Thursday, April 30, 2009

Muslim woman's appointment as Obama advisor



Muslim woman's appointment as Obama advisor draws cautious optimism

Dalia Mogahed, a veiled Egyptian American, will advise President Obama on prejudices and problems faced by Muslims. Many Arabs hope it's a step toward reversing stereotyping.

By Noha El-Hennawy, Los Angeles times, April 22, 2009

Reporting from Cairo — Egyptians are cautiously rejoicing over the recent appointment of a veiled Egyptian American Muslim woman as an advisor to President Obama.

Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, was appointed this month to Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Arabs are closely watching for signs that the new leadership in Washington is making efforts to improve relations with Islam, which many Muslims believe were severely damaged during the eight years of the Bush administration. The selection of Mogahed is viewed by many in the Middle East as a step by Obama to move beyond the stereotypes and prejudices that Muslims believe they have encountered since the attacks Sept. 11, 2001.

"Dalia Mogahed is the best example of a successful Muslim woman. She proves that the Muslim should be successful in all fields, at least in [her] area of specialization," a commentator wrote on the website of the independent daily Al Masry al Youm.

The Egyptian-born Mogahed moved with her family to the United States almost 30 years ago. Recently, she co-wrote the book "Who Speaks for Islam?" with John Esposito, an American political science professor who has been criticized by some as an Islamic apologist. Mogahed and Esposito published an opinion piece this month in The Times on American ignorance of Islam and the Muslim world.

"My work focuses on studying Muslims, the way they think and their views," Mogahed was quoted as saying on the website of the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite news channel. "Then I should tell the president about their problems and needs, especially that lately Muslims have been perceived as a source of problems and as incapable of taking part in solving international problems and that they should work on themselves. Now we want to say that Muslims are capable of providing solutions."

Yet, Mogahed's declaration that her loyalty goes first to the United States, published Monday in an interview with Al Masry al Youm, disappointed some people.

"I wish your loyalty was to your Islam first, Egypt second and your Arabism third and then to anything else," wrote a reader identifying himself as the Tiger of Arabs. "I am afraid that they might make a fool out of you and use you as a cover for policies that don't serve Egypt and the Arab and Muslim world."

El-Hennawy is in The Times' Cairo Bureau.

Also See:
Obama's Muslim Advisor - Islamonline.com
A good show, but no applause yet - The National
Who Speaks for Islam - A Book co-authored by Dalia Mogahed

Pakistan Police Needs Reform:



Pakistani Police Needs Reform
The Spectrum, April 30, 2009

Tad Trueblood has more than 20 years experience in the U.S. Air Force and the national security community. He lives in Santa Clara.

As deep thinkers and strategists, and lots of others, too, wrestle with what to do about Pakistan's slide into chaos, one potential approach being talked and written about lately is police reform. Last week, I mentioned a circuitous search that led me to a paper by Dr. Hassan Abbas on this topic. This week, let's keep exploring that trail. See info at www.thiscouldgetinter esting.com.

In his recent study, "Police Reforms in Pakistan," Abbas makes the case that in any counterinsurgency fight - like the battle against Taliban, al-Qaida and other extremists in Pakistan's tribal regions - one of the keys for success is an effective and respected police force. Other researchers, and my own experience, agree with this.

For complete article, click here
To see the original report, click here

Obama: Pakistan threat 'internal'

Obama: Pakistan threat 'internal'
Aljazeera, April 30, 2009

Barack Obama, the US president, has said Pakistan's army has begun to realise that the Taliban pose the biggest threat to the country, rather than India.

Speaking at a news conference in Washington DC on Wednesday, he said: "You're starting to see some recognition ... that the obsession with India as the mortal threat to Pakistan has been misguided.

"Their biggest threat right now comes internally ... and you're starting to see the Pakistani military take much more seriously the armed threat from militant extremists," he said.

"I am gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan, not because I think they're immediately going to be overrun and the Taliban will take over ... [but] that the civilian government there right now is very fragile."

For complete article, click here

Also See:
Obama Says Pakistan’s Government Is ‘Very Fragile - Bloomberg
House requests constraints on Pakistan bill - USA Today
Surrender and Hope - Abira

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Taliban Drama

Taliban deceived govt, staged withdrawal drama: ISPR
Military operation launched in Buner
* Jets, choppers bomb Taliban hideouts in Buner mountains
* Police station under siege, three FC platoons reportedly surrender
Daily Times, April 29, 2009

MINGORA/ISLAMABAD: Security forces backed by warplanes and helicopter gunships launched a new operation in Buner district near the Swat valley on Tuesday, bombing suspected Taliban hideouts in Kalil, Shera Turf, and Kandao areas.

Fighter aircraft also bombed Mushki Pur, a mountainous area of Mardan district bordering Buner.

“Today at 4pm, the Frontier Corps (FC) and military troops launched a joint operation against the militants in Buner,” Inter-Services Public Relations Director General Maj Gen Athar Abbas said at a press briefing in Islamabad. He said FC Inspector General Maj Gen Tariq Khan is commanding the operation.

Nearly 300 Taliban entered Buner from April 2 to 4 and began to terrorise the locals, in violation of the Swat deal, Gen Abbas said. “The government warned the militants but they refused to listen and staged only a symbolic withdrawal. They government was left with no option expect to use force,” he said.

According to several news agencies, he said it would take up to a week to clear an estimated 500 Taliban from Buner.

Surrender: Late on Tuesday, a private TV channel reported that the Pir Baba police station in Buner was under Taliban siege.

It said sixty policemen and troops were inside the police station. Unconfirmed reports said that three FC platoons and an SHO were disarmed and captured by Taliban in Buner, the channel added. ghulam farooq/ sajjad malik/agencies/daily times monitor

Also See:
Pakistan drop troops behind Taliban front line - Reuters
US welcomes Pakistan move against Taliban - AFP
EDITORIAL: Some misconceptions about the Taliban - DT
Taliban influence in bureaucracy - Wichaar.com

Taliban are Enemies of Pakistan and Islam

Taliban are Enemies of Pakistan and Islam
By Salman Ahmad and Kamran Pasha
Washington Post, April 27, 2009

The Taliban hordes now sit dangerously close to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, and many both inside and outside the country fear that they are poised to possess the souls of a nation of 173 million. As Pakistanis living in America we stand united and join the people of Pakistan to resist the murderous Taliban and their proven malice toward Islam.
Malice toward Islam? But aren't the Taliban true Muslims who seek only to establish a pure Islamic state based on Sharia, or Islamic law? That is certainly how they present themselves. But the Taliban are no more representative of mainstream Islam than the Crusaders who ransacked Europe and the Middle East were of Christianity. Both the Taliban and their Crusading counterparts represent a political movement meant to dominate and destroy rather than strengthen faith and build human society.

Despite the distorted teaching of extremists like the Taliban, the truth is that the Holy Qur'an does not establish any form of government. Indeed, it is disputes over politics and leadership that split the Muslim community into two sects, Sunni and Shia. The very idea of imposition of religion on others goes against the heart of the Qur'an. In Surah 2:256, the Qur'an says forcefully: "There is no compulsion in religion."
Even the notion of imposing "Islamic law" is nonsensical, as the very idea of a monolithic body of religious rules agreed to by the Muslim community has no basis in Islamic history. There is no unified notion of Sharia. Over the past 1,400 years, many schools of law have developed, each with its own doctrines and jurisprudence, and with contradictory rulings on many matters. Sharia is not a codified body of rules, but a dynamic interaction between scholars, jurists and the Muslim community.

For complete article, click here

Jungle Law: Dawn Editorial

Jungle Law,
Dawn Editorial, April 28, 2009

The brutal crimes committed by the Taliban constitute a warning: this is the sort of behaviour that lies at the extremist yet logical end of the jungle-law mindset taking root in the country. Increasingly, Pakistan is a place where the powerful can get away with any transgression, while the weak become exponentially vulnerable.
A case in point is last week’s incident in Muzaffargarh. A district education officer visited a government high school in connection with an inquiry against a secondary schoolteacher. The enraged teacher reportedly thrashed the DEO and then locked her up, while the assailant’s accomplices fired in the air. The police eventually arrested the DEO’s attacker but delayed registering a case against him. Reportedly, the teacher in question is close to an MPA from the PML-Q’s unification bloc. The area police told this paper that they were awaiting ‘instructions’ from the provincial assembly legislator.

Such subversion of justice is all too common in our society, where the rule of law remains an abstract concept. The citizenry is taught by example to sidestep the conventions of legality and citizens’ rights when there is a chance of getting away with it – which depends mainly on access to wealth, privilege and power. Ordinary citizens learn from the example set by their rulers, which virtually across the board belong to the feudal or economic elite.

There are plenty of instances where the feudal elite, among them well-known politicians, have victimised peasants and other powerless constituents. Instances of buying votes, bribing constituents and opposition party members, and blatantly favouring loyalists are too many to enumerate. Military rulers have no better record. Power has often been wrested through moves later ‘legalised’ through a retroactive tinkering with the laws. The constitution of the country has been subverted, and legal governments arbitrarily removed.

The judiciary and the police are meant to prevent such flouting of the law, but these institutions have shown a regrettable lack of commitment. A pliant justice system has often been created through either a non-transparent process of appointing judges, or through alleged ‘deals’. Constitutional illegalities have been given retroactive cover.

