Descent into Chaosistan?

Daily Times	Thursday, July 01, 2010

COMMENT: Descent into Chaosistan? —Dr Mohammad Taqi

The war in Afghanistan is not about what one military commander can deliver. It is really about the commander-in-chief getting his house in order. On Petraeus’ success or failure potentially hinges Obama’s re-election

Let’s face it: the CIA plan titled ‘Chaosistan’, alluded to by General Stanley McChrystal in his October 2009 speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, might actually be playing out in Afghanistan — by default.

General McChrystal’s more recent asides carried by Rolling Stone magazine that cost him his job, is not the first time a US military commander has trashed an incumbent president from Illinois. General George McClellan was promptly relieved of his status as the general-in-chief by Abraham Lincoln when the former referred to him, in private letters, as “nothing more than a well-meaning baboon”, a “gorilla”, and “ever unworthy of his high position”.

That both generals chose the wrong words, language and conduits to castigate their lawyer-presidents from Illinois is not moot. The civilian command of all US wars is also a well-established fact and McChrystal has become — after Admiral Fallon and General McKiernan — the third wartime commander to be canned, post-9/11, by the civilian leadership.

However, after removing his general-in-chief, Abe Lincoln prosecuted the war through a war council that, at least in the history books, seems to have had its act together. The Obama situation room, on the other hand, appears to be like the proverbial deer in the headlights. In his insubordination, McChrystal has managed to turn the high beam on to a highly dysfunctional bunch. The confusion in Washington — and not some sinister CIA plan — is leading to a similar state of affairs in Afghanistan: Chaosistan is right here in the US.

The one word missing from Mr Obama’s 4,608 word subdued speech delivered at the West Point Academy on December 1, 2009, was victory. Pandering to the democratic left, Mr Obama laid out his plan to get out of Afghanistan: a $ 30 billion a year war is economically not sustainable. The US has to cut its losses and get out. In effect, he made it clear that he was out to win an election and not the war.

Four days later, the worn-out looks and body language of Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, trying to sell Obama’s West Point speech on Sunday-morning talk shows, said it all. Deep divisions and not just disagreement existed within the Obama team. The scholar-president, while apparently agreeing with the McChrystal, Clinton and Gates camp, was increasing troops but had practically sealed the fate of this surge by announcing a draw down date. The clown-prince, Joseph Biden, supported by Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel, had prevailed.

In a too-clever-by-half move, the Obama administration has now appointed General David Petraeus to lead the war in Afghanistan. Chatter had it that Petraeus — a Republican registered to vote in New Hampshire — may have been interested in running against Mr Obama in 2012.

It was not too long ago that the democratic financier George Soros’ outfit, Moveon.org, ran full-page advertisements in the New York Times against Petraeus, calling him ‘General Betray us’. Ironically, Mr Obama, then a junior senator, did not vote for the Senate resolution calling for a removal of these advertisements. Interestingly, Moveon.org removed the advertisement from its website only last week.

The Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, also released last week, shows that Americans’ confidence level in President Obama has hit an all-time low with 62 percent saying that things in the US are “off on the wrong track”, while only 29 percent think that things are “headed in the right direction”.

In this backdrop, White House political operatives have effectively demoted Petraeus and have prevented him from being a leading Republican candidate in the January 2012 New Hampshire primary. US presidential historians do remember that successful generals have given career-politicians a run for their money in the presidential elections. Even the unsuccessful ones like General McClellan remained a thorn in Abe Lincoln’s side and ran against him in the 1864 election.

What is lost on the Obama administration is that, like McChrystal, General Petraeus — a shrewd political mind himself — is not the one interested in losing wars or creating a façade of success that clueless peaceniks of the Pelosi variety need for their electoral victories at home.

More than that, the war in Afghanistan is not about what one military commander can deliver. It is really about the commander-in-chief getting his house in order. On Petraeus’ success or failure potentially hinges Obama’s re-election. Major bad news from the warfront in an election year can turn the tables on him, especially when the economy and domestic issues have very little chance of giving him a major boost. Obama’s potential electoral rival is his best ally now.

It is about time that Obama commissions a robust review of his Pak-Afghan policy. Especially pertinent would be to rate the advice he has received from his two so-called experts on Pakistan, i.e. Joe ‘foot-in-the-mouth’ Biden and that sheep in wolf’s clothing, Richard Holbrooke. The performance of this duo is pathetic at the very least and outright counterproductive in many instances. Mrs Clinton may have to accept her share of responsibility for the failure of the motley bunch that Holbrooke has gathered around him.

