Thursday, July 31, 2008

ISI's Role in Kabul Attack?

Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
New York times, August 1, 2008

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

For complete report, click here

For Pakistan's response, See Pakistan denies Embassy bomb accusation - CNN
Pakistan vows to 'weed out' pro-Taliban agents - AFP
Also See:
Analysis: ISI in a democratic milieu — Lt. Gen. (r) Talat Masood - Daily Times
CIA chief conveyed concerns over ISI - Dawn
Pakistan's Spies Elude Its Government - TIME
"Reform of Pakistan's Intelligence Services" - The News

Washington disappointed by new face of Pak democracy: Shaheen Sehbai

Washington disappointed by new face of Pak democracy
Shaheen Sehbai, The News, August 1, 2008

WASHINGTON: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani came to Washington and has returned to Islamabad but the decision makers of DC are still confused what to make out of his unofficial ‘official’ visit.

The eagerness at every level to meet and see him was to assess and evaluate the man in terms of his usefulness as a replacement to their long-trusted but fading friend, Gen Pervez Musharraf, and the plain fact is that Washington is disappointed and has decided not to take him seriously.

It is so because the man who represented democracy in Pakistan fell short on many scores. Not that the official Washington did not know but the real Washington needed to have a firsthand look at the man they were being asked to deal with after Gen Musharraf.

This real Washington comprises scores of think tanks, lobbyists, Congressmen, retired diplomats, bureaucrats, generals and media gurus. They did not go home with the perception and confidence that Gilani was the right man who they could instantly start dealing with, trust and depend on.

What they found lacking was the depth of understanding and vision in dealing with complex international and security issues, articulation to comprehend and project Pakistani policies in a clear and candid way, more so on public places than in closed door meetings. They did not find the will and the capacity in the prime minister to grasp the importance of issues, take control of matters and make decisions which he could sustain.

For complete report, click here

For a different viewpoint, see Gilani’s US visit viewed as highly successful - The News
Also See:
PM's Performance Leaves Much to be Desired - The News
A Conversation with Yousaf Raza Gillani - The News

FATA's Growing Disconnect

Fata’s growing disconnect
By Afrasiab Khattak, Dawn, July 31, 2008

IT is hardly an exaggeration that the security of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the entire region and indeed that of the whole world will be defined by developments in Fata over the next few months. Different scenarios are being painted by military strategists and political experts.

Al Qaeda, after regrouping in the militant sanctuaries of the area, is acquiring the capacity to repeat attacks in North America or Europe similar to those carried out in 2001 in the US.

If reports about the exchanges between Pakistan and the US at the highest level are anything to go by it is pretty clear that the US will retaliate against Pakistan, probably even more severely than it did against the Taliban-dominated Afghanistan. Similarly the use of these militant sanctuaries for cross-border fighting is so large in scale (in fact all the six political agencies bordering Afghanistan are being used) that denial in this regard is no longer plausible.

The federal government has to either admit defeat or muster the political will to resolve the problem, or else justify the existence of militant sanctuaries by explaining their usefulness to the national interest. We have run out of time and this decision cannot be delayed any more as there are no takers of the denial line.

As if this were not enough, armed lashkars (armies) from militant sanctuaries in Fata are poised to penetrate/invade the contiguous settled districts. The events in Hangu some three weeks back are a case in point. The Hangu police arrested four Taliban commanders from a car that also contained weapons, explosive material and manuals for making bombs in a place called Doaba not far away from the Orakzai Agency border.

Hundreds of Taliban surrounded the Doaba police station and demanded the commanders’ release. They also blocked the Hangu-Kurram highway. During this confrontation the Frontier Constabulary was ambushed near Zargari village and 16 security personnel were killed. Subsequently the army was called in to launch a military operation in Hangu. This action was not just in retaliation for the murder of 16 FC men but also came in view of the threat of attack by four to five thousand Taliban from Orakzai and Kurram agencies.

By now the said military operation has been completed and the targets achieved to the extent that the Taliban have been chased out of Hangu. Nevertheless, they have fled to Orakzai Agency where they are regrouping and preparing for future attacks.

The NWFP (Pakhtunkhwa) government is in a quandary. It has to call in the army whenever armed lashkars threaten to overrun a district as the police force simply does not have the capacity to fight an ever-expanding insurgency.

After Swat the army has also been deployed in Hangu. In view of the militant sanctuaries situated nearby, the army cannot be withdrawn in the near future. Imagine if the story is repeated in other vulnerable districts. Will the army also have to be deployed in all these other districts? Will such measures not bring the existence of the civilian provincial government into question?

Is it not amazing that in spite of such high stakes the presidency that has a monopoly over governance in Fata seems to show no anxiety over the prevailing situation? It is continuing with the policy of keeping Fata a black hole where terrorist groups from across the globe run their bases. It is still a no-go area for the media and civil society, and so far there is no corrective measure or policy change in sight. So much so that we have failed to take even the most preliminary step of extending the Political Parties Act to Fata.

It is only natural that we are perturbed when attacks are launched from across the border. But should we not be equally sensitive to the loss of our sovereignty over Fata to militant groups? Strangely enough we do not seem to be bothered about the militants’ total control of Fata. When the international media carries reports about this situation we dismiss them as ‘enemy’ propaganda against Pakistan. We have failed to grasp the fact that in the post-cold war world there is a universal consensus about two things. One, that all assault weapons that can be used for launching a war cannot be allowed to be kept in private possession. Two, that no state will allow the use of its soil by non-state players against another state. The entire world is astounded by our fixation with the cold war mode. We have developed an incredible capacity to live in unreality. This is indeed dangerous for any state system but it can be catastrophic for a state dancing in a minefield.

Where does all this leave the people of Fata? They are victims and not perpetrators as some people would like us to believe. They are in fact in triple jeopardy. Firstly they are groaning under the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) of 1901. They have no access to the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan since they are not justiciable outside of the jurisdiction of the higher judiciary.

Secondly the tribal belt has almost been occupied by foreign and local militant organisations that are better equipped, better trained and better financed than the local population. More than 160 tribal leaders have been killed by terrorists in North and South Waziristan who operate with total impunity. Today’s Fata is not dissimilar to the Taliban and Al Qaeda controlled Afghanistan before 9/11.

Thirdly, the people of Fata get caught in the crossfire between militants and security forces from both sides of the Durand Line. The so-called collateral damage has seen a cancerous growth in Fata. The people of Fata have lost the support and protection of the state. They have no access to the media, courts and hospitals or to humanitarian assistance. The only intervention by state players takes place through their armies and air forces in which people of the tribal area are mostly on the receiving end.

For any informed and sensitive Pakistani, the situation in the tribal area is the top-most priority when it comes to policy formation and implementation. We must realise that the question of dismantling militant sanctuaries in Fata and taking short-term and long-term measures to open up the area and integrate it with the rest of the country needs urgent national attention if we are to avoid the impending catastrophe.

Pakistan needs strong judiciary for stability: Aitzaz Ahsan's Talk at Harvard

Pakistan needs strong judiciary for stability

News: July 25, 2008; Author: Beth Maclin , Communications Assistant;
Belfer Centre, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The United States should change its tactics in Pakistan to win the battle against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar president, Aitzaz Ahsan, said recently.

Rather than looking at Pakistan through the "war on terror" lens, Ahsan suggested that the United States focus on winning over the local population. "If the local population looks at you as a tyrant, you have given up your most effective weapons," he said.

Ahsan is a leader of Pakistan's lawyers' movement, which began in response to President Pervez Musharraf's suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry from his position on March 9, 2007. Despite Parliament unanimously reinstating Chaudhry in July 2007, Musharraf continued attacks against the judiciary by arresting Chaudry again and by removing and arresting 59 judges and thousands of lawyers between November 2007 and February 2008. Many of these cases have not yet been resolved, despite the power change in Pakistan's parliament.

Ahsan discussed what is needed to fix the country's dire judicial situation earlier this month at a seminar hosted by the Project on Managing the Atom and the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Pakistan must have a fearless, independent judiciary in order to be a stable and sound democracy, according to Ahsan.

"The judiciary must begin to be reconstructed by the reinstatement of the independent chief justice and judges," Ahsan said. "They have been prevented from performing their functions and they must be facilitated in returning to their posts and begin to perform their function and to impart justice," he said.

This creates a problem for Pakistan, but also the United States, because it makes it harder to have an invested local population. He said the United States could actually aid their cause by coming out in support of an independent judiciary.

Ahsan said that the local population needs to be "equipped with enforceable rights, which means a justice system it has confidence in." He explained that without a justice system the local population believed in, those rights could not enforced and therefore, the population will not be invested in the success of the system.

If "you deny a people an independent justice system, you actually contribute the people to the adversaries who promises a rough kind of justice," he said.

"At the same time, you must remember that if you arrest 60 of the independent judges and there is no recourse or reinstatement," Ahsan said, "which judge in Pakistan will be independent if he has the horrible example that Pervez Musharaff has made of the chief justice and his children in front of him? Which judge will ever be independent?"

Ahsan said that the lawyers' movement was the voice of opposition against Musharraf's actions because the opposition political leaders were in exile. "It was the lawyers who had taken up the battle cry against Pervez Musharaff when there was a barren and desolate political landscape," he said.

Yet even after Pakistan's exiled leaders returned and elections were held, which "sacked" Musharraf, the 60 senior and independent judges, who were arrested and removed from their posts, have not been reinstated.

"The lawyers' movement, itself, waited upon the leadership and the new parliament to reinstate the judges," Ahsan said. The leaders of the two major parties which make up the coalition signed the Bhurban accord, which promised the judges' reinstatement by April 30, 2008. "However, the thirtieth of April passed. The judges were not reinstated. A new deadline was assumed and agreed upon. The judges are still not reinstated."