The transgressions of the police, meanwhile, are known to all. From ceding to the demands of influentials and manipulating evidence to extracting confessions through brutal means, the Pakistan police have gathered a reputation of being no friend of the powerless. Such practices teach the citizenry that the law is invoked only by the weak, and to little avail.

To prevent a jungle-like situation in the country’s future, it is imperative that the law be applied and enforced across the board. In the restoration of the chief justice, an important point was scored for the rule of law. This must be driven home further. It must be made clear that no one is above the country’s laws, which are paramount.

Sufi Mohammad Missing ?

Where has Sufi Mohammad gone?
Bureau Report, Dawn, 28 Apr, 2009

PESHAWAR: The government as well as followers of Sufi Mohammad's defunct Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi are looking for him for one reason: to start talks to remove the last few remaining hurdles in the enforcement of Nizam-i-Adl Regulation.
Sufi Mohammad was last seen leaving for his home in Lal Qila area from his base camp in Maidan on Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday morning, according to his spokesman Ameer Izzat, the cleric started for his base camp along with his son Ziaullah, just when the paramilitary forces moved in to attack militants’ hideout in Lal Qila.

‘The last time we had contact with Sufi Sahib was when he said he was on his way to Maidan. He said that he wanted to return home but he was not allowed to proceed by security people because of the fighting there,’ Ameer Izzat said.

‘There has been no communication since then and we don’t know where he is. Everybody is looking for him. We are looking for him. The government is looking for him. We are concerned. We want him to come back and resume talks to resolve the pending issues.’

Ironically, the NWFP government faces the same predicament. It desperately needs to start talks and announce the remaining steps for the implementation of the recently-announced regulation but it does not know where to find the TNSM chief.

For complete article, click here

Sunday, April 26, 2009

People of Buner Responds to Talibanization

Buner jirga asks Taliban to end display of arms
Daily Times, April 27, 2009

LAHORE/MINGORA: A Buner jirga asked the Taliban on Sunday to stop displaying arms and return vehicles seized from government and NGO officials working in the area, a private TV channel reported. The channel said the jirga was attended by tribal elders and representatives of political parties and the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi. Resolutions passed at the meeting demanded the immediate establishment of qazi courts in Buner and called on the Taliban to facilitate the return of peace. daily times monitor/staff report

Also See:
Buner: a hard place for the Taliban to crack - The News
Lessons of Buner - Zafar Hilaly, The News
In Pakistan, Guile Helps Taliban Gain - NYT

Related:
'Tehreek-e-Taliban Peshawar coming soon' - DT
TTP assembling Taliban in Mardan: residents - DT

Strides of civil society are non-negotiable

Strides of civil society are non-negotiable
Prof Paul Scott and Sarwar Bari
The News, April 27, 2009

The political and economic shape of Afghanistan and Pakistan is being configured right before our eyes. It is clear that a series of readjustments and course-corrections are being made, changes that may well add up to what will then form a chain of causality that will be obvious only when one looks back and connects the dots. Hindsight is always perfect. What is obvious is that the global economic crisis is forcing policymakers back to a drawing board whose formula may well be phrased in a “means and ends” matrix. All pragmatic realists should applaud this formulation. Sufficient means and clear ends should almost always result in a reasonable chance of success. This mantra of means and ends is akin to Goethe’s definition of genius, “knowing when to stop.” Yet pragmatism and realism devoid of idealism and humanitarianism are empty cylinders where national interest can be counted. The shaping of history and configurations of nations and peoples is more than just an accountant’s balance sheet.

President Obama, in his first White House televised interview, with the Al Arabiya news networkbased in Dubai, enunciated a course of action that will be fundamentally different in both means and ends than that of Mr Bush. As the New York Times reported, “…Yes, the with-us-or-against-us global struggle — the so-called Long War — in which a freedom-loving West confronts the undifferentiated forces of darkness comprising everything from Al Qaeda to elements of the Palestinian national struggle under the banner of ’Islamofascism’ has been terminated. What’s left is what matters: defeating terrorist organisations. That’s not a war. It’s a strategic challenge.” One applauds the change in tone in Mr Obama’s words. He is certainly both an elegant and an intelligent man; one who understands nuances.

While Mr Obama does not want to be the new sheriff in town he has certainly sent out explicit signals of what fights he will not be drawn in. This is where the recent statements of Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defence Robert Gates need closer and more critical appraisal.

For complete article, click here

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Comparing Iran with Pakistan



comment: Iran was different — Suroosh Irfani
Daily Times, April 26, 2009

For Pakistan, the lessons are clear. Rather than succumbing to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pakistan must develop the spiritual solidarity it lacks for standing up to the onslaught of darkness

As the Taliban extend their emirate in Pakistan’s Frontier province after taking control of Swat, there are fears that “a disaster on the scale of the Iranian revolution” could unravel Pakistan, as the web-newspaper McClatchy recently noted. Earlier, during the political crisis that forced former President General Musharraf out of office, David Ignatius warned in the Washington Post that a “revolutionary earthquake” similar to Iran’s was underway in Pakistan, “with one terrifying difference: Pakistan has nuclear weapons”.

However, the fact is that while Pakistan as we know it might cease to exist if the onslaught of the Taliban-Al Qaeda revolution is not stemmed, there are hardly any similarities between Pakistan today and the revolution that erupted in Iran thirty years ago.

Pakistan today is a democratic but divided nation, unable to decide whether its principal enemy is the United States, or the violent jihadi politics that US, Saudis and Pakistan promoted in the past, and now have become hostage to. As for Iran, a quest for freedom spurred the revolutionary upheaval of 1978-1979 against an autocratic regime that the US had foisted by toppling the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mossadeq in 1953.

At the same time, there is nothing in common between the Taliban and Al Qaeda’s ‘Islamic revolution’ blasting its way from tribal highlands of the Frontier into the urban areas of Pakistan, and the Islamic revolution of Iran which erupted in the heart of urban Iran, outdoing the Russian Revolution in terms of mobilisation of urban masses.

Indeed, the major difference between the Taliban-Al Qaeda revolution in Pakistan and the Iranian revolution lies in a singular fact: the revolution that toppled the Pahlavi autocracy on February 11, 1979 was, in essence, a non-violent revolution of unarmed masses. The blood and violence that Iranian revolution got identified with is a legacy of post-revolutionary turmoil — executions, the invasion of Iran by Iraq, and ravages of armed uprising by opposition groups leading to further repression.

Indeed, when Iran’s Islamic revolution exploded in January 1978, thirty thousand US personnel and servicemen were stationed in Iran as advisors and instructors for the Shah’s army and other institutions. At the same time, 680,000 tourists visited Iran from January to December that year.

And yet, during thirteen months of revolutionary upheaval, not a single American was killed, nor foreigners kidnapped, or sprayed with bullets. On February 9, 1979, when trainees of the Air Force Technical School in Tehran led a popular armed uprising, forcing the army’s surrender, the brief armed confrontation was restricted between the young revolutionaries and a unit of the Shah’s army, even as people spontaneously surged through the various military barracks, taking away weapons and fraternising with soldiers.

For complete article, click here

Also See:
The Iranian Revolution at 30 - Middle East Institute
Pakistan to draw closer to Iran - Press TV, Iran

Where is the Pakistan army?

Where is the Pakistan army?
The News, April 26, 2009
Dr Farrukh Saleem

Five thousand square kilometres of Swat are now under Taliban control -- de jure. Chitral (14,850 sq km), Dir (5,280 sq km), Shangla (1,586 sq km), Hangu (1,097 sq km), Lakki Marwat (3,164 sq km), Bannu (1,227 sq km), Tank (1,679 sq km), Khyber, Kurram, Bajaur, Mohmand, Orkzai, North Waziristan and South Waziristan are all under Taliban control -- de facto. That's a total of 56,103 square kilometres of Pakistan under Taliban control -- de facto.

Six thousand square kilometres of Dera Ismail Khan are being contested. Also under 'contested control' are Karak (3,372 sq km), Kohat (2,545 sq km), Peshawar (2,257 sq km), Charsada (996 sq km) and Mardan (1,632 sq km). That's a total of 16,802 square kilometres of Pakistan under 'contested control' -- de facto. Seven thousand five hundred square kilometres of Kohistan are under 'Taliban influence'. Additionally, Mansehra (4,579 sq km), Battagram (1,301 sq km), Swabi (1,543 sq km) and Nowshera (1,748 sq km) are all under 'Taliban influence'. That's a total of 16,663 square kilometres of Pakistan under 'Taliban influence' -- de facto. All put together, 89,568 square kilometres of Pakistani territory is either under complete 'Taliban control', 'contested control' or 'Taliban influenced'; that's 11 per cent of Pakistan's landmass.

Where is Pakistan army? To be fair, under our constitution law enforcement -- and establishing the writ of the state -- is the responsibility of our civil administration. Yes, under Article 245, the federal government can call in the army "in aid of civil power" but the overall strategy has to be devised by our politicians. Counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency are very specialised operations. Textbook counter-insurgency has three elements: Clear-Hold-Build (C-H-B). The army may be required to 'clear' insurgents from a particular area but every army operation creates a vacuum that has to be filled by a civil-political administration. After the 'clearing' of insurgents it has to be the politicians to 'hold' that area and then fulfil the social contract -- dispensation of justice, municipal services etc -- between the ruled and the rulers (classic counter-insurgency is DDD, disrupt, dismantle and defeat).