The Pakistani security establishment has played Mr Obama’s team like a fiddle. Among all the regional and world players involved in Afghanistan, Rawalpindi — to its dubious credit — has had the most consistent, clearly enunciated and efficiently executed policy. The way things are going, the Pakistani security establishment and its jihadi assets will very likely recover the strategic losses incurred in the last nine years. They have already scored high in the battle of perception.

The US endgame in Afghanistan has been effectively reduced to damage control. The most effective message that Petraeus can convey to Obama is the observation noted in his PhD thesis on the Vietnam War: “The war was a painful reminder that when it comes to intervention, time and patience are not American virtues in abundant supply.” This is precisely the perception that the Pakistani security establishment has banked on to regain its hegemony over a sovereign neighbour.

On how General Petraeus manages the perception of a worn-out US depends whether Chaosistan becomes a reality, again.

The writer teaches and practices Medicine at the University of Florida and contributes to the think-tanks www.politact.com and Aryana Institute. He can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

Af-Pak: a flurry of reports

Daily Times	Thursday, June 24, 2010

COMMENT: Af-Pak: a flurry of reports —Dr Mohammad Taqi

The lack of attention to a population-centric counter-insurgency approach is not because of lack of capability but flows directly from the Pakistani security establishment's policy to preserve and promote its jihadist assets

Just when the Pakistani sleuths and their media cohorts were attempting to trash the London School of Economics (LSE) report on the former’s nexus with the jihadists, the RAND Corporation’s National Security and Research Division published its monograph ‘Counter-insurgency in Pakistan’, last week.

The 209-page work, authored by Seth Jones and Christine Fair, concludes that Pakistan’s record against the militants remains a mixed bag, with the country lacking a comprehensive counter-insurgency doctrine and the militants continuing to be a significant threat to Pakistan, the region and the world at large.

The report makes four major recommendations. It states, “First, Pakistan needs to establish a population-centric approach that aligns better with effective counter-insurgency efforts. Of particular importance are the Pakistani police, which need to serve as a key ‘hold’ force over the long run.” The authors correctly identify that FATA’s constitutional status within Pakistan remains a stumbling block in the region, being a judicial black hole under the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR).

The report adds, “Second, Pakistan needs to abandon militancy as a tool for its foreign and domestic policy. A key objective of US policy must be to alter Pakistan’s strategic calculus and end its support to militant groups. The US should continue to make this position clear, as it began to do in 2010.

“Third, the US needs to reduce it reliance on Pakistan where feasible. In some areas, the US will remain dependent on Pakistani cooperation, such as in targeting al Qaeda and other militants based in Pakistan that threaten the US homeland and its interests overseas.

“Fourth, the US should re-examine ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’ in a comprehensive strategy. The US should continue US Special Operations Forces training programmes and ensure that goods and services given to Pakistan are appropriate for counter-insurgency purposes. But it should withhold some aid until Pakistan makes discernible progress. Washington has had mixed success in persuading Pakistan to change course, partly because US strategy has focused too much on carrots and too little on sticks.”

The RAND report is quite candid and even keel but has, in a way, put the carriage before the horse. The lack of attention to a population-centric counter-insurgency approach is not because of lack of capability but flows directly from the Pakistani security establishment’s policy to preserve and promote its jihadist assets.

The complete indifference of the Pakistani state apparatus to the wholesale killing of the traditional tribal elders (Maliks) in the tribal areas by the jihadists helped create a power vacuum that only the Taliban were allowed to fill. The systematic dismantling of the traditional tribal governance system has effectively thwarted the possibility of developing a population-based approach to clear, hold and build the region.

Similarly, in Swat Valley, the state’s support was either not given to the local resistance against the Taliban, as in the case of Afzal Khan Lala, or was withdrawn leading to the brutal slaughter of Pir Samiullah. Intriguingly, the security agencies had looked on as Fazlullah’s thugs, reportedly, took over their establishments in Miandam and Mingora. The former commissioner of Malakand division, Syed Muhammad Javed, who allegedly was in cahoots with the Swat Taliban, has gotten off scot-free.

The LSE report was called outlandish by some, but knowing the track record of the Pakistani agencies in the region and the pliability of even the democratic governments to fall in line, there is not much surprise in it. Perhaps Mr Zardari did not meet the Taliban but was it not the same government and the security agencies that flatly denied the existence of the Quetta Shura and then a few months later nabbed half of the Shura members in Karachi?

What might have slipped from memory is a major instance of the civilian government endorsing the security establishment’s covert operations in Afghanistan. Just after the Soviet withdrawal, General Hamid Gul gave an in-camera briefing to parliament in February 1989 about his Jalalabad offensive. According to one of the most powerful ministers of the time, the civilian government decided to “simply step out of their way”.

