Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Pakhtunkhwa or ‘Bengali Model’?

Pakhtunkhwa or ‘Bengali Model’, says Bilour

The News, March 30, 2010
By our correspondent

LAHORE: Railways Minister and a central leader of the Awami National Party, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour has said Bengalis chose to end their allegiance to Pakistan to get recognition and ìnow it is up to the politicians of the country whether they recognise the Pakhtuns by naming their province after them or go for the 'Bengali Model.'

Talking to media men at the Railway Headquarters on Monday, he said it was not only disturbing but disappointing to see such a hue and cry over a legitimate and reasonable demand. Bilour regretted the reservations expressed by Mian Nawaz Sharif over the issue, saying if he had any problem with the issue why he did not bring it up for discussion during at least 75 parliamentary committee meetings.

He said Nawaz Sharif had agreed to everything, but all of a sudden he was blessed by an unexplainable revelation dawning upon him that he had serious reservations over renaming of the NWFP. The minister said although negotiations and meetings with the PML-N were still going on, in which they have been assured of cooperation, but the backtracking of the PML-N had created a trust deficit.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Pashtuns want their mark on country’s map, says Bilour - Daily Times
Hectic political efforts to end deadlock - Dawn

Monday, March 29, 2010

The changing politics of Nawaz Sharif - Amir Mateen of 'The News' looks at PML-N Politics

The changing politics of Nawaz Sharif
By Amir Mateen, The News, March 27, 2010

ISLAMABAD: Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s slip of the tongue about requesting the Taliban to spare the Punjab may have triggered graver concerns as to the inner thinking of the party supposedly in waiting to hold power in Islamabad. The changing style of Nawaz Sharif’s cult politics, the pointed-top organisational pyramid and his party’s ambivalent position on crucial issues like the growing religious militancy and terrorism, the security paradigm, economic revival, and stance towards the US, India and Afghanistan necessitates more explanations than are available from the second biggest party of Pakistan.

The PML-N offers a vague one-size-fits-all policy on most issues. The idea is to keep the mainstream swing voters in a flux and show the real teeth once the levers of power are in control. The same strategy is in practice within the party where nobody knows who is going to do what in a future power set-up. A deliberate chaos has been created where all PML-N leaders are saying all things to all people. The real position, if there is one, is only known to Nawaz Sharif.

The party is likely to perform better than its earlier governments, if their hopes of returning to power in Islamabad materialize, or definitely better than the PPP government. But the PML-N is far short of the nirvana its sympathisers are hoping it to deliver.

The PML-N, to be fair, has fought a historic fight and bounced back from a near oblivion to stake its claim for a third round of power in Islamabad. It seems to have learnt a few lessons this time around. There has not been a major corruption scandal against the party. The PML-N seems to have developed respect for public opinion as shown in the case of supporting the judiciary movement and also by sacking elected members when found on a wrong foot. It has supported a democratic continuity and has refrained from becoming a tool in the hands of the establishment to dislodge the PPP government in the Centre — even after the provocative dissolution of their government in the Punjab. The party took a firm stance against the Army’s involvement in politics and did not fall in line to please the Americans overly.

Nawaz Sharif stands taller as a political leader with his closest rivals, after Benazir’s assassination, placed at a distant second position. He has the longest tenure in power than Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and even dictators Ayub, Zia and Musharraf. In his 27-year political career, he has been in power for 13 years -- two years as Punjab minister, five years as Punjab chief minister and almost six years as twice prime minister.

For complete article, click here
Part II - Don’t try deciphering Pir Nawaz Sahib-II - The News, March 28, 2010
Part III - Special Report-PML-N - The News, March 29, 2010

The Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan

GHQ winning like never before
By Farrukh Saleem, The News, March 29, 2010

ISLAMABAD: What is so strategic about the strategic dialogue? Not too long ago, the Pentagon tried to play with the GHQ’s India-centric national security paradigm. Finally, the GHQ won, the Pentagon had to give in. Not too long ago, the US State Department tried to pressurise the GHQ into submission to civilian executive. Finally, the GHQ won, the State Department lost out.

Richard Holbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, now says, “How can you have a strategic dialogue without including the military?” The New York Times announced, “Army Chief driving Pakistan’s agenda for talks.” The Washington Post declared, “Gen Kayani is driving the nation’s agenda.” Reuter’s announced, “General Kayani in Washington: Pakistan’s most powerful man.”

Within Pakistan, the GHQ won Operation Rah-e-Rast in Swat, Operation Black Thunderstorm in Buner, Lower Dir and Shangla and Operation Rah-e-Nijat in South Waziristan. Over the recent past, the Pak Army successfully conducted the largest heli-borne operations ever undertaken in South Asia.

Strategically, within Pakistan, real power has already moved from Islamabad to Rawalpindi. The ruling politicians have failed to control events around them and are yet to exhibit any ability to control other powerful entities-one a mere 14 kilometres away from the Presidential Palace. And, unfortunately, the civvies have failed to put together coherent strategies to deal with state actors, the US, India and Afghanistan. On November 2, America votes to elect 435 members of the United States House of Representatives, 36 new members to the United States Senate and 38 governors.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Army Chief Driving Pakistan’s Agenda for Talks - NYT
Courting Pakistan - Wall Street Journal
Yet nothing strategic about it! - The Nation
In Afghan end-game, India gets that sinking feeling - Dawn
India outplayed, outsmarted in Afghanistan - IBN Live
A spy unsettles US-India ties - Asia Times

At the Presidency: Tearful on Pakistan Day - By Adil Najam

At the Presidency: Tearful on Pakistan Day
Adil Najam, All Things Pakistan, March 25, 2010

On March 23 I was at the Presidency in Islamabad for the Pakistan Day Awards Ceremony.

This is usually a festive occasion full of pomp and ceremony and amongst the most elaborate state occasions of the year. The grandest room at the Presidency is all spruced up. There are starched military uniforms bedecked with chests full of shining medals (most of the awards handed out are always military awards). The President as well as the Prime Minister of the Republic preside over the proceedings. National power-brokers - political as well as bureaucratic - are all assembled. Everything is choreographed to convey a sense of pride.

This is how it should be. After all, it is the nation and the state honoring those who they choose to honor. In normal times this should be a day of pride and joy.

But these are not normal times. These tend to be tearful times. And so, too, was the ceremony this year. It was not meant to be that way, but that is what it became. It still conveyed a sense of pride, but it was pride drenched in too many tears.

The event started on a high note with the swearing in of the new Governor of Gilgit-Baltistan, Dr. Shama Khalid and later the merit awards for the military’s top-most brass. But then came the gallantry award, the Sitara-i-Bisalat, and it was as if the room changed in front of us. It was a parade of wives receiving awards for dead husbands, mothers and father for dead sons, sons and daughters for lost fathers.

Each a poignant reminder of the times we live in. None more poignant than when the young son of Maj. Mohammad Akbar Shaheed - barely 6 or 7 years old - came up to receive his father’s award. Dressed in a child’s mock military uniform he walked up to the President to give a brisk salute. What might otherwise have been cute, was outright heart-breaking. When the President picked up the child to give him a hug he too was fighting back tears. I do not think there was a single person in that huge hall whose eyes had not filled up. Some, like myself and at least a couple of the generals sitting next to me were no longer even trying to hold them back.