At least 11 per cent of Pakistan's landmass has been ceded to the Taliban. Where is the Pakistan army? I Corps is in Mangla, II Corps is in Multan, IV Corps in Lahore, V Corps in Karachi, X Corps in Rawalpindi, XI Corps in Peshawar, XII Corps in Quetta, XXX Corps in Gujranwala and XXXI is in Bahawalpur, In effect, some 80 to 90 per cent of our military assets are deployed to counter the threat from India. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian army and sees its inventory of 6,384 tanks as a threat. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian air force and sees its inventory of 672 combat aircraft as a threat. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian army and notices that six out of 13 Indian corps are strike corps. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian army and finds that 15, 9, 16, 14, 11, 10 and 2 Corps are all pointing their guns at Pakistan. The Pakistan army looks at the Indian army and discovers that the 3rd Armoured Division, 4 RAPID Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade have been deployed to cut Pakistan into two halves. The Pakistan army looks at the Taliban and sees no Arjun Main Battle Tanks (MBT), no armoured fighting vehicles, no 155 mm Bofors howitzers, no Akash surface-to-air missiles, no BrahMos land attack cruise missiles, no Agni Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, no Sukhoi Su-30 MKI air superiority strike fighters, no Jaguar attack aircraft, no MiG-27 ground-attack aircraft, no Shakti thermonuclear devices, no Shakti-II 12 kiloton fission devices and no heavy artillery.

Pakistan is on fire and our fire-fighters are on the Pakistan-India border. To be certain, none of those Indian tanks can cross the Himalayas into China so Arjun MBTs must all be for Pakistan. Thus, the Pakistan-India border has to be defended. Then, what about this hyperactive insurgency that is snatching away Pakistani physical terrain -- bit by bit? There certainly is no easy way out. America wants the Pakistan army to neutralise threats to the mainland US. The Pakistan army, on the other hand, has to defend the Pakistan-India border. The need of the hour, therefore, is for all organs of the Pakistani state -- the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and the military -- to put their heads together and devise a National Counter-Insurgency Policy.

The writer is the executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS). Email: farrukh15 @hotmail.com

Also See:
Jinnah vs Sufi Mohammad - Ghazi Salahuddin
analysis: Militancy and the state —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi - Daily Times

An awakening, but is it enough?

An awakening, but is it enough? By Cyril Almeida
Friday, 24 Apr, 2009

THANK you, Sufi Mohammad. With one speech Sufi has done more to galvanise public opinion against militancy than a hundred suicide bombings and beheadings.

Suddenly, people have woken up to the fact that the great soldier of Islam is a dangerous kook. ‘He thinks we’re what?’ ‘He wants to do what?’ Yep, he thinks the rest of us are sick and what we really need is a dose of Sufi’s medicine. Y’know, to straighten us out about our romance with infidel democracy and yearning for quaint things like basic rights, a functional economy, education, etc.

Sufi’s utopia, it turns out, is everyone else’s dystopia. The fact that people are surprised though has everything to do with the catastrophic, collective failure of our politicians and army.

How did Sufi become the state’s go-to man in Swat? Ask the politicians and they’ll tell you it’s the army’s fault. The army promised they would crush the militants but didn’t, the politicians say. Ask the soldiers, and they blame the politicians. Every time we were close to securing a victory the politicians forced us to stand down so that they could talk to the militants, the army says.

The truth, as ever, lies in between. Militarily, the army let us down. The story of Operation Rah-i-Haq has yet to be told but when it is, ugly secrets will spill out. Were the local commanders and GHQ on the same page at all times? If there was a united will, was there a coherent strategy? Why were people defying Maulana Fazlullah abandoned? What happened last December when Pir Samiullah and his band of Barelvi fighters pleaded for help but didn’t get any and were duly slaughtered by the TTP? There is a stench that surrounds the army operation in Swat and it doesn’t just come from the piles of dead bodies.

For complete article, click here

Also See:
The Fruits of Appeasement - Zahid Hussain
Do We Need More Religion - By Babar Sattar
Sufi Takes Back Taliban to Swat - The News

Related:Petraeus Calls On Pakistan To Redirect Military Focus - Washington Post
Kerry: Administration lacks 'real strategy' for handling Pakistan - USA Today

Friday, April 24, 2009

Link Leads to Link, Leads to...

Link Leads to Link, Leads to...
The Spectrum, April 24, 2009

Tad Trueblood has more than 20 years experience in the U.S. Air Force and the national security community. He lives in Santa Clara.

As I scanned favorite Web sites last week, I ran across a video segment on Small Wars Journal (I've mentioned them before.) It featured a discussion with counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen, one of the brains behind the successful "surge" strategy in Iraq. The subject was partly about Kilcullen's new book, "The Accidental Guerrilla" (I haven't read it yet, but will soon.)

During the segment, Kilcullen talks a lot about Pakistan and it's clear he's been thinking hard about it lately. This is a guy I place a lot of stock in. I've read much of his writing and actually sat across a table from him asking questions. So, when he says there's no solving Afghanistan without first making progress in Pakistan, I pay attention.

He also mentioned that one of the keys to stabilizing Pakistan will be building up its police forces, which by any measure are sub-standard. Billions of U.S. dollars have been spent on Pakistan's military, but the police are desperately undermanned and underfunded.

"Aha! Now there's a topic," I thought, and started Googling.

Within a couple of searches, I brought up a new report from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, by Hassan Abbas, Ph.D., Tufts, entitled "Police and Law Enforcement Reform in Pakistan" dated this month. Based on the timing of Kilcullen's remarks, also in April, and the subject, it seemed obvious he'd already seen Abbas' study.

Clearly, I was onto something, so I started to read it. One link led to another though, and within minutes I discovered Hassan Abbas also manages an extensive blog, called "Watandost", featuring "inside news about Pakistan and its neighborhood."

Now a new trove of information and perspective was opening up. The blog's current lead article, by another author, is "The inevitability of defeat for the Taliban."

Hmmm, maybe that's even better.

The point is, now I've got a range of possibilities for interesting topics. David Kilcullen's new book, if I hurry and read it, or the role of police forces in counterinsurgency or the state of Pakistan's police or maybe this idea of the Taliban's "inevitable" defeat. They'd all be good for a column.

For complete article, click here

Taliban Withdraw from Buner


Picture: In Pakistan’s Buner district on Thursday, a barber looked at the “Shave is strictly forbidden” warning that the Taliban wrote on the window of his shop. The Taliban now control the region.Tariq Mahmood/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (From NYT)

Taliban Announce Key Withdrawal
BBC, April 24, 2009
Video Link

The Taleban say they are withdrawing from a Pakistani district where their consolidation of power this week has caused deep concern in the US.

A Taleban spokesman said commander Maulana Fazlullah had issued the order for fighters to pull back from Buner, just 100km (62 miles) from Islamabad.

The US has accused officials in Pakistan of abdicating to the Taleban.

The Taleban have agreed a peace deal bringing Sharia law to some districts in return for ending their insurgency.

The peace agreement covers six districts of Malakand division, including the troubled Swat region, in North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

For complete article click here

Related:
Militants will not be allowed to dictate terms: Gen Kayani - Dawn
Disarray on Pakistan Taleban threat - Ahmed Rashid, BBC
Pakistan’s Most Wanted: A Profile of Tehrik-e-Taliban Leader Baitullah Mahsud - Mukhtar Khan
Analysis: Pakistan, Taliban and nuclear arms - CNN

Taller than His Mountains: Afzal Khan of Swat



Taller than His Mountains: Afzal Khan of Swat
By Dr. Mohammad Taqi, April 24, 2009

Fit to govern!
No, not to live. O nation miserable,
With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd,
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,
Since that the truest issue of thy throne
By his own interdiction stands accursed …


Self-interdiction and then an abdication by the Awami National Party (ANP) in favor of its nemesis -the Taliban is obvious, but one ANP leader stands taller than the mountains of his native Swat, against the bloody scepters of the untitled Jihadist tyrants.

At the other end of my phone call today was an unmistakable deep voice, with an inimitable Pashto diction that many of us from the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, would readily recognize.

Muhammad Afzal Khan of Droshkhela, Swat sounded calm, composed and firm in his resolve to deny a military or moral victory to the Taliban who have unleashed terror on our province. He expressed his resolve to remain in what he described as his fortified house. How I can leave my family spread over five villages and my people all over Swat, questioned Khan Lala, as the veteran Pashtun nationalist is called with affectionate reverence.

General Janjua, a military doctor, had recommended for Afzal Khan to be evacuated out of Swat for a medical condition, which he has had since 1994, but too proud to turn his back on his people, the Khan declined.

Afzal Khan talked about his meeting with the Pakistan Army Chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani with palpable skepticism. “I told the Army Chief that the Swatis feel that they are being killed by the Taliban and the Army both”.”Give me a reason to explain to the Swatis that this is not true”.”The Chief didn’t say anything”, said Afzal Khan.

Known for his moderate views towards the State of Pakistan, of which he has remained a Federal Minister, member of the National Assembly, deputy opposition leader and contestant of a presidential election, Afzal Khan sounded intrigued at the inaction of the Pakistan’s security apparatus.

He however reserved his deepest concerns for his own party, the ANP. Afzal Khan said that he has conveyed his displeasure at the so called peace agreement, to the Chief Minister of the NWFP, Amir Haider Hoti. “I asked Haider Khan Hoti, where are the Swatis in this whole deal”, “you never asked us about our opinion”, said Afzal Khan.