It would be too simplistic to assume that the Pakistani security establishment is about to change its game plan any time soon. The US State Department’s “roadmap” for institution building in Afghanistan and FATA, released earlier this year, was probably one of the most naïve and generic documents produced on the Pak-Afghan region thus far. Just when the credibility gap between the Pakistani security establishment’s words and actions comes to light, the West fills it in with its gullibility.

This author had noted in an essay, ‘The Alsatia of FATA’ (April 1, 2009, AIRRA and Pakistan Link, California) that, “The US 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. Ambivalence towards the Alsatia of FATA could ultimately cost President Obama the war in Afghanistan.”

The same remains true today and more so with the timeframe given by Mr Obama for a drawdown in Afghanistan. The RAND report does help to put things in perspective and in enumerating actionable issues. However, the Boston Globe’s observation noted in its June 18, 2010 editorial really cuts to the chase:

“President Obama must recognise the necessity of persuading Pakistan’s military leaders, who control the ISI, to stop playing a double game with the US. This can be done. Washington has valuable carrots to offer and credible threats to make. To succeed, however, Obama must be willing to play hardball.”

Mr Obama will have a window of opportunity immediately after the November 2010 elections to deploy a more robust strategy, but the time to plan for that is now.

Postscript: General McChrystal may have apologised for his recent remarks about Mr Obama but has highlighted the significant differences that exist among the US policy makers. Mr Obama and his clown-prince Joe Biden cannot ignore the advice by McChrystal, Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton. If they do not reverse their cavalier approach, soon they would be the ones apologising to the public.

The slanted truth

The slanted truth

By Dr. Mohammad Taqi

Daily Times

June 17, 2010

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – Emily Dickinson

Three men had their right hands severed, for petty theft last month, by the Taliban in the Ghaljo village of the Orakzai Agency. After initial treatment at a hospital in Kohat, they were in contact with a prominent civil and human rights activist to get prosthetic surgery done, to be followed by a rehabilitation program. Funds were raised subsequently, as charitable donations from individuals, to assist them.

However, the unfortunate victims have now declined to get the surgery and rehab done. They and their families reportedly did this, under duress from the Taliban. The sad decision is a stark reminder of the fascist hordes lurking in the shadows – the Taliban are neither down nor out. But the security establishment in Pakistan would have one believe otherwise.

On June 5, 2010, two articles appeared in the Pakistani press. The one in this paper titled “North Waziristan, the Punjabi Taliban and the Durand Line”, was authored by Mr. Naeem Tahir and the second one “N.Waziristan: the final frontier”, published in The News, was written by Ms. Sherry Rehman, MNA.

The resemblance between these two articles is striking. Had it been Urdu or Persian poetry, one would have been tempted to call this tawarud i.e. two poets expressing – coincidentally - the same ideas in very similar words without prior knowledge of each other’s thought or work.

Upon a cursory read, both pieces might come across as opinions by liberal writers who are concerned about the curse of Talibanization afflicting Pakistan and are trying to float an indigenous plan to fight it.

A slightly deeper look, however, would reveal that clad in a liberal cloak, the authors are just peddling the Pakistani security establishment speak: despite the clear and present danger that the Taliban and Al-Quaida portend, we are not able to do much about it, especially in the North Waziristan Agency (NWA).

Ms. Rehman, whose written or spoken word on military strategy and the Pak-Afghan geopolitical situation has hithertofore remained hidden from the public eye, makes a foray into both spheres. She starts by dropping some geographical terms like “Loya Paktia” and using quasi-military jargon. She writes:

“The challenge in North Waziristan is that Islamabad does not have the military or civilian capacity to open all fronts at the same time. Despite impressive successes in other tribal agencies, the Pakistani army faces a 50,000-strong critical mass of armed guerrilla combatants in North Waziristan. They have learnt to avoid set-piece battles. After army operations in surrounding areas, a hardened assortment has sought sanctuary there.”

Similar formula is deployed by Mr. Tahir, who mentions the Peochar stronghold of Mullah Fazlullah along with a narrative of the valley’s capture and the “successful operations” in South Waziristan etc. but concludes that:

“Action in North Waziristan must be undertaken, but the timing must be decided by the government of Pakistan and the armed forces, and it should follow the settlement of these issues.”

Mr. Tahir, who has loyally served two military dictators – the second one literally as a cheerleader within and outside Pakistan- then ventures into lecturing on the history of Durand Line and how Mullah Fazlullah and other terrorists can sneak through it, back into back into Pakistan. He calls “revisionist” those who think that people on both sides of the Durand are one people.

While Mr. Tahir was spending his energies furthering Zia ul Haq’s obscurantism at the state-owned television or pitching Musharraf’s “enlightened moderation” to the west, he might have overlooked to research the historical visit by the Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, to the Torkham border-post on the Durand Line.