For complete article, click here

Sunday, March 28, 2010

The Constitutional Amendment Crisis in Pakistan: Changing colors of Nawaz Sharif

Nawaz isolated as reform committee stands its ground By Ahmad Hassan
Dawn, 27 Mar, 2010

ISLAMABAD: The parliamentary committee on constitutional reforms rejected on Friday a proposal by Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif for Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to discuss with the chief justice of Pakistan proposed amendment to the Constitution pertaining to appointment of superior court judges.

The 26-member panel recognised the renaming of the NWFP as the only matter pending for incorporation into the draft of the 18th amendment and put off its deliberations till Wednesday after the PML-N sought more time to settle the issue with the Awami National Party.

According to sources, the committee decided to take an initiative in this regard if the two parties failed to resolve the issue.

The chairman of the committee, Mian Raza Rabbani, expressed his determination to protect the constitutional reforms proposed by representatives of the people.

Haji Mohammad Adeel of the ANP likened PML-N’s U-turn to a drone attack on the committee.

A majority of members were of the view that although the Supreme Court could interpret the Constitution, the lawmaking and amending the Constitution were the prerogative of parliament. They said involvement of the judiciary or any of its members in the process would be tantamount to breach of parliament’s privilege.

Deviating from their earlier stand, PML-N’s representatives proposed in a note of dissent that the chief justice should appoint a retired judge of the Supreme Court as a member of the judicial commission. The committee had earlier agreed that the commission would appoint a retired judge of apex court as its seventh member and proposed an amendment to Article 177 of the Constitution for the purpose.

The PML-N chief appeared isolated and even representatives of his party did not challenge the criticism of his sudden change of mind which had disrupted the planned signing of the constitutional document and presentation of the 18th amendment bill in parliament.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Dekho, dekho, kaun aya… - The News
Nawaz Sharif’s U-turn opens Pandora’s box  - Daily Times
I have no regrets: Nawaz - DT
Inside the Constitutional Package - The News
Democratic transition in Pakistan - Dr Rashid Ahmad Khan - DT

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Jaswant Singh Speaks about his book on Jinnah at Asia Society


Jaswant Singh on Jinnah - Asia Society

Leading Indian politician Jaswant Singh, formerly of BJP,  reassesses the events leading up to India's 1947 partition with Devesh Kapur and Steven I. Wilkinson at Asia Society on March 25, 2010.

To watch complete program, click here
Background:
BJP expels Jaswant Singh over Jinnah remarks - Times of India
Jaswant Singh Website

Friday, March 26, 2010

Pakistan’s War of Choice - NYT

Pakistan’s War of Choice
By MICHAEL E. O'HANLON, New York Times, March 23, 2010

WHAT are Americans to make of all the good news coming out of Pakistan in recent weeks?

First, the Afghan Taliban’s military chief, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was arrested in a raid in February. Around the same time, several of the Taliban’s “shadow governors” who operate out of Pakistan were captured by Pakistani forces. Last week, the C.I.A. director, Leon Panetta, announced that thanks in large part to increased cooperation from Pakistan, drone strikes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border are “seriously disrupting Al Qaeda,” and one killed the terrorist suspected of planning an attack on an American base in December that caused the deaths of seven Americans. Meanwhile, Pakistan has mounted major operations against its own extremists in places ranging from the Swat Valley in the north of the country to Bajaur on the Afghan border to South Waziristan further south. Yes, extremists continue to do great damage, as at Lahore on March 14 when about 40 civilians were killed in bombings. But after traveling across the country in recent days as a guest of the Pakistani military, I was convinced that Pakistan has become much more committed to battling extremists over the last couple of years, as the country felt its own security directly threatened.

Things are complicated, as always in this fractious land. Pakistan’s resolve is clearest against its own internal enemies. And while its will to pursue the Afghan Taliban has grown, its policies are changing incrementally, not fundamentally. It is rebuilding trust with America only slowly. And its obsession with India will continue to constrain its ability and willingness to act against the groups that threaten the NATO mission across the Afghan border.

First, though, give credit where credit is due. Pakistan has become deadly serious about its own insurgency, loosely referred to as the Tehrik-i-Taliban. Total Pakistani troops in the North-West Frontier Province, Baluchistan and the tribal areas now number about 150,000, up from 50,000 in 2001. In addition, there are 90,000 paramilitary troops of the Frontier Corps in the area, and they are far better equipped, paid and led than in years past.

As I toured the nerve center of the Pakistani military in Rawalpindi, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the army’s spokesman, recited an impressive list of statistics. The army now has 821 posts on the Afghan-Pakistan border, as opposed to just 112 manned by NATO and Afghan forces on the other side. Pakistan carried out 209 operations in 2009 of brigade size or larger (that is, involving at least 3,000 troops), twice as many as in the previous two years combined. Convoys bringing supplies for the NATO mission in Afghanistan used to be preyed on frequently by terrorists and thieves; but as a result of the improved security, NATO is now losing only about 0.1 percent of the goods it ships across Pakistan.

For complete article, click here

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed: 'Do I look like a terrorist?' - By Robert Fisk

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed: 'Do I look like a terrorist?'
The banned Islamist militant organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba has been branded 'the next al-Qa'ida'. In a remarkable encounter in the Pakistani city of Lahore, the group's founder tells Robert Fisk he runs a charity, not a feared network which has Western targets in its sights

Independent, UK, 26 March 2010

For America, the European Union and India, he is the most wanted man in Pakistan, the founder and leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the "Army of the Righteous", blamed for the mass killing of 188 civilians, 54 of them women and children, in Mumbai in 2008, for three assaults on Delhi, for the deaths of 211 civilians in a 2005 train bombing also in Mumbai, and last month's suicide attack on Indians in Kabul.


His "army" has been banned as a "terrorist organisation" by the US, the EU, the UN Security Council, Russia, India, Pakistan and Australia. But when Hafiz Muhammad Saeed walks into the bedroom-cum-office of a small suburban house in Lahore, he is all smiles, a white cap on his head, his straggling black Salafist-style beard spreading over his white gown, urging me to eat the biscuits and apricot-topped cream-cake lying on the glass table between us.

He smiles; he occasionally laughs; he wearily takes off his thick-framed brown glasses and lays them on the bed; he talks of the need to "liberate" all of Kashmir, and he produces copious files to show me that the Lahore High Court could not prove he was a violent man, let alone the leader of the "Army of the Righteous". Indeed, he says, he is merely the leader of a charitable organisation, the Jama'at-ud-Da'wah – the "Group of Preaching" – one of the largest welfare NGOs in Pakistan, with 2,000 offices and a reputation as an earthquake and flood relief agency.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Face to face with Pakistan’s most wanted - Independent
The Next Al Qaeda? - Newsweek
American Terror Suspect Traveled Unimpeded - NYT
Deconstructing `We, the Mothers of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba’ - Beena Sarwar

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Walking With The Comrades By Arundhati Roy

Essay

Walking With The Comrades
Gandhians with a Gun? Arundhati Roy plunges into the sea of Gondi people to find some answers...
Arundhati Roy, Outlook India, Mar 29, 2010

The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat. I’d been waiting for months to hear from them. I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days. That was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. The note said: “Writer should have camera, tika and coconut. Meeter will have cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas. Password: Namashkar Guruji.”