I asked Lala as to what he thought of a mutual friend of ours who is at the helm in the ANP.”Don’t you think he misled Dr. Najibullah, as an advisor, and now is repeating the same mistakes on our side of the Durand Line”, I tried to prod him. Afzal Khan chuckled but opted not to answer this question directly.

He went on to talk about how the Swatis, having elected the ANP candidates on all seven provincial assembly seats, feel disenfranchised after the deal. He relayed his fear that this lull is providing the Taliban the respite they required to rearm and regroup to extend their attacks outside Swat. “Look, all that the ANP deal has done is to give the Taliban a reprieve from fighting here and now they are in Buner and Shangla”, he lamented.

“Afrasiab Khattak and Iftikhar Hussain (ANP’s provincial president and information minister, respectively) came to see me, escorted by government security agencies”, said Afzal Khan. “I told them that the first priority of the state is to provide security to the citizenry, but you chose to remove the security away from the Swatis and yet have it for yourselves”, he concluded.

Last year, the ANP had rebuked its leaders like Lateef Afridi, who had suggested a march to Swat and a show of strength, in support of Afzal Khan and the Swatis. Many in the ANP believe that the current leadership is wary of Afzal Khan because he has achieved a larger than life stature and probably ranks right up there with Mir Wais Hotak, Khushal Khattak and Ahmed Shah Durrani.

Afzal Khan, though cognizant of the symbolic nature of his stand, remains focused on the practical aspects of the struggle and its outcome for his people. He is the embodiment of Faiz’s thought about the course of the people’s struggle: when the times demand, it is the seasoned campaigner who walks and sets the momentum for the whole movement and when needed is firm like the mighty mountains; and in doing so he makes the journey proud and the path shining :

Ų¬Łˆ Ų±Ś©Ū’ ŲŖŁˆ Ś©ŁˆŪِ ŚÆŲ±Ų§Śŗ ŲŖŚ¾Ū’ ŪŁ… , Ų¬Łˆ Ś†Ł„Ū’ ŲŖŁˆ Ų¬Ų§Śŗ Ų³Ū’ ŚÆŲ²Ų± ŚÆŪ“
Ų±Ūِ ŁŠŲ§Ų± ŪŁ… Ł†Ū’ Ł‚ŲÆŁ… Ł‚ŲÆŁ… , ŲŖŲ¬Ś¾Ū’ ŁŠŲ§ŲÆŚÆŲ§Ų± ŲØŁ†Ų§ ŲÆŁŠŲ§

jo rukay to koh e garan they hum, jo chalay to jaan se guzar gaiay
rah e yar hum ne qadam qadam, tujhey yadgaar bana diya


(Author practices and teaches medicine at the University of Florida and can be reached at mazdaki@msn.com)

Also See:
Swat - Last Khan Standing - By Sartaj Khan
Mohammad Afzal Khan: A Ray of Hope - By Zar Ali
Afzal Khan Lala vows to stay in Swat despite fresh attack By Rahimullah Yusufzai - valleyswat.com

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Taliban v. Taliban: The Road out of Kabul goes through Kashmir

Taliban v. Taliban
Graham Usher; London Review of Books, April 9, 2009

Pakistan and India have been at war since 1948. There have been occasional flare-ups, pitched battles between the two armies, but mostly the war has taken the form of a guerrilla battle between the Indian army and Pakistani surrogates in Kashmir. In 2004 the two countries began a cautious peace process, but rather than ending, the war has since migrated to Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas on the Afghan border. ‘Safe havens’ for a reinvigorated Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida, the tribal areas are seen by the West as the ‘greatest threat’ to its security, as well as being the main cause of Western frustration with Pakistan. The reason is simple: the Pakistan army’s counterinsurgency strategy is not principally directed at the Taliban or even al-Qaida: the main enemy is India.

In the Bajaur tribal area, for example, the army is fighting an insurgency led by Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of one of Pakistan’s three Taliban factions, but it’s not because he is a friend of al-Qaida. What makes him a threat, in the eyes of Pakistan’s army, is that he is believed to be responsible for scores of suicide attacks inside Pakistan (including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto). He is also thought to have recruited hundreds of Afghan fighters, among them ‘agents’ from the Afghan and Indian intelligence services – ‘Pakistan’s enemies’, in the words of a senior officer.

For complete article, click here

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan Quandary

Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan Quandary – Part II
Pakistan wants US pressure on India as condition for cooperating against Al Qaeda
Haider Ali Hussein Mullick
YaleGlobal, 15 April 2009

President Obama faces two equally unpleasant alternatives if he wants to defeat Al Qaeda, according to Haider Mullick, Senior Fellow at the US Joint Special Operations University in this second part of a two part series on Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan Quandary. These alternatives are: help bolster Pakistan’s security interests in Afghanistan by reducing India’s role there, or be sucked deeper and deeper into Pakistan in a bid to defeat Al Qaeda. Based on extensive interviews with Pakistani civil and military officials, Mullick writes that these officials are deeply concerned by India’s massive aid presence in Afghanistan and its suspected support to Baluchi insurgents in Pakistan’s western border. Unless the US takes a stand against India’s alleged subversive role, they indicated, Pakistan’s cooperation against Al Qaeda will be limited. According to Mullick, a role for moderate pro-Pakistani Taliban in the Kabul government would also help to ensure Pakistani cooperation. But Mullick also calls for an end to heavy-handed counter-insurgency campaigns in Pakistan, political reconciliation between Islamabad and the Taliban, a campaign of public education about the value of cooperation with the US, and making public the US military presence in Pakistan. Without these and other policies put in place, he warns, the US will fail to defeat Al Qaeda and become trapped in Pakistan’s morass. – YaleGlobal

For complete article, click here
For Part I, click here

NWFP chief minister doubles police salaries - A Positive Move

NWFP chief minister doubles police salaries
Hoti says NWFP government has diverted funds from development programmes to facilitate law enforcers
Says 400 Elite Police Force personnel have started training

By Manzoor Ali Shah, DT, April 22, 2009

PESHAWAR: NWFP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti announced to double the salaries of provincial police on Tuesday.

Addressing a police darbar at Malik Saad Shaheed Police Lines, he also announced to raise the compensation amount of Police Shuhada package from Rs 1 million to Rs 1.5 million. He said the NWFP was involved in an insurgency-like situation and his government had diverted development funds to meet the needs of law enforcers.

Praising the police for fighting the insurgency with courage despite shortage of resources, Hoti said steps were being taken to improve the existing infrastructure and train police personnel. “Police will be provided modern training and would be transformed into a paramilitary force,” he added. He said 5,000 new personnel had been hired since January 2009 and the number would be increased if necessary.

Training: Hoti said 15 Elite Police Force personnel had completed their training while 400 jawans were undergoing training. The number would be increased to 2,500, he added. He said that some 17,000 new weapons had also been purchased while 180,000 others were in the pipeline. He said the government was awarding gold medals and special allowances on performance basis in restive areas, adding it had already approved a welfare package for children of police martyrs.

For complete article, click here

The Children of Taliban - A Moving Documentary

The Children of Taliban - A Moving Documentary by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
PBS, April 20, 2009
To watch documentary click here

The city of Peshawar is on high alert. The Taliban are closing in, regularly attacking police convoys, kidnapping diplomats, and shooting foreigners. The fighting across this volatile region has driven thousands of families from their homes and many have found shelter in Peshawar.

Correspondent Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is traveling across her fractured homeland to investigate the rising popularity of a new Pakistani branch of the Taliban, now threatening the major cities, blowing up girls’ schools and declaring war on the Pakistani state.

Her journey begins at a rehabilitation center in Peshawar, where she talks with many young victims caught in the crossfire of this war.

“We saw the dead body of a policeman tied to a pole,” an articulate young girl named Qainat tells the reporter quietly. “His head had been chopped off. It was hanging between his legs. There was a note saying that if anyone moved the dead body, they would share its fate.”

Before the Taliban took control of Qainat’s village, the women in her family attended university and worked. But now the Taliban has banned girls from going to school.

Qainat is from Swat, a 100-mile-long valley in the north of Pakistan, three hours drive from Peshawar. Until recently, Swat was known as the Switzerland of the east, and had a thriving tourist industry.

Two years ago, hundreds of Taliban fighters moved into the valley from the adjoining tribal areas, when the Pakistani Army drove them out.

Driving through the streets of Swat filming surreptitiously, Obaid-Chinoy sees Swati women wearing the burqa. This never used to be the case.

The Taliban often use radio broadcasts to drive home their message.

In one typical address, a preacher proclaims:

“Sharia Law is our right, and we will exercise this right whatever happens. We will make ourselves suicide bombers! I swear to God if our leader orders me, I will sacrifice myself… and blow myself up in the middle of our enemies.“

The Taliban have destroyed more than 200 government schools in Swat since they took control of the region. Walking through the rubble of a school that once taught 400 girls, the reporter comes across two nine-year-old girls who used to study there.

Click here for full transcript

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Inevitability of Defeat for the Taliban in Pakistan

The Taliban will be defeated
The News, April 21, 2009
by Mosharraf Zaidi

The young lust that infuriates the fascist Flintstones of Malakand is only the beginning of the love chronicles that will extinguish the little ember that they mistake for a raging fire. The little ember they mistake for populist wildfire is disenchantment with the failing state in this country. Unfortunately for these comedic miscarriages of reality there is only one raging fire in Pakistan. It is the fire in the cities. Sure there are randomly distributed fascist mullahs in the cities too, and many of them have taken the choreography of Sufi Mohammad to heart. But if it was so easy to convert the madrasas of this country into the nodes of a bloody fascist Flintstone revolution, it would have already happened.