The Project on Managing the Atom is housed within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Not Charlie Wilson's war but Bhutto's, says Gilani

Not Charlie Wilson's war but Bhutto's, says Pakistani PM
Los Angeles Times, July 31, 2008

The black limousines snaked all the way down the street last night as a veritable who's who of South Asia-philes gathered to fete visiting Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani at the Embassy of Pakistan in northwest Washington.

Among those in attendance were U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, who flew in for Gillani’s visit to Washington this week, CIA Director Michael Hayden and chief deputy Stephen Kappes, the State Department's South Asia assistant secretary, Richard Boucher, and other inside-the-Beltway luminaries.

Gillani, tapped as prime minister after the first democratic elections in Pakistan in a decade, said little publicly of his meetings with President Bush and other officials, in which he was pressed aggressively to do more to counter the growing threat from Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous areas bordering Afghanistan.

But Gillani and Pakistan's new ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, both spoke passionately of the challenges facing the newly elected civilian government.

Both said that Pakistan wanted to fight terrorism and restore democracy but that it needed to do so on its own terms -- a polite reference to the mounting American pressure to allow more U.S. military and intelligence activity within the country. And both said Pakistan would do so as a testament to their political party's former leader, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated late last year while campaigning to unseat the party of Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

"This is not Charlie Wilson's war," Gillani said, referring to the charismatic former congressman who helped the United States dictate how the Afghan government fought and won its war with the occupying Soviet army in the 1980s. "This is Benazir Bhutto's war. And there should be absolutely no doubt about our commitment to fighting terrorism."

Afterward, Pakistan expert Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution said the new government truly wanted to dismantle Al Qaeda and the many other extremist organizations operating on its soil. "This is the best government we could ever hope to get in Pakistan," Cohen said. "I just don’t know if it's enough."
-- Josh Meyer

Also see:
Gilani hits back, cites US failure in Afghanistan - Dawn

How peace deals in NWFP/FATA help only militants

How peace deals help only militants
The News, July 31, 2008
Sayed G B Shah Bokhari

A very dangerous trend has taken root among some elected representatives, hailing from constituencies adjacent to FATA. For the sake of short-term gain and their personal glory, these people are actively involved in brokering so-called peace deals between the government and militants. All this does is give much-needed respite to the militants, enabling them to re-group and re-organise themselves. This respite is also crucial from the militants' point of view because in most cases they would not otherwise be able to fight for long periods of time against the might of the government's security forces.

Also, the behaviour and role of these legislators before the law and order situation takes a turn for the worse also needs to be scrutinized. For instance, as the situation begins to get out of hand, these people's representatives remain silent spectators and do nothing to stop it from worsening. They swing into action only when the situation turns so grave that the government is compelled to use the military option. The question that obviously comes to mind is that why convene a jirgas only when an operation is going on against the militants? Surely, the only side that will benefit from that, especially if the operation is going reasonably successfully, is the militants.

Public representatives need to realize that during such an operation it is usually the case that some security forces personnel may lose their lives and a larger number may become disabled. Also, the number of young widows and orphaned children continues to swell with each passing operation. So from the soldier's point of view, why should be he risk his life and everything to achieve something that is immediately given up once a peace accord is signed?

I wrote about the Hangu operation recently but need to elaborate on its winding up in some detail. It began on July 9 and after some time the military had driven around 400-odd militants out of the area, forcing them to take shelter in neighbouring North Waziristan and Orakzai agencies. However, despite this weak position, they employed the clever trick of giving a warning to the ANP government to wind up the operation by or face retaliation. And what did the NWFP government do? It caved in and asked the army to wind up the operation within a day the warning was given.

The next day a grand jirga was called and a ceasefire agreement duly signed. Though its terms have not been made public, a member of the jirga revealed that the government's first priority was to get 29 people still held hostage by the Taliban released in exchange for the release of three of the seven militants (including presumably Rafiuddin, said to be Baitullah Mehsud's close aide) arrested by the police in Hangu (which led to the militants laying siege to a police station). As usual, the army would then withdraw and the Taliban would give an 'assurance' that they would not challenge the writ of the government again. However, it is unclear whether any monitoring mechanism will be put in place to ensure that the Taliban abide by the terms of the agreement. Also, the release of even a single, let alone three, militants hardly makes sense given that it was over this matter that the operation had been initiated in the first place.

In any case, the sincerity, or lack thereof, of the militants was shown soon. On July 26, armed men kidnapped the brother of the Hangu district nazim, who ironically was the most enthusiastic member of the jirga which had brokered the so-called peace deal. Also, unknown person attacked the residence in Kohat of the SHO who in Hangu had arrested the seven militants.

If agreements in Wana or Swat are to any guide, it is likely that the agreement in Hangu will end up helping only the Taliban.

The writer is a retired colonel based in Peshawar.sismaelshah@hotmail.com

IslamExpo in London - Building bridges?

IslamExpo: building bridges or burning them down?
Josef Litobarski; Opendemocracy.net, 24 - 07 - 2008

IslamExpo, Europe's biggest Muslim cultural event, was first held in London in 2006 on the first anniversary of the 7/7 bombings. The timing might seem slightly confrontational, but it was an unfortunate coincidence rather than a political statement; the deposit for the venue having been paid before the bombings. This year's IslamExpo, attended by some 40,000 people, was held at London's Olympia from July 12-14. The event was organised to build bridges and promote understanding and to celebrate the culture and history of Islam. Critics, however, have compared the event to a BNP rally and allege that shady links exist between the organisers and groups such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The controversy surrounding the event became such that, hours before he was due to speak at the opening ceremony, Shahid Malik, the UK international development minister, was forced to pull out due to pressure from the government. A spokesperson from the department of communities revealed that the government had "reservations about the organisers of the event." And Malik wasn't the only speaker to cancel his appearance: Stephen Timms, minister of state for employment, mysteriously disappeared from the list of speakers; the Tory Muslim peer Lord Sheikh pulled out, citing a bad back; and Douglas Murray and Martin Bright both refused to attend when they learned that the blog Harry's Place was being threatened with litigation by the organisers of IslamExpo for claiming that British Muslim Initiative president Mohammed Sawalha had used the phrase "evil Jew."

The talk about the Iraq war (entitled "Five Years On: Stability or Chaos?") was hit particularly hard by this blight of vanishing speakers. Salah El-Sheikhy, Andrew Murray and former Iraqi interim prime minister Ayad Allawi all pulled out, leaving the panel looking more than a little thin, with only Respect MP George Galloway and Guardian columnist Jonathan Steele remaining. The chair, Anas Altikriti, was forced to shuffle over and become a panellist. The Iraq debate ended up being decidedly one-sided, with all the speakers in total agreement with one another (although Jonathan Steele seemed more than a little wary of Galloway's assertion that al-Qaida is really a CIA puppet).

Despite the paucity of panelists, the IslamExpo appeared very well attended by a young, mostly Muslim audience, split fairly evenly between the sexes and with a great many children playing and running around, jumping onto the balloons strewn across the hall (sometimes punctuating a heated question and answer session about suicide-bombing with a startling bang). But to describe it as a "mostly Muslim" audience suggests a homogeneity which it didn't possess: there were Muslims from Europe attending, Muslims from India, from Pakistan, from Nigeria and Somalia, from Malaysia and Indonesia, and from many places in between. And there was a sizeable minority of non-Muslims in attendance as well: from Anglican priests in dog-collars to Hasidic Jews in shtreimel.

The first floor was taken up by the main lecture hall, and by the stalls, crowded with interested attendees; stall-holders selling middle-eastern and south-Asian foodstuffs, books and DVDs and t-shirts, and handing out a small rainforest worth of brochures and magazines. There was also a "fun zone" for children to play in, a five-a-side football pitch, a cafƩ, a garden-style area, a stage for performances, examples of Muslim street art, and a giant fabric-domed mosque. On the second floor of the hall were a collection of displays: a timeline of the history of Islam; ancient and contemporary Muslim art, including a series of striking political cartoons on Guantanamo bay and the war on terror (and a rendering of Abu-Ghraib in lego); and displays of Islamic science and invention. Also on the second floor were the workshops: calligraphy, henna, Islamic geometry, North African drumming and more.

Of course, the henna and calligraphy workshops were unlikely to be a source of controversy. It was rather the range of political views on offer at IslamExpo that had critics chomping at the bit. Especially interesting was witnessing Godwin's Law applied in the real world. Earlier in July, when Shahid Malik had said that British Muslims felt like the "Jews of Europe," he had been very careful to stress he was not making a comparison with the Holocaust. Unfortunately, some of the audience members who got up to ask questions at the IslamExpo lectures failed to make the distinction. One man said, to loud applause, that the "treatment of Muslims in the UK is starting to become very close to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany."

Conspiracy theories also abounded (not helped by George Galloway's mysterious pronouncement that even al-Qaida didn't know who they were really working for) - one woman in the audience stood up and screamed into the microphone that nobody would ever be able to convince her that Iraqis were actually the ones killing Iraqis, because all sectarian killings in Iraq were actually being carried out by American contractors. She was swiftly denounced by another woman, who said she had lost family in Iraq, most definitely killed by other Iraqis, and that she found these conspiracy theories offensive. The audience applauded her. One of the speakers, Robert Leiken, author of "Europe's Angry Muslims," said he felt extremely depressed by some of the questions. "If people heard these questions," he said, "they would feel they were correct [in their preconceptions of Islam]." On the other hand, the more moderate views put forward got plenty of applause as well.

Perhaps most controversial of all, however, was a talk given by Dr. Azzam Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought. Dr. Tamimi certainly caused a stir in 2004 when he said in a BBC interview that he would go to Palestine and sacrifice himself if he was able to. His speech on Saturday began quietly, steadily increasing in fervour until by the end he was shouting into the microphone. As Dr. Tamimi argued passionately that Hamas was a national liberation movement, some members of the audience got carried away and there were one or two yells of "allāhu akbar." Dr. Tamimi ended his speech calling for "Christian, Jew and Muslim [to] live in peace," yet refused to answer a question from the audience about whether he condoned suicide bombing. Sitting beside Dr. Tamimi was Dr. Nur Masalha, who told the audience that he considered suicide-bombing to be counter-productive to the efforts of the people of Palestine, a sentiment which received applause.