Namashkar Guruji. I wondered whether the Meeter and Greeter would be expecting a man. And whether I should get myself a moustache.

There are many ways to describe Dantewada. It’s an oxymoron. It’s a border town smack in the heart of India. It’s the epicentre of a war. It’s an upside down, inside out town.

In Dantewada, the police wear plain clothes and the rebels wear uniforms. The jail superintendent is in jail. The prisoners are free (three hundred of them escaped from the old town jail two years ago). Women who have been raped are in police custody. The rapists give speeches in the bazaar.

Across the Indravati river, in the area controlled by the Maoists, is the place the police call ‘Pakistan’. There the villages are empty, but the forest is full of people. Children who ought to be in school run wild. In the lovely forest villages, the concrete school buildings have either been blown up and lie in a heap, or they are full of policemen. The deadly war that is unfolding in the jungle is a war that the Government of India is both proud and shy of. Operation Green Hunt has been proclaimed as well as denied. P. Chidambaram, India’s home minister (and CEO of the war), says it does not exist, that it’s a media creation. And yet substantial funds have been allocated to it and tens of thousands of troops are being mobilised for it. Though the theatre of war is in the jungles of Central India, it will have serious consequences for us all.

If ghosts are the lingering spirits of someone, or something, that has ceased to exist, then perhaps the new four-lane highway crashing through the forest is the opposite of a ghost. Perhaps it is the harbinger of what is still to come.
 
For complete article, click here

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Reinventing Pakistan By Pervez Hoodbhoy

Reinventing Pakistan By Pervez Hoodbhoy

Dawn, 23 Mar, 2010

PAKISTAN is not a nation although it has been a state since 1947. Missing is a strong common identity, mental makeup, shared sense of history and common goals. The failure to effectively integrate flows from inequalities of wealth and opportunity, absence of effective democracy and a dysfunctional legal system.

Notwithstanding the recent outburst of Punjab’s chief minister, most Punjabis think of themselves as Pakistani first and Punjabi second. But not the Baloch or Sindhis. Schools in Balochistan refuse to hoist Pakistan’s flag or sing its national anthem, Sindhis accuse Punjabis of stealing their water, the MQM runs Karachi on strictly ethnic grounds, Pakhtuns adamantly want the NWFP renamed Pakhtunkhwa against the wishes of other residents, caste and sect matter more than competence in getting a job and ethnic student groups wage pitched battles against each other on campuses.

Pakistan’s genesis explains the disunity. Created as the Boolean negative of India — not India — there was little thought to how the new country might accommodate diversity. It did not help that its founder died just a year later. Mr Jinnah’s plans were ambiguously stated and he left behind no substantive writings. His speeches, often driven by the exigencies of the moment, are freely cherry-picked today. Some find there a liberal and secular voice, others an articulation of Islamic values. The confusion is irresolvable.

The determination to emphasise a singular Muslim national identity, and maintain a centralised state structure run by the colonial-era ruling elite, became the basis for governance. It proved to be Pakistan’s greatest burden. This became evident as the Baloch, Pakhtuns, Sindhis, and most dramatically the Bengalis in East Pakistan, launched struggles to be respected and pursue their own dreams. The independence of East Pakistan almost 40 years ago should have ended the illusion that religion and force can hold people together in the face of injustice and a lack of democracy.

Yet, religion still remains the strongest bonding factor. A recent survey of 2,000 young Pakistanis in the 18-27 age group found that three-quarters identify themselves first as Muslims and only secondly as Pakistanis. Just 14 per cent defined themselves as citizens of Pakistan first. Dejected and adrift, most see religion as their anchor. The common refrain of the post-Zia generation is that “every issue will be solved if we go back to the fundamentals of Islam”.

But these ‘fundamentals’ have multiple interpretations that fuel divisive and violent political forces, each convinced that they alone understand God’s will. Murderous wars between Sunni and Shia militias started in the late 1980s. Today, even those favouring the utopian vision of an ideal Islamic state are frightened by the Pakistani Taliban who seek to impose their version of the Shariathrough the Kalashnikov and suicide bombings.

For complete article, click here

"Man Versus Afghanistan" - Robert Kaplan in Atlantic Monthly

Man Versus Afghanistan

Divided by geography, cursed by corruption, stunted by poverty, staggered by a growing insurgency—Afghanistan seems beyond salvation. Is it? From Somalia and the Balkans to Iraq, the U.S. military has been embroiled in conflicts that reflect an age-old debate: Can individual agency triumph over deep-seated historical, cultural, ethnic, and economic forces? Drawing on his experiences in Iraq, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, has his own answer to that question.

By Robert D. Kaplan, Atlantic Monthly, April 2010

We were there to fight, to do PT, to eat, to sleep, then to fight again. There was no big-screen TV or other diversion in the barracks. It was a world of concrete, plywood, and gun oil, and it was absolutely intoxicating in its intensity and unlike anything that existed in the British military.” So recollected retired Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams of the elite British Special Air Service, concerning the worst days in Iraq. In December 2006, Williams told me, there were more than 140 suicide bombings in Baghdad, a level of violence that he likened to the Nazi Blitz on London. In December 2007, there were five. “General McChrystal delivered that statistic,” a feat that not even the recent bombings in Baghdad can detract from. In Iraq, he went on, General Stanley A. McChrystal raised the “hard, nasty business” of counterterrorism—of “black ops”—to an industrial scale, with 10 nightly raids throughout the city, 300 a month, that McChrystal, now 55, regularly joined.

Williams did not discount the decisive Sunni Awakening, the surge of 20,000 extra troops into Iraq, or the deployment of troops outside the big Burger King bases and deep into the heart of hostile Iraqi neighborhoods. But he insisted that the work of the special operators commanded by McChrystal was also pivotal.

For complete article, click here

Related:
Talks not an option yet - By Rahimullah Yusufzai, The News

U.S. Sees Hope in Pakistan Requests for Help

U.S. Sees Hope in Pakistan Requests for Help

In Document, Islamabad Seeks Military and Civil Aid from Washington; Perceived as Exchange for Crackdown on Taliban
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG And PETER SPIEGEL, Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2010

Pakistan sent a 56-page document to the U.S. ahead of strategic talks scheduled for Wednesday, seeking expanded military and economic aid in what some American officials believe is an implicit offer to crack down in return on the Afghan Taliban.

The previously undisclosed document includes requests ranging from U.S. help to alleviate Pakistan's chronic water and power shortages to pleas for surveillance aircraft and support in developing the country's civilian nuclear program.

U.S. officials say the document and the talks surrounding it could help redefine one of America's thorniest foreign-policy relationships, if it leads to a serious Pakistani clampdown on the Taliban.

The Taliban uses Pakistan, a U.S. ally, as its rear base in its fight against American and allied forces in neighboring Afghanistan, and has often relied on clandestine support from elements of Pakistan's national security establishment. But in the past few months, Pakistan has rounded up several senior leaders of the Afghan Taliban on its soil, and last year it began a series of offensives against the Pakistan offshoot of the Afghan movement.

U.S. officials are keen to see those moves broadened as a key to shifting the momentum of the Afghan war. "Right now, we're looking at something that could deliver a big part of our success in Afghanistan," said a senior U.S. military official, speaking of the document and talks.