Till taken down by the Zia regime, the board at Torkham had the Quaid’s words inscribed on it that the people living on either side of this border are one nation (qaum) and no power will be able to keep them apart.

Most politicians in Pakistan are not afraid of acknowledging that the Pashtuns/Afghans living across the Durand Line are one people who share common languages, culture and customs, just like the Germans in Austria, Deutschland and Switzerland. Perhaps this is what the Quaid meant in his speech and not the use of the FATA for unleashing thirty years of death and destruction in Afghanistan by the Pakistani, Saudi and US agencies.

Ironically, these believers in the thesis that Afghanistan provides Pakistan with the strategic depth are so scared of this shared bond that they had vetoed Afghania –represented by the letter ‘A’ in the word Pakistan - as the new name for the erstwhile NWFP. What Mr. Tahir is trying to sell is nothing but the Pakistani security establishment’s desire to treat Afghanistan as its backyard where only they have the right to play and only under their own rules.

The apologetics put forth by these two authors blend seamlessly with the collaboration between the Pakistani intelligence apparatus and the jihadist outfits highlighted yet again by the recent London School of Economics(LSE) report . This partnership was never hidden and neither are the attempts by the security establishment to force even the democratically elected leaders to tow their line.

Not too long ago a senior Pashtun politician had mentioned on national media, a press conference by the Taliban that was held at a security agency fortress. He and his party reportedly came under tremendous pressure to rescind his statement – he stood his ground but the party’s president eventually buckled.  

Given the lengths to which the establishment goes to delay and defer the action against its Taliban assets, the LSE report is not surprising to the people of Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa and FATA. They also know that not one Taliban leader – including the notorious Muslim Khan – has been brought to justice by the same authorities who are not willing to act against the 50,000 jihadists in NWA. This is precisely why they decline treatment when they need it most.

The question remains that how long will the world continue to buy the slanted truth?

(The writer teaches and practices Medicine at the University of Florida and contributes to the think-tanks www.politact.com and Aryana Institute. He can be reached at mazdaki@me.com )

Fear of mirrors — II

Daily Times	Thursday, June 10, 2010

COMMENT: Fear of mirrors — II —Dr Mohammad Taqi

Considering the admixture of an aggressive political Islam, analysts unable or unwilling to propose foreign policy alternatives to reliance on Riyadh and a series of governments relying on such analysts, the perpetual US confusion about the Islamic world and its dynamics, especially the militancy, is not surprising

“And there are those who build a mosque from mischievous motives, to spread unbelief and disunite the faithful” — Holy Quran 9:107



With the above verse of Surah Taubah (Repentance) opens the May 2010 book A Mosque in Munich, by The Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer-winning former correspondent, Ian Johnson.

The news cycle has moved on since the first part of this article appeared, but has it really? The carnage at the Ahmediyya congregations in Lahore only underscores the importance of understanding the genesis of the bigotry perpetuated from mosque pulpits.

In an interview, available on the internet, Ian Johnson, a University of Florida alumnus, says, “Right now, the CIA roadblocks anyone trying to get information on our dealings with radical Islam, claiming that releasing documents, even half a century old, would harm the national interest. It was like this with the Nazis. The CIA released information only when Congress passed a law mandating it. I think something similar will have to happen here too.”

These are not just any documents that Johnson is talking about. These are files related to the relationship of western intelligence agencies, primarily the CIA, with the most important organiser, agitator, fund-raiser and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West and a disciple and successor of Hasan Al Banna — the late Dr Said Ramadan.

According to Johnson, the story of Dr Ramadan and the western powers consorting with him and the Brotherhood is “really a strange one with memorable characters”. He says, “The people involved are so bizarre that they sound like the start of a joke: you have a brilliant Nazi linguist, a CIA man who is a nudist, and a radical Muslim.”

The nudist CIA agent was Robert Dreher, stationed in the then West Germany in the 1950s, who worked with the Muslim radical Said Ramadan, to lay the groundwork for what has become a colossal labyrinthine of mosque-centres, front outfits, financial gateways and, above all, the ideological clearing-houses for Wahabiism, throughout Europe and the US.

The irony is that this is not just an obscure story from the distant past that is of academic interest only. The process is continuing and there are people like Stephen Schwartz trying to obfuscate — in the name of pragmatism — the attempts to find a way through. Forward-looking Muslim-Americans face multiple challenges if they are to seriously consider getting back the mosque-centres.

Firstly, Wahabiism in the US masquerades as the non-denominational Islam. In a classic Brotherhood way, hundreds of Islamic centres are really controlled by leadership recruited from the middle and upper-middle classes. For South Asian-Americans, primarily concerned with offering prayers or getting Quranic education for their children, to see through this modernist façade might be difficult, but not impossible. As a rule of thumb, these centres never mention Sufi Islam and its various exponents. The Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh Hisham Kabbani of Fenton, Michigan, has testified before the State Department regarding the Wahabi control of the US mosques, citing 114 such centres.

