Tripping democracy — again?

Daily Times Thursday, December 30, 2010

COMMENT: Tripping democracy — again? —Dr Mohammad Taqi



Benazir Bhutto wrote extensively about reconciliation between the Islamic world and the west. Unfortunately, she did not live to see it materialise. But even before that she had started a rapprochement with Mian Nawaz Sharif and had outlined a roadmap for it too

http://tinyurl.com/25byw2q

I write these lines on the evening of December 27, 2010 at exactly the same time when Benazir Bhutto breathed her last, three years ago. Her martyrdom remains one of those immense tragedies where one cannot forget the place where one was or the thoughts that crossed one’s mind upon receiving the tragic news.

I was visiting Lahore to see Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan who was under house arrest at the time, with his residence having been designated a sub-jail. Thanks to his family, I managed to slip past the police to see him for almost an hour-long session in his living room. After seeing Barrister sahib, I was ushered back to his law chambers next to the residence. But that is not really what I wish to reminisce about here. Walking into his office, I heard his family and associates talking about a bomb blast at the PPP’s Liaquat Bagh rally and that perhaps Benazir Bhutto had succumbed. It was the dark, cold, blood-soaked evening of December 27, 2007. And I clearly remember the first thought that passed my mind upon hearing the heartrending news.

It was almost like a flashback and relegating the hectic talk around me to the background, I thought of the first time I saw Benazir Bhutto and the first words I heard from her. It was at her mammoth rally at the Cunningham (Jinnah) Park in Peshawar circa May 1986. Peshawar was her second or third stopover after returning to Pakistan from exile in April that year. The news of her historic welcome at Lahore had already reached far and wide. As a young worker of the Movement for the Restoration for Democracy (MRD), I had decided along with my other colleagues from the Pashtun nationalist and progressive parties that we would attend the PPP rally. None of us was a member of the PPP or its students’ wing but having developed a great working relationship with the PPP under the aegis of the MRD, we came in hordes, and early. The rally was scheduled to start around 2:00 pm or so but we came in at 10:00 am only to find that the park was already packed. But Benazir Bhutto’s procession did not arrive till very late in the evening. But it is not even the size of the procession or the magnitude of the rally that I wish to remember. Benazir Bhutto’s first words from that stage were in Pashto: “Za za, Zia za” (Zia must go). The predominantly Pashtun audience immediately bonded with her and erupted in a chorus of ‘Za za, Zia za, za za, Zia za’, calling upon the military dictator Ziaul Haq to go, to leave, to vanish from the political scene. Hearing the news of her death, this is the political statement I remembered hearing from Benazir Bhutto as if it was yesterday.

But did the ghost of Ziaul Haq’s Islamo-fascism ever leave us? Did that ‘go Zia go’ slogan ever materialise? The stark, unfortunate reality is no, it did not. The birds of the Ziaist feather are flocking together again, nay, political vultures are hovering over the current PPP government. They always do. After those 1986 rallies, Zia was forced to cobble together a king’s party. He created his version of the Muslim League and many, including the current prime minister, hopped on to that anti-Bhutto bandwagon.

As a party, that particular Muslim League was not a winning horse on its own but bringing together the Bhutto-haters from across the political spectrum became the establishment’s favourite trick to either keep the PPP out of power or to dislodge its governments, which it has managed to form despite all odds. No one could have put it better than the senior columnist and friend Kamran Shafi who had told the television anchor Nasim Zehra: “Fauj jamhooriyat ko thibbiyan laga rahi hai” (the army keeps trying to trip democracy over). Nothing sums up the relationship of the Pakistani establishment with the left-of-centre political parties, especially the PPP better.

The establishment’s inherent mistrust of the PPP remains entrenched largely in the latter’s popular roots and, to an extent, in both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto’s maverick style of leadership. Even when the shadows of political adjustments or reconciliation with the establishment have lurked over the PPP’s coming to power, the former remained deeply suspicious of the PPP leadership and feared their independent streak.

Over the last decade, the establishment has included Mian Nawaz Sharif in the list of the leaders it fears. The reason simply being that with a reasonable mass following, the politicians draw political legitimacy from the consent of those governed and tend to free themselves of the dependence on the establishment. This independence — however small it might be — is unpalatable for the deep state because unlike politicians it has no other way to seek political legitimacy. Even the most brutal martial law regimes ultimately had to seek the fig-leaf of rubber-stamp parliaments, ‘mandates’ from the Supreme Court or doctored referenda. No matter how strong the ruling establishment might be, its desire to rule (directly) is eventually incongruent with the nature of the modern nation state.

This fact is not completely lost on the Pakistani establishment but unable to reconcile to this reality, it continues to attempt every so often to manufacture dissent against the democratically elected dispensations. Its allies — with some variation in names and faces — in such attempts to trip democracy remain the usual parasites like the MQM, JUI, JI, PML-Q and Imran Khan. Fortunately, Mian Nawaz Sharif and his PML are way past such blatant intrigues and over the term of the present set-up have shown political maturity that has kept many adventurists at bay.

Benazir Bhutto wrote extensively about reconciliation between the Islamic world and the west. Unfortunately, she did not live to see it materialise. But even before that she had started a rapprochement with Mian Nawaz Sharif and had outlined a roadmap for it too. On the eve of Benazir Bhutto’s third death anniversary, the beat of the political war-drums is getting louder. Nothing would put a damper on those yearning for snap polls, in-house change, benevolent dictatorship or the ‘Chinese model’, except a robust revival of the PPP-PML-N partnership. Benazir Bhutto knew that Zia’s ghost lurks under the surface of such proposals. She would have wanted the PPP and the PML-N to stick together post-haste or prepare to be tripped over, along with democracy — again.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

The Pamir Knot and beyond

Daily Times	Thursday, December 23, 2010

COMMENT: The Pamir Knot and beyond —Dr Mohammad Taqi

http://tinyurl.com/26zcb9d

 

There is nothing really ideological or fraternal about the Chinese investments in Pakistan, as some Pakistani newspapers would like us to believe. Interestingly, while the Pakistani media has a knack for comparing everything to India, it has really remained mum over premier Jiabao’s visit to Delhi

The relationship between the US and Pakistani intelligence agencies appears to be moving from playing uneasy footsie to a fairly sordid affair. The blowing of the CIA’s Islamabad station chief’s cover, allegedly at the behest of the host country’s spooks, has not gone down well with the US. That this happened on the eve of the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s much-trumpeted visit to Pakistan raises a question if Pakistan is using grandpa Wen to help fend off the ‘big bully’ US.

The Chinese leader’s visit, in turn, came on the heels of the US strategic review of the Afghan war chiding Pakistan and asking it to do more to fight the Islamist terrorists operating from within its borders. This review has not set any benchmarks — at least publicly — to gauge Pakistan’s success in what is being demanded of it. Additionally, President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defence Secretary Robert Gates have reiterated in separate statements their concern about Pakistan’s role in the Afghan war.

Wen Jiabao obviously did not disappoint his hosts, and speaking to the joint session of the Pakistani parliament said what they really wanted to hear: “Pakistan was at the front of the international fight against terrorism and made big sacrifices and important contributions, which were obvious to all. The international community should affirm that and give great support as well as respect the path of development chosen by Pakistan. The fight against terrorism should not focus on specific religions or ethnic groups, but rather on eradicating the root factors breeding terrorism.”

While appearing to be a shot in the arm for the Pakistani regional policy, Mr Jiabao’s speech reinforces what is already known about Sino-Pak relations and the Chinese ambitions in the second decade of the 21st century. The Pakistani policy planners, especially those directly or indirectly associated with its ruling establishment, take a vicarious pride in the strides China has made and tend to believe that in the coming decade it would surpass the US as a global power.

However, the Chinese quest to revive the land-based Silk Route and develop jumping boards to Africa like the Gwadar port, point to its significant handicap in overcoming its geographical limitations. Resource-hungry China might take more than 10 years to develop a navy to be competitive with South Korea and Japan-supported US, even in the Pacific Rim. It is therefore, imperative for China to develop cheap and relatively direct access to resources, especially fossil fuels, from Central Asia, the Persian Gulf and Africa.

There is nothing really ideological or fraternal about the Chinese investments in Pakistan, as some Pakistani newspapers would like us to believe. Interestingly, while the Pakistani media has a knack for comparing everything to India, it has really remained mum over premier Jiabao’s visit to Delhi. A right-wing contemporary in its editorial praising China for its ‘stellar words and deeds’ vis-à-vis Pakistan opted to black-out the fact that just days ago the Chinese leader was quoting from the Upanishads, eulogising Mahatma Gandhi and buoyantly claiming Manmohan Singh’s friendship. With about $ 60 billion in exports, China has become India’s largest trading partner. By 2015, this sum is expected to rise to around a whopping $ 100 billion. The $ 30 billion of Chinese investment in Pakistan over the next five years does not look that massive after all. The point remains that it is the confluence of economic and geo-strategic interests — not words from scriptures or leaders — that dictate the Chinese or any other nation’s interest in Pakistan and for that matter in India.