In the end, whatever IslamExpo resembled it was nothing like a BNP rally. It had too many different strands, too many different competing narratives playing out at the same time. Yes, there was an ugliness which occasionally reared its head during discussions on contentious topics. But in fact the worst "hate speech" I came across in relation to IslamExpo was on a billboard in London advertising the event, where someone had painted a swastika with a spray-can. With one or two exceptions, there was genuine debate going on at IslamExpo. The talk about women in Islam was especially interesting in this respect - and it was encouraging to see that more than half of the audience members there were women.

It remains to be seen whether IslamExpo really has built any bridges between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Britain. The event did not draw a great deal of non-Muslims, nor an enormous amount of attention from the mainstream media. Critics may also be right when they say that many of the debates were politically-biased. IslamExpo should not, however, be dismissed out of hand. The lack of balance was made far worse, for example, by the decision taken by almost all the speakers critical of IslamExpo to pull out at the last minute, not leaving the organisers enough time to find suitable replacements. From what I could see, the speakers would not have been badly received, booed or heckled if they had presented arguments which challenged the views of the audience. One hopes that the convention's critics won't shy away from the show next year.

"C.I.A. Outlines Pakistan Links With Militants": NYT

C.I.A. Outlines Pakistan Links With Militants
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, July 30, 2008

WASHINGTON — A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.

The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants.

The C.I.A. assessment specifically points to links between members of the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the militant network led by Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, which American officials believe maintains close ties to senior figures of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The C.I.A. has depended heavily on the ISI for information about militants in Pakistan, despite longstanding concerns about divided loyalties within the Pakistani spy service, which had close relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 attacks.

For Complete article, Click here

Also See:Pakistan feels the heat in Washington - Asia Times

Karachiites cheer deposed CJ amid ban on live TV coverage

Karachiites cheer deposed CJ amid ban on live TV coverage
The News, July 30, 2008
By our correspondents

KARACHI: Thousands of cheering lawyers, students, rights organisations and activists of political parties accorded a warm welcome to deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on his arrival here on a two-day visit.

But on the other hand, the Sindh High Court administration has imposed a ban on live transmission of TV channels, entry of political parties’ leaders, activists, civil society members in SHC building for today (Wednesday). On Sindh High Court Bar Association (SHCBA)’s invitation, the deposed chief justice is to inaugurate a commemorative plaque on main door of the SHCBA, which is named as Justice Iftikhar Hall.

For Complete story, click here
Iftikhar gets warm welcome in Karachi - Daily Times

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Bush Administration Sticks with Pakistan Army: EURASIA

PAKISTAN: BUSH ADMINISTRATION STICKS WITH PAKISTANI MILITARY
Richard Weitz: 7/29/08; EURASIA

President George W. Bush is talking to Pakistan’s civilian leaders, but the US presidential administration continues to exhibit a stubborn preference for maintaining close ties with the Pakistani military, an institution that is widely discredited inside the South Asian state.

Bush welcomed Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to the White House on July 28 for talks that focused on the deteriorating security situation along the Pakistani-Afghan border. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Gilani said the Pakistani government is determined to contain Islamic militants. Bush told journalists that the Pakistani leader had “made a very strong commitment” to restoring Islamabad’s control over the tribal areas. Questions remain, however, over whether the Pakistani government, even if it has the will to take action, possesses the means to break up the militants’ safe havens.

Amid the speculation, the Bush administration has clung doggedly to policies that have proven ineffective in curbing the militant threat. The US strategy to date has centered on the personality of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the leader of the country’s military establishment, and a man who, from the popular viewpoint, is easily the most reviled figure in Pakistani politics today. Indeed, Gilani’s rise to power was the direct result of parliamentary elections that were widely interpreted as a repudiation of Musharraf’s policies, as well as the military’s control of the political process. Over 80 percent of the Pakistani people want Musharraf to go, according to a recent poll conducted by the International Republican Institute.

The parliamentary elections presented US officials with an opportunity to reevaluate Washington’s policy dependence on the Pakistani military, but, to date, the United States has not followed up on that opening. The bulk of US assistance to Islamabad continues to be funneled through the military establishment. Administration critics argue that diverting assistance toward civil society and economic development initiatives would be more effective in winning the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people, and in making the country’s tribal areas more secure.

For Complete article, click here

A Fresh Start With Pakistan: NYT

Editorial: A Fresh Start With Pakistan
New York Times, July 28, 2008

Pakistan’s new civilian prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is in Washington this week for what we are sure will be a difficult set of meetings.

Mr. Gilani’s constituents deeply resent the United States for propping up and enabling their former dictator, Pervez Musharraf. President Bush, who directed that enabling, must have his own serious doubts about Mr. Gilani’s willingness to fight Taliban and Qaeda forces that are using Pakistan as a safe haven.

That is why Mr. Bush needs to use this visit to recast relations — making clear that he is committed to strengthening both Pakistan’s democracy and its ability to fight extremism. That will require a lot more economic assistance and more carefully monitored military aid.

For their part, Pakistan’s civilian leaders must provide more honest and effective governance. They must tell their voters that extremism also threatens Pakistan — and that this is not just America’s fight.

The government also needs to find new ways of asserting its authority in the tribal areas, by providing better social services, promoting economic development and working more closely with tribal leaders. And it must send more elite troops trained in counterinsurgency to take on Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Both sides would be better able to achieve these goals if Congress approved legislation introduced this month by Senator Joseph Biden and Senator Richard Lugar that provides for substantial long-term increases in economic assistance to Pakistan and tighter monitoring of American military assistance. The White House needs to give this bipartisan initiative its strong support.

The imbalance it seeks to remedy between lavish but misdirected military aid and miserly economic assistance was highlighted in the recent Congressional skirmish over who would pay for modernizing Pakistan’s jet fighters.

The modernized F-16 is a high-technology plane, mainly intended to deter India, and is poorly suited to counterinsurgency operations along the Afghan border. The original plan was for Pakistan to pay the $230 million a year. But now the White House and Mr. Gilani want Congress to pick up the tab.

Mr. Gilani is eager to keep the Pakistani military happy — and the new army commander, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is a professional who has supported the transition to civilian government. If Washington pays, it would also, in theory, free up those millions for badly needed social spending.

If spent wisely, that money could go far. A program to control and prevent hepatitis B infections would cost roughly $100 million. A public-health laboratory network could be set up for $30 million.

Under present aid formulas, Washington can pay for the F-16 upgrades only by shifting funds from equipment better suited for fighting the Taliban. Pakistan needs more such equipment — not less — including Cobra helicopters and night-vision goggles.

Pakistan should not be modernizing the F-16’s at all, but that deal was made long ago. Congress should hold its nose and approve this year’s F-16 money, plus additional emergency funds for the helicopters and goggles. Then it should quickly enact the Biden-Lugar legislation.

That way, Pakistan will have reliable funding for future social programs and be able to focus American military aid on counterterrorism. It is an imperfect solution but could be the start of a better relationship — one that promotes democracy and the fight against Al Qaeda.

PM Gilani in Washington D.C.

Joint communique: $115.5m US food security assistance
By Our Correspondent, Dawn, July 29, 2008

WASHINGTON, July 28: The United States will provide $115.5 million in food security assistance to Pakistan, including $42.5 million over the next nine months, says a joint communiquƩ issued here on Monday after a meeting between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. The statement also supports a move in the US Senate to provide $15 billion to Pakistan over 10 years.

The two leaders welcomed recent efforts in the US Congress to extend the United States’ commitment to help address Pakistan’s most urgent needs, including education, agriculture and energy. The president will continue to work with Congress to ensure the continued support of the United States to Pakistan over the long term, says the communiquĆ©.

The two leaders agreed to institute a separate track for agricultural cooperation under the Strategic Dialogue. The United States will assist with disease control activities in Pakistan to augment the prime minister’s initiative to combat the spread of hepatitis and other infectious diseases.

The United States highlighted its $30 million Pakistan Energy Development programme focussed on improving power availability, affordability and efficiency.

The United States and Pakistan will hold the next round of the US-Pakistan Energy Dialogue this autumn to help Pakistan meet its vast and growing energy needs. The two leaders agreed to hold the next round of Education Dialogue later this year.

They agreed to continue and enhance robust collaboration in science and technology under the successful bilateral Science and Technology Framework Agreement.

The United States highlighted its support for democracy-building and improved governance through project funding.

TRADE AND BUSINESS: The two leaders renewed a joint commitment to pursue steps to establish Reconstruction Opportunity Zones that will expand trade opportunities in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The United States and Pakistan will work together towards a goal of establishing direct non-stop flights between the two countries before the end of 2008, expanding people-to-people ties and improving the investment climate to the benefit of the people of both countries.

The United States and Pakistan agree to convene officials promptly to review the status of bilateral investment treaty negotiations.

The two countries will reconvene the Joint Council under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement in September 2008.

The US-Pakistan Economic Dialogue will be held on August 11 in Islamabad.

SECURITY COOPERATION: The two leaders agreed to strengthen long-term security relationship with a view to enhancing Pakistan’s defence capabilities, especially in the field of counter-terrorism, through training and equipment.

Reconvene the bilateral Defence Consultative Group this autumn with a renewed focus on counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism. Renew cooperative efforts to root out extremism along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, including the North-West Frontier Province, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan. Expand cooperation between the US and the Pakistani Frontier Corps and other Pakistani security forces on the front lines in the fight against violent extremism.

Focus US security assistance on efforts to enhance the counter-terrorism capability of Pakistan’s military forces.

REGIONAL PEACE, SECURITY: Strengthen the Tripartite Commission between the International Security Assistance Force, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Support the efforts of Pakistan and Afghanistan to hold the next joint jirga this autumn. Hold the next Regional Economic Cooperation Conference in Islamabad this autumn.