Then comes the financing, which started in the 1950s with the Saudis paying for Dr Said Ramadan’s Cadillac and the Saudi ARAMCO sponsoring the Muslim Brothers’ trip to meet President Eisenhower and continues to date. Mainstream faith-based Islamic organisations have not only received help in cash and kind from the Saudi kingdom, but their activists state that they are not shy of receiving foreign funding for their ventures. The website of King Fahd, maintained after his death by the Saudi hajj minister, proudly lists the mosques personally funded by the late monarch.

US authorities had named two large Islamic groups, one of which runs an endowment (waqf) that holds title to hundreds of mosques in the US, as un-indicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007, for support of terrorism. But a deeper probe into the conduct of the US mosque-centres remains outstanding.

One of the cohorts of Said Ramadan, Hajji Amin al-Hussaini, nabbed after World War II for war crimes, was let go for ‘pragmatic reasons’ — not much different than an un-indicted co-conspirator status.

In his most recent interview on June 5, 2010 aired on the National Public Radio (NPR), Ian Johnson made a shocking revelation, saying: “Shortly after 9/11, there was this desire to cut all ties with Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and even to prosecute them. The fundamental problem with that effort was that it tried to link them directly to terrorism, which is really not so much what the Muslim Brotherhood does.

“The Muslim Brotherhood creates the worldview that can lead to terrorism, the milieu where that can flourish. So, after these prosecutions failed, the Muslim Brotherhood re-established itself, and by the second term of the Bush administration, there were already very clear efforts where brotherhood groups in Europe are being clearly cultivated for US foreign policy aims.

“So, much of the rhetoric that you hear today is similar to what we were saying in the 1950s: that Islam is essentially a tool that we can use for foreign policy purposes. I think this is kind of — this is a fundamental problem in how we look at this religion. It has come back to haunt us again and again, but we continue to make the same mistake.”

Considering the admixture of an aggressive political Islam, analysts unable or unwilling to propose foreign policy alternatives to reliance on Riyadh and a series of governments relying on such analysts, the perpetual US confusion about the Islamic world and its dynamics, especially the militancy, is not surprising.

Ian Johnson records that on the eve of his meeting with the Muslim Brothers, the gist of Eisenhower’s message, as reported by his aides, was: “The president thought we should do everything to emphasise the ‘holy war’ aspect.” If this is still the attitude that the US administration is going to take towards the Muslim Brotherhood, its various incarnations and its Saudi patrons, this might be the third and probably an insurmountable hurdle for everyday Muslim-Americans, before they can take back the mosque pulpit.

(Concluded)

The writer teaches and practices Medicine at the University of Florida and contributes to the think-tanks www.politact.com and Aryana Institute. He can be reached at mazdaki@me.com

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Into Our Town The Hangman Came

Outlook India June 4, 2010

A Pakistani Perspective

Into Our Town The Hangman Came

 

'And we wondered, whenever we had the time / Who the criminal, what the crime / ... And sun by sun, and night by night / The gallows grew to monstrous height...'