That China will expand manufacturing exchanges, develop the transport and (nuclear) energy sectors in Pakistan, and even do a currency swap agreement, is not moot. However, what it might not tolerate is very similar to the world demands about countering the terror networks operating in and out of Pakistan. For China to have viable, uninterrupted resource supply routes from Central Asia and through Pakistan, it has to have a western border free of the jihadist menace. To metamorphose from a global moneylender to a global power, China will be confronting the question of how to tackle jihadism sooner than later. It may have saved the skins of the likes of General Hamid Gul — even at the UN level — but doing business in the global economy would entail China actually policing such characters rather than encouraging or protecting them.

The Chinese global interests, therefore, are more congruent with the US, and perhaps even India, than a Pakistani establishment with a jihadist mindset fossilised in the past. Internally, China is extremely sensitive about any socio-political upheavals that could pitch its impoverished central and western provinces against the affluent coastal regions and potentially lead to the unrest prevalent on the eve of Chairman Mao’s revolution. Issues like Tibet and Uighur autonomy are thus taken quite seriously, and dealt with harshly, by the Chinese. Moreover, China’s status as the world’s ATM machine is hugely dependent on its trade with the US and western consumer societies. While it would love to see the Pamir Knot and northern Silk Road revived with economic vigour, China would not be interested in undoing the Gordian knot of Afghanistan with the tip of its sword and neither would it give Pakistan a free hand to do so — a fact not lost on the Pak-Afghan policy planners in the US.

The New York Times (NYT) report that the US military seeks to expand raids inside Pakistan appears to be part of this seemingly endless game of analysing the projection of power, perception of strength or weakness and posturing of the geo-strategic players. Speaking to this writer, a CENTCOM spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Lawhorn cited the International Security Assistant Force statement, which categorically rejects the NYT report and claims everything to be hunky dory between the US and Pakistan: “There is absolutely no truth to reporting in the NYT...Cross-border coordination has and continues to disrupt and dismantle insurgent networks in select areas, with significant operations on both sides of the border removing large numbers of insurgent leaders and fighters.”

The last part of the statement is ambiguous about who exactly is conducting those raids but seems to indicate that for now the US planners have opted to ignore grandpa Wen’s words and innuendo in Pakistan. They seem to be focused more on the great-grandpa Hu Jintao’s Washington, DC visit next month.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

US Afghan war review

Daily Times Thursday, December 16, 2010

COMMENT: US Afghan war review —Dr Mohammad Taqi

The word victory has never featured in Mr Obama’s speeches in the Afghan context and is unlikely to pop up now. We will hear a lot from him about the build-hold-clear-stabilise-handover process and the long term US ‘commitment’, but there will be hardly any reference to nation-building or even sustained counterinsurgency

http://tinyurl.com/36u39go

US president Barack Obama will announce his annual review of the Afghan war today (December 16, 2010). A successful legal challenge to Mr Obama’s healthcare plan and hectic congressional activity to extend the Bush-era income tax cuts had pushed this review off the US media radar, but the death of the Special Representative Richard Holbrooke has managed to put it back in the news-cycle, at least for the time being. What was expected to be a low key affair will still remain a whimper but more questions are being asked about the shape of the things to come as a larger-than-life member of Mr Obama’s Pak-Afghan team made his exit from the diplomatic and world stage.

The Washington Post has reported that Mr Holbrooke’s last words, spoken to his surgeon, were: “You have got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” Incidentally, Mr Holbrooke’s surgeon happened to be a King Edward Medical College-educated Pakistani. Of course, neither the surgeon nor the common Pakistanis have much to do with the war in Afghanistan but given the Pakistani establishment’s massive involvement in favour of the Taliban, Mr Holbrooke’s last words seem almost surreal.

Mr Holbrooke, however, was not the only one calling for ending the war in Afghanistan. On the eve of the Afghan war review, a 25-member group of experts on Afghanistan, which includes respected names like Ahmed Rashid and Professor Antonio Giustozzi, has published an open letter to Mr Obama, calling on him to authorise a formal negotiation with the Afghan Taliban and seek a political settlement. However, buried in the text of the 1,030-word long plea to talk to the Taliban is the key sentence: “With Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, it is not realistic to bet on a military solution.”

Mr Obama is very likely to claim progress in his statement (no speech is expected) and declare that the strategy he announced a year ago at the West Point Military Academy is working. However, he has very little to show in terms of tangible progress, especially in dealing with the continuous Pakistani intervention in Afghanistan. He may reiterate what he had told the US troops on his recent visit to Afghanistan: “We said we were going to break the Taliban’s momentum. That’s what you’re doing.” The idea being that the use of military force to change the political landscape of Afghanistan will continue as planned. The only addition anticipated is a prominent mention of the year 2014 as the withdrawal date for the NATO troops and security handover to the Afghan national forces. But the start of the troops’ drawdown in July 2011 will still remain as one of the objectives, albeit more as a rest stop rather than a milestone.

However, it is erroneous to make a claim about breaking the Taliban momentum during the winter months, which is literally the ‘down time’ of the war. During the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s one could tell by the drop in price of a Kalashnikov in Peshawar that the winter lull in fighting was about to start. But then again nobody claimed Mr Obama to be an expert on Afghanistan.

In fact Mr Holbrooke, along with his boss Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, had vociferously criticised the president when the latter was putting together his Afghan strategy, commenting: “It cannot work.” However, all of them and General David Petraeus did sign on to Mr Obama’s flawed plan. At the time I had noted in an article ‘The Alsatia of FATA’ written for the Aryana Institute that “the American and NATO planners need a paradigm shift in their approach to handling the mess in FATA. Without setting up metrics for specifically measuring the Pakistan Army’s efforts in dismantling its jihadist assets, the US will be setting itself up for failure.”

The White House is saying that Mr Obama will talk about the al Qaeda’s senior leadership, Afghanistan and Pakistan and, more specifically, about increasing cooperation with the Pakistani government. How Mr Obama fleshes up this last agenda item is what would determine the future shape of things in Afghanistan — and Pakistan. I agree with Ahmed Rashid and Professor Giustozzi et al that with Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, a military solution is not possible. However, I maintain that without the US confronting the Pakistani establishment on its continued support for the Taliban, a political solution to the Afghan imbroglio will remain elusive as well. Mr Holbrooke had told Bob Woodward that he saw a 1 in 10 chance of a good outcome in Afghanistan. I would say that it is a safe bet to make it a 1 in 1,000 chance.

The word victory has never featured in Mr Obama’s speeches in the Afghan context and is unlikely to pop up now. We will hear a lot from him about the build-hold-clear-stabilise-handover process and the long term US ‘commitment’, but there will be hardly any reference to nation-building or even sustained counterinsurgency. At the risk of eating crow tomorrow, I submit that there would not be any reference, even in fine print, to setting up any benchmarks for measuring the Pakistani establishment’s cooperation in helping evolve a political solution to the Afghan morass.

With Mr Holbrooke’s demise, General Petraeus will be lugging many aspects of coordination with the civilians in both Afghanistan and Pakistan in the short term. He, along with Robert Gates, has a much more realistic view of the ground realities than their commander-in-chief. In fact, the Lisbon agreement on the 2014 withdrawal timetable was very much a result of their efforts. They are also cognisant of the fact that while al Qaeda has been neutralised in Afghanistan for now, even a semblance of a jihadist victory will effectively revive the Islamists’ fortunes not only there but in Pakistan as well. In fact a US debacle in Afghanistan will give the turban, jeans or khaki-clad Pakistani jihadists a morale boost that will dwarf the post-Soviet withdrawal euphoria.

Like the 25 experts on Afghanistan, Mr Obama’s Afghan war review is likely to miss the potential logarithmic growth of jihadism in Pakistan that a negotiated settlement with the Taliban will entail. This will leave Pakistan’s moderate voices and the centre-left political forces out in the cold. While Petraeus et al will provide a cushion of time to the Pakistani political forces, counting on the US would be a mistake that the latter will regret at their peril. What they need is a Pak-Afghan policy review of their own.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

Times of universal deceit

Daily Times Thursday,
December 09, 2010

COMMENT: Times of universal deceit —Dr Mohammad Taqi

http://tinyurl.com/28rhxot

The US government has now ordered all its employees to stay away from the WikiLeaks website even on their home computers and not read what the government still considers classified information. Big Brother keeps digging itself deeper into a hole


“Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death” —Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984.

Last week’s WikiLeaks had a distinct Orwellian aura to it. One could almost hear the 1984 theme music playing with O’Brien asking, “What are your feelings about Big Brother?” “I hate him,” replied Winston Smith. And then, of course, the all too familiar retort from O’Brien, “You must love him. It is not enough to obey him. You must love him.”