The document outlines a range of aid Pakistan is seeking from the U.S., say American and Pakistani officials who have seen it or been briefed on its contents. A high-level meeting between senior Pakistani and U.S. officials in Washington on Wednesday aims to stitch together their fraying alliance.

For complete article, click here
Qureshi & Kayani meet key US officials - Dawn
Pakistan seeking nuclear deal with US - Irish Times

Monday, March 22, 2010

Miliband: time to push for Afghan settlement

Worldly Boston
Miliband: time to push for Afghan settlement
James F. Smith, Boston Globe, March 10, 2010

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told an audience at MIT today that the government of Afghanistan should launch a push for a broad political settlement with Afghan rebel leaders to take advantage of the momentum generated in recent months by the US and British military push against Taliban insurgents.

In an address titled "the War in Afghanistan: How to End It," Miliband said the Afghan government should not only try to win over low-level rebel fighters but should also try to engage insurgent leaders and other political foes who are willing to enter into a dialogue, even if that means making concessions to rivals.

"The idea of political engagement with those who would directly or indirectly attack our troops is difficult," Miliband said in a prepared text. "But dialogue is not appeasement and political space is not the same as veto power or domination."

Along with engaging domestic political foes and insurgent leaders, Afghanistan should reach out to neighboring countries, including Pakistan, India and Iran, and work for "a new external political settlement," Miliband said.

"There needs to be a greater effort to reach out not just to disaffected Afghans, but the country's neighbors and near neighbors," he said.

For Complete article, click here
Related:
Karzai holds peace talks with Hekmatyar group - DT
Afghanistan seeks more independence - The Gazzette

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Blogging from New Dehli: Asia Society's Conference at Taj Palace - March 18-20, 2010

Watandost Blogging from New Dehli:

Asia Society's 20th Asian Corporate Conference
Mar 18 -20, 2010Visit Conference Website:
Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi

Following a sweeping victory in India's recent elections, the new Congress-led government has mandated that its main focus will be to address the global economic downturn and to boost the country's economic growth. With a reinforced prerogative to introduce new policies and push forward long-awaited reforms, India is well poised to accelerate its pace of growth of and capitalize on its robust economic potential. Amidst the global recession, the Indian economy has shown encouraging signs of revival, and international investors are demonstrating a reinvigorated interest in India. How will this giant address its critical challenges in order to truly emerge as a global leader?

Join government leaders, key decision-makers, and industry experts from the international and Indian business community to discuss how India will fulfill its optimistic economic forecasts while overcoming the extraordinary contradictions that still prevail—improving its economic and physical infrastructures, advancing requisite reforms, addressing prevalent yet growing inequities, and strengthening its important role in the region.

Pakistan's role in Afghanistan: Tickets to the endgame?

Pakistan's role in Afghanistan
Tickets to the endgame
Pakistan wants a say in ending the war, and it knows how to ask
Mar 18th 2010, The Economist

A HIGH-LEVEL delegation of Pakistanis is due to sweep into Washington for the restart on March 24th of a “strategic dialogue” with America. The Pakistanis have muscled their way to the table for what looks like a planning session for the endgame in Afghanistan. The recent arrest of the Taliban’s deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and a clutch of his high-ranking comrades, has won them a seat.

The Pakistani team, led by the foreign minister, will include both the army chief and the head of the army’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). America has upgraded its own representation at the talks, last held in mid-2008, from deputy-secretary to secretary-of-state level. The dialogue is supposed to cover the gamut of bilateral issues, including help for Pakistan’s fragile economy, and even, on its ambitious wish-list, civil nuclear technology.

But the future of Afghanistan is the most pressing topic, and in Pakistan that issue is always controlled by the powerful army and the ISI. Pakistan believes that the Americans are coming to understand its fear of encirclement: a rising India to the east, uncertain relations with Iran to the west and growing Indian influence in Afghanistan to the north-west.

Whereas some see in Pakistan’s arrest of Mr Baradar hints of a strategic shift against its old jihadist proxies, it seems depressingly more likely to be an attempt by the ISI to grab control of the Taliban’s negotiating position. Mr Baradar had been making overtures directly to Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul—bypassing Pakistan.

According to a senior Pakistani official, the detention of Mr Baradar is a double victory for Pakistan. It has captured a Talib who had become troublesome. And it hoped to win plaudits for cracking down on the insurgency’s leaders, meeting longstanding demands from the NATO-led coalition and Afghan government.

Instead, it finds itself criticised anew, despite dropping the denials it has maintained since 2001 that Afghan Taliban leaders were on its soil, and despite having acted against one of them. By some accounts Mr Karzai is angry that his favourite Talib was locked up. Other regional powers, such as India, Iran and Russia, are said to be alarmed that Pakistan is putting itself in the driving seat in the Afghan negotiations. According to Ahmed Rashid, a veteran observer of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s reinvigorated interference in its neighbour’s affairs risks setting off a regional competition for influence that could push Afghanistan back into the sort of civil war it endured in the 1990s, between proxies backed by outside powers.

Pakistan’s position has evolved. Rather than seeing the ethnic-Pushtun Taliban as its best hope of a friendly government in Kabul, its policymakers would now prefer the Taliban to be part of a broader-based Afghan government. Perhaps it has realised at last that extremists wielding unbridled power from Kabul tend to export disaster across the porous border they share. So Pakistan also needs links with non-Taliban elements in Afghanistan.

America is taking a harder line than most of its partners, Britain included, in seeking to weaken the insurgency, perhaps even inducing some rebel commanders to defect, before considering talks with the Taliban leadership. But as America plans to start drawing down its forces next year, the jostling for a political settlement is well under way. Pakistan’s basic demand is that any future regime in Kabul must be Pakistan-friendly, by which it means not too close to India. The Pakistanis believe they are close to convincing America that they hold the key to stabilising Afghanistan.

But the cost of their Afghan policy at home has been huge. In recent days the Pakistani Taliban, essentially a copycat movement, has resumed its terrorist campaign across the country. And though Pakistan’s army has faced down the home-grown Taliban in the North-West Frontier Province and the tribal areas, Pakistan’s heartland continues to be plagued by their extremist fellows, such as Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Security forces have pursued them, but the “mainstream” jihadist groups which spawn the domestic terrorists continue to be tolerated.

Nurtured in the shadows where the ISI operates, Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan remains murky. Opinion polls show that ordinary Afghans still deeply resent its interventions. Pakistan may think it is manoeuvring the American superpower into striking a deal to its liking; but that might make it even harder to allay the suspicions felt towards it by ordinary Afghans.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Let Pakistan Make Its Own Progress

Let Pakistan Make Its Own Progress
By NADIA NAVIWALA; New York Times, March 16, 2010

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — What do we do about Pakistan? Because I am a Pakistani-American who recently spent several months there, people here are constantly trying to get me to answer that question. One of the most important things I can offer them is a reality check.


I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, but my family moved to Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, in the early 1990s. Those were Karachi’s worst years and constitute my earliest memories of terrorism.

Political and ethnic violence wracked the city, becoming, as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan today, an excuse for every type of crime — shootings in mosques, kidnappings, violent break-ins and streetside executions if you belonged to the wrong ethnic group. By 1996, my family gave up on Pakistan and came back to the United States. By 1999, Pervez Musharraf gave up on Pakistan and overthrew the government.