Mohammad Taqi

	"...For who has served me more faithfully Then you with your coward's hope?" said he, "And where are the others who might have stood Side by your side in the common good?" "Dead," I whispered. And amiably "Murdered," the Hangman corrected me: "First the foreigner, then the Jew... I did no more than you let me do." --"Hangman" by Maurice Ogden The massacre of Ahmadis in Lahore, Pakistan has most of us up in arms. But the bitter, cold truth is that the killers didn’t do anything more than we let them do. The 1974 act of the Parliament of Pakistan, declaring the Ahmadiyya community and the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement - also described by other (even derogatory) terms like Mirzai, Lahori, and Qadiani - as non-Muslims was perhaps the most shameful legislation in the history of Pakistan. More shameful was the fact that the leader of the house, championing the secular cause, initiated such an action and the key leader of the opposition – a secular, liberal to boot – stood by and did nothing. These leaders were, of course, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Wali Khan, respectively. According to one unconfirmed account from a source close to the late Maulana Shah Ahmed Noornai, the two parliamentarians belonging to the religious parties ultimately voted against the resolution. Reportedly, Mirza Nasir Ahmed, the then leader of the Ahmadi community and Mr Sadruddin, of the Lahori group, asked for a debate with the religious and secular political leaders in Parliament. Sahibzada Farooq Ali, the then speaker of the national Assembly, later stated in an interview that Mirza Nasir Ahmed held his own, in face of cross-examination led by the Attorney General Yahya Bakhtiar, but overall performed dismally. The record of these proceedings leading to the fascist diktat, however, was dutifully sealed and remains sealed to date. Sadly, just a few years before this action was taken, ZA Bhutto’s Pakistan People's Party (PPP) had actively sought the advice of the Ahmadiyya leadership in awarding the party tickets for the 1970 election – an action that cost the Ahmadis Wali Khan’s support, when they needed it the most. Wali Khan’s dislike of the Ahmadiyyas’ political stance, however, dated back to the latter’s support for partition of India and creation of Pakistan. He wasn’t particularly fond of Sir Zafrulla – a jurist who held key positions within the Ahmadiyya movement and later held the office of Pakistan’s first foreign minister. Zafrulla is widely regarded as the legal architect of the March 23, 1940 Pakistan Resolution that was the harbinger of the separate state of Pakistan. There is no denying the fact that the Ahmadiyya, like most other Islamist revivalist movements, had a certain political motivation from its inception. The allegations against them ranged from being the lackeys of the British rulers of India, to throwing the newly independent Pakistan’s foreign policy into America’s lap. However, even their worst enemies haven’t charged them of militancy. If anything, they are charged with denouncing the armed Jihad. The Ahmadiyya community was tightly aligned with Mr. MA Jinnah’s All India Muslim League and ended up attracting the ire of the Indian nationalists ranging from the Jamiat e Ulama e Hind (JUH) to the proto-liberal Pashtun Red Shirts of Badshah Khan (Wali Khan’s father), aligned with the Indian National Congress (INC). In the pre-partition period there is no obvious record, however, of the Pashtuns led by Badshah Khan being anti-Ahmadi at any point. In fact the Ahmadi sect flourished in the Pashtun countryside in that period. In the post-1947 phase, while Wali Khan and the Pakistani Left at large, were critical of Sir Zafrulla steering Pakistan into the US camp, they never played the sectarian card against the Ahmadiyya community. On the other hand, the inherently anti-Pakistan religio-political forces like Jamat e Islami of Syed Maududi, the Majlis e Ahrar, Khaksar Tehrik of Inayatullah Mashriqi and the various incarnations of the JUH in Pakistan like the Jamiat e Ulama e Pakistan (JUP) and the Jamiat e Ulama e Islam Pakistan (JUI), informally and formally came together to go after the Ahmadiyya in the most vicious manner in 1953, to have them declared apostate (Kafir/murtad) and hence punishable by death according to the former’s interpretation of the Islamic Law (Shariah). Anti-Ahmadi riots erupted in March 1953, leading to the first imposition of the Martial Law, in Lahore. The real motive of these religio-political parties, particularly the JI and JUI, was to create a raison d’être for them to not only become relevant in the politics of a country whose creation they had opposed to the hilt, but in essence to hijack the polity of the new state. Another unfortunate twist in this race to create a sectarian piñata came when the largest Muslim minority of Pakistan i.e. the Shiites, who too were an ally of Mr. Jinnah’s Muslim League, cast their lot with the Islamist revivalists of the Maududi and Maulana Mufti Mahmud variety. Mufti Mahmud, during his brief stint as the Chief Minister of the NWFP in 1973-74, was instrumental in securing the support of the late Maulana Safdar Hussain of Peshawar – a leading Shiite cleric of the era who commanded nationwide respect. The Shiite motives for joining this alliance were twofold. First and more obviously, they wanted to cosy up to the holy fathers of the revivalist Sunni variety and in return earn a doctrinal legitimacy for themselves. More sublime is the key doctrinal difference between the Shiite and the Ahmadiyyas regarding the arrival of Al-Mahdi - the promised Messiah. In declaring Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadian as the promised Messiah, the Ahmadiyyas are at serious odds with the Shiite in that the latter hold as a cardinal belief that the promised Messiah is their twelfth Imam, Muhammad Mahdi, who - currently in occultation – would return to lead the Muslims at the ‘end of times’. What started in the early 1950s eventually came to the boil in 1974 and a constellation of factors stacked the deck against the Ahmadiyya. ZA Bhutto had already developed a trust deficit with them, suspecting that they might be switching political loyalties to Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s Tehrik e Istaqlal. The Islamic Summit Conference in February 1974 at Lahore galvanized the religious parties to demand their pound of flesh and the Ahmadi issue was raised anew. At the same time ZA Bhutto, pumped-up with real and perceived successes at home was eager to appear on the world stage as a champion of the Third World. However, realizing that in the presence of Tito, Castro and Indira Gandhi, there was little room for him to play the lead role, he made the deal with the devil himself. Bhutto deferred the divine stewardship of the Muslim world to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia while assigning himself the temporal political leadership. Indian nuclear explosion in May 1974 and concerns within the security establishment of Pakistan, only helped to consolidate the relationship between Bhutto and King Faisal. In addition, the public attention needed to be diverted from the Indian success to more topical issues and hence the moving of the Ahmadi issue to the front burner. A few years ago, this author had asked the Justice (R) KMA Samdani (of Lahore High Court) about his report on the May 29,1974 riots in Rabwah – the Pakistani headquarter city of the Ahmadiyyas. Justice Samdani said that the scope of his judicial inquiry was strictly limited to probing the incidence of violence. He advised that if I were interested in the judicial inquiry into the doctrinal question of faith and apostasy, I should be looking into the Punjab Disturbances Court of Inquiry Report, (April 10, 1954) by the Justices Rustam Kiyani and Muhammad Munir of the Pakistan Federal Court. The two judges had summarized the crux of the report thus: “We had put to the Ulama (clergymen) the question, what is Islam and who is a momin or a Muslim? But we cannot refrain from saying here that it was a matter of infinite regret to us that the Ulama, whose first duty should be to have settled views on this subject, were hopelessly disagreed among themselves.” It is simply not possible to overlook the findings of the Munir-Kiyani report and one cannot imagine that this report would not have been made part of the parliamentary proceedings of 1974 by the prosecutors or defence. In the most unfortunate manner the state coerced a people into becoming a minority against their wishes. They were blinded to the fact that political – including constitutionally elected fora – are not the right venue for settling religious issues. Enter then, on the scene, the butcher of all butchers – General Zia ul Haq. Through his Islamic Martial Law supported by the Islamic fundamentalist clergy, he persecuted the PPP and executed Bhutto, hounded the Leftists, and harassed the Shiites – all of these had hoped that they’d never fall prey to the noose. But he saved the worst for the Ahmadiyyas. On 26 April 1984, Zia issued the Ordinance XX of 1984 called the “Anti Islamic Activities of the Qadiani Group, Lahore group and Ahmadis and (Prohibition and Punishment) Ordinance 1984. Section 298-B was inserted in the Pakistan Penal Code to punish the members of these groups if they: call or “pose” themselves directly or indirectly as a Muslim or refer to his faith as Islam; preach or propagate their faith or to invite others to accept their faith or in any manner whatsoever outrage the religious feelings of Muslims; call people to prayer by reciting Azan to refer to their mode or form of call to prayer as Azan; refer or call their place of worship as Masjid (Mosque); refer any person other than a Caliph or companion of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as Amir-ul-Mominin, Khalifatul-Muslimeen, Sahaba, Razi-Allah Anho any person other than the wives of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) as Umm-ul–Mominin and any person other than a member of the family of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) as Ahle-bait. While the scalpels of the Ahmadi surgeons saved Zia’s eyes and prostate, he let the guillotine of his fascism fall on the necks of the Ahmadiyyas. One after the other, political and military leaders, religious sects - even the minorities and progressives- and Pakistanis at large, have either been compromising with the Islamic fundamentalist forces or have kept on looking the other way while the grave-digging for the Ahmadiyya went on. The Hangman reared his ugly head in Pakistan in 1953 and we kept deluding ourselves that he is not after us because those dying were somehow different from us. We persisted in our belief that we will be spared if we collaborated. Writer, poet and blogger Hasan Mujtaba of the BBC wrote a moving Urdu piece – 'We all are Ahmadis’ (hum sub Ahmadi hein) about the massacre in Lahore. I beg to differ with Hasan though:  Unless we all take action to protect the weak in our midst we are all murderers of Ahmadis.