But, apparently, thoughtcrime has been committed. Some, who did not love Big Brother, decided to disobey him too. The 250,000 secret diplomatic cables started becoming public, one bagful at a time. Big Brother, of course, is writhing in agony because the commoners did not heed its warnings invoking sacrosanct national security or the presumed disruption of the world order. However, the agony is not just of defeat but is also compounded by the fact that “one man with a laptop” and a private, first-class sergeant carry far more credibility with the public around the globe than the super or quasi-superpowers and their clients. Prometheus has stolen the fire from Zeus and has handed it over to the mortals.

The humpty dumpty of the official truths that these diplomats and the governments that they worked for and with had so painstakingly created has taken a great fall. The common citizens feel vindicated, as they had known all along that the gospel of official truth is nothing more than a mirage they were supposed to believe blindly. All the king’s men and women have now set out to put their humpty dumpty back together again — through whatever means it might take.

What is still lost on the government functionaries around the world, and especially US officials, is that this trust deficit between them and the public did not develop overnight. Whether it was lying about the Hiroshima bombing, overthrowing Iran’s Dr Mossadegh, the slaughter of thousands of Chileans including Dr Allende, creating the Afghan mujahideen monster, the Iran-Contra scandal, lies about WMDs and stage-managing the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue, the list of the skulduggeries perpetrated on the world is endless. Decades of disinformation, half-truths and lies have contributed to a credibility gap between the words and actions of governments, especially the US government, which is now wider than the Grand Canyon.

What also remains lost on the US government and those abetting its campaign against the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is that going after him on grounds as flimsy as broken condoms (the charge against Assange being that he allegedly proceeded with sex, despite protests from his previously consensual partners, after protection broke down), is eroding whatever little credibility they might have left.

From the outset it became clear to most observers that the US literally has no case against Mr Assange and would very likely resort to pressing Sweden to pursue the alleged sexual harassment charges against him. Last week, the Voice of America’s Pashto service Deewa Radio conducted a special on WikiLeaks and whether they constituted espionage or journalism. Special Representative Richard Holbrooke recorded this ‘exclusive’ observation for the telecast: “The WikiLeaks is very unfortunate. This is an appalling breach of security by whoever did it — we think we know who it is — but whoever did it violated his oath of office to the US and committed an act for which he will be charged to the full extent of the law.”

The host then asked me and other participants to comment on Holbrooke’s remark. My take was, and remains, that the US does not stand a chance in hell to prosecute Assange under the present US and international laws and that Richard ‘the bulldozer’ Holbrooke was alluding to pulverising sergeant Bradley Manning — the little guy who allegedly disobeyed Big Brother.

How much more Orwellian can it get? Apparently it can. The US government has now ordered all its employees to stay away from the WikiLeaks website even on their home computers and not read what the government still considers classified information. Big Brother keeps digging itself deeper into a hole.

At the time of this writing, Julian Assange is being remanded in British police custody, after being denied bail in the Swedish case referred to above. Republican Mike Huckabee wants Assange assassinated, a few others want the use of military force against him, and Sarah Palin wants him “hunted down like Osama bin Laden”. What these right-wing hacks keep forgetting is that, despite being subjected to decades of controlled media and manufactured truths, the world at large retains a voracious appetite for the unvarnished truth. Call it left-wing, name it anarchism or brand it treasonous, upwards of four million new-user hits on the British daily The Guardian’s website on day one of the cables’ release show that the people do not swallow the official truth. Even if nonsense is shoved down their throats, they puke it up the first chance they get.

When The New York Times had confidently reported ‘No Radioactivity in Hiroshima’ and all journalists had been ushered to see the Japanese kneel before General McArthur, Wilfred Burchett was reporting — through cable — in his landmark story for London’s Daily Express ‘The Atomic Plague’ that more than just a bomb blast had caused the deaths at Hiroshima. The US censor came down hard on Burchett and vilified him and any paper that reproduced the report. We now know that it was the first report that documented the radiation fallout and the nuclear holocaust.

Henry Kissinger used to say that states could not be held to the same moral standards as ordinary citizens. Many officials around the world apparently continue to subscribe to his thought that not only are they above any moral standards, they also have a privilege to stomp on them secretly and deny such dealings publicly. But the common man clearly subscribes to Claud Cockburn’s proviso of “do not believe anything until it is officially denied”.

George Orwell had observed: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” While Assange may not be a revolutionary himself, he has revolutionised the way tech-media has forced the traditional media to take note of information that may otherwise have ended up being much like The New York Times reporting of the Hiroshima bombing. Thoughtcrime remains the perfect antidote to universal deceit.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

Blasphemy laws: what does the Quran say?

Daily Times

Thursday December 2,2010

COMMENT: Blasphemy laws: what does the Quran say? —Dr Mohammad Taqi

http://tinyurl.com/2fqhdbv

 

It is a travesty of justice that a verse dealing with war, sedition and rebellion is invoked to punish what may not even qualify as theocratic or religious dissent. In fact, Article 295 is not just a travesty of justice, it is an iftira (slander) against the Almighty and Prophet (PBUH) as it attributes to them what they never mandated

 

حق جلوہ گر ز طرز  بیان محمد ہست

آرے کلام حق بہ زبان محمد ہست 

غالب ثناۓ خواجہ بہ یزداں گزاشتیم 

کاں ذات پاک مرتبہ دان محمد ہست 

( غالب )

“The Truth expresses its grace through Mohammad’s [PBUH] expression,

Indeed the Truth speaks through Mohammad’s [PBUH] word,

Ghalib, therefore, I leave Mohammad’s [PBUH] praise to God,

Almighty alone can understand the exalted status of Mohammad [PBUH].”



While the Lahore High Court (LHC) is restraining the president from pardoning Aasia Bibi in a blasphemy case and a federal minister has vowed to not allow any change in the blasphemy laws, why do I quote Ghalib’s praise for the Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)? For starters, Ghalib remains one of the foremost secularists that the Indian subcontinent has ever produced and this na’at (hymn) — perhaps amongst the finest written in any language — goes to show that it is perfectly alright for the secularists to occasionally talk about matters of faith, including their own faith. In fact, it is imperative to do so when a fog of confusion is deliberately created around faith by bigots of all shades.

Moreover, the Holy Quran and Sunnah, ostensibly, form the premise of Article 295 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and, without revisiting what they actually say about blasphemy, the only challenge that might be successful against this law would be to have its procedural aspects modified. The Quran and Sunnah indeed are the two material sources of the shariah law, but were eventually supplemented by a corpus of interpretation largely agreed upon by a majority of Muslim scholars (ijma) and deductive analogy (qiyas) to form the basis of Islamic jurisprudence.

In the first quoted verse, Ghalib is referring to the Holy Quran, which states: “That this (Quran) is indeed the speech of an illustrious messenger” (69:40) Ghalib’s last verse, of course, is the crux of a Sufi’s faith and, once again, alludes to the passages in the Quran where the Almighty showers praise on Mohammad (PBUH). I would point to one such verse: “Verily! We have seen the turning of your (Mohammad’s) face towards the heaven. Surely, We shall turn you to a Qiblah (prayer direction) that shall please you, so turn your face in the direction of Al-Masjid-al-Haram” (2:144). This is a unique verse; while the Quran and other holy books speak to what humans, including the prophets, must do to earn the pleasure (raza) of the Almighty, here Allah is doing something purely to earn the pleasure or raza of His Prophet (PBUH).

So is it possible then, that the Almighty, who has thus exalted the status of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), left us without any guidance on how to deal with speech or actions that attempt to disparage him? Could the Quran be silent on a matter of such grave importance? Have we been left to rely on the ijma and qiyas of the clerics who came some two centuries after the Prophet (PBUH)? Indeed not, but that is something that the ones after a poor woman’s scalp would have us believe. Let us consider Surah Al-Ahzab, verse 57:

“Lo! those who malign Allah and His messenger, Allah hath cursed them in the world and the Hereafter, and hath prepared for them the doom of the disdained.”

The Quran also mentions the most important case of blasphemy ever committed against Mohammad (PBUH). The Quran says in Surah Al-Massad:

“The power of Abu Lahab will perish, and he will perish. His wealth and gains will not exempt him. He will be plunged in flaming fire. And his wife, the wood-carrier, will have upon her neck a halter of palm-fibre.”

The common theme between the verses noted above is that, while the highest condemnation has been heaped on anyone reviling or attempting to revile the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and eternal damnation promised for the perpetrator, neither a direct order (amr) has been given to impart a punishment nor a set punishment prescribed — not even for Abu Lahab!

Let us also consider the Arabic terms used to describe blasphemy against God and the Prophet (PBUH). The Arabic words sabba (abuse, insult) and shatm (vilification) denote blasphemy and have been adopted in Persian and Urdu as well. It must be stated that the word shatm does not occur in the Quran at all while a derivative of sabba is used only in one verse and that too to proscribe the Muslims from hurling sabba on other people’s gods and deities (Chapter 6:108).