The real love affair that the Taliban and their ilk should be scared of is the incandescent passion with which Pakistanis, religious and irreligious, love this big, bulking behemoth of a country. March 15 may be a long and distant memory in the newspapers, but its markings on the DNA of Pakistan are still fresh. The scars that it has left are still raw, and the traditional elite in this country has not forgotten the humiliation of that day. Both the feudal politicians and the wannabe-feudal military leaders in this country grossly mis-underestimated (a Bushism all too appropriate for this Pakistan) the size and heat of the movement to restore the judiciary. The Taliban, the TNSM and the Lal Masjid Brigades repeat the mistakes made by the traditional elite, for good reason. Their DNA is imprinted with the “Made By The Traditional Elite of Pakistan” label. And let’s not be blinded by opportunism, paralysed by our romance for family dynasties or constrained by our personal politics. The defence establishment in this country that has cultivated irrational public discourse under the cloak of religion in Pakistan has not been alone in the endeavour. Their feudal dance partners have been central in enabling and facilitating the rot. Controlling the mosques with their left hands, and the triggers of civilian and military guns with their right–the traditional elite have caved in to the demands for Nifaz-e-Adl because they prefer the faux wrath of a perverted distributive justice agenda to the real and irresistible agenda for reform and renewal in Pakistan’s cities.

The MQM understands this urban agenda for reform and renewal better than any political party in the country, which is why, despite the clear and obvious threats that a free judiciary poses to the operational fidelity of the MQM, the party made a conscious decision not to allow another May 12 to transpire this March. It is also why the MQM has spoken loudly and proudly against the ridiculous handing over of Pakistani sovereignty to the Flintstones of Malakand. Most of all, the MQM’s depth of relationship with urban sentiment is evident in the starkly different rhetoric that defines engagement with the issues between Pakistan’s Gucci and Prada liberals on the one hand, and the MQM’s leadership on the other. Convening an ulema conference was a stroke of urban Pakistan genius by the party. No self-respecting secular, progressive liberal (sic) would be caught dead at such a convention. Hence the difference between the MQM (a serious power-player in this country), and cheese and cracker liberals (a loud but politically sterile minority). As much as the lawyers’ movement was an a-religious movement, it was not amoral. And Pakistan’s people (even the ones in nice cars in the city working for banks and educated in the American Midwest) still draw moral inspiration primarily from Islam.

Since handing over the mosque to the wretched of South Asia at Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s request, Muslims here have slowly but surely abdicated their faith to a newfangled clergy. Their primary instrument in sustaining ownership of the mosque and madrasa, and all the symbols that go with them, is a supremely confident ignorance.

The language of religious discourse is dripping with Islamic symbolism. There is no reason for Pakistan to be shy of engaging the clergy with the same symbols. Indeed, it is the uncontested monopolisation of those symbols that has enabled the current rot. More often than not, the mullahs will lose the argument. Ignorant rants have a very short lease of life. Simply put, there are more Hakim Saids in Pakistan’s Muslim history than there are Sufi Mohammads. Fought properly, there is only one outcome in the battle for the soul of Pakistan–victory for the peace-loving masses, and defeat for the firestorm-fanning agents of irrationality.

Of course, the MQM represents a deeply compromised flag-bearer for the political fight against the Taliban. Despite a much-reformed party agenda, the ethnic affiliation of its top leadership is an issue that has consistently kept it from growing beyond urban Sindh. Moreover, rather ironically, its political choices since 1999 have put it directly at odds with urban Punjab. Ultimately, the alliance between urban Sindh and urban Punjab is a natural and inevitable one. This inevitability was all too visible to President Asif Ali Zardari, and it is what inspired the unnatural alliance between the PPP and the MQM–two parties that were at opposite ends of the violence and mayhem of May 12. Despite the federalist benefits of the PPP-MQM alliance, and the dangers of a rural Sindh that has no allies in either Punjab or in Karachi, this political expedience has a limited shelf life.

Of course, the challenge in Punjab is the PML-N’s ability to continue to be a vessel for the articulation of urban Pakistan’s political ethos. Taking on the mullah without abdicating its centrist Muslim identity is a critical challenge for the PML-N. Traditionally, it has been assumed that the natural role of taking on the mullah belongs to the PPP. Today’s PPP, lacking the brilliance of a Bhutto as its field marshal, is hurting. It is unable to seamlessly integrate the feudal tendencies of its electoral strength with the urbane (not urban) sensibilities of its somewhat exceptional cadre of highly qualified advisors. The growing wisdom and alacrity of the prime minister notwithstanding, the PPP will take at least a generation to grow into a viable force in Pakistan’s new urban frontier. Until then, to stay alive, compromise with the most unpalatable negotiating-table partners is all the party can do. This is doubly true for the ANP, which has been unfairly burdened with the blame for the deal. In fact, the ANP has done what every party other than the MQM will do in the same situation. Without a military that is willing to take the battlefield heat, political parties have no choice but to find compromise solutions to intractable problems.

None of the Realpolitik of the day, however, alters the bottom-line truth about Pakistan in 2009. There is a big set of unresolved issues around which violent extremists are able to construct a rationale for their murderous campaign for power. The resonance and appeal of these issues is undeniable. The bloodshed at Lal Masjid in 2007, the covert sexual revolution that has taken place on the back of a massive telecom boom, and the collateral damage of drone attacks, all have serious play in mainstream Pakistan.

But these issues are not the sole informants of Pakistaniat–to use Adil Najam’s phraseology. They are among a larger galaxy of issues. Proof of this is in the political performance of the rightwing, even as recently as the Feb 18, 2008, elections. Despite the bread-and-butter nature of these issues in urban and rural Pakistan, the religious right failed to win back the gifts handed to it by the deeply flawed elections of 2002. The key question is not whether the religious right in Pakistan can mobilise meaningful numbers to actualise its vision for a strait-jacketed and irrational Pakistan. They cannot. Even though these issues are shared across a broad spectrum, the religious right is tone-deaf, and politically irrelevant. And if the JUI and JI and their cohorts can’t win the street, the Taliban don’t have a chance.

The key question, therefore, is not about the populism of the Taliban, the TNSM, or any violent extremists in Pakistan. It is whether Pakistani Muslims will remain hostage to their sense of religious inferiority to the mullah. In fear of violating the precepts of a faith to which most Pakistanis are still deeply committed, will the people give mullahs like Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid carte blanche to destroy this country? The MQM’s ulema conference may cause all kinds of squirming, but it answers the question unequivocally. No, they will not.

The love affair of the Pakistani people with their country is a firewall that will hold. Violent extremists can flog the odd alleged straying couple, but they cannot flog 172 million people. They cannot win this war, and that is why they’re so angry all the time.

Taliban in Pakistani ex-resort: `Welcome, Osama!'

Taliban in Pakistani ex-resort: `Welcome, Osama!'
By KATHY GANNON – AFP, April 20, 2009

MINGORA, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan was trying to end bloodshed when it let the idyllic Swat Valley fall under Islamic law last week. Instead, it has emboldened the Taliban and prompted an invitation — however improbable — for Osama bin Laden.

The local spokesman for the Taliban, which control the valley, told The Associated Press he'd welcome militants bent on battling U.S. troops and their Arab allies if they want to settle there.

"Osama can come here. Sure, like a brother they can stay anywhere they want," Muslim Khan said in a two-hour interview Friday, his first with a foreign journalist since Islamic law was imposed. "Yes, we will help them and protect them."

Khan spoke in halting English he learned during four years painting houses in the U.S. before returning to Swat in 2002. He averted his eyes as he spoke to a female journalist, in line with his strict understanding of Islam.

Pakistan reacted with alarm to his comments, saying it would never let him shelter the likes of bin Laden.

"We would have to go for the military operation. We would have to apply force again," said Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira. "We simply condemn this. We are fighting this war against al-Qaida and the Taliban."

But it is far from clear that the government has the means to do much of anything in the Swat Valley. It agreed to Islamic law in the region — drawing international condemnation — after trying and failing to defeat the Taliban in fighting marked by brutal beheadings that killed more than 850 people over two years.

"We lost the war. We negotiated from a position of weakness," said Afrasiab Khattak, a leader of the Awami National Party, which governs the province that includes Swat. He said the region's police force is too underpaid, undertrained and underequipped to take on the militants.

For complete article click here

Also See:
Editorial: Sufi Muhammad shows true colours - DT
Pakistan's Sharif urges dialogue to quell insurgency - USA Today
insight: Time for Plan B —Ejaz Haider - DT
Tensions Rise Between United States, Pakistan - NPR

Monday, April 20, 2009

Afghan Women March, America Turns Away

Afghan Women March, America Turns Away
By NADER NADERY and HASEEB HUMAYOON, New York Times, April 19, 2009

LAST November, extremists on motorbikes opposed to education for women sprayed acid on a group of students from the Mirwais School for Girls in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Several young women were severely burned. Yet it did not take more than a few weeks for even the most cruelly disfigured girls to return to school. Like the crowds of women in Kabul this week who protested a new law that restricts their rights, the Mirwais students demonstrate unbending courage and resolve for progress. They don’t fear much — except that the world might abandon them.