Encourage the Pakistan-India Composite Dialogue process to reduce tensions, build trust and resolve all outstanding issues.

Also See:
Bush Meets With Prime Minister Gilani of Pakistan - Washington Post
Pakistan's Accidental Prime Minister - Time

Monday, July 28, 2008

America's Opportunity in Pakistan’s Tribal Belt

America's Opportunity in Pakistan’s Tribal Belt
By Ziad Haider

Lahore, July 28: When Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gillani, visits Washington today, he will face tough questions about securing Pakistan ’s federally administered tribal areas (FATA) along its border with Afghanistan . So will his hosts in Congress. For a key question on Islamabad ’s mind is the fate of stalled legislation creating reconstruction opportunity zones (ROZs) to spur development and combat militancy in FATA.

Today FATA is the alleged epicenter of the war on terror. A 2008 DNI assessment states that Al Qaeda is finalizing its next plan of attack against America in FATA. The Taliban is using these areas to launch attacks in Afghanistan where last month more troops were killed than in Iraq . FATA-based militants have also turned their guns inward. The CIA has accused Baitullah Mehsud’s network of assassinating Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto while security forces continue to be brazenly attacked in Pakistan ’s frontier.

The Government of Pakistan has adopted a three-pronged strategy to combat this threat: negotiating with tribesmen who cease combat; withdrawing the army from these areas and only using it when peaceful alternatives are exhausted; and promoting development.

The third prong is crucial as FATA is among Pakistan ’s most underdeveloped areas and thus ripe for militancy. Government estimates show that 60% of households live beneath the poverty line; only 17.42% of the population is literate.

In 2006, President Bush announced he would seek legislation creating ROZs in Afghanistan and Pakistan ’s border and earth-quake affected areas. Select goods produced in ROZ-based industries would have duty-free access to the US , spurring investment and employment. Now Congress must translate this initiative into reality for three reasons.

First, as Pakistan ’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmud Qureshi stated in Washington recently, ROZs “will go a long way in helping expand economic opportunities and weaning innocent people off extremism.” Lack of jobs is a key factor cited for FATA’s Talibanization, according to a 2008 FATA survey sponsored by the British Government.

Recognizing the role ROZs can play, Pakistani officials consistently raise them with their US counterparts and Congressional delegations; politicians touted them during the parliamentary elections held earlier this year; and bureaucrats are identifying potential sites while navigating security concerns.

Second, US development aid has neither been sufficient nor always trickled down in FATA. The Government Accountability Office estimates that only 1% of aid for FATA between 2002 and 2007 was spent on development. Even as Congress increases this fund, ROZs will help FATA’s people stand on their feet and directly reap gains from faceless American consumers instead of only reaping losses from faceless American Predators.

Third, increasing market access will decrease America ’s credibility deficit. Three-fourths of Pakistanis believe the war on terror’s purpose is to dominate the Muslim world, according to a recent Terror Free Tomorrow poll. Incidents like the US strike that killed 11 Pakistani troops, statements regarding entering FATA, and images of US drones in FATA are fueling fears of a unilateral strike and weakening a fledging elected government.

Without the Pakistani people’s support, however, neither government can tackle their shared threat. In addition to resolving deep institutional divisions over combating versus patronizing the Taliban, Islamabad must convince the public it is not fighting America ’s war but an existential internal threat which will require partnering with the US . It must further demonstrate that this partnership can yield not just short-term aid but also long-term gains like market access.

Indeed, over two-thirds of Pakistanis who favorably view Al Qaeda stated in the Terror Free Tomorrow poll that alternate US policies such as those promoting investment and trade would change their opinion of America . ROZs are thus precisely the type of initiative America must deliver on and publicly spotlight while privately addressing its legitimate differences with Pakistani officials.

Yet despite the clear dividend, it has taken two years for enabling bills to be introduced in Congress. Now in an election year with competing trade priorities and domestic labor concerns hampering the bill’s progress, the window to pass legislation is fast closing.

ROZs are not just an opportunity for FATA’s people. They are also an opportunity for Congress to use American soft power to promote US credibility and stability in a pivotal region. The sooner Congress passes this bill, the sooner it provides a gainful alternative to joining Al Qaeda and the Taliban and killing Americans, Pakistanis, and Afghans among others. That is a goal worthy of Congress’s immediate attention.

Who Controls ISI - The Controversy Continues...

For Latest analysis on the subject, see

Failed coup against ISI was to appease US - Shaheen Sehbai, The News
How decision was reversed so soon - Hamid Mir, The News
ISI back under PM’s control - Tahir Niaz, Daily Times
Govt forced to withdraw ISI decision - Syed Irfan Raza, Dawn
Taming of the ISI? - Daily Times Editorial

For an Indian View, see
Pakistan's U-Turn on ISI - Hindu

Shiites flee enclave in Pakistan after Taliban lay siege

Shiites flee enclave in Pakistan after Taliban lay siege
By Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, International Herald Tribune, July 27, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: It was once known as the Parrot's Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the U.S.-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. That was during the Cold War.

Now the area, around the town of Parachinar, is near the center of the new kind of struggle. The Taliban have inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under siege.

The Taliban, which have solidified control across the Pakistani tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds for attacking U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with fellow Sunni Muslims against an enclave of Shiites settled in Parachinar for centuries. The population of about 55,000 is short of food. The fruit crop is rotting, residents say, and the cost of a 30-kilogram, or 65-pound, bag of flour has skyrocketed to $100.

And, in a mini-conflict that yet again demonstrates the growing influence of the Taliban and the Pakistani government's lack of control over this sensitive border area, young and old, wounded and able-bodied, have become refugees in their own land.

Thousands of displaced Shiites from Parachinar are scattered among relatives in Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the tribal areas, and in hotels and shelters where images of Iranian religious leaders decorate the halls.

For Complete story, click here

U.S. war on terrorism loses ground in Pakistan: LAT

U.S. war on terrorism loses ground in Pakistan
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 27, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Although the "war on terrorism" remains a consuming focus of the U.S. government, the Bush administration appears poised to leave behind a situation not unlike the one it inherited nearly eight years ago: a resurgent Al Qaeda ensconced in South Asia, training new recruits, plotting attacks against the West, and seemingly beyond the United States' reach.

In dozens of interviews, senior U.S. national security, intelligence and military officials described a counter-terrorism campaign in Pakistan that has lost momentum and is beset by frustration.

for Complete Story, click here

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Kayani factor & the withering PPP - PML-N Coalition

Kayani factor & the withering PPP,PML-N coalition
By Sohail Iqbal, Pulse, July 24, 2008

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has reportedly threatened to finally quit the ruling alliance, if the sacked judiciary is not restored by the Independence Day on August 14 and the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) doesn’t take a decision on impeaching President Pervez Musharraf. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s party, which withdrew from the coalition government in May, has conveyed to the PPP that it won’t rejoin the cabinet, if these two crucial decisions are not taken by the time when the nation will celebrate its 61st Independence Day, claims a report. The reported date coincides with an important day because the PML-N probably wants to present a gift to the nation on August 14, freeing the people of a dictator, who is at the lowest ebb of popularity, yet, refuses to give up power.

The differences among the PML-N and the PPP, which together in March had formed the strongest coalition in the country’s history, reached a climax when Sharif refused to accompany Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in a maiden visit to the United States to meet the outgoing President George W Bush. Sharif also did not attend the meeting of the ruling coalition this week on the pretext that he was busy looking after his wife in London. The PML-N leadership maintained that since the PML-N had already quit the cabinet, there was no justification for Sharif to go on an official visit to the US. Secondly, the Muslim League leadership doesn’t want to meet the American president realising the Bush administration doesn’t feel comfortable working with Sharif and his party. In the past few weeks, the statements from the PML-N leadership have become bitter and nobody is talking about the proposed constitutional amendment that aims at reducing the powers of the president. Sharif and Zardari, who few months ago appeared to be best of friends, are moving apart and there seems to be no common ground to bridge those differences and unite them again for the sake of democracy.

Zardari and Sharif have been moving in opposite directions, as the former is relying on the Republican administration to bail it out of its failures in the first 100 days of governance, while the latter is hoping the Democrat’s will return to power in the forthcoming US presidential elections, as Sharif in past has had friendly relations with the Democrats.

The most memorable thing in the first 100 days of the PPP-led coalition government is, perhaps, the inability of the alliance to kick-start a strong and stable government because both Sharif and Zardari have been playing nerve games, waiting for the other to break first. The egos of the political leaders have become larger than the interests of the country. Despite several meetings between the two leaders and their announced resolve to keep the coalition intact, the two parties have not been able to sort out their disputes over reinstatement of the judiciary and removing the president from his office. The two leaders have refused to budge from their stated positions leaving the country in a political, economic and security turmoil, while making the forces of Establishment stronger.

The PPP-PML-N split is without any doubt strengthening Musharraf, encouraging him to make public appearances and he recently enjoyed a trip to the hill resort of Murree and a game of golf with the Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. This was a clear indication that despite being extremely unpopular, the president was enjoying the support of the military, a reason that is keeping the PPP from making a drastic move against Musharraf. According to sources close to the PPP and the PML-N, the two parties were unhappy at the army chief playing golf with the president, as it betrayed his claim that he had pulled the army out of politics and that in future the armed forces will have nothing to do with politics. The army chief also held a series of meetings this month with newspaper editors and media chiefs, keeping them off the record. According to sources the army chief raised the point in these meetings that the political leadership was refusing to take responsibility for operations in the tribal areas against the militants and wanted the military to spearhead the action. These sources claim that some media chiefs objected that why should the political leadership take the responsibility when the military is refusing to transfer complete power to the civilian government.

Secondly, these sources say, the media chiefs also tried to convince the army chief to withdraw support to the unpopular president and let the civilian leadership take independent decisions. On this issue, sources said, the army chief did not utter a word leaving his guests in a state of confusion and disappointment.