So where then are punishments like death or chopping limbs for blasphemy coming from? Usually, anecdotal reports are cited from the Hadith where the Prophet (PBUH) allegedly condoned the death or punishing of a blasphemer. However, for each such incident — usually reported on weak authority — there are two others where the Prophet (PBUH) tolerated and indeed pardoned insults against him. Not a single incident can be cited from the Sirah traditions where charges of blasphemy were filed, a trial held and the punishment meted out. Almost all proponents of severe or capital punishment for blasphemy, therefore, quote verse 33 of Surah Al-Maidah, in support of their argument:

“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter.”

It is a travesty of justice that a verse dealing with war, sedition and rebellion is invoked to punish what may not even qualify as theocratic or religious dissent. In fact, Article 295 is not just a travesty of justice, it is an iftira (slander) against the Almighty and Prophet (PBUH) as it attributes to them what they never mandated. The presidential pardon is most commendable in the current case and procedural changes to the blasphemy laws would be welcome.

However, Article 295 is repugnant to the Quran and Sunnah and, as long as it remains on the books, it will be a direct negation of the verse “Wama arsalnaka illa Rehmatan-lil-alameen” (We sent thee not, but as a Mercy for all creatures — 21:107). By not prescribing harsh penalties, the Almighty prevented this exalted status of Mohammad (PBUH) from being undermined; Ghalib was spot-on.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

Dirty dancing to the drone hum

Daily Times Thursday, November 25, 2010

COMMENT: Dirty dancing to the drone hum —Dr Mohammad Taqi


Both the proponents and opponents of the drone attacks agree that they are a tactic, not a strategy. There is little doubt that the campaign has successfully decapitated the senior Pakistani, Afghan and al Qaeda jihadist leadership and disrupted their movement, planning and training

http://tinyurl.com/2g8m9xa

This past weekend The Washington Post reported with an Islamabad dateline that the US has increased pressure on Pakistan to allow the CIA an expanded theatre for its unmanned aerial vehicles or drones operations inside Pakistan. Though hotly debated, the drone operations were not the newsworthy item in the story. The fact that instead of the ‘lawless tribal areas’, the US ‘appeal’ had focused on Quetta – the provincial capital of Balochistan – and its vicinity caught everyone’s immediate attention.

Analysts have since been debating whether the news item was a feeler to gauge the Pakistani official and public response to the possible attacks in or near Quetta or is a harbinger of the drones swooping down on a densely populated city. The news piece specifically mentions the members of the Quetta Shura of the Afghan Taliban as the potential targets.

The Quetta Shura has been in existence since 2003 when the Taliban leadership regrouped after the demise of their emirate in Afghanistan. It is the topmost tier of the Afghan Taliban leadership, consisting mostly of those who held cabinet, gubernatorial or military portfolios in the Taliban regime from 1996-2001. The Shura remains under the direct supervision of Mullah Omar, the doctrinal and political leader of the Taliban. (As an aside, one must note that while the man has nothing to do with spirituality in the commonly understood sense of the word, many western journalists insist – erroneously – on calling him the spiritual head of the Taliban.) It is a policy and decision-making entity dealing with both strategy and tactics. It appoints the shadow governors (waali), district administrators (uluswaal) and operational commanders, and even adjudicates criminal justice matters.

Now consider Quetta, which has a population of roughly one million people. But also of note is that the city is home to the Pakistan Army’s XII Corps, ISI regional headquarters, the Balochistan Frontier Corps, a robust army selection and recruitment centre and the Pakistan Air Force base Samungli. And last, but not the least, the Pakistan Army’s Command and Staff College, almost a required stepping stone to senior leadership in the army, is at Quetta.

Considering the massive cantonment that Quetta is, anyone familiar with the city’s grid plan and its post-1978 demographics would find it hard to believe that the head honchos of the Shura can move in or around the city without the knowledge of the security establishment. In addition, any movement of the Taliban to Karachi or northwards to South Waziristan is incomprehensible without the local authorities getting a whiff of it. It cannot be completely lost on the US planners that the Taliban cannot operate in Quetta without at least some local protection. What, then, is the US trying to achieve by threatening strikes in a major population centre?

In a situation where the US could not or would not use political, economic and full military means to resolve a major rift with Pakistan, it has chosen to continue relying on the use of limited force in well-circumscribed areas. These so-called discrete military operations carried out through Predator or Reaper drones are supposed to press Pakistan to act against the al Qaeda-Taliban sanctuaries in Quetta and FATA. But exactly how discreet are these drone operations?

For starters, the Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman in his response to the Post article has conceded that there are certain red lines that the US cannot cross. He also referred to the ‘boxes’ (aerial or geographical demarcations) over which the drones operate. More important is a small technical detail that the drones can operate successfully only when unopposed. They can be shot down by fighter jets with relative ease; Iraq’s MiG-25s did that circa 1999. It all points to an undeclared, uneasy and reluctant understanding between the US and Pakistan about the drone campaign, which George Bush also mentions in his recently released memoir, Decision Points.

Instead of publicly confronting the Pakistani security establishment for harbouring the three major components of the Afghan militancy, i.e. the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network and Hizb-e-Islami (Gulbuddin), the US has opted to up the ante through unattributed news reports. When reached by this writer, the media contact persons at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and the CENTCOM offices in Tampa, Florida, declined to comment on The Washington Post story. What the Post report really did was point towards the hypocritical moves in the dirty dancing going on between the US and Pakistan for almost a decade now.

Both the proponents and opponents of the drone attacks agree that they are a tactic, not a strategy. There is little doubt that the campaign has successfully decapitated the senior Pakistani, Afghan and al Qaeda jihadist leadership and disrupted their movement, planning and training, thus resulting in significant execution setbacks for them in the Pak-Afghan region and around the world. It is also pertinent to note that research led by the Pashtun intelligentsia has debunked the myth of high civilian casualties perpetuated by a pro-jihadist media and some bleeding-heart liberals in the West.

Under pressure from its military commanders in Afghanistan, the US political leadership has to act. But like the original anti-Taliban campaign of 2001, they want to take the easy route and do it at a minimum human, dollar, and political cost. This approach, which involves back door dealings with the Pakistani establishment, did not give durable results then and will fail again. The US must remember that the only time their ‘allies’ make even a half-hearted move against the jihadists, is in the face of overwhelming public pressure, e.g. in Swat. Reluctant to act for two years, the army undertook the operation after intense public, media and political pressure. There is no shortcut to developing a political consensus about the strategy.

Discreet military operations cannot deliver strategic results or induce a paradigm shift in the Pakistani establishment’s thinking. If the public opinion reaching us directly, especially from the Pakhtunkhwa and FATA, is anything to go by, the people want the drone campaign to be legally regularised and the political leadership to take ownership. Without helping the Pakistani political leaders stand up to the India-centric brass, the US risks not only tactical failure but also a strategic debacle in Afghanistan. The Pakistani establishment has set the US up to keep playing whack-a-mole with the jihadists. Drone attacks in Quetta is one such whack that must be avoided.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

The missing link in drone debate

Viewpoint
Online issue # 27
November 19,2010

http://tinyurl.com/2b6vhtt


The missing link in drone debate

by Dr. Mohammad Taqi |
Politicians have been coerced by the Army to publicly condemn the drone attacks and parliamentary resolutions were used to indicate to the US the purported public outrage. However, privately, many are appreciative of the drone campaign

With about a hundred drone attacks this year and roughly two hundred since June 2004, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, the discussion over this issue does not seem to go away. In fact, since David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum last year, Peter Bergen this year and Hamid Karzai this week, weighed in against the use of drones – at least under the current ‘rules’- the debate has only heated up.

Between 2004 and 2007 there were about ten attacks by the CIA-operated Predator drones but the number rose exponentially after George W. Bush commissioned the CIA to conduct action against the al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies in FATA. However, the covert nature of the program and the murkiness around the understanding regarding these attacks, between the United States and Pakistan , more specifically the Pakistani Army, continues to give rise to endless questions and myths. In his recently published book, Decision Points, George Bush notes:

“By the middle of 2008, I was tired of reading intelligence reports about extremist sanctuaries in Pakistan . I thought back to a meeting I’d had with Special Forces in Afghanistan in 2006.

‘Are you getting everything you need?’ I asked.

One SEAL raised his hand and said, ‘No, sir.’

I wondered what his problem might be.

‘Mr. President,’ he said, ‘we need permission to go kick some ass inside Pakistan .’

I understood the urgency of the threat and wanted to do something about it. But on this issue Musharraf’s judgment had been well founded… no democracy can tolerate violations of its sovereignty.