That is why President Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan policy speech last month and his administration’s related white paper are worrisome: both avoided any reference to democracy in Afghanistan, while pointedly pushing democratic reforms in Pakistan. The new policy represents critical shifts — such as a new emphasis on civilian work, and recognizing the regional nature of the problem and the inadequacy and abuse of resources. But a faltering commitment to the democratization of Afghanistan and ambiguous statements from Washington on an exit strategy have left us Afghans scratching our heads.

The Obama administration’s bold declaration of what is to be defeated (Al Qaeda) and absence of equal zest for what is to be built (democracy) inspires a sense of dĆ©jĆ  vu. The last time the United States was seriously involved in Afghanistan, its goal was the defeat of the Soviet Union. But after that “success,” extremist militias greedy for power brought our society to its knees. In the absence of the rule of law and legitimate and democratic institutions, the militias’ atrocities allowed the Taliban to rise to power and harbor those behind the 9/11 attacks.

To defeat the forces of oppression, Washington must promote and protect the ideals of democracy and human rights. It is true that Afghanistan has miles to go before it will be a real democracy. But why won’t the new administration state a commitment to helping us get there?

First, with the economic crisis and other domestic priorities, there is a sense in Washington that helping Afghanistan democratize is either a luxury American taxpayers cannot afford or a charitable cause they can delay. This shows a misunderstanding of both what is needed to help Afghans build a real democracy and the lasting interest of the United States.

Second, there is a temptation among some in Washington to believe that if the zeal for democratic reform or women’s and minority rights in Afghanistan were relaxed, Taliban insurgents would find “reconciliation” more attractive and the war would end more quickly.

This belief is encouraged by the radically conservative forces that have increased their influence since 2005 over the Kabul government, which has been backtracking on its commitment to rights like freedom of the press and equality under the law. This was exemplified by two events last month: the upholding of a 20-year jail sentence given to a young journalist for printing a controversial article from the Internet that was critical of the role traditionally assigned to women in Islam; and President Hamid Karzai’s signing of a law affecting the country’s Shiite minority that places restrictions on when a woman can leave her house and states the circumstances in which she is obliged to have sex with her husband. That law prompted the protests this week in Kabul.

It would seem that the escalating violence the country has suffered since 2005 would be a pretty convincing demonstration that giving up ground on democracy and human rights is not helping end this war. Rather, the Taliban has interpreted it as a sign of the weakness of the Afghan government and its international allies. The Afghan public, even as it faces an unpopular and brutal insurgency, is no longer sure if a government that is reluctant to stand up for human rights deserves support. Afghans are also aware that if their government does not honestly commit to judicial and legislative reforms, it will lose American and European public support.

Third, and perhaps most important, many Westerners still cling to incorrect assumptions about Afghans, which they use as excuses for abandoning democratization. One such belief is that Afghans are a “tribal people” who probably do not want a say in choosing their leaders. Others claim that because Afghanistan is a traditional Islamic society, any promotion of democracy and women’s rights will be resented as an imposition of Western values. Another much-heard statement is that Afghans are “fierce independent fighters” who mercilessly defy external influence, so the United States better not get bogged down in this “graveyard of empires.”

These assumptions are wrong. In our first democratic elections, in October 2004, 11 million Afghans — 41 percent of them women — registered to vote. In a 2008 survey by the Asia Foundation, 76 percent of Afghans responded that democracy was the best form of government. An estimated 10 million people, one-third of the population, live in cities. Almost 65 percent of Afghans are under the age of 25. This dominant generation came of age not under the old tribal structures but in an Afghanistan whose traditional fabrics were torn apart by Soviet tanks and our long civil war.

As for women’s rights, the troubles that brewed in Afghanistan during the 1990s — civil war, followed by the Taliban’s totalitarianism and harboring of Al Qaeda — were in great part the result of the female half of our population being deprived of social and political participation. Like everyone else, Afghans crave security, justice, accountability, educational and employment opportunities, and a promise of a future.

Democracy and progress are not products to be packaged and exported to Afghanistan. Afghans have to fight for them. Last month, the two of us helped organize “Afghanistan: Ensuring Success,” a conference led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born former United States ambassador to the United Nations. Speakers included Afghans from all walks of life and there was broad agreement that, in the words of President Obama, it was time to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off” and strive for genuine democratic progress and self-reliance.

But as we approach Afghanistan’s second democratic elections, in August, we cannot afford to have our allies falter — through rhetoric or policy — in supporting our nascent democratic forces. Those brave and burned young women of Kandahar did not give up. How could we?

Nader Nadery is a member of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Haseeb Humayoon, a student at Middlebury College, has worked as a consultant to nongovernmental groups in Afghanistan.

Defining the Punjabi Taliban Network

Defining the Punjabi Taliban Network
By Hassan Abbas, CTC Sentinnel, April 2009

On march 30, 2009, militants launched a deadly assault on a police training center outside Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab Province. Eight police cadets were killed, and nearly 100 injured. Less than a month earlier, on March 3, gunmen in Lahore ambushed members of the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team, killing at least eight people. Punjab, the most populated of Pakistan’s provinces, has largely escaped the bloodshed plaguing the country’s troubled northwest. Yet since 2007, violence has escalated in the province. The increasingly bold terrorist attacks in Pakistan’s heartland—within Punjab Province and in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad—show that local logistical support for these attacks is attributable to what is often labeled the “Punjabi Taliban” network. The major factions of this network include operatives from Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan and Jaysh-Muhammad — all groups that were previously strictly focused on Kashmir and domestic sectarian violence.

Members of these groups are increasingly supporting Taliban elements from Pakistan’s tribal regions to conduct attacks in sensitive cities such as Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore. Ongoing investigations into the Marriott hotel bombing that rocked Islamabad in September 2008, in which dozens of Punjabi suspects were arrested and interrogated, show the role played by Punjabi militants. One unnamed investigator working on the Marriott attack revealed that “all evidences of the terrorist bombing led to South Waziristan via Jhang [a city in Punjab where Lashkar-i-Jhangvi has strong links]. The truck that was rammed into the hotel was also from Jhang.”

This article attempts to define the Punjabi Taliban network, in addition to profiling the three main factions that contribute to its ranks.

For complete article (pdf), click here

Related:
Recently Released Video Highlights Punjabi Taliban - Samaa TV
Editorial: Punjab is more vulnerable than we think - Daily Times
South Asia’s Taliban Problem - NYT
United Militants Threaten Pakistan’s Populous Heart - NYT

What Sharia Regulation in Swat Stands for?


Sharia regulation in Swat
By Tahir Wasti; Dawn, 20 April, 2009

NO one can deny the enormously serious political impact that the Sharia regulation will have. Our major political parties bury their heads in the sand when a meteorite hits our political landscape and jolts our whole constitutional infrastructure. Alongside the adverse effects it will have on the overall governance of the state, the Nizam-i-Adl regulation will have widespread legal repercussions.

A reading of the text of the Regulation 2009 indicates that members of our parliament hurriedly passed the resolution without exerting their right of reading and carefully studying several provisions of the regulation. The regulation lacks all the essential qualities of good legislation: clarity, accuracy and constitutionality. Ambiguity and vagueness ruin the very purpose of the legislation and are the two qualities that one may find floating on the surface of this law.

Had Mr M.D. Tahir been alive he certainly would have challenged this law under the constitution as it makes not only various constitutional provisions redundant but also marginalises the role of constitutional bodies, for instance, the Islamic Ideology Council, and even parliament.

According to the 1973 Constitution, as it was originally drafted, to legislate law in consonance with the Quran and Sunnah is the task assigned to parliament. Even when Zia amended the constitution and established the federal sharia court (FSC) and granted it the power to examine laws on the touchstone of the Quran and Sunnah (Article 203D), the FSC was bound to refer the matter to the president to make amendments in case the court found any law or its provision repugnant to the injunctions of Islam.

The FSC is not empowered to make law and proclaim that this law will now be applicable. In the absence of such a provision, when qazis will declare any law un-Islamic, they will also assert what the Islamic law is. Then, their version of Islamic law will begin to apply.

To pass on this burden of legislation to qazis is delegating their responsibility to individuals who will enforce their personal interpretation of Sharia on others. It is beyond comprehension as to how and on what basis the parliament can pass on its role of legislation to another body of the state, more so when the authority is passed to individuals, who have neither technical education nor the experience of dispensation of justice, keeping in view the fundamental human rights enshrined in our constitution.

Anyone who has not been educated about the Pakistani constitution and various other fundamental procedural statutes and their principles cannot dispense justice that is in consonance with our basic law and the treaties that Pakistan has signed in the UN. Sharia under Section 2 (j) of this Regulation means: ‘the injunctions in Islam as laid down in Quran, Sunnah, ijma and qiyas’. Now what are these injunctions? Where is codification of these injunctions? Most lay Muslims believe that whatever law, ritual and custom they practise in their everyday life, including wife-beating, killing in the name of honour, depriving women of higher education, are based on these four sources of law.