Despite the fact that Zardari has declared Musharraf an illegal and unconstitutional president, he is unable to remove him given the pressures that he is facing from the Establishment and of his own weaknesses as a leader. Given Zardari’s inability to lead from the front, he is hoping that the president would resign voluntarily and walk away rather than face impeachment. While, the political questions remain unanswered, the government of Yousuf Raza Gilani has also not made any progress, which was reflected in his first address to the nation last week. He was unable to convince the public as to why the peace accords with the tribal militants had failed and the Pakistani Taliban were becoming stronger and stronger. He could not answer the questions as to why the nation has to suffer high fuel prices and inflation. The technical problems of recording his speech aside, the prime minister lacked confidence unable to see the public directly in the eyes and claim credit for the steps taken by the government.

As the political, economic and security situation nosedives, the PML-N doesn’t want to share the failures of the Gilani government. After all, the recent surveys by independent polling agencies including that of Washington-based International Republican Institute’s report, Sharif is gaining in popularity and Zardari is losing. Musharraf is already down and out in the race of popular Pakistani leaders, according to the IRI report. This situation suits Nawaz Sharif who can sit back and prepare for next elections -- the sooner the better for him.

ISI and IB under Interior Minister?

ISI, IB put under interior division’s control
By Syed Irfan Raza, Dawn, July 27, 2008

ISLAMABAD, July 26: The government on Saturday placed the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) under the direct control of the interior division.

The landmark decision was notified by the cabinet division after the approval of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

The notification, issued the day the prime minister left Islamabad for Washington, said: “In terms of Rule 3(3) of the Rules of Business of 1973, the prime minister has approved the placement of the Intelligence Bureau and the Inter-Services Intelligence under the administrative, financial and operational control of the Interior Division with immediate effect.”

The country’s three main intelligence agencies have been working under various authorities. The ISI and the IB were working directly under the prime minister, while the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) was being overseen by the interior minister.

Following the latest decision, all the three main spy agencies will work under the interior ministry.

In theory both the agencies would now be answerable to Rehman Malik, the prime minister’s adviser on interior.

It was not clear why the agencies were being put under the interior division’s control and whether lack of coordination was the cause. Both the agencies have apparently been running smoothly under the prime minister.

The ISI -– described as a ‘state within state’ -– has over the years taken flak domestically as well as abroad for its policies. Although it was earlier answerable to the prime minister, there was an impression that the agency was acting autonomously, and not under the orders of the prime minister.

A senior security official told Dawn that were the decision implemented in “letter and spirit, it would enhance coordination between the agencies”. However, he expressed doubts that the ISI would work under the interior division, saying it would continue to work in its “previous capacity and framework”.

“When the agency was under the control of the prime minister, it did not comply with any orders. How is it possible that it will now work unquestioningly under the interior minister?”

He said a debate had been going on for several years that all intelligence agencies, including the ISI, should work under the civilian set-up so that they could be held accountable to the people.The official, however, hoped that the decision to bring the ISI and the IB under a single authority would help win the “war on terror”.

“As far as the IB is concerned, the agency is already sharing information with the interior ministry. Therefore, there will be no problem in this regard,” he said.

A former caretaker interior minister, Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Nawaz, said the decision would not bring about any “qualitative change” in the performance of the agencies, but it would definitely improve coordination between different agencies.

He said the arrangement was not a new one as all agencies previously used to work under the president and there was a time when all agencies were answerable to the ISI.

In his opinion, all intelligence agencies should work as separate entities. In that case, he contended, there would be a “diversity of information” that could be correlated and utilised by a higher authority.

Also See:
Notification regarding ISI has been misunderstood : PID - The News
Gilani's Gamble: The Coming Coup By Shaan Akbar - The Insider Brief
A Bold Decision - The Nation

Blasts in India

29 die, 88 injured as blasts hit western India
By R.K. MISRA – July 26, 2008

AHMADABAD, India (AP) — At least 29 people were killed and 88 wounded when a series of small explosions hit the western Indian city of Ahmadabad on Saturday, a top official said, a day after seven similar blasts struck a southern city.

Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat state where Ahmadabad is located, said at least 16 bombs went off Saturday evening in several neighborhoods of the busy city.

Modi called the blasts "a crime against humanity," and said the state government would cover the medical costs of all those wounded in the attacks.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either set of blasts, and it was not clear if they were connected but Modi said that the attacks appeared to be masterminded by a group or groups who "are using a similar modus operandi all over the country."

Distraught relatives of the wounded crowded the city's hospitals and television channels showed video footage of police officers and sniffer dogs scouring the areas that were hit.

There also were images of a bus with shattered windows, destroyed roadside stalls, twisted bicycles and charred vehicles. Most of the blasts took place in the narrow lanes of the older part of Ahmadabad, which is crowded with tightly packed homes and small businesses.

Prithviraj Chavan, a junior minister in the prime minister's office, called the explosions "deplorable" and said they were set off by people "bent upon creating a communal divide in the country" — language officials usually use when blaming Islamic militants believed to be behind bombings that have repeatedly hit India's cities in recent years.

"Anti-national elements have been trying to create panic among the people of our country. Today's blasts in Ahmadabad seem to be part of the same strategy," federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil told reporters in New Delhi.

Patil provided no details about the explosions.

The latest attacks came a day after seven synchronized small bombs shook Bangalore, India's high-tech hub, killing two people and wounding at least five others.

On Saturday, police found and defused an eighth bomb near a popular shopping mall in Bangalore, said Srikumar, the director general of police in Karnataka state, where the city is located. Like many Indians, he uses only a single name.

As in past bombings in India, suspicion for both sets of explosions quickly fell on Muslim militants blamed for attacks such as the July 2006 bombings that ripped through Mumbai's commuter rail network, killing nearly 200 people.

Those fears were amplified by the history of Ahmadabad, a crowded and historic city that in 2002 was the scene of one of worst incidents of rioting between India's Hindu majority and its Muslim minority.

The violence killed about 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. It was triggered by a fire that killed 60 passengers on a train packed with Hindu pilgrims. Hindu extremists blamed the deaths on Muslims and rampaged through Muslim neighborhoods, although the cause of the blaze remains unclear.

Revisiting a Conspiracy

Recalling a conspiracy
By Anwar Syed, Dawn, July 27, 2008

WHEN two or more persons make plans to commit a crime, they may be said to have hatched a conspiracy.

Discussion of the project does not become a conspiracy unless the participants have agreed to carry it out.

It has been said repeatedly in recent weeks that conspiracies are being hatched in the presidency to disrupt the rapport between the PPP and PML-N. If this is indeed happening, the enterprise may be called dirty politics but, strictly speaking, it is not a conspiracy since breaking a rival coalition is not a crime.

We have had only a few known conspiracies in our history. There was the Rawalpindi Conspiracy to overthrow Liaquat Ali Khan’s government in 1951, a conspiracy between President Iskander Mirza and Gen Ayub Khan to dismiss the civilian regime and bring in military rule (1958), and a conspiracy between Gen Yahya Khan and some of his associates to use military force to crush the separatists in East Pakistan (1971). One may also refer to a conspiracy between Gen Ziaul Haq and his commanders to overthrow Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government (1977). Participants in only one of these cases, the Rawalpindi Conspiracy, were arrested, tried and convicted. The specifics of this case are not generally known and I should like to share them with readers.

Maj Gen Mohammad Akbar Khan was its author. Born into an affluent Pakhtun family in 1912, he went to Islamia College, Peshawar, after finishing high school, entered the British Indian Army, graduated from the famous Sandhurst Military Academy, returned to the Indian Army as a commissioned officer (1934), fought the Japanese in Burma during World War II, received a gallantry award, and joined the Pakistan Army as a brigadier after independence. He commanded the regular and irregular forces fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, did not approve of the ceasefire and wanted the fighting to continue.

He was greatly dissatisfied with what he considered was the inadequate support the government extended to the Pakistani men fighting in Kashmir. Gen Douglas Gracey, chief of the Pakistan Army at the time, and on his advice the prime minister, did not want the army to get too deeply involved in Kashmir. That is why they were circumspect in their support of the operation.

Akbar Khan was inclined to be impulsive and rather indiscreet, and he talked too much. He freely conveyed his criticism of the government to fellow officers. His wife, Nasim (daughter of the celebrated woman politician Begum Jehan Ara Shahnawaz), was even more of a talker. She too went around criticising the government. Word of their talking eventually reached the intelligence agencies, who began to watch them.

Akbar Khan was nevertheless promoted to the rank of major general in December 1950. Gen Ayub Khan, who was now commander-in-chief, posted him as chief of the general staff at the headquarters, partly to keep an eye on him and partly to keep him away from officers out in the field. This, however, did not stop his tirades against the government. In fact he now began to discuss with friends a plan to overthrow the government.

On Feb 23, 1951 about a dozen officers (ranking from major general to captain) and three civilians met at Akbar Khan’s house. The civilians included Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Syed Sajjad Zaheer (general secretary of the Communist Party of Pakistan) and Mohammad Hussain Ata. Akbar Khan presented his plan: Governor General Nazimuddin and Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, who were expected to be in Rawalpindi during the following week, would be arrested. The governor general would be forced to dismiss the government and install an interim regime headed by Akbar Khan. Elections would be promised but no definite date given. The new regime would set things right (eradicate corruption, provide education, healthcare and other amenities of life to the poor). The meeting lasted more than eight hours, and reportedly the participants agreed that the plan should be implemented.

Akbar Khan had reached an understanding with the Communist Party along the following lines: he would stop the intense persecution to which the party leaders and workers were being subjected at the time, and he would let the party function like any other political organisation. This guarantee included the right to contest elections. In return the party and the trade unions affiliated with it would welcome his government, and The Pakistan Times, of which Faiz Ahmed Faiz was the chief editor, would support it.