I looked for other ways to reach into the tribal areas. The Predator, as unmanned aerial vehicle, was capable of conducting video surveillance and firing laser-guided bombs. I authorized the intelligence community to turn the pressure on the extremists. Many of the details of our actions remain classified…”

This brief anecdotal section of Bush’s memoir gives some insight into the genesis, success and the criticism of the drone operations. The issues of sovereignty and the alleged civilian casualties remain perennial favorites with the Pakistani right wing and the international left. The common intuitive response to a foreign power’s actions in what is otherwise considered sovereign territory is usually that of condemnation but the militant menace in FATA significantly changes the equation.

Minds entrenched in the notions of Westphalian and international legal sovereignty are inclined to denounce, in a knee-jerk manner, any violation of the international geographical borders or presence of an external authority. While it may, prima facie, appear a reasonable approach but it ignores that legitimacy and authority – two key components of the modern concept of sovereignty- are not enough by themselves to support a nation-state’s claim to sovereignty. The sine qua non of sovereignty is the ability and willingness of the entity claiming such sovereignty to exercise control and establish its writ over its territories and prevent them from being used against other sovereign entities.

The Pakistani state’s de facto policy since the 1973 has been to use the FATA as the point d'appui for launching its Islamist militant proxies against Afghanistan . Faced with the post-9/11 predicament of how to preserve its jihadist assets – then on the run from Afghanistan- the Pakistani security establishment opted to use the FATA to provide such sanctuary. The Pakistan army had retracted its Taliban and Al Qaeda allies into FATA right after the Tora Bora battle and ushered them through Kurram agency into Orakzai and the North and South Waziristan agencies, where they thrive to date.

The traditional tribal elders-led Maliki system of governance however, was a hindrance in the movement, settlement and operations of these jihadist forces. The Pakistani state, therefore, aided and abetted the systematic elimination of the traditional power structures of the Maliki system between 2002 and 2004 and hundreds of tribal elders were killed by the jihadists. Territory and authority was either ceded to or held jointly with panoply of jihadists ranging from the Haqqani network in North Waziristan to local thugs-turned-jihadists like Mangal Bagh in Khyber Agency.

The operations against the US and ISAF troops in Afghanistan were planned and executed from the bridgeheads used by jihadists throughout FATA. Where the Pashtun tribes resisted the jihadists e.g. in the Kurram agency, the state sided with the jihadists against its own people. The Pakistani establishment literally created a Somalia-like situation in the FATA where its favored warlords ruled the roost. What that navy SEAL was referring to was true from his vantage point but it was important from the Pakistani people’s standpoint too.

While the ideological heart of jihadism throbbed throughout Punjab and its brains resided in Rawalpindi , its execution arm remained active in the FATA. Hundreds of bombings across Pakistan with the resultant death toll in the thousands were planned and launched from the tribal areas. On the face of it, the covariation between the Pakistani state’s proclaimed authority and the effective control of its territories remains nonexistent. But the state has actually been perpetuating a massive fraud on its people and the world at large, as it continued to remain in bed with the jihadists, who now exercised authority on behalf of the security establishment.

Under pressure from its military commanders in Afghanistan , the US political leadership had to act. But like the original anti-Taliban campaign of 2001, they tried to take the easy route and do it at a minimum dollar and human cost. Instead of openly confronting Pakistan they opted to press, appease and buy off the junta at the helm in Islamabad . What should have been a declared joint operation with publicized and documented status of forces agreement (SOFA) with Pakistan became a legally and politically tainted back-street gig.

Musharraf at the head of the army, as Bush notes in his book, was successful in scaring the Americans away from not only direct action but also to sufficiently muddle the venture, making it nearly impossible to evolve a public opinion favorable to drone attacks. However, not willing to risk a US incursion into FATA, Pakistan reluctantly acquiesced to the drones operating from places like Shamsi airbase inside Pakistan . But the buffer created by the absence of a (publicized) legal instrument of understanding between the Pakistan and the US outlining the parameters governing the drone operations has served the Pakistan Army well, while the Americans and the Pakistani people who support the drone attacks are readily painted as evil.

The Pakistani politicians from across the political divide have been coerced by the Army to publicly condemn the drone attacks and parliamentary resolutions were used to indicate to the US the purported public outrage. However, privately, many of the center-left politicians, including from the ruling parties, are appreciative of the drone campaign but are reluctant to say that openly. This attitude of the civilian leadership has weakened the case for pursuing the jihadists through drones or other armed means. It also sends a mixed message to the US military and political leadership who then tend to rely more upon the Pakistan Army.

A corpus of research- predominantly through the efforts of the Pashtun intelligentsia- has emerged over the last two years that debunks the myths of civilian casualties and public outcry in FATA over the drone attacks. However, to let the intellectuals do all the heavy lifting on this issue is somewhat unfair and also has its limitations. Without the political leadership taking a lead in shaping the narrative in favor of sustained action against the militant sanctuaries, the public opinion could be swayed with planted news and slanted views. We have seen that, despite claims to the contrary, the Pakistani mainstream media remains beholden to the Army and whether it is the Kerry-Lugar Law or NATO incursion over Mata Sangar, it sings in chorus with them. However, when politicians speak – on record – it is hard for the media and the world powers to ignore their concerns.

It is important not just for the US to hold the Pakistani Army’s feet to fire but for the Pakistani politicians to clearly state their position on the subject of drone attacks in FATA. Americans have the luxury to pack up and leave but most Pakistani politicians do not. They must seek a formal and public state policy on the drones operations preferably through the parliament. With the Pakistan Army’s reluctance to move against the jihadists holding the FATA hostage, the Predator drones remain the most viable option against terror. Only a bold political stance can clear the fog over the FATA skies; the politicians must speak up to regularize the drone campaign.

US mid-terms and Af-Pak policy: what lies ahead

http://tinyurl.com/2aqcdth

Daily Times
Thursday, November 11, 2010

COMMENT: US mid-terms and Af-Pak policy: what lies ahead —Dr Mohammad Taqi


The mid-term defeat has shattered Obama’s walking-on-water myth. He, therefore, will remain engaged with India, the Central Asian Republics and even Iran, as the counterpoise to Pakistan. The Pakistani establishment obviously does not like this scenario and that is the catch-22 for the US


The dust has started to settle on the US mid-term elections. With 239 seats, the Republican Party has gained control of the US House of Representatives while the Democrats have managed to hang on to a majority in the Senate with 53 seats. Out of the 37 state gubernatorial races, the Republican candidates have won 29, including 10 key swing states.

For more than half the US electorate, the economy was the top priority followed by the related issue of the budget deficit. The education, healthcare and immigration reforms were next on the voters’ mind, with environment and energy trailing way behind. While Mr Barack Obama may have literally saved the faltering world of capitalism from demise, the gains were not tangible enough for the common man to have voted for the president’s party.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the national security issues, including foreign wars and homeland security, were mentioned neither by the voters nor the candidates. Indeed, the words ‘war’ or ‘conflict’ did not feature in the election-day network television coverage at all. November 2, 2010 showed the wisdom of the dictum: ‘All politics is local,’ But around the world, and especially in the Pak-Afghan region, people and pundits alike are trying to make sense of what lies ahead in terms of US foreign policy, especially how it projects hard power.

The US constitution provides for both the executive and the legislative branches of the government to have a share in drafting foreign policy. Perhaps the best interpretation of these constitutional parameters came from Edward S Corwin, who wrote: “What the constitution does, and all that it does [sic], is to confer on the president certain powers capable of affecting our foreign relations, and certain other powers of the same general kind on the Senate, and still other such powers on Congress; but which of these organs shall have the decisive and final voice in determining the course of the American nation is left for events to resolve.”

However, historically, US presidents have considered and projected foreign policy as their domain. Presidents like Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan before him had reinvented themselves by literally going extrovert after election defeats at home. The US presidents have constitutional powers to formulate foreign policy in a considered manner through policy statements and implementation, proposing legislation and negotiating international agreements and treaties. Alternatively, a reactive — but still constitutional — foreign policy measure could come as a response to a world event or an altered dynamic in events already underway.

Obama has roughly 13 months to lay out his foreign policy agenda, before the Iowa Caucus in January 2012 kick-starts the presidential election campaign. Going by the recent election results and the way he has been walking on eggshells during the present tour, it seems highly unlikely that Obama will make any monumental independent decisions in the foreign policy realm. While trying to prevent any unexpected events from forcing his hand, the US president will strive to stay the course in various hotspots around the world, including Pakistan’s both frontiers.

The change of guard in the House of Representatives or the addition of a few Senate seats to the Republican tally will have negligible bearing on how the president projects both hard and soft power. The most important landmark in the congressional oversight of the current foreign policy will be the review of the Afghan war next month. In all likelihood, the policies and plans presented originally in 2008 — including the drawdown date of July 2011 — will be endorsed again without any major changes. The military side of the effort would continue to be funded but there remains a potential for political arm wrestling when it comes to financing the civilian projects, especially in Afghanistan, due to alleged corruption issues.