For complete article, click here

Related:
No room for democracy in Islam: TNSM Chief - Dawn
“Taliban Aa Gayay”: Silence of the Lambs - Pakistaniat.com
OPINION: Moolah for the mullah —Nasir Abbas Mirza - DT
Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan - NYT

Of judges and drones: U.S. policy alienates the Pakistani people




Of judges and drones: U.S. policy alienates the Pakistani people
By: Osama Siddique, Harvard Law Record, 4/16/09

There are many faces to Pakistan. Vibrant, joyful, intelligent, compassionate, and calm. Resonant with a lust for life; glowing with a passion for self-fulfillment common to all people; and as human in their joys and in their sorrows as any human can be. If you prick them, they bleed; if you tickle them, they laugh; and if you poison them, they die. There are millions upon millions of such faces but you never see them (though you could if you tried). You never see them because they are never shown, at least not on the bulk of the 'free' world's media, elements of which would cause Orwell to shudder. A 'free' media that at times sketches, colors, dehumanizes, objectifies, magnifies, projects, and then damns a vile 'other,' an 'imagined nation' of barbarians, with scant regard for its diversity, complexity, plurality, and above all, humanity.

As a result, what is repeatedly shown instead are grainy images of some half-crazed cleric crouching against a grey-brown, rock strewn backdrop, muttering doomsday dreams. What gets hardly any attention are the images, dialogues, debates, processes and institutions within a Pakistan that clearly displays cognizance of, apprehension about, and steadily growing defiance against the nemesis of religious radicalism and militancy - a violent menace that Pakistanis increasingly realize they will have to collectively confront, for it threatens the very ethos of a tolerant, pluralistic, and equitable federation. But the rabid faces of radicalism are so much more fascinating to the camera than the travails of a nascent democracy. At the same time, we are hardly ever told of this radicalism's genesis; the tell-tale story of its creation; and the genealogy of the angst that seems to grip it. Any attempt to discuss the real necromancer behind the forces of militant radicalism finds little coverage. The backdrop of economic and social disempowerment; paucity of education and democratic space; and, above all, the use and abuse of Pakistani turf and many of its people by a coalition of international interests and local undemocratic regimes, in order to fight wars that the Pakistani citizenry was never consulted about, remains unexplored. The bugaboo is here now, we are bluntly told, and Pakistan needs to do more about it, we are scolded. We can bomb it to oblivion, and we can also 'bomb Pakistan to the stone age,' is the unveiled threat from paragons of subtle international diplomacy like former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. With such talk, it's no surprise that there is no romance in the air. No wonder U.S. foreign policy pundits and international observers find few in Pakistan, even amongst the overwhelming majority of its moderate citizens, whose eyes are brimful with tears of relief and gratitude as they talk of the mythical U.S./Pakistan partnership against radicalism. As we know, there is no place for threats in a partnership.

For complete article, click here

Also See:
US policies alienating Pakistan, warn scholars - Dawn

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Elections in India



Indian general elections 2009: Congress cashes in on ‘distorted’ facts in Advani autobiography
By Iftikhar Gilani, Daily Times, April 19, 2009

NEW DELHI: In a belated dissection of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Lal Krishna Advani’s autobiography ‘My Country, My Life’, published in March 2008, the Congress on Saturday sought to take political advantage during the ongoing elections, citing instance after instance of what a Congress minister called distortion of facts and history.

Union Minister and Congress spokesman Kapil Sibal pitied Advani at the AICC press briefing for “not caring to educate himself about the country’s most celebrated freedom fighters – Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev” – by claiming that they were hanged for hurling bombs inside the Delhi assembly.

“Being a swayamsevak (volunteer) of the RSS, which had no role in the Indian freedom struggle, his ignorance is quite obvious, as otherwise, he should have known that they [freedom fighters] were sentenced to death actually for the assassination of JP Saunders, and that it was well-known and documented Lahore conspiracy case,” Sibal said.

Elsewhere in the book, Sibal added, Advani had described Punjab’s Communist Party of India (CPI) leader as “late Satyapal Dang, not caring to verify as he would have known, that the veteran leader is very much alive and in good health”.

Sibal also pooh-poohed the BJP leader for his “duplicity in writing that the BJP ‘forced’ then prime minister Indira Gandhi to order ‘Operation Blue Star’ to liberate Golden Temple from anti-national occupants, and at the same time describing it as one of the most painful moments in the history of the republic”.

Akali Dal, who remains aligned with the BJP, should note their prime ministerial candidate’s views, Sibal said.

The Congress spokesman said that another duplicity in the “divisive agenda” was apparent when Advani described the Babri Masjid demolition as “Hindu awakening”, but then “hypocritically” called it the “saddest” day in his life.

“Yet he did the groundwork for that day when he embarked on his journey spreading hate in his 1990 Rath Yatra that resulted in communal riots in which hundreds were killed,” Sibal said.

Another “memory lapse” is evident when Advani claims to have spoken to US ambassador Robert Blackwill for assistance during the IC-814 plane hijack drama. The fact is that Richard F Celeste was the US ambassador to India during that period, the Congress spokesman said.

Another falsehood in the book that Sibal nailed was Advani writing that both he and then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee were firmly opposed to sending Indian troops to Iraq. He cited a statement of the Indian embassy in Washington dated June 8, 2003, that: Advani told then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfield that the matter was under consideration.

Sibal also ridiculed Advani for choosing to give account of people killed by police firing during the Gujarat riots but not finding it important to talk about how the state machinery, including police, was involved in the riots.

He also criticised Advani for lacking the courage to mention that the RSS forced him to resign as the BJP president over his controversial praise of Muhammad Ali Jinnah during a visit to Pakistan in 2005.

Sibal said Advani was desperate to shed the tag of “prime minister in waiting” but his ambition based on “distortion of facts” would ensure that he lives with this tag in perpetuity.

Also See:
India elections: Facts behind world's biggest vote - CNN
Untouchable and unattainable - Economist
India's jumbo election - Economist

Life post-Nizam-e-Adl in Swat?

Life post-Nizam-e-Adl
The News, April 19, 2009
Dr Farrukh Saleem

Here are four of our historical, landmark, monumental mistakes. First: in 1947, we accepted that 27,220 square kilometres of FATA -- Bajaur, Khyber, Kurram, Mohamand, North Waziristan, Orakzai, South Waziristan plus FR Peshawar, FR Kohat, FR Tank, FR Bannu, FR Lakki and FR Dera Ismail Khan -- shall continue to be governed under the Frontier Crimes Regulation of 1901. Second: in 1970, Federally Administered Northern Areas (FANA), a total of 72,496 square kilometres -- that includes Skardu, Ghanche, Gilgit, Ghizer Diamer, Astore and Hunza -- was created as a separate administrative unit. Third: in 1997, Ehtesab Act was passed by the Nawaz Sharif government that gave birth to Ehtesab Courts. Fourth: in 1997, the Anti-Terrorism Act gave birth to Anti-Terrorism Courts.

For the past 62 years we have failed to integrate FATA into the rest of Pakistan. For the past 39 years we have failed to integrate FANA into the rest of Pakistan. That's 99,716 square kilometres, nearly 13 per cent of our total landmass, outside the boundaries of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The results of our follies are for the world to see. On April 13, President Asif Ali Zardari, the 11th president of Pakistan, signed Nizam-e-Adl Regulation 2009 donating an additional 5,337 square kilometres of Pakistan to Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM). The TNSM has already laid its claim to 14,850 square kilometres of Chitral and 5,280 square kilometres of Dir. That would mean 16 per cent of our landmass. Where would it all stop? FATA is beyond Pakistan de facto. Swat is now beyond Pakistan de jure. Pakistan has no writ in most of Balochistan. And, that's a total of 452,243 square kilometres, or 58 per cent of Pakistan, beyond Pakistan's writ. What would Swat now be like? Which one of the 192 member-states of the UN would Swat be like? Which one of the 57 OIC countries would Swat be like? Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan?

Would the 'Switzerland of Pakistan' now be like Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia's per capita book readership is one of the lowest on the face of the planet. Saudi Arabia is yet to produce a Nobel prize winner (Israel has produced eight). Saudi Arabia has no more than 5,000 scientists (200 per million) while the US has 1.5 million (4,000 per million). Saudi Arabia hasn't invented anything of consequence for the human civilisation in its 77 years of existence. Saudi Arabia officially practises a comprehensive gender-based apartheid system whereby 14 million Saudi women have different legal rights than Saudi men, an "unequal access to property and jobs, and restrictions on freedom of movement… (Saudi women were not allowed to vote in the municipal elections of 2005)." Would the 'Switzerland of Pakistan' now be like the 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan' (as Afghanistan was from 1996 to 2001)? No political parties, no politics, no elections -- and absolutely dictatorial. No TV, no chess, no kites. For women -- restricted employment, no education, no sports, no nail-polish. For everyone else -- no videos, no music, no dancing, no clapping during sports events -- and a beard "extending farther than a fist clamped at the base of the chin." No paintings, no photographs, no stuffed animals -- and no dolls.

Saidu Sharif has the Swat Museum and the Swat Museum has Buddha's footprints. Remember how the National Museum of Afghanistan was torn down with sledgehammers? Swat has Mingora and Mingora has Buddhist stupas. Remember Buddahas of Bamyan? Swat has Kabal and Kabal has a beautiful, beautiful golf course. Swat has Malam Jabba and Malam Jabba has a ski resort (last year, parts of the ski resort were burnt down). What would life be post-Nizam-e-Adl? According to Amnesty International, Nizam-e-Adl means "legitimising human rights abuses" in the Swat Valley. According to McClatchy Company, that publishes 43 different daily newspapers in the US, "A growing number of US intelligence, defence and diplomatic officials have concluded that there's little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing a greater threat to the US than Afghanistan's terrorist haven did before 9/11."