A senior police officer in the NWFP, Askar Ali Shah, had been Akbar Khan’s friend and confidant for a time and had known of his opposition to the government. He did not participate in the meeting on Feb 23 but learned of its proceedings, got cold feet, and blurted them out to the provincial IGP. The latter reported them to the governor, who promptly informed the prime minister.

On the morning of March 9, Maj Gen Akbar Khan and three of his co-conspirators, including Faiz, were arrested. Begum Nasim, Sajjad Zaheer and several others were arrested a few days later. They ended up in Hyderabad jail (where a wing had been specially prepared for them) and were tried on the charge of “having conspired to wage war against the king.” A special tribunal consisting of Sir Abdul Rahman of the federal court, Justice Mohammad Sharif of the Lahore High Court and Justice Amir-ud-Din of the Dhaka High Court was constituted to try the accused. The trial began on June 15 and lasted several weeks. A.K. Brohi appeared as the chief prosecutor while Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, Z.H. Lari, and several other well-known lawyers appeared for the defence.

The defence argued that while the accused had met and talked, they had not all agreed to take any action. But two of the conspirators (Col Siddique Raja and Maj Mohammad Yousuf Sethi) turned approvers and were persuaded to testify that the accused had indeed come to an agreement. Gen Akbar Khan and the other officers were sentenced to imprisonment for 12 years but the civilians got away with four years in jail.

‘Enemies of the king’ are usually made reasonably comfortable in prison. Forced solitude gives them time to reflect. Faiz wrote some of his finest poetry during his years in jail. The charge of conspiracy did not lower these men in public esteem, Faiz continued to be honoured after his release and Akbar Khan landed a high post in the national security apparatus in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts.anwarsyed@cox.net

Future of Muslims in India

BOOK REVIEW: Muslim future in India by Khaled Ahmed
Daily Times, July 27, 2008

Living with Secularism: The Destiny of India's Muslims
Edited by Mushirul Hasan, Manohar India 2007

In 2004, the elections in India have brought a new hope for Muslims but the BJP is still strong in opposition and continues to echo Golwalker, the founder of RSS who had said in 1947 that non-Hindus in India must learn to glorify only the Hindu religion. NC Chatterjee of Hindu Mahasabha had said in 1949 that Muslims must accept Mahabharata and Ramayana as their own instead of Arabic and Persian classics

In 2004, Indian scholar Mushirul Hasan had challenged Indian secularism under the BJP dominance and its doctrine of Hindutva with his book, Will Secular India Survive?, but the general election the same year brought the Congress-led UPA government to power as a people’s response to majoritarian communalism of the BJP and its ‘family’ of organisations.

This selection of essays presents a more satisfying analysis of what India is doing to its Muslims. After 2004, Hindutva has not gone away. It threatens the Muslims more than the other communities because: 1) Muslims are the largest religious minority in India and the second largest Muslim population in the world; 2) Muslims are erstwhile rulers of India and the memory presents them as a threat to Hindu majority; 3) Muslims are considered as members of a settler colony by Sangh Pariwar; 4) Muslims get excluded by majoritarian nationalism with Pakistan as the ‘other’ and Indian Muslims as a separatist population; 5) Muslims are targets of all communal riots; 6) Muslims serve as instruments of Hindu unity under Hindutva because India is presented as being under threat from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir; 7) Muslims are steady targets of communal riots; and 8) Muslims spoil the Indian monolithic identity as a Hindu Rashtra and are an obstacle in India’s unification.

American scholar Theodore P Wright Junior gives us a projection of what might happen to the Muslims of India in the coming days. First he tells us how a group becomes subordinate: voluntary or involuntary immigration, ritual pollution, religious conversion, changing boundaries, differential of birth and emigration rates, group status reversal, relations with the majority group. Subordination occurs if the population is on the border and the border is next to a population of the enemy state of the same religion.

Fear of Muslims is aroused by the fact that their population, although only 13 percent of the total, has grown to this number in fifty years more quickly as compared to the Hindus. Is this fear comparable to the Christian fear aroused in Lebanon of ethnic supersession by Muslims through birth rate after 1943, ending in the civil war of 1975-88? There is Muslim majority in Kashmir and large Muslim minorities in West Bengal and Assam near the border of an adjoining Muslim state that equally arouse fear and loathing. Then there is the memory of Muslim rule for three hundred years which puts off the upper caste Hindus.

[The following states have Muslim minorities as indicated by percentages: Assam (28 percent), Kerala (23 percent) West Bengal (23 percent), Uttar Pradesh (17.3 percent), Bihar (16 percent) and Karnataka (16 percent). Needless to say the largest number live in the UP where the total population is more than that of Pakistan.]

Southern and coastal India doesn’t hate the Muslims as much as the Indian north and northwest, but may begin to have communal riots as BJP and its friends spread their influence there. It is possible that Muslims may actually be squeezed into the coastal areas in the South to join the non-threatening “middlemen Muslims”: Memons, Khojas, Bohras, Navayats, Marakayyars, Lebais, Rawthors and Mapillas. They pose no threat to the majority dominance. Muslims in Hyderabad, Bhopal and Junagadh are humorously equated to past elites but they are in fact local poor Hindu converts who can never challenge the Hindus unless they step out of poverty and acquire education.

If India and Pakistan proceed on their hostile course and threaten each other with nuclear weapons, the Muslims in India will face the possibility of subordination, expulsion and genocide. This is gleaned from the history of what happened to such minorities elsewhere in the world. But if things remain normal the Muslims of India will face the following four options: assimilation, pluralism, secession and dominance. The experience of the Palestinians vis-Ć -vis Israel is a pointer because the Israeli population seems to have arrived at the consensus of expulsion.

In India under Nehru, autonomy and pluralism were the tools of treatment for Muslims. This pluralism compelled the Congress to refuse to impose a uniform Civil Code on Muslims. What followed was the escalation of communal riots targeting Muslims and the decay of Gandhian ideals in the post-Nehruvian period after the 1960s. Now Hindu nationalists want the Muslims to assimilate into a Hindu-defined nation. Behind this came coercive notions finding their physical fulfilment in the Gujarat pogroms in 2002.

In 2004, the elections in India have brought a new hope for Muslims but the BJP is still strong in opposition and continues to echo Golwalker, the founder of RSS who had said in 1947 that non-Hindus in India must learn to glorify only the Hindu religion. NC Chatterjee of Hindu Mahasabha had said in 1949 that Muslims must accept Mahabharata and Ramayana as their own instead of Arabic and Persian classics (p.289). But if India develops as a modern state as evidenced already in the metropolises then the Muslims will get by without being persecuted. They will be visible but their maltreatment will not be allowed by the modern Hindu.

It is useful in some regions to have become invisible, that is, without the markers that announce a Muslim as a separate identity. Since there is racial similarity the names are a usually a giveaway, but in some states the names are becoming uniform, for instance in the case of A Premjee, one of India’s big names in electronics. A stands for Azeem. Even in America where the Jewish people are generally not persecuted many Jews have named themselves away from their Semitic origins: Lewis Libby, John Bolton and Bernard Lewis are Jews.

In big business, like the entertainment industry, big Muslims names have become iconic and this is the location where the rare Muslim can hope to survive normally. But the final solution according to the author lies in Indo-Pak relations.

The crunch comes when the Indian states include Muslims in the “affirmative action” programmes aimed at providing relief to the very poor in India. Laws exist to correct the social imbalance between the accepted castes and those that don’t get mentioned as castes. The non-scheduled castes or untouchables in India outnumber even the Muslims and are frequently given protection through reservation of jobs.

Commissions set up to recommend reforms have included Muslims in the category of other backward classes (OBCs) since they are not untouchables. They are 8 percent of the OBC which itself comprises 27 percent of the population. That makes half of the Muslims of India backward. *

Saturday, July 26, 2008

India Ratifies Parkinson's Law!

India Ratifies Parkinson's Law
By Niranjan Ramakrishnan
25 July, 2008; Countercurrents.org

"A nuclear reactor is so vastly expensive and complicated that people cannot understand it, so they assume that those working on it understand it. Even those with strong opinions might withhold them for fear of being shown to be insufficiently informed. On the other hand, everyone understands a bicycle shed (or thinks they do), so building one can result in endless discussions: everyone involved wants to add his touch and show that he is there"

--Parkinson's Law of Triviality (from Parkinson's Law, 1955)

The fellow was standing on his 25th floor balcony contemplating the evening sky, when he heard someone shout, "Hey Banta Singh, your daughter Jeeto has committed suicide!". In his grief he jumped from the balcony. When he passed the 20th floor it occurred to him his daughter was not called Jeeto. As he passed the 15th, he remembered he had no daughters. And as he passed the 10th he recalled his name was not Banta Singh!

--An Indian Joke


When he published it in 1915, Albert Einstein had formulated his Theory of General Relativity entirely in his imagination. It was not until four years later, in 1919, that it would be verified empirically. Few of us can aspire to such a distinction, but wouldn't it have been enough of a thrill to be there at least when the experiment confirmed Einstein's theory?

If you were paying attention, you might have had a similar opportunity recently.

If Einstein's prediction was verified by Sir Arthur Eddington and his colleagues as they viewed the 1919 solar eclipse from faraway Principe in West Africa, the unerring insight the Law of Triviality was to be laid bare in the lower house of the Indian Parliament, a continent away and a half-century later. I can tell my grandchildren I saw it happen!

But let us begin at the beginning.