The same review will also focus on Pakistan’s role in the Afghan imbroglio. That Pakistan is essential for US success and ultimately peace in Afghanistan is understood clearly by both Obama and the Congress. However, the perception — and to a large extent the reality — remains that Pakistan continues to come to the negotiating table with its suicide jacket on. If — and a mighty if that is — Obama can miraculously manage to talk Pakistan’s establishment out of its delusional belief in its zero-sum regional policy, that alone may be sufficient to earn him immortality in history. Alas, the mid-term defeat has shattered Obama’s walking-on-water myth. He, therefore, will remain engaged with India, the Central Asian Republics and even Iran, as the counterpoise to Pakistan. The Pakistani establishment obviously does not like this scenario and that is the catch-22 for the US.

Around this time last year, Obama took a page out of Mikhail Gorbachev’s ‘get out of Afghanistan’ manual. To allay Pakistani concerns regarding India, he may have to revisit his handbook. A key issue at the 1988 Geneva Accords was how the various powers continued to arm their proxies in Afghanistan. George Shultz, the then US Secretary of State, had noted at the signing of the accord: “It is our right to provide military aid to the resistance. We are ready to exercise that right. But we are prepared to meet restraint with restraint.” He was alluding to what became known as negative symmetry. Unless Obama is willing to take on the Pakistani establishment militarily, establishing negative symmetry, i.e. getting all regional powers, including India, to lay off Afghanistan, may be his only realistic chance at enduring peace in that hapless country.

With the Republican victories across the board, especially in the swing states, a plethora of domestic problems that are not likely to go away, winning a UN Security Council seat for India or using trade agreements with it to force China into playing ball on currency issues, are unlikely to give Obama an edge in his re-election bid. Even an unlikely breakthrough in the stalled Middle East talks is not going to be of much help when all politics again become local. Come 2012, Obama would not be able to afford a disaster in or originating from the Pak-Afghan region. President Carter had learned something similar at his peril. What seems now like a long shot in the Pak-Afghan region could become Obama’s foreign policy legacy. But does he have any fire left in his belly?

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

Kurram: the forsaken FATA

http://tinyurl.com/36awez2

Daily Times
Thursday, November 04, 2010

COMMENT: Kurram: the forsaken FATA —Dr Mohammad Taqi

The flat out refusal of the Kurramis, who have lost over 1,200 souls since April 2007, to cede their territory and pride to the jihadists and their masters has thrown a wrench in the latter’s immediate plans. Having failed to dupe the citizenry, the establishment has elected to bring them to their knees by force

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani visited a tribal agency last week but he did not tender an apology to some local families, whose dear ones — including children — were killed by the Pakistan Army gunship helicopters this past September. Not that one was holding one’s breath for the general’s regrets but it would have presented some semblance of fairness given the Pakistan Army’s demands for apology and furore over the NATO choppers killing its troops in the same region during the same month. Well, life is not fair as it is, especially for the people of Kurram — the third largest Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA).

The crime of these civilians, killed by their own army, was that they had been resisting the influx of foreign terrorists into their territory. Despite the claims put forth by the military about the NATO incursion, it is clear now that the latter had attacked the members of the Haqqani terrorist network who were using the village of Mata Sangar in Kurram to attack the ISAF posts in neighbouring Khost, Afghanistan. Reportedly, the de facto leader of the Haqqani network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, was in the region at the time of the NATO attack.

What has also become increasingly clear is that the Pakistani establishment is trying its level best to relocate its Haqqani network assets to the Kurram Agency in anticipation of an operation that it would have to start — under pressure from the US — in the North Waziristan Agency (NWA) sooner rather than later. This is precisely what the establishment had intended to do when it said that the NWA operation would be conducted in its own timeframe. The Taliban onslaught on the Shalozan area of Kurram, northeast of Mata Sangar, in September 2010 was part of this tactical rearrangement. When the local population reversed the Taliban gains in the battle for the village Khaiwas, the army’s gunships swooped down on them to protect its jihadist partners.

This is not the first time that the security establishment has attempted to use the Kurram Agency to provide transit or sanctuary to its Afghan Taliban allies. It did so during the so-called jihad of the 1980s and 1990s when the geo-strategic tip of the region called the Parrot’s Beak served as a bridgehead for operations against the neighbouring Afghan garrisons, especially Khost. In the fall of 2001, the Pakistan Army moved into Kurram and the Tirah Valley straddling the Khyber and Kurram agencies, ostensibly to block al Qaeda’s escape from the Tora Bora region. The Tirah deployment actually served as a diversion, as al Qaeda and key Afghan Taliban were moved through Kurram and in some instances helped to settle there.

The use of diversions and decoys has also become a de facto state policy when it comes to Kurram. The crisis in the region has been described as a sectarian issue since April 2007. However, the fact of the matter is that the Wahabi extremists, sponsored by the state’s intelligence apparatus, were used to prepare the ground for a larger Taliban-al Qaeda presence in the area. A local mosque in Parachinar served then as the staging ground for rolling out the Taliban rule in the Kurram Agency like similar operations in other tribal agencies. At the time, the Nasrullah Mansur network — an affiliate of the Afghan Taliban — along with the Pakistani Taliban was part of the alliance that had taken over the mosque. The resistance by the Kurram people was extraordinary and the jihadists were dislodged, albeit at great cost to the life, property and peace of the region. A son of Nasrullah Mansur, Saif-ur-Rahman was reportedly killed in a later round of fighting in December 2007.

From that point on, the Kurram tribesmen have come under increasing pressure from the establishment and its Taliban assets to allow the use of their territory for waging war against Afghanistan. The Parachinar-Thall road was effectively closed to the people from upper Kurram through jihadist attacks right under the establishment’s nose. The blockade became so intense that the people had to either use an unreliable and highly expensive small aircraft service operated by the Peshawar Flying Club to reach Peshawar or look for alternative routes.

A land route to Kabul was later opened through the efforts of some Peshawar based tribal and political elders. For about two years, this 230 mile-long arduous journey has literally been upper Kurram’s lifeline and its only land route to reach the rest of Pakistan via Peshawar. Given the fact that the Kurram Agency, with its over half a million population and a 3,380 square kilometre area, is the third largest tribal agency, this route has helped avert a massive humanitarian disaster by allowing food, medicine and supplies to reach the locals. The state did not stand just idle; it actively assisted in the blockade of its own citizens.

The establishment’s strategy over the last month has been to impose the Haqqani network as the ‘mediators’ over the Kurram Agency to help resolve the ‘sectarian’ conflict there. They had coerced and co-opted three leaders from Kurram, Aun Ali, Zamin Hussain and the MNA Sajid Turi, to meet Ibrahim and Khalil Haqqani, sons of the network’s ailing chief Jalaluddin. The three Pakistani men, however, did not have the waak — a customary power of attorney or designation — to conduct a jirga or negotiation or seek nanawatai (sanctuary) on behalf of the Kurram people and therefore were not able to guarantee that Kurram would not resist the new Taliban-Haqqani network incursion there.

The flat out refusal of the Kurramis, who have lost over 1,200 souls since April 2007, to cede their territory and pride to the jihadists and their masters has thrown a wrench in the latter’s immediate plans. Having failed to dupe the citizenry, the establishment has elected to bring them to their knees by force. It announced last week that it is closing down the Parachinar-Gardez-Kabul route, trapping the people of Kurram in a pincer of twin blockades. Announcing the embargo, Colonel Tausif Akhtar of the Pakistani security forces claimed that they are closing down five border entry points to clamp down on sectarian violence. The people of Kurram, however, see this as the state opening the floodgates of oppression on them. But as long as the rest of Pakistan and the world at large do not take notice of the establishment’s tactics in Kurram, this forgotten part of FATA will be completely forsaken.