The writer is the executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS). Email: farrukh1 5@hotmail.com

Also See:
comment: Dissecting Nizam-e Adl —Chaudhry Fawad Hussain - DT
Suicide bomb hits Pakistan police - BBC

US to jam Taliban websites, radio links - FINALLY

US to jam Taliban websites, radio links
The News, April 19, 2009

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration is starting a broad effort in Pakistan and Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from using radio stations and websites to intimidate civilians and plan attacks, according to senior US officials.

As part of the classified effort, American military and intelligence personnel are working to jam the unlicensed radio stations in Pakistan’s lawless regions on the Afghanistan border that Taliban fighters use to broadcast threats and decrees, according to US influential daily WSJ.

US personnel are also trying to block the Pakistani chatrooms and websites that are part of the country’s burgeoning extremist underground. The websites frequently contain videos of attacks and inflammatory religious material that attempts to justify acts of violence.

The push takes the administration deeper into “psychological operations,” which attempt to influence how people see the US, its allies and its enemies. Officials involved with the new programme argue that psychological operations are a necessary part of reversing the deterioration of stability in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Taliban and other armed groups have carried out a wave of attacks in the two countries. US officials believe the Taliban enjoy an advantage by being able to freely communicate threats and decrees.

In Pakistan, Taliban leaders use unlicensed FM stations to recite the names of local Pakistani government officials, police officers and other figures who have been marked for death by the group. Hundreds of people named in the broadcasts have later been killed, according to US and Pakistani officials.

“The Taliban aren’t just winning the information war — we’re not even putting up that much of a fight,” said a senior US official in Afghanistan. “We need to make it harder for them to keep telling the population that they’re in control and can strike at any time.”

For complete article, click here

Saturday, April 18, 2009

The grand capitulation in Swat...and Islamabad?

Legal eye: The grand capitulation
The News, April 18, 2009
Babar Sattar

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad. He is a Rhodes scholar and has an LL.M from Harvard Law School

It is hard to conceive an edict more shameful and frightening than Nizam-e-Adl Regulation 2009. In reviling its detractors and labeling them conspirators, the NWFP government and the federal government are now insolently marketing this deal with the devil as a sustainable basis for peace in Swat. The underlying argument in support of this deal being propounded by its advocates is that the state of Pakistan and the provincial and federal government were at the mercy of Sufi Mohammad, Fazalullah and their fellow Swati Taliban to establish order in the area. Given that surrender before these agents of violence was the only available option to save the lives of the citizens of Swat, this vile deal was unavoidable.

If it is true that the unequivocal resolve of the heads of all state institutions and the use of all state instruments and resources available to the government and the armed forces could not enforce the writ of the state in Taliban-held territory, there was probably no other option. Liberty, after all, would mean little to the dead. But in analysing the Swat deal, why must we make this binary choice between life and other fundamental rights? How come our ruling elites threw in the towel so expeditiously and in such pusillanimous manner? Why is the fundamental premise regarding lack of options in Swat not being challenged? What happened to the seventh-largest army in the world that, as we are repeatedly reminded, is capable of thwarting all external and internal security challenges confronting the nation?

Where is civil law-enforcement infrastructure that is meant to enforce rule of law and protect citizens from criminals who try to appropriate their lives, liberty and property? What happened to the ANP and PPP's ideology of tolerance, liberal political philosophy, and commitment to constitutional democracy and rule of law? And what about the rest of the parties in the Parliament – especially the PML-N – that joined hands with the ANP and the PPP to barter a part of the territory of Pakistan to avoid being branded "murtid" by Muslim Khan and his ilk, or because they neither have the inclination nor the ability to address the internal serious challenges confronting our nation?

Should we simply accept the replacement of anarchy in Swat by tyranny because the Swat deal has been inked by products of our democratic process or because the deal has been struck in the name of Sharia and criticising it would attract accusations of blasphemy from obscurantists who mistake themselves for divinely-ordained vanguards of our religion? Once you concede, as the ANP government has repeatedly done, that the deal that has produced the Adl Regulation is a product of necessity not choice, as there was no other way to curb the violence being perpetrated by the Taliban in Swat, a formal legalistic review of the merits of the law itself becomes immaterial.

For complete article, click here

Related:
MPs who opposed Nizam-e-Adl are no longer Muslims: Sufi - DT
Red Mosque cleric's militant message - BBC

Friday, April 17, 2009

Police & Law Enforcement Reform in Pakistan



Police & Law Enforcement Reform in Pakistan: Crucial for Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism Success
By Hassan Abbas, ISPU Report, April 16, 2009

It is a globally recognized fact that a state’s police and law enforcement agencies play a critical role as the first line of defense against the threats of terrorism and insurgencies. An informative RAND study titled How Terrorist Groups End provides evidence that effective police and intelligence work, rather than the use of military force, deliver better counterterrorism results.* Based on this conclusion, the report suggested to U.S. policymakers that they stop using the phrase "war on terrorism," because there is no battlefield solution to defeating terrorists. Another valuable study analyzing the police role in counterinsurgency campaigns in Malaya and Cyprus concluded that nearly all major twentieth-century counterinsurgency campaigns relied heavily on indigenous police as well as military forces.*

Both studies are very relevant to the terrorism and insurgency crisis faced by Pakistan today.* Many security experts rightfully contend that both Pakistan and Afghanistan are facing a growing Taliban insurgency in the Pak-Afghan tribal belt – some even call it a Pashtun insurgency.* According to Kelev I. Sepp’s Best Practices in Counterinsurgency, which closely studied seventeen insurgencies, the role of the police is always central to any successful counterinsurgency measures.* His recommended measures for insurgency hit areas emphasize "police in the lead" with the military providing backup support and strengthening the police with diversified training capabilities to help meet the security needs of the at-risk population.

Since 9/11 and the consequent US/NATO military action in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s troubled northwestern frontier has come under increasing pressure from militant and terrorist organizations operating in the area. Pakistan’s deficient and flawed law enforcement capacity in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the adjacent North West Frontier Province (NWFP) have helped Pakistani Taliban and other terrorist groups expand their influence and strongly challenge the state’s writ. Outgunned and outfinanced, on average 400 police officers have been killed every year in terrorist attacks since 2005.* Controversial and haphazard Pakistani military action in the area has led to more instability, and limited resistance in FATA has now become a growing ethnic insurgency. As is clear from the turmoil in the NWFP’s Swat district, any army action can provide no more than a breathing space to the state; only police and law enforcement actions can help the state reestablish its writ and stabilize the area. A timely police action can be more effective in quelling emergent insurgencies. My research into the 2007 Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) crisis in Islamabad, where a strong military operation led to hundreds of deaths and dozens of retaliatory suicide attacks, also indicates that: (a) an effective police action in time (2004-05) could have avoided the later bloody clash and (b) the police lacked authority and the permission of the state and its important institutions to legally pursue the rebel clerics in the mosque (during the 2004-07 timeframe).*

The police infrastructure is one of Pakistan’s most poorly managed organizations. It is aptly described as ill-equipped, poorly trained, deeply politicized, and chronically corrupt.* It has performed well in certain operations; overall, however, that is a rare phenomenon. Arguably, the primary reason for this state of affairs is the government’s persistent failure to invest in law enforcement reform and modernization. It is ironic that despite frequent internal crises since its inception in 1947, ranging from ethnic confrontations and sectarian battles to a sharp rise in criminal activity and growing insurgencies, both political and military policymakers have never given this sector top priority. Hence, poor police performance in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency is not surprising. The fact that the police successfully challenged some militant religious groups in Punjab and tackled an insurgency-like situation in Karachi in the late 1990s shows that they do have the potential to deliver the desired results when political support is present and resources are provided. Clearly, better policing standards and performance will add to the government’s credibility and establish its writ more effectively in areas that are currently slipping out of its hands. Learning lessons from what transpired in the NWFP in recent years especially in order to plan for any preemptive law enforcement actions in South Punjab, where banned local militant groups like Sipah-e-Sahaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad are resurgent, is the need of the hour.

Historically, US support for Pakistan has always been skewed in favor of country’s defense needs – heavy guns, tanks, officers’ training and fighter aircrafts, etc. It made some sense given the nature of external threats and regional instability – ranging from Soviet expansionist designs to Indian hegemonic tendencies – but now its all together a different ball game. The internal threat to Pakistan today from extremists is more severe than anything Pakistan has witnessed in 60 years of its existence (perhaps with the exception of civil war in East Pakistan 1969-1971, now Bangladesh). Bush administration as well as Musharraf regime failed to understand what this really meant – through there was no shortage of rhetoric on the subject. Evidently, from 2002-2008, only the thinnest slice of US funds for Pakistan went to policing.* More specifically, in 2007 for instance, the US allocated $731 million to help the country’s military and only $4.9 million for its police.*

This policy paper makes the case for international support for police reform in Pakistan to enhance its law enforcement and counterinsurgency capacities. The Obama administration’s proposed $1.5 billion annual aid package for Pakistan for the next five years must also include sufficient resources for this sector. To build schools and hospitals, create jobs and spur economic development, security environment in Pakistan has to improve significantly.12 Police and civilian law enforcement agencies are the most appropriate institutions to spearhead that effort countrywide. Rule of law besides requiring an effective criminal justice system and independent judiciary also needs a competent law enforcement infrastructure. If U.S. funds will make all that happen, it will correspondingly lead to its better image in Pakistan. Democratic institutions in turn will also benefit as their dependence on military for internal law and order duties will lesson.

For complete report (pdf), click here