Worse than the violence, for a Pakistani-American child, was that Pakistan was boring. As far as I am concerned, Pizza Hut was the only good thing that happened to Pakistan in those years. Prior to that, there was no American fast food in Karachi, let alone malls or highways. You couldn’t even find a decent candy bar.

And as I got older, I grew increasingly irked by the conservatism. Pakistan, I felt, was easily the most closed country in the world — traditional dress was mandatory, girls were either stuck at home or harassed in the streets, and I almost never saw a foreigner.

I never imagined that I would see Pakistan the way I saw it this summer, after a mere 14 years. Karachi today looks like any major, cosmopolitan city — movie theaters, restaurants, and cafés full of boys and girls smoking, in jeans, mingling together.

More women are finishing college and getting jobs, and they have traded traditional baggy shalwars for trousers and capris. The city has been aggressively transformed by a mayor so impressively capable that he seems misplaced in a culture of corrupt politicians and broken bureaucracies.

For complete article, click here

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

'Our dogmatic liberals' By Humeira Iqtidar

Our dogmatic liberals  By Humeira Iqtidar
The News, March 17, 2010

The writer is a research fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, and teaches courses on globalization, religion and politics of South Asia.

"Why are Pakistanis so prone to conspiracy theories?" a colleague at Cambridge recently asked. He was referring to recent debates about the presence of Blackwater in Pakistan. A version of this question is echoed by the liberal intelligentsia of Pakistan. The local version emphasises the focus on Blackwater within the rhetoric of a segment of society, notably the Islamists. A common refrain amongst the liberal intelligentsia to the question of Blackwater presence in Pakistan is that we must look inwards, we must critique ourselves and our own creations such as the Taliban before we focus on Blackwater. Through framing any critique of Blackwater as conspiracy theory, there is some congruence between the stance of my colleague at Cambridge, who is largely unfamiliar with Pakistan, and the liberal intelligentsia: they both see this focus on Blackwater as an illogical act, as a hiding behind and of course, as an abdication of our own responsibility.

What this discourse of 'our' responsibility that 'we' need to confront hides in its language of the universal 'we' in Pakistan is the reality of an extremely fractured and polarised Pakistan. There is no unified 'we' who is responsible for the rise of the Taliban, no unanimous 'we' that supported the intrusion of neo-liberal economic policies in everyday life so that about half of Pakistan is now living below the poverty line, no united 'we' that decided to support either militancy or America's war for the last decade. There are many different interest groups and classes within Pakistan and some are more implicated in the destruction of Pakistan than others.

For complete article, click here

Out of the tribal areas and into the cities of Pakistan By Kulsoom Lakhani

Out of the tribal areas and into the cities of Pakistan
By Kalsoom Lakhani, Foreign Policy, March 15, 2010

The last week has been tough for Pakistan. A series of attacks occurred throughout the country, including a siege of the World Vision International office in Mansehra last Wednesday that killed six aid workers, and a suicide bombing in Swat over the weekend that killed around a dozen people and wounded at least 37. However, the wave of bombings targeting the city of Lahore garnered the most attention. Last Monday, a car bombing targeted the Special Investigations group of the Federal Investigative Agency, the Pakistani equivalent of the FBI, killing at least 14 people and wounding 89 others. News correspondents said the amount of explosives "was so large it brought down the two-story building."


And this past Friday, two suicide bombers struck within15 and 20 seconds of each other in R.A. Bazaar in Lahore, killing at least 45 people and injuring scores more. The attacks, dubbed by news agencies as "the bloodiest strike in Pakistan this year," were later followed by six "low-intensity blasts" in the middle class residential neighborhoods Iqbal Town and Samanabad in Lahore. Although the bombs were reportedly locally made and used "a very small quantity of explosives," the six blasts appeared to be a well-coordinated attempt to ignite panic and chaos in Lahore. Residents rushed out of their homes. Punjab's police were filmed rushing from one site to another as the deafening sounds of another blast were heard. As Pakistanis remained riveted to their television screens, Lahore was paralyzed with terror.

In the aftermath of the bombings, it is not so much a question of "Why Lahore?" but rather, "Why not Lahore?" The series of attacks does not necessarily mean the center of violence has shifted from one major city to another. It means there was no epicenter at all. Whether or not the escalation of violence was in revenge for the death of Qari Zafar, a leader of the Punjabi militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi who was killed in a U.S. drone strike, militants are sending the message that they have the ability to strike anywhere at any time. Despite the Pakistani military's successes in northwest Pakistan over the past year, this war is far from over.

While it is convenient to attach the broader "Taliban" label to the problem, the network of players is far more complex and nebulous. Although the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan swiftly claimed responsibility for Monday and Friday's suicide attacks in Lahore, this organization has only been able to conduct large-scale attacks in Pakistan's major cities with the coordination and help of militants in the southern Punjab nexus, groups that make up the oft-labeled "Punjabi Taliban."

In the April 2009 issue of the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) Sentinel, Hassan Abbas defined the Punjabi Taliban as "a loose conglomeration of members of banned militant groups of Punjabi origin -- sectarian as well as those focused on the conflict in Kashmir -- that have developed strong connections with Tehrik-i-Taliban, Afghan Taliban and other militant groups based in FATA and NWFP." These organizations, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, and Jaish-e-Muhammad, provide weapons, recruits, finances and other resources to the TTP and are responsible for planning many of the attacks attributed to the Pakistani Taliban

For complete article, click here

The crazy Right and rump Pakistan By Kamran Shafi in Dawn

The crazy Right and rump Pakistan By Kamran Shafi
Dawn, 16 Mar, 2010
 
I was to regale you with other stories to do with our security establishment’s tortured and seemingly futile hunt for the very elusive holy grail of strategic depth in Afghanistan (I ask you) this week, but the ever-increasing assault on our poor country and its innocent people by unlettered and brainwashed and murderous yahoos leads me elsewhere.

Who saw clips of the unintentional video shot by a shocked bystander who burst into uncontrolled moans as he filmed the Yahoo blow himself up and tens of others with him, limbs and blood and gore flying in all directions?

Well, I did, and while one has almost been inured to such scenes, the live images were shocking in the extreme and outraged me more and more every time they were repeated. Not for long though, because soon the scenes began to be censored, the more gory parts cut out of the film. Bad move by whoever for the people at large must be shown the extent of the bestiality and the brutishness of the yahoos who are lionised by some politicians for their own narrow political ends.

Lahore has been attacked twice inside of a week, the attacks killing scores of people and injuring and maiming many more. The intelligence agencies failed all ends up yet again, and as per usual, specially the premier agency aka the Mother of All Agencies which seems to have its finger in every matter — from disappearing people to formulating the country’s foreign policy to destabilising the government whenever it is perceived to be stepping ‘out of line’ — except in running the yahoos to the ground and nipping their evil in the bud.

You might well ask what I mean by the title of this piece. Simple: the Crazy Right are the successors of the Crush India Brigade of the late 1960s and early 1970s which gave us the Bangladesh tragedy (which of course had other reasons too); rump Pakistan is the country we are left with after the breakup of Pakistan as a result of the exertions of the crazy Right. They might well succeed yet again.