Afzal Bangash: The Marxist maverick

Afzal Bangash: The Marxist maverick Dr. Mohammad Taqi The Statesman & Daily Times I count myself in nothing else so happy, As in a soul remembering my good friends (Shakespeare in Richard II) Reminiscing some of the stars of the secular galaxy of Pakistan and especially Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, is an obligation not just due to a family association or personal feel-good, nostalgic reasons. It is a must because the current generations - being fed a steady diet of religious extremism masquerading as non-denominational Islam - ought to get acquainted with the history of this land. In a country where first the state-controlled, and now the state-indoctrinated, media persons have systematically relegated both our saints and secularists to oblivion, while projecting larger-than-life images of the obscurantist characters from the Pakistan and Islamic studies textbooks, such recollections become a moral duty. One such distinguished progressive, secular person was the leader of the Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), Muhammad Afzal Bangash who died on this day (October 28th) in 1986. Somewhere in the middle 1986, Bangash returned from exile and took up residence on Kohat Road in Peshawar. The word spread around quickly and this scribe got to tag along with a group of friends and family who called upon him. For some reason, the conversation started in Urdu. But then Bangash asked “Tussi saray Hindko samajhdayo na?” (Do all of you understand Hindko?) Some nodded and others verbalised in an affirmative. He then quipped: “Bohat achha aiy, kyoonkeh mein Urdu bolna waan tey inj lagda aiy jhoot bol riya waan” (Great then, because if I speak in Urdu I feel I am lying). In one sweep he had thus made a case for the mother tongue; Bangash was not known for subtleties. Twenty-four years later a study by the British Council Pakistan recommended last month that the mother tongue be the medium of instruction in elementary schools. Afzal Bangash was above any chauvinism and parochialism though. He spoke and wrote in Urdu, Pushto and English and had great command of the Peshawari and Kohati dialects of Hindko. In fact he remained part of the Ulasi Adabi Jirgah (People’s Literary Guild) along with the Urdu poets Farigh Bokhari and Raza Hamdani. He shared the forum with progressive nationalist poets like Ajmal Khattak and Qalandar Momand on one hand and the religio-romantic nationalist masters like Amir Hamza Shinwari and Dost Muhammad Kamil on the other. The guild was founded by his mentor Kaka ji Sanober Hussain Momand, a revolutionary leader of the Indian freedom movement, after whom Bangash later named the MKP weekly “Sanober” that also carried Kaka ji’s verse on the cover. In fact Bangash detested labels and branding. While many characterised him as a Maoist, he took umbrage at the tag for he was the Marxist maverick who had officially documented his opposition to the Chinese invasion of Vietnam, in the MKP’s journal “Circular” and parted ways with his colleagues who had endorsed it. After the Afghan revolution Hafizullah Amin wanted Bangash to form a Pakistani party allied with his Khalq faction. Not only did he snub Amin but further admonished him for their aggressiveness and advised them to take the local culture and norms into serious consideration. As a son of the soil, Bangash was not fond of importing or exporting revolutions and believed in an indigenous struggle and means to his revolutionary ends. He was of the opinion that only the local circumstances can dictate such ways and means. To him the most essential tool was the revolutionary self-reliance meaning a combination of the mass mobilisation of the oppressed people through an astute leadership, culminating in the directly concerned people shouldering the burden of waging the struggle. In an agrarian society this meant that the peasantry was to be the vanguard of such a movement. But having served as Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah’s provincial campaign manager in her bid against Ayub Khan, in an election rigged by the General, Bangash was acutely aware of the deck stacked against the masses. He had been a member of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) since 1948 and had seen the Quaid-i-Azam watch helplessly as the West Punjab Assembly flouted the recommendations of its own land reform sub-committee within six months of independence. Whether it was fixing the tenant’s share in the crop, the abolition of begaar (unpaid forced labour), making cheap credit available to the tenant or preventing their forced evictions, the legislative help was not on the horizon. Bangash was also elected as the first general secretary of the National Awami Party (NAP) in 1957 and was intimately familiar with the workings of such multi-class leftist fronts which in many instances meant the feudal nationalist elements holding sway over the party decisions. It was one such decision by the NAP leadership barring Bangash and others from working in the peasant committees that led to his parting ways with NAP and founding on May 1, 1968, the MKP – perhaps the largest revolutionary leftist party in Pakistan’s history that openly eschewed electoral politics. The MKP’s red flag with a white star became a symbol of resistance to the feudal lords in Hashtnagar (Charsadda), Peshawar, Mardan and Swat/Malakand. It drew support from not only the tenants, agri-labourers but also from white-collar people like lawyers. In fact Wali Khan’s nephew Faridoon Khan hoisted the MKP flag in his father Ghani Khan’s house and ‘de-classed’ himself to join the peasant uprising. After a tenant, Sardar Shah raised the MKP flag as a challenge against his landlord Usman Ali “Wawa” Khan’s eviction order, the scene was set for a mass uprising in Northern Hashtnagar and an armed struggle ensued. The peasant uprising lasted through three successive governments including that of the NAP. Along with its contemporary Naxalite struggle and the Peruvian and Nepalese peasant movements that followed it, the Hashtnagar peasant struggle provides a unique case study in an era when urban fascists are trying to claim the mantle of anti-feudalism. Bangash was well-versed in Marxist theory and many of his speeches and writings reflected this command but he was not a dogmatist. However, he did develop a methodology of ‘theory-practice-feedback-theory-practice’ to keep adjusting both the ideological framework and the means to achieve the ideological goals. He was highly proud of his comrades like Major Ishaq Muhammad, Prof. Eric Cyprian and Imtiaz Alam who contributed to both to theoretical and practical side of the struggle. During the recent judiciary movement some of his former associates like Latif Afridi and Justice Shahjahan Yousufzai demonstrated, from the bar and the bench respectively, the acumen and resolve of the seasoned campaigners that Bangash had trained by the dozen. Bangash did gradually move towards mainstream politics starting with the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) of which the MKP was a founding and highly functional component. He had great working relationship with Benazir Bhutto during that era. Along with Sardar Ataullah Mengal, Mumtaz Bhutto and Hafiz Pirzada, Bangash formed the Sindh Baloch Pashtun Front (SBFP) in 1985 to counter the establishment’s hegemony and proposed a confederal state. Upon his arrival back in Pakistan, he remained involved with the merger of the left-oriented parties and closed the door on a generation-long rift with Wali Khan. The MKP, a faction of the PNP, Rasool Bux Paleejo’s Awami Tehrik and the NDP thus came together to form the Awami National Party. Wali Khan became its first president while MKP’s Sardar Shaukat Ali was elected as its general secretary. The legacy of Bangash is that of highly secular, selfless devotion to the deliverance of the wretched of the earth from oppression and exploitation, if needed, by challenging through all means available, the Weberian concept of the ‘legitimate monopoly on violence’ as well the hegemony of the forces of tradition. He may not have achieved a political high office but being not the one to be suborned by such temptations, he remained loyally committed till last breath to the cause he championed. He was originally buried in his native Shadi Khel village, Kohat but later his mortal remains were transferred to Hashtnagar where he rests in peace along with his comrades and cadres. A newspaper column cannot do justice to a political life spanning more than four decades but younger friends should remember the words of Iqbal and Hafiz: سر خاک شہيدے برگہاے لالہ مي پاشم کہ خونش با نہال ملت ما سازگار آمد بيا تا گل برافشانيم و می در ساغر اندازيم فلك را سقف بشگافيم و طرح نو در اندازيم Sir e khaak e shaheeday barghaiy lala mi paashem Keh khoonash baa nehaal e millat maa sazgar aamed Biya ta gul barafshaanem o mai der saghar andaazem Falak raa seqf beshigafem o tarh e nau darandaazem I scatter the petals of tulips upon the dust of martyrs For their blood profits the sapling of the community; Come so that we may strew roses and pour wine into the cup; Let us tear open the roof of Heaven and think upon new ways. Thanks are due to Kamil Bangash, a former vice-president of the ANP and son of Afzal Bangash, for his help in verifying certain information and the priceless gift of Bangash Sahib’s portrait. The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

Karachi’s civil war: politics by other means

Daily Times	Saturday, October 23, 2010

COMMENT: Karachi’s civil war: politics by other means —Dr Mohammad Taqi

It would be erroneous to assume that the criminal outfits of Karachi are just a function of the urban sprawl and disarming them, without a concomitant political solution, is going to be useful or even possible

About 90 people — 12 in just one instance — were assassinated in Karachi earlier this week and approximately 1,300 have been killed in various acts of violence in the city this year. These are not random or targeted killings: this is civil war.

Unlike interstate wars, a civil war is defined as “an armed combat within the boundaries of a recognised sovereign entity, between parties subject to a common authority at the outset of hostilities”. While all wars are hell, civil wars are particularly nasty and are aptly termed dirty wars as the common authority usually stands eroded and the combatants who deem every foul act fair, do not abide by the customary laws of war.

In most instances, a civil war is the continuation of politics by other means and must be understood in this context. An inaccurate narrative of the conflict and use of incorrect nomenclature and descriptive terms, especially by the media and analysts, may mask the political motives of the warring factions and make the already elusive solutions even harder to find.

Whereas an overexposure of the brutalities can desensitise a population, the attempts to sanitise the narrative are also counterproductive. Using euphemisms like target or targeted killing makes the conflict opaque to the people, hampers their understanding of the situation and, in a land where human life is the cheapest commodity, keeps them from demanding answers and definitive action from their elected representatives.

Historically, civil wars have been used to make cities and regions ungovernable, thus making the competing sections of the population and the rulers cede territory and political control. Traditionally, the root cause of many civil wars has been ethnic and religious antagonisms endemic to that region, but in Karachi’s case the continued prevalence of an armed conflict is the composite result of such hostilities, a steady accumulation of unresolved conflicts since at least the 1970s and the gradual emergence of new demographic and political realities.