Earlier this week, the Indian Parliament had a two-day debate on whether the government should pursue the nuclear deal with the United States. The proceedings, shown live, turned out to be gripping television. Whether or not you followed politics, you couldn't help getting caught up in the drama of the Lok Sabha debate, with its stirring speeches, constant interruptions, inspired heckling, a Speaker by turns bemused and amused, himself a fugitive from his party, vainly trying to bring order to his assembly. There were accusations of MP's being kidnapped, charges of open bribery and, a couple of hours before the end, a dramatic display in Parliament of a valise with bundles of 1000 rupee bills (10 million rupees in raw cash) by three oppositon MPs claiming the government side had given them the money to get them to abstain. Many of the speeches were outstanding, some moving, one in particular was rollicking. The pace never flagged. The bar for entertainment in India has been set high, and Bollywood will have to work its heart out to regain its position. Even the President of India reportedly canceled all appointments to sit in front of her TV.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose speech was supposed to conclude the debate (called 'replying to the debate') could not speak amidst the noise and interruption following the rupee bundle demonstration. He had instead to enter his speech into the record and sit down. Then they voted, and what was expected to be a squeak-through victory for Mr. Singh's government turned out to be a 19-vote margin after all. But the governing alliance had been turned inside out. Those who were supporting it had turned opponents. New allies had taken their place.

And though the government had won, it had really won a vote of confidence in its continuation, not specifically the nuclear deal, for there had been little to no discussion of that subject. The Left Parties were opposed to the American connection, the largest opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seemed to have only one grouse, namely that the Congress rather than it had engineered the agreement. As to the government, you could have gathered from its speeches that the nuclear deal was the lone and final key the country had to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

But the government could claim that Parliament had approved the nuclear deal (a weaker claim than Bush's saying Congress authorized the Iraq War, but Indians are fast learners), They lost no time in doing so. And the Bush administration, eager to see this move forward, welcomed the victory and urged Godspeed, a sentiment gleefully reciprocated by the enlivened Congress party. The nuclear lobbies in both countries are salivating at the prospect of a radiant path paved with profits. Or perhaps, a path to profits paved with radiation, except the subject never came up.

Those who watched it even marveled at the high level of participation (house full) and the level of the debate, some speaking in English, others in Hindi. It was a proud moment for all Indians, parliamentary democracy at its best (the bags of money notwithstanding) , etc. etc. Unlike the staid debates on C-SPAN, one member talking to an empty chamber as the person in the chair tries not to nod off, this was vigorous and enthusiastic.

It was only later, after all the excitement settled down, that you remembered that there wasn't much said about nuclear energy, its need and its dangers, the wisdom of depending on foreign nuclear fuel (why is it any better than depending on foreign oil?) So riveting was the debate that we forgot what it was for.

To my recollection, there was not one sentence spoken by anyone, for or against the government, on the matter of nuclear waste and what India planned to do with it. It is a problem that has not been solved by any country. No one mentioned that nuclear waste stays on for thousands of years.

Very little was said about why other countries are not jumping on nuclear energy. One minister (Pranab Mukherjee, who gave an otherwise sober speech) theorized that neither America or Russia was building nuclear plants because 'they were floating on oil'. America imports 70% of its oil, and Mukherjee is India's foreign minister.

There was virtually no discussion of what role nuclear energy should play in the overall plan. France (and its high reliance on nuclear energy) was mentioned by a few speakers on the government side. The French challenge of dealing with a huge amount of radioactive spent fuel was never mentioned.

There was much talk of 2030 and 2050 -- how much of the country's energy would be nuclear by that time. What's more, the agreement's proponents argued that this was actually their way of avoiding global warming! What was the plan all these years before Bush's visit opened this line of thought? Not asked, not answered.

In all the discussion, the one name that never came up was that of Mahatma Gandhi. When Henry Ford wrote to him asking what possible objection Gandhi could have if he ( Ford) were to entire towns or villages, Gandhi answered Ford with an simple question: Who would control the switch? Through all their mock outrage, sarcasm hot and cold, paternal disdain, that and other essential questions never occurred to India's Parliamentarians during their two-day gabfest. Whatever the truth about their other alleged crimes of bribery and intimidation, it can be truly said that in the matter of nuclear energy and its impact on India, they remain wholly innocent.

As does the country the debate was supposed to educate.

Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast. He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo. com.

How to Deal with Militants in FATA?

Dealing with militants
By Aqil Shah, Dawn, July 26, 2008

STATES are supposed to wield legitimate monopoly over the means of coercion in the territory under their control. That’s what makes them states.

In Pakistan, however, Taliban militants have successfully challenged and displaced state authority in many parts of Fata and even some settled districts of the NWFP. While the image of a state collapsing before marauding Taliban militants might be far-fetched, it is not a good sign when they can routinely kidnap and slaughter security personnel with virtual impunity and openly threaten the NWFP provincial government with dire consequences if it does not call off military operations against them. And their actions across the border in Afghanistan are creating grounds for US threats of unilateral action in the tribal areas.

What is the federal government doing about all this? In view of the prime minister’s forthcoming visit to Washington, the coalition principals’ meeting held on July 23 expressed the government’s resolve to tackle militancy through political means backed by the threat of military force. But we have heard that before without much concrete progress on the ground. No doubt suicide attacks inside Pakistan have decreased in frequency since the civilian government assumed power in March. But then the militants have shown that they retain the right to strike any time, anywhere in Pakistan.

Cross-border attacks in Afghanistan have also reportedly intensified in recent months. With 45 fatalities, June 2008 proved the deadliest month for US-led forces since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. Facing intense external pressure to plug the flow of militants into Afghanistan, the government designated the army chief as “the principal for application of military effort”, and ceded him the authority to command “the Frontier Corps and other law enforcement agencies for military operations”, and to “decide on the quantum, composition and positioning of military efforts”.

Giving the military an autonomous and expansive internal security mission only seemed to belie the government’s earlier claim that it was pursuing a coordinated political-cum-military anti-terror strategy in the tribal areas. Brute military force was tried in Fata and it failed, period. Whether it was a problem of capacity or strategy, or both, the military’s anti-terror operations carried out under American pressure did not achieve their main objective of flushing out militants from their hideouts. What is clear is that heavy use of force alienated the local populations which only helped fuel militancy.

The use of force in fact cost the security forces dearly in the form of deadly suicide attacks inside heavily guarded military installations. When faced with heavy losses, the military haphazardly struck peace deals brokered by the JUI-F with the militants. While these deals typically bypassed the civil administration, they achieved little in terms of peace.

Under the terms of the North Waziristan pact of September 2006, for instance, the government ceased military operations, released militants, returned their weapons, removed army check posts and agreed to allow foreigners to stay in the tribal areas if they renounced violence. The militants pledged that they would not challenge the state’s writ, and cease attacks on Pakistani troops as well as cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. They obviously had no intention of sticking to their side of the bargain and swiftly denied the presence of foreigners in the area. In the meantime, they continued to run Taliban-style parallel mini-states and gradually spread their influence to other tribal agencies and the rest of the NWFP. That much we know.

On its part, the Bush administration has made a mess of things in Afghanistan and, by corollary, in Fata. The administration’s diversion of military and intelligence resources from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003 allowed Al Qaeda and their Taliban and other allies to regroup, reorganise, recruit and train for the battle in Afghanistan. As America’s trusted ally, the military under Musharraf cooperated with the US in capturing Al Qaeda fugitives amid allegations that it was concurrently patronising at least the Afghan Taliban as an insurance policy against arch rival India’s growing influence in Afghanistan.

With the Taliban insurgency raging, Afghan president Hamid Karzai has been repeatedly pointing fingers at Pakistan for what largely appear to be his US-backed government’s governance and security failures. Karzai has accused the ISI of orchestrating the July 7 car bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul which left nearly 60 dead. The Indian government too has alleged that “elements in Pakistan” are behind the Kabul blast. Neither has yet furnished any evidence to back up their claims. In turn, Pakistan has blamed India for using its consulates along the Pak-Afghan border for stirring trouble in Fata (and Balochistan), again without providing any evidence.

As the India-Pakistan rivalry reaches deep into Afghanistan, it will not be surprising if attempts continue to deny India a footing in Pakistan’s ‘backyard’. There is no denying that we live in a tough neighbourhood. But because it is devoid of any serious input from the civilian political leadership or civil society, our national security policy has traditionally reflected the military’s deep organisational biases towards India rather than our broad economic and/or foreign policy priorities. But it is not the Indians alone that scare us. We are told that once the Americans are done with Iran, or even before that, they are coming for us. Their plan, apparently, is to slice up and denuclearise the only Muslim nuclear state. These are not facts, at least not as yet.

But here is an undeniable fact to consider: the tribal areas of Pakistan are being used by foreign and local militants to launch cross-border attacks on Afghan and Nato forces. And Pakistan is under international obligations to deny the use of its territory to terrorists. UN Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001), adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and hence legally binding, directs member states to “deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts” and “prevent those who finance, plan, facilitate or commit terrorist acts from using their respective territories for those purposes against other States or their citizens”.One can only welcome the stated determination of the coalition partners to disallow the use of Pakistani territory for cross-border militancy. But actions tend to speak louder than words. Only if the government implements its avowed policy can it reverse the perception that it has passed the buck to the military.

The writer, a PhD candidate in political science at Columbia University, is conducting doctoral research in Pakistan. E-mail: as2552@columbia.edu

Also See:
Give dialogue a chance in FATA - Rahimullah Yusufzai, The News

Obama and Muslim voters: Reuters

Obama and Muslim voters a "double whammy?"
Jul 25, 2008, Reuters
By Michael Conlon - Analysis

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Barack Obama should be able to count on heavy support from U.S. Muslims in the November election, if polls are correct, but he risks offending some members of that faith by having to explain he is not one himself.

The number of votes at stake is small since Muslims account for only a fraction of the U.S. population and there are no reliable figures on how many are registered to vote.

But with a recent history of close presidential elections, no vote can be discounted when Democrat Obama, who would be the first black president, faces off against Republican John McCain.

A survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Politics found that 63 percent of U.S. Muslims either considered themselves to be Democrats or leaned in that direction, compared with 11 percent who said they were Republican or identified with that party.

At the same time, about 12 percent of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, a misconception that has persisted for months and been fed by Internet rumors.