Here is the present high priest of the crazy Right, one Zaid (Zaman) Hamid, reportedly speaking on something called ‘Ummah Radio’: “Pakistan is in the headlines again! Oh people! Know that it is a combined action of RAW and Mossad to dismantle the divinely placed concrete foundations of the house of the pure, the feared fort of Islam. We are a nation which is like a glittering star of guidance for the crescent of the whole Muslim world, the pioneer of the creation of the green united states of Islam in the world that is drowning in the sea of ignorance.

“Oh Muslims! Always hold on to truth, and the truth is that it is yet again a Zionist-controlled western media’s conspiracy. Let’s rise up against the enemies of Islam; let’s nuke the ... Hindus and Jews, the nefarious dark forces of this planet. Insha’allah, the time for shahadat is near. My sons and daughters, get ready for the big day, the promised day when Allah will make the Muslims victorious and Jews will run here and there to find shelter. Even the trees will talk and will say: ‘these sons of apes and swines are hiding behind my trunk’.

“Rise up and get ready for the mass suicide. Great nations die for a noble cause. What is more nobler than wiping the enemies of Islam from the face of this earth? Remember, Islam is a peaceful religion. Allah commands us to take care of each other. All are equal in the eyes of Allah. Slay them with your daggers. ...Islam will rule the world....”. The transmission is interrupted. Announcer: “We are trying to re-establish the connection with our great leader, meanwhile we will ask Qari Bakir to recite ‘Surah Tauba’.”

If this doesn’t make your blood run cold and infuriate you all at once, dear reader, I don’t know what will. Can you and I ask why this person is allowed to go on with his increasingly violent rants aimed at the huge numbers of unemployed, half-educated youths who have nothing to do in a country that is essentially a security state and which, instead of creating job opportunities for these vulnerable targets for the spreaders of poison, spends most of its money on toys and more toys for the boys, and more and more luxurious perks for its generals?

Surely spreading hate against other religions is against the law? Surely calling for mass suicide is against the law? Surely advocating nuking the hell out of another country is a crime against humanity itself? Why, then, is this man not prosecuted?

Why does the federal government not get the Federal Bureau of Revenue to investigate the sources of this person’s income, which must be huge judging from the campaigns he mounts, to see who exactly keeps him in big money? Why does the judiciary, which seems to be hell-bent on just pursuing the federal government’s leaders, not take suo motu notice of this man’s dangerous spoutings?

We must recall immediately too that some days ago this person was hosted in Peshawar by Governor Owais Ghani and sent amidst official protocol to speak at Islamia College University where he was not allowed to speak by the Pakhtun Students Union and the Amn Tehrik and was sent scurrying back to the comfort of the governor’s bosom.

Why, pray, is the federal government’s representative in Peshawar trying to smooth the way for this purveyor of hatred? Why is he mollycoddling this man who is attempting to lead the country’s disaffected young astray?

Our country is at great risk, my friends, for no one seems to have learnt any lessons at all. I fear it will face even more grief in the coming days while our politicians leap off the cliff like lemmings.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

Pentagon Contractors' Role as Spies - Investigations underway...

Pentagon to investigate intelligence unit that allegedly used contractors
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, March 16, 2010

The Pentagon said Monday that it was looking into allegations that a Defense Department official had set up an intelligence unit staffed by contractors to hunt insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan under the guise of social and cultural information-gathering.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to confirm or deny whether a criminal investigation had been opened into activities by Michael D. Furlong, a former Special Operations officer who now works as a senior civilian officer for the Joint Information Operations Warfare Center at Lackland Air Force Base, Tex.

Furlong's operation, which included numerous former intelligence and Special Operations officials now in the private sector, raised hackles at the CIA, where it was considered "a semi-independent intelligence-collection operation in a war zone," according to a U.S. official familiar with the agency's concerns. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that it was "not apparent who authorized" the operation but that the "potential for disaster" was obvious.

A second source close to the intelligence community said that "both the [CIA] and the Special Operations community . . . have been expressing grave concern for a long time. Why he was able to keep his job, much less continue this program, is a mystery."

Unease about Furlong rose to the highest levels of the intelligence agency, with several briefings provided to CIA Director Leon Panetta.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants - NYT
Pentagon considers Afghanistan spy ring claim  - BBC

Hobnobbing with Terror by Babar Sattar

Hobnobbing with terror by Babar Sattar
The News, March 13, 2010

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

What are the irresistible compulsions of power politics that forced the PML-N to jump into bed with the proscribed Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and its head Muhammad Ahmad Ludhianvi to win the provincial assembly seat in Jhang this week? Is this simply a case of reprehensible electoral politics with the PML-N stooping low to mix with hate-mongers in order to defeat the PPP in a heated election contest?

Is this a reflection of the PML-N's political ideology that has traditionally pandered to the politics of the religious right that nurtures bigotry, intolerance, hate, obscurantism and paranoia to garner public support? Does it not raise serious questions about the ability and willingness of this mainstream party to attack the menace of terrorism that is rooted in an ideology of religion-inspired intolerance and violence that organisations such as the SSP and Jamaat-ud-Daawa stand for?

It is hard to determine what is worst: that Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah chose to campaign for the PML-N candidate in PP-82 along with the SSP head, that Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif threw his support behind this informal alliance between the PML-N and the SSP, that the PML-N candidate won with the SSP's support, or that the PML-N leadership exhibits an utter inability to comprehend and acknowledge the gravity of this misstep.

The joint campaign of Rana Sanaullah and Ahmad Ludhianvi -- when viewed together with (i) the fact that Shaikh Yaqoob who won during the last election from the Jhang area on a PML-Q ticket (by virtue of his informal alliance with the SSP) later defected and joined the PML-N, and (ii) the decision of the Punjab government to allow another banned organization, Jamaat-ud-Daawa, to convene public rallies and give sermons on Kashmir Day -- raises alarming legal, political, ideological and security-related concerns.

Pakistan already suffers from an inadequate legal framework to grapple with the scourge of terrorism. Successive governments have failed to take effective measures to confront the ideology of religion-inspired violence that lies at the heart of our problem of terror, and the organisations and so-called madrasas that preach this ideology of hate and intolerance. Some changes were introduced within the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) in 2002, which have created a mechanism to ban terrorist organisations, monitor the activities of their members, acquire control over their funds, and ensure that the message of such organisations is not disseminated to the public. But such mechanism has proved insufficient and ineffectual.

But instead of strengthening this moth-eaten legal framework that doesn't produce adequate penal consequences for banned terrorist organisations and their members, the Punjab law minister has rendered this entire framework meaningless by electing to participate in an election campaign alongside the SSP chief and then stubbornly defending this reprehensible act.

For complete article, click here

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Support Peace in Pakistan

UNITE FOR PEACE

We ask all citizens to sign up on a petition seeking peace for Pakistan, the region and all its people.

Let us through this petition state clearly that we want justice. We deserve democratic governance. And call for accountability.

Let us challenge the old ways
Let us call for change and demand equal opportunity,
Let us respect and involve all citizens,
Let us celebrate diversity, pluralism and peace.