Fear of mirrors — I

Daily Times  Thursday, June 03, 2010

COMMENT: Fear of mirrors — I – Dr Mohammad Taqi

The neo-con thirst for oil is so extreme that they are willing to undermine the sacrifices of the brave men and women from the forces fighting the Taliban and the jihadist menace worldwide

“But she had slipped on the old mask and I knew she was concealing the truth. What memories was she trying to suppress, and why?” — Fear of Mirrors, Tariq Ali.

While reader response to my article, ‘Two faces of fear’ (Daily Times, May 11, 2010), was overwhelming and extremely positive, a minority — on the extreme right, both in the west and Pakistan — apparently went into an epileptic seizure.

Some of these fringe elements have, for years, tried to slip on a mask to conceal their motives to suppress memories — the public’s memories, that is. Their own memories, of the role they have played and keep on playing in creating monsters, remain intact.

The inability to handle their hideous image as shown in the mirror of my column has apparently induced convulsions of rage. Being outed in a piece — widely read by their own admission — was not to their liking.

In their rant, ‘Pakistani Conspiratorialism,’ published in Rupert Murdoch and William Kristol’s neo-con flagship, the Weekly Standard, on May 17, 2010, Irfan al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz exhibit a lot of confabulation and frothing at the mouth, while cherry-picking information from my article to alternatively endorse and criticise it.