The touchy issue was in the news again when The New Yorker published a satirical cartoon on its cover depicting an Arab-garbed Obama and his gun-toting wife in the White House Oval Office with an American flag burning in the fireplace.

There have also been unconfirmed reports that the Obama campaign plans to appoint a liaison to the Muslim community.

A religion section on an Obama Web site, "Fight the Smears," that was created to deal with such rumors, labels claims that he is a Muslim a "lie" and states he "has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim and is a committed Christian."

"We know he isn't a Muslim but who cares if he is?" said Sofian Zakkout, director of the American Muslim Association of North America.

Obama's pledge "to bring communities together" is his appeal, Zakkout said, and "We don't expect him to come to us and say, 'I'm with you.' We don't need that."

But Saaqib Rangoonwala, managing editor of Southern California InFocus, a Muslim newspaper, sees a close election in which "American Muslim votes will be needed and it is time for Muslims to take a stand ...

"Muslims are not less deserving of Obama's time than other groups that he has met with ... to his credit, he met with a Muslim leader and personally apologized to the Muslim women who were banned by campaign volunteers from sitting behind the podium at a Detroit rally because the women wore hijabs," he said.

'EARN THEIR VOTES'

"These actions are well and good," Rangoonwala said, but "Muslims need to let Obama know that he has to earn their votes."

Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said there was a high level of interest in the presidential election among Muslims, with the main issues being civil rights, peace in the Middle East, immigration, the economy and Islamophobia.

But he thinks Obama may be "overcompensating" in trying to correct the misconception he is a Muslim, leaving the impression that being a Muslim is somehow un-American -- a "double whammy."

"Many in the Muslim community think he is being sheepish in reaching out to them," he said.

Obama already has faced problems within his own Christian church, having to distance himself from controversial comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that were perceived by some as anti-American.

A 2007 Pew report found that U.S. Muslims were mainly middle class and mostly in mainstream society. A later survey of likely voters by the Council on American-Islamic Relations also found them largely Democrats and young, with 75 percent of them U.S.-born or having lived in the country for 20 years or more.

The Pew reports have estimated Muslims at just 0.06 percent of the population, although other reports have placed the number higher.

In Minneapolis, which has a large concentration of Somali Muslim immigrants, Mohamed Burk, 53, said, "I'm listening and thinking," but he is undecided between Obama and McCain.

Abdulaziz Al-Salim, 23, a Minnesota native who now lives in Daman, Saudi Arabia, where he works as a financial analyst for Saudi Aramco, the oil company, said he was sad that "being associated with Muslims is a political liability."

But he said he would vote for Obama "for the same reasons that everyone else is supporting him. He's a unifier, charismatic and represents change."

(Additional reporting by Todd Melby in Minneapolis; Editing by Bill Trott)

Friday, July 25, 2008

Three 'terminal' narratives of Pakistan By Khaled Ahmed

Three 'terminal' narratives of Pakistan By Khaled Ahmed
July 18-24, 2008 - The Friday Times, Vol. XX, No. 22

The three clashing and merging narratives causing upheaval in Pakistan are like the end-of-the-world theorems, and Pakistan must choose one of them to perform the act of dying as a state. The state and Al Qaeda rival each other for the status of enemy. And the state seems to be losing out all the time

A s Pakistan moves into the turbulence of a global economic downturn, three invasive discourses cause diversions and distortions. The world outside thinks Pakistan has become the centre of international terrorism. It is ground zero for the West in its hunt for Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Inside Pakistan, there is an opposed people's narrative, starting with a protest against the definition of terrorism and ending with a pledge of confrontation against the West. The third narrative is an India-driven narrative which serves to delay any reconciliation between the other two clashing narratives.

The External Narrative

The External Narrative is typically information-based. Its knowledge of Al Qaeda is comprehensive enough to enlist the support of the masses of America and the European Union. Information gathered from the Arab secret services, journalistic inquiry and confessional material from Al Qaeda agents caught by America, enables the West to know more about the penetration of Pakistan by Al Qaeda than Pakistanis do. Western observers at times find it quite shocking that Pakistanis don't even know the names of their own jihadi organisations active in the region.

The states affected by Al Qaeda's activities are not only America and the member states of EU. Others who contribute to the external narrative are located in the region. They are Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Russia and India, all of them affected by terrorism purveyed through men trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Although Turkey has always sympathised with the 'fellow-Turk' Uzbeks, and supported the Uzbek warlord Abdur Rashid Dostam of the Northern Alliance, recent terrorist attacks have forced it to focus on the training grounds of Pakistan where the rebellious expat Turks have taken their training.

Iran was one of the neighbouring countries that opposed the Taliban regime in Kabul and then developed the strategy of supporting the Northern Alliance even though the Northern Alliance was supported also by the US. It declared cultural affinity with the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance and opposed the Pakistan- and Saudi Arab-supported Taliban. Since Iran is fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq it is also in a state of unspoken challenge against Pakistan as a hiding place of Al Qaeda.

Because of the training of Chechens in South Waziristan and their subsequent move into Dagestan, a disturbed part of the Russian Federation, Russia too backs the grand coalition of forces against Al Qaeda. India has been the target of mujahideen trained in Afghanistan in Al Qaeda camps. It was made to take its embassy out of Kabul in 1996 by the incoming Taliban, but now it is back in Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance, primed with the strategy of staving off Pakistan's mischief behind an Al Qaeda foil. Its flanking move in Afghanistan is geared to interdicting any move by Pakistan into the Indian-administered Kashmir.

The Civil Society Narrative

The second narrative of Pakistan is the Civil Society Narrative based on people's perception of Al Qaeda and America. It is typically based on ideology rather than facts. It denies the way the non-Muslim world has defined terrorism and the activities of Al Qaeda. It is a counter-version of what transpired on 9/11 and has no knowledge about the origins and development of Al Qaeda as an organisation. At times it denies that there is such a thing as Al Qaeda. On its fringes people rely on such extravagant theories as the one that has Osama bin Laden in a jail in America, while the US invents pretexts for attacking Muslim states.

The Civil Society Narrative is of a piece with the general people's trend in the Muslim world of abandoning the state. There is a widening of the gap between the nation and the state in the Muslim world, followed by a demonisation of even elected governments as 'slaves' of America. The alienation of the people consists of a feeling of betrayal against the state on the basis of its 'interest'; and of 'sell-out' by the government on the basis of its 'opportunism'. Muslim civil society often talks of solidarity with the 'umma' at the global level but quickly supersedes this concept with disavowal of Muslim governments.

Civil society doesn't conceptually separate the invasion of Afghanistan, under the mandated of the UN Security Council, from the invasion of Iraq later, without the approval of the UN Security Council. It sees America's war against Al Qaeda as war against Muslims and doesn't take into account the global consensus behind this war. It sees Pakistan's participation in this war as fighting 'not its own' war. Examined closely, the narrative seems to be recommending a war against America rather than against terrorism 'whose real causes the West is not willing address'.

This narrative is not a little influenced by the strategy of Al Qaeda of moulding opinion in Pakistan through expertly deployed suicide-bombing. Civil society and most of its institutions are exposed to this strategy because of the dwindling writ of the state and the retreat of its institutions in the face of the foot soldiers of Al Qaeda who call themselves Taliban. Anger about being weak is allowed to take the identity of an anti-American passion because of the pan-Islamic civil society trend to mistrust and reject the state as an 'un-sovereign' entity.

The Nationalist Narrative

The third narrative is the Nationalist Narrative that is purely India-driven and supported by the Pakistan army. It diverts the West-induced threat to the security of Pakistan from Al Qaeda to the traditional threat from India. It is here that a meeting of the minds between at least one institution of the state and civil society at large comes into being. It sees the presence of India and its intelligence services in Afghanistan as a threat to the security of Pakistan. It points to India's interference in Balochistan as an example. The moment the state of Pakistan puts abroad this new angle of threat, it unconsciously destroys the justification for looking at Al Qaeda as a threat.

The state institutions under this narrative seem to become divided in their approach. They are pulled in the direction of confrontation with Al Qaeda because of Western persuasion and the challenged writ of the state. They sees that the army cannot alone defeat Al Qaeda without the help of the US and the EU, but when it unleashes the Nationalist Narrative it begins to point at an external threat emanating from the very West, with whom it was cooperating, as a collaborator of India. This narrative modifies the Civil Society Narrative too.

Civil society today sees the state and its institutions as 'slaves' of America, but it retains yet a memory of the Nationalist Narrative when civil society used be an ally of the state pointing to India as the only significant external source of threat. It revives that memory because reviving it waters down the focus on Al Qaeda as the main threat to Pakistan and vitalises the new intense perception of America as the most significant threat by joining India with America as an ally in Afghanistan.

If the civil-military enclave in Islamabad was inclined to agree with the External Narrative, because it was threatened by Al Qaeda and its destruction of the writ of the state, it is now inclined to half-believe the narrative while half-hating the West in Afghanistan as an ally of India. This tends, not so much to divide the establishment, as to make it acquire a split personality. It begins to act in line with the directions of the West and act against the West at the same time. From here rises the impression that the state and its institutions are complicit with Al Qaeda.

The most dangerous aspect of this narrative is that at some point it designates two enemies that Pakistan must fight at the same time: the United States and India. This brings this narrative close to the cause of Al Qaeda which wants to fight an entire array of global entities associated one way or another with America. It also subliminally supports the Al Qaeda concept of jihad as a normal condition of life because otherwise 'rational choice' would prevent it from choosing a regional superpower and a global power as its enemies at the same time.

Three clashing and merging narratives cause upheaval in Pakistan today. They are like the end-of-the-world theorems, and Pakistan must choose one of them to perform the act of dying as a state. There are secondary diversionary sources of disorder too, like the lawyers' movement, which simply tend to exacerbate the conflict. Hurt by the steep economic downturn, the people of Pakistan are hardly able to accept the state as a benign entity. The state and Al Qaeda rival each other for the status of enemy. And the state seems to be losing out all the time.