Political instability — real or perceived — at the federal level indicates disorganisation, weakness and erosion of the state’s monopoly over the coercive and administrative apparatus. This provides a milieu as well as a cue for the various competing groups to contest with each other and the state for power and in the process worsens the perception of governmental weakness. In order to protect their interests, the major political players, therefore, respond to this perceived weakness by seeking means to project their soft and hard power.

In a multi-ethnic, mega city like Karachi, where an overt secessionist movement or insurgency does not exist, various ethnic — and occasionally religious — groups use systematic violence to project hard power. Violence is also used as a coercive adjunct to negotiating and obtaining concessions from opponents, competitors and partners. The so-called land-grabber, drug and extortion mafias or the gangs operating with impunity, serve as the coercive muscle that the different ethnic and political outfits use to demonstrate hard power.

Whereas the Mafiosi and gangsters are a problem by themselves, their importance lies in their association with various political outfits. In some ways these gangs are a revival of certain armed student outfits of the 1970s and 1980s that various political parties, especially the Jamaat-e-Islami and later the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), had used to bring the university campuses under their control. It would be erroneous to assume that the criminal outfits of Karachi are just a function of the urban sprawl and disarming them, without a concomitant political solution, is going to be useful or even possible. However, political rapprochement by itself would also be insufficient and ineffective.

This is precisely the predicament that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) finds itself in: damned if it takes a stern action and damned if it does not. The PPP’s central leadership, especially President Asif Zardari, is under pressure from its own Sindh and Karachi leaders, as well as allies like the Awami National Party (ANP) to call in the military in support of the civilian administration. So far it has resisted these calls because its other coalition partner, the MQM, is totally averse to the idea of an army operation.

The PPP thus faces a political dilemma at two levels. Firstly, and perhaps more importantly for the PPP and others, an army action has its own dynamics and may take a life of its own with consequences that in the long run could undermine the democratic process. Secondly, if the MQM were to exit the provincial and central coalitions, the Sindh government could sustain itself numerically, but the central government would lose its simple majority.

At a juncture when Mian Nawaz Sharif has kept completely mum about the Karachi situation while opting to castigate President Zardari, the PPP would not want to rely on his support to run a minority government. If the PPP’s central government is weakened, Mian sahib — who does not seem to be in a conciliatory mood — may nudge the things towards an in-house change or early polls.

However, the rise in the Pashtun population of Karachi and the resultant ascendancy of the ANP there is something that the PPP cannot ignore. The ANP and its predecessors like the NDP have had political roots in Karachi but the higher profile of the party is reflective of the changing demographics that make the MQM cower. Unlike the rather unnatural and uneasy PPP-MQM coalitions that historically have ended in failure, the ANP perhaps would be the PPP’s natural ally in the Karachi politics in the years to come.

In a situation where the PPP is finding it difficult to break the cycle of violence and an army action may not be in sight, a bolstered police and rangers action with a clear mandate must start in earnest, and soon. The public perception of the PPP’s weakness is seriously damaging its political base, especially in Sindh. However, for such an action to deliver even the bare minimum, the PPP will have to restrain its coalition partners. If the PPP leadership is able to demonstrate some crisis management skills, it could project the party’s soft power through its image restoration. Karachi’s perennial inter-ethnic problems are unlikely to evaporate soon but a proactive PPP could manage to keep them from spiralling into a full intensity civil war.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

Takfir: the ideology of hate

Daily Times Thursday, October 14, 2010

COMMENT: Takfir: the ideology of hate —Dr Mohammad Taqi

An ordinary Salafi may believe in the non-violent call to convert to their version of Islam but the Salafi jihadists are proponents of violent jihad. The doctrinal differences that set the jihadist group apart include practising takfir, i.e. labelling other Muslims as infidels or apostates

“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that is pretty important” — Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

While some in the Pakistani media seem to have bought into Pervez Musharraf’s Facebook flight of fantasy and were focused on his ‘Desperate Housewives’-style, primetime soap performances, the peddlers of the ideology of hate struck again.

There were two major attacks: one against yet another symbol of South Asian religious diversity — the Abdullah Shah Ghazi shrine in Karachi — and the other before that, which killed the Islamic scholar and practising psychiatrist, Dr Farooq Khan. The assassination of Dr Khan is, by far, the more significant and more ominous of the two because he was a person who had dedicated his life to preserve and promote pluralist thought, which shrines like Shah Ghazi’s have epitomised for centuries.

However, the news media, especially the television networks, covered these two stories for just about 24 hours and after that moved on with the preferred national pastime of Zardari-bashing and betting on his exit date. But, given the open jihadist tirades of certain anchors, anti-Ahmediyya vitriol of a particular televangelist and outlets that air the interviews of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, this is hardly a surprise.

Last week, Ms Gulmina Bilal Ahmad, in her article ‘Historical distortions’ (Daily Times, October 8, 2010), has written eloquently about Dr Farooq, his thoughts and work and has alluded to those who are out to counter this thought. I did not know Dr Farooq except from a conversation we had at the humble yet dignified guest room of the late Professor Saeedullah Qazi, the then Dean of Sheikh Zayed Islamic Centre, Peshawar. His words are rather vague in my mind, but it is hard to forget his soft-spoken mannerism. What Farooq has done in his death — and Ms Ahmad has taken up in her column — is to open the debate about a virulent ideology hell-bent on eliminating anyone who does not conform to it.

In recent times, the biggest manifestation of this ideology has been the suicide bombings or the so-called ‘martyrdom missions’. While we focus on suicide bombings as the dastardly acts that have killed thousands, we have been somewhat remiss in assessing the role of the doctrine providing the religious-political and psycho-social ‘rationale’ of this foremost tactic in the global Salafi jihad.

The Salafi jihadists form an extreme fringe, even of the Wahhabiist-Salafist spectrum itself. An ordinary Salafi may believe in the non-violent call to convert to their version of Islam, but the Salafi jihadists are proponents of violent jihad. The doctrinal differences that set the jihadist group apart include practising takfir, i.e. labelling other Muslims as infidels or apostates (kafir) and concluding, therefore, that violence against the latter is permissible (halal or mubaah), condoning acts of violence against civilians and the use of suicide missions. Violent jihad is held at par with the basic tenets of Islam by the Salafi jihadists. The most explicit endorsement of killing Muslim civilians came from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who said in a 2005 audiotape message: “The killing of a number of Muslims whom it is forbidden to kill is a grave evil. However, it is permissible to commit this evil — indeed, it is even required — in order to ward off a greater evil, the evil of suspending jihad.”

Dr Farooq was not the first Islamic scholar to have differed with the hateful ideology of takfir and to have paid with his life for this dissent. Ironically, the grandfather of al Qaeda, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, was killed on November 24, 1989 in Peshawar, in a bomb attack by his own cohorts, for opposing takfir.

The late chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Syed Maududi, had also written against invoking takfir in religio-political polemics. I was told that one cannot find his books in Saudi Arabia and I did find this to be true, as far as the shops around the Holy Ka’aba and the Masjid-e-Nabvi go. This, perhaps, has something to do with his very favourable opinion of Imam Abu Hanifah in doctrinal matters, a tolerant view of the Shiite and a general condemnation of takfir.

Indeed, the key pan-Islamists such as Muhammad Abduhu and Rashid Rida — like Maududi — had tried a selective application of takfir against the relatively newer sects in Islam. They feared that indiscriminate use of the label would lead to endless strife (fitna) within the larger Muslim community and advised their followers that wrongly accusing another Muslim of being an infidel is a major sin in Islam.

However, even this self-serving and rather meek condemnation of takfir is not acceptable to the ardent takfiris who are quick to condemn even Maududi as a kafir. The jihadists and their apologists remain blind to the fact that these attacks, ostensibly against foreign occupiers, have killed more Muslims than any other group, have divided the country deeply and have reinforced the belief that the jihadists consider common Muslims as expendable. Moreover, suicide attacks — though not as common — did take place in Egypt, Algeria and Afghanistan even when there was no foreign occupier.

This suggests that, while challenging the appeal of the takfiri ideology is a crucial component of the counter-terrorism strategy, a scholarly discourse by itself is an insufficient antidote. What is needed is a holistic, multi-pronged approach to stymie the takfiri groups. Civilian law-enforcement officers have made great strides in understanding takfiri terrorism in Pakistan and have apprehended many of its leaders. However, no high profile leader has ever been put on trial or any madrassah shut down — let alone levelled — limiting the deterrence value of counter-terrorism operations.

The trial of the far-right extremist, anti-Islam Dutch parliamentarian, Geert Wilders, resumed yesterday in Amsterdam. He is facing charges of inciting hatred against Muslims. This has some of his friends on the US side of the pond, up in arms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali went on bewailing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the Netherlands, a 21st century democracy, has put free speech on trial. What has actually been put on trial, however, is hate speech.

The Dutch law may not make Geert Wilders love Muslims, but chances are that it will prevent him from inciting hate and potential hate crimes. One may woefully concede that for something like this to happen in Pakistan, many Dr Farooq Khans may be lynched first.