Both gentlemen claim to be of the moderate Sufi Islamic persuasion, and that might be true. But in their own article, they helped scratch their façade, revealing the ugliness of the neo-conservatism lurking underneath.

They loved the part where I had criticised most faith-based US Islamic organisations for serving as a front for the world of Wahabiism, but are indignant when I get to the root-cause analysis of this hydra choking American Islam, i.e. the US-Saudi alliance and the American protection of Riyadh and, indirectly, its policies, which include promotion of Wahabiism in the US. They write:

“But the western links to Riyadh and Islamabad are pragmatic and empirical, founded on energy economics in the Saudi case and military necessity in that of Pakistan. Wahabiism was the ideological foundation of the Saudi state before oil was found on Arabian territory and America began to pay attention to politics there. Jihadism emerged in today’s Pakistan when the territory was still part of British India and America played no role in the region. Historically, Pakistanis have unresolved grievances against their former colonial masters in London, and have only become anti-American as a deranging consequence of their dangerous situation.”

That simple, eh! But I would say, not so fast Mr Schwartz and Mr al-Alawi. Both of them have carved themselves a niche as cheerleaders of the anti-Saudi campaign in the west and the US, with the latter leading an annual protest outside the Saudi embassy in Washington DC and has claimed fame as the author of a purported anti-Wahabi work called Two Faces of Islam.

The US-Saudi sponsorship of worldwide jihadism is the subject of deep and thorough scholarship by reputed authors like Steve Coll, Ahmed Rashid and the late John Cooley. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is on record as having acknowledged this lapse in US judgement.

Knowing full well that their deceitful message would be readily discarded by the mainstream US media or countered by hundreds of experts, the duo chose their ultra-rightwing weekly to sneak in the allegation that Pakistani-Americans are somehow paranoid about the unholy alliance between the neo-cons and their Wahabi partners.

The paragraph quoted above speaks for itself. The neo-con thirst for oil is so extreme that they are willing to undermine the sacrifices of the brave men and women from the forces fighting the Taliban and the jihadist menace worldwide. The sophistry used to justify the protection afforded to Riyadh flays naked Schwartz and al-Alawi’s anti-Wahabiist rhetoric and antics. They come across as nothing but Wahabi fellow travellers, and really clumsy ones at that.

We already knew that ‘moderate’ Islam cannot be produced in the test-tube of the ‘Centre of Islamic pluralism’ run by Schwartz, but now it is clear that this Murdochist is an outright apologist for the Saudi financing of worldwide Wahabiism on the pretext that we need their oil. Trading the brave American soldiers’ blood for Saudi oil is a deal that only Mr Schwartz can conceive.

The web of half-truths, deceit and confusion that these two authors have woven does not just stop with their apologetics for the continued neo-con support of the Wahabiist monarchy in Riyadh.

They go on to misrepresent the facts about the Senator Joseph Lieberman-sponsored Terrorist Expatriation Act, which the LA Times, in its editorial, ‘A Lieberman loser’ (May 10, 2010), dubbed as the “Terrorist Exploitation Act”.

Schwartz and al-Alawi are completely wrong in stating that, “Taqi predictably and absurdly compared such proposals with the mass relocation of ethnic Japanese during the Second World War. Nobody responsible has suggested that the citizenship of all Pakistani-born Americans, counting in the low hundreds of thousands, should be annulled, and fear-mongers like Mohammad Taqi, in spreading such nonsense, show exceptional foolishness.”

The LA Times wrote, and I quote, “Lieberman is candid about why he wants to deprive suspected US terrorists of their citizenship: to deny them due-process rights available to Americans...The Lieberman bill is unnecessary as well as unjust.”

The proposed legislation calls not for stripping convicted terrorists of their US citizenship but stripping that of the alleged terrorists. Simply put, anyone that the Lieberman’s coterie might not like could be put on the next boat to nowhere, without their day in court. The al-Alawi-Schwartz gloss-over of this glaring fact is not a mere oversight; it is an attempt to hoodwink the American public.

Schwartz and al-Alawi neither have the following nor the scruples to lead the change that is inevitable, i.e. first a cultural détente, and then an entente and rapprochement, between the Muslims — especially the émigré — and the West. Despite the fog of confusion that a vintage neo-con polemic creates, the Americans are able to see the fear of mirrors as displayed by al-Alawi and Schwartz. They and the politicians they support have messed up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and are out now to mess up the peace.

I maintain that mainstream American-Muslims — predominantly of South Asian descent — led by their forward-looking intelligentsia remain the best hope to rescue the mosque-centre pulpits around the US from fringe elements of all shades.

(To be continued)