious to revive the local government.
In any case, there was hardly any popular and enthusiastic celebration of what is potentially a major breakthrough. But any political or administrative transformation has to be judged on the basis of benefits or relief that it would provide to the ordinary people. On that score, the entire scene remains very depressing.

The writer is a staff member

Nobody on this side of the fence has been able to credibly deny that the Haqqani Network (HN) which fights the Americans and others in Afghanistan has its rear echelons quartered in Pakistan. It may be a piece of Pakistan over which the government has little writ or control, but it is undeniably within Pakistan’s internationally recognised borders. The HN is not a de-facto arm of Al-Qaeda, nor does it necessarily have common cause with Al-Qaeda, but it has linkages with other terrorist groups and Taliban operating across the borderlands with Afghanistan. Pakistan’s own links with the HN, as with so many other groups which are now a liability rather than an asset, hark back to the war against the Russians in Afghanistan. The HN is said to have thousands of fighters, is well-armed and trained and has just been fingered by the US for the attack in Kabul this week that saw six RPG rounds land inside the compound of the US embassy there. And the Americans appear to suspect that the HN launched or resourced the attack from Pakistan, which leaves them distinctly peeved.
Their elevated state of peevishness was evident in the comments of US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta (until June this year director of the CIA) who warned on Wednesday that the US would ‘retaliate’ against ‘insurgents’ that he said Pakistan had repeatedly failed to rein in or crack down on. He would not detail what form this retaliation might take and it is unwise to set hares running, but the reality is that the options for retaliation by the Americans are extremely limited. The use of drone strikes could be ramped up, but would further poison the water in which the Pakistanis and the Americans swim these days. There could be pinpoint raids such as those carried out in Abbottabad to kill Bin Laden, but the fallout from that episode is still settling; and a repeat performance would have to be based on rock-solid evidence and the deployment of considerable American ground and air assets. Not likely to find favour with Pakistanis. Then there is plain old-fashioned hot pursuit. Pakistani authorities have thus far refrained from such a move despite a series of damaging raids from Afghanistan into Pakistani territory, in part because it would be tantamount to an invasion of another sovereign power. The Americans would face the same dilemma. The US political system is unlikely to be able to accommodate yet another front opening in a war it is not winning, moreover a front which is a military push into the territory of a state described as an ally in the fight against terrorism. Whatever ‘retaliation’ Panetta has in mind it is going to have to be very carefully calibrated if it is not to nullify the fragile trust-structures rebuilt since the Abbottabad raid. For Pakistan’s part, the HN is a headache that has become a migraine. Time, perhaps, for medication.

On Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry’s sceptical inquiry about the federal government’s achievements in Karachi given that it had not submitted a progress report on targeted killings or land grabbing since January, the government’s counsel, Dr Babar Awan stone-facedly replied: “If things are not good, we can’t conclude that they are all bad either.” One was left wondering what Dr Awan’s definition of ‘bad’ is. “If an institution is not giving desired results or optimum benefits, there is surely need for improvement, but it cannot be termed failure,” Dr Awan insisted. In essence, the lawyer was arguing that as long as the government could produce even the lowest common denominator of achievement, it was wrong to call it a failure. Indeed, Dr Awan’s statement about Karachi betrays what seems to be the overall thinking of the government: that is, that it only needs to achieve the bare minimum in order to claim both legitimacy and functionality. Hearings have thus come and gone in the Karachi case as they have in the NICL, Haj and other sundry cases but nothing has led the government to change tack. ‘Flex your muscles all you want; use all these court cases to rap our knuckles every now and then,’ Awan seemed to be telling the court in his shameless responses on Tuesday. ‘Do what you want as long as we can do what we want at the end of the day.’ And that, for a government only invested in lowest-common-denominators, is enough.
To demonstrate sincerity in tackling violence in Karachi, Awan read out for the court a list of 13 major steps the federal government had taken at the Sindh government’s request – including placing civil armed forces at the disposal of the provincial government, giving Rs2.5 billion in the current financial year for training and capacity building of the Sindh police, sharing real time intelligence with the province, maintaining criminals’ data in Nadra, blocking over 20 million illegal cell phones in the country and setting up a monitoring cell of Customs and the FIA to curb arms trafficking. But despite Dr Awan’s litany of successes, body bags continue to be found across Karachi, as the bench reminded him. “So we can’t say all is well,” said the CJ. And that is just the mild version.