Join Us:

If you want the State to provide for and respond to your needs
If you want the State to ensure justice and the rule of law
If you want the State to provide opportunities to all and prioritize development

Sign on to show that you care and that you are willing to look beyond despair
Sign on to demand a State that nurtures you, its citizen

A State that ensures all its citizens a life of dignity
A State that lives in peace and enables you to do so
A State that keeps your children safe
Safe from terror, from exploitation and insecurities,
Safe from violence

Let us forge a new relationship
Trust must be rebuilt, between peoples and institutions
Citizen and State must now coincide.
Together let us regenerate promise and potential.
Let hope and unity intertwine

Speak out now!
Speak out for your future and your people
The time has come, together we must rise.

Are You Ready?

US Relations with the Muslim World: Biden Condemns Israeli Settlement Plan in East Jerusalem

Biden Condemns Israel's Approval Of Plan To Build New Settlements In East Jerusalem
Huffington Post/AP, March 9, 2010

JERUSALEM -- Israel approved the construction of 1,600 new homes for Jews in disputed east Jerusalem on Tuesday - a move that immediately clouded a visit by Vice President Joe Biden aimed at repairing strained ties and kickstarting Mideast peace talks.

The Interior Ministry announced the construction plans just as Biden was wrapping up a series of warm meetings with Israeli leaders.

Biden issued the following statement Tuesday afternoon in response:

I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem. The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I've had here in Israel. We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them. This announcement underscores the need to get negotiations under way that can resolve all the outstanding issues of the conflict. The United States recognizes that Jerusalem is a deeply important issue for Israelis and Palestinians and for Jews, Muslims and Christians. We believe that through good faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome that realizes the aspirations of both parties for Jerusalem and safeguards its status for people around the world. Unilateral action taken by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations on permanent status issues. As George Mitchell said in announcing the proximity talks, "we encourage the parties and all concerned to refrain from any statements or actions which may inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of these talks.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Biden: U.S. won't play favorites between Israel, Palestinians - CNN Political ticker
Remarks by Vice President Biden and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - Whitehouse.gov

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Shirin Ebadi Warns Against Sanctions at an Asia Society Event

Ebadi Warns Against Sanctions
Asia Society, March 3, 2010

NEW YORK, March 3, 2010 - Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi warned against additional international sanctions against Iran, claiming that they would harm the population, not the government.

"We oppose military action or economic sanctions because that is to the detriment of the people," she said. The focus should instead be aimed at preventing global corporations from providing technology that assists direct repression, Ebadi argued. An opponent of boycotting any country, she also encouraged foreigners to travel to Iran and meet with ordinary people to better understand the country.

Speaking at Asia Society headquarters in New York, Ebadi was joined by President Vishakha Desai in a wide-ranging conversation on topics that included the political situation in Iran, the importance of the women's movement in opposing the current regime, and the country's prospects for democracy.

Marking International Women's Month, the lawyer and human rights activist declared that women are leading the way towards democracy in Iran despite their degraded status in the Islamic state. The majority of university students in Iran are female, and women achieve the rank of professor, CEO, doctor, lawyer, or engineer. But despite having the vote and serving in parliament for more than 50 years, Iranian women now face a legal system that is "discriminatory and not compatible with the level of culture that exists in Iran." Ebadi pointed out that women require their husband's permission to work, travel, and leave the country, and their testimony and even the value of their lives count for half that of men.

Citing the campaign for women's equality, Ebadi emphasized that Iranian women are not afraid to state their opposition to the regime and to demand justice for themselves and their children, "This movement does not have a leader or headquarters, it belongs to every woman, every person who believes in equality of rights."

Ebadi also noted that in the violent aftermath of the June 2009 presidential elections women were on the front lines, protesting peacefully, and cited the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan during Tehran's post-election protests. "A woman became the symbol of the democratic movement in Iran."

Reported by Malgorzata Juszczak-Punwaney

How a new chapter opened between Pakistan and Afghanistan?

How a new chapter opened
The News, March 11, 2010
Saleem Safi

The misunderstandings between Pakistan and Afghanistan should not be attributed to the wrong policies of Kabul alone. The monumental mistakes of our own policymakers in tackling the situation in Afghanistan after the US attack and the subsequent fall of the Taliban have contributed in equal measure to the Afghans' hostility towards Pakistan.

For the last eight years our policymakers ignored the importance of courting Hamid Karzai. With the exception of Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Mehmood Khan Achakzai and Afzal Khan Lala, who have a good understanding of Afghan politics and society, no one supported the idea of developing close contacts with the Afghan president.

However, the emergence of Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, two staunch anti-Pakistan political leaders, as opponents of Karzai in the recently held presidential elections came as a rude shock to our policymakers.

Pakistan had established secret contacts with Abdullah in the initial stages of the presidential campaign. Pakistan even promised to support him and Dr Abdullah was keen to get this support. However, later good sense prevailed in Islamabad and the policymakers decided to favour Karzai.

For complete article, click here

ISI Chief Gets One-Year Extension

Key Pakistan spy chief gets one-year extension
Reuters - March 10, 2010
Pakistan's prime minister has extended the term of the head of the country's main intelligence agency by a year in a move expected to preserve continuity in the fight against Islamist militancy

Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, director general of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, was due to retire this month but will remain in office for another year, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani's office said in a statement.

"Given the domestic and regional jihadist insurgency situation, the development is obviously based on Pakistan's need for continuity of policy," international intelligence firm STRATFOR said.

"But it is equally important for the American strategy for Afghanistan."

Pasha, a former head of military operations for Pakistan's army, was appointed head of the ISI in September 2008, months after U.S. officials questioned the reliability of the spy agency in the campaign against Islamist militancy.

Such questions have largely ended under his leadership, however, after security forces mounted big offensives in the northwest over the past year.

The powerful ISI oversees efforts in combating militants, who have been attacking the agency as well as other security and government targets. It also plays a major role in foreign policy.

India and Afghanistan view the spy agency, which is often referred to as a "state within a state," with great suspicion. Pakistan's civilian politicians also fear it for its role in past military coups.

"MAJOR SHIFT"

Backed by the United States in the 1980s, the ISI spearheaded efforts to support Islamist guerrillas battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

It is also believed to have been heavily involved in backing a separatist insurgency against Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region.

The ISI and other agencies captured hundreds of al Qaeda fighters after the September 11, 2001, attacks but it has long been suspected of turning a blind eye to Afghan Taliban fighters operating out of Pakistan, seeing them as leverage against Indian influence in Afghanistan.

But the recent arrest of several Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistan has led to speculation that the ISI is changing its position on the militants in anticipation of some sort of Afghan peace process and the departure of Western forces.

"The ISI is in the process of a major shift; it is transitioning from being the cultivator of jihadists to being an entity that fights them," STRATFOR said.

As well as the arrests and offensives against Pakistani Taliban, STRATFOR cited intelligence-sharing to facilitate attacks on militants in Pakistan by U.S. drone aircraft as being among the unprecedented steps Pakistan was taking.

Pakistani officials said at least 14 militants were killed in the North Waziristan region on Wednesday in the latest in a surge of drone strikes that Pakistan publicly objects to.

"The ISI plays the single most important role in the U.S.-led international effort to bring about an end to the regional jihadist morass," STRATFOR said.

Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani is due to retire late this year. There has been speculation in the media President Asif Ali Zardari will extend his term.

(Additional reporting by Kamran Haiderl editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Related:
VIEW: Age of extensions —Syed Talat Hussain, Daily Times
ISI chief - Dawn Editorial

Monday, March 08, 2010

The Future of Islam

The Future of Islam
By John Esposito
Read Preface by Karen Armstrong by clicking here

John L. Esposito and Karen Armstrong: Author One-to-One

Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous works on comparative religion, including the critically-acclaimed The Case for God. She spoke with John L. Esposito about Western perceptions of Muslims and the issues facing the world’s fastest growing religion.

Armstrong: How did you view Islam before you began to study it seriously? How did study affect your understanding of Muslim faith and culture?

Esposito: Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, surrounded by Italian Catholic neighbors, I knew little about the one Irish girl in my class, and much less about Arabs or Islam who were invisible in the American landscape. And what I did know (much of it, I discovered later, was the product of bias and stereotypes) did not attract me to “these strangers”. In addition, since most theology and religion departments did not teach Islam, the prospect of getting a teaching position in this area were indeed bleak. When the department chair of religion at Temple encouraged me to take a course in Islam with a newly hired Muslim professor, I declined. However, he was “gently adamant” and I, reflecting on my precarious position as a grad student, finally agreed to “take just one course.”

When I first encountered Islam in graduate school, I was astonished to discover that Islam was another Abrahamic faith. While the Judeo-Christian connection was well known, no one ever mentioned a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Why? If Muslims recognize and revere many of the major patriarchs and prophets of Judaism and Christianity (including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus) and God’s revealed books, the Torah and the Message (Gospels) of Jesus, why had I not been aware of these similarities after all my years of liberal arts and theological training?

Armstrong: Western feelings about Islam have certainly intensified since 9/11. But do you think that the Western perception of Islam has fundamentally changed? If so, how has it changed? If not, why not?

Esposito: There certainly has been more coverage of Islam and Muslims are more visible in the public square. However, during the past decade continued terrorist attacks, the sharp politicization among experts and political commentators, the influence of neocons and the hardline Christian Right have fed a significant increase in anti-Islam and anti-Muslim (Islamophobia) attitudes and policies. The Gallup World Poll and other major polls have demonstrated the impact on public opinion. When Americans were asked in 2007 what they admire about Islam, 57% (that figure dropped to 53% in 2009) said “nothing” or “I don’t know.” The critical missing link in our information and the key question in understanding Muslims ought to be “What do Muslims globally, the mainstream majority, really think?” To chart a new way forward, we in the West need to know not only what experts and pseudo-experts say about Muslim attitudes, beliefs, grievances, hopes, fears, and desires but also and most importantly what the often silenced Muslim majority have to say. I believe we’d discover many commonalities in their values, hopes and dreams.

At the same time, there has been an exponential growth in information and knowledge regarding Islam and Muslims, in books and media. It’s not clear that this has led to greater understanding. Toward that end I have seen an increase in inter-civilizational and inter-religious dialogue initiatives and media and popular culture projects that reach a broad audience, especially youth who are the future of Islam.

Armstrong: What are the particular challenges that Islam faces in the modern world?

Esposito: The first challenge is time. In contrast to Christian reforms that grew out of and were influenced primarily by conditions in the West over several centuries, Islam and Muslims have decades, not centuries, to make significant progress in a globalizing world characterized by Western political, military, and economic hegemony. Secondly, many Muslims today pursue reform not from a position of power and strength but from one of relative weakness, struggling for change in the face of authoritarianism and repression, limited freedom of speech and the press, and in some cases war and terror.

Armstrong: What do you find most hopeful in current Muslim thinking?

Esposito: Post 9/11, the call to reform Islam, to strengthen its relevance in a rapidly changing twenty-first-century world, has intensified. If some say that Islam is a perfect religion that doesn’t need to change or adapt, many others stress that Islam is inherently dynamic and that reinterpretation and reform are critical in the struggle to respond to the demands of our times, to marginalize extremists, and to promote gender equality, religious pluralism, and human rights. This debate has been intensified by a modern technology and mass communications and by the growth of religious extremism and terrorism in the name of Islam.

An influential group of vibrant Muslim intellectuals and religious leaders, from Africa to Asia, from Europe to America, have addressed the role of Islam in contemporary society: How do religion and Islamic law contribute to the modern nation-state? Where do Islamic values apply to key issues of today, like democracy, secularism, gender equality, human rights, free market economies, modern banking? What is the role of the clergy (ulama); are they the preeminent authoritative voices who speak for Islam?

Reformists are clergy, as well as intellectuals and activists; rulers and citizens, both traditionalist and modernist. They can be found at Islamic institutes and universities, at academic and religious conferences, and in parliamentary debates. Reformist ideas proliferate in hundreds of books and articles, audios, videos and DVDs, in newspaper editorials, in muftis’ fatwas, and on the Internet. As in the history of Christianity and the Reformation, change in Islam is not limited to debates in theology and law but also involves struggles in politics and society, and at times violence and terror.

Punjabi Taliban avenge Qari Zafar’s death?

Punjabi Taliban avenge Qari Zafar’s death
The News, March 09, 2010
By Amir Mir

LAHORE: The March 8 suicide bombing in Lahore’s Model Town is believed to have been carried out by the Punjab chapter of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to avenge the killing of Commander Qari Zafar, the acting Amir of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) in a US drone strike in North Waziristan on February 24, 2010.

While confirming Qari Zafar’s death in a statement faxed to local journalists on February 25, a Lashkar-e-Jhangvi spokesman had described him as a martyr and pledged to avenge his death. “The Mujahideen will soon take revenge from the Pakistani government for his killing by resorting to suicide bombings anywhere in the country,” the LeJ spokesman added. Qari Zafar was killed, along with nine other Punjabi Taliban in the Peerano Killay area of Miramshah, when a drone struck his hideout.

He was wanted by the US as well as Pakistani authorities for his alleged involvement in the March 2, 2006 car bombing outside the US consulate in Karachi which killed three people, including US diplomat David Foy, thus making the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to announce a $5 million bounty on his head.

For complete article, click here

Related:
Who is behind Lahore blast? - Xinhua
Terrorists strike at ‘safe house’ in heart of Lahore - Dawn
Attack on SIA kills 13 in Lahore - Daily Times

Now India and Pakistan Can Get Down to Business: WSJ Op-ed

Now India and Pakistan Can Get Down to Business

High-level talks in February, billed by some as a failure, actually set the stage for progress.
By Najam Sethi, Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2010

On initial appearances, the first high-level bilateral talks between India and Pakistan since November 2008 weren't a success. When the two foreign secretaries convened in New Delhi on Feb. 25, at times it was as if they were at different meetings. The Indians tried to focus on terrorism sponsored from within Pakistan, while the Pakistanis wanted a broader dialogue. In the end, there was no noteworthy result. But appearances in this case are deceiving. This meeting is likely to prove more successful than many expect.

That's because interests on both sides are at last correctly aligned to give talks a shot at success. For India, it has been a matter of reaching several conclusions at the same time. First, New Delhi has failed to browbeat Islamabad into steps like cracking down on Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terrorist group responsible for the Nov. 2008 Mumbai attacks. Indian saber rattling alone hasn't done the trick, just as in 2002 when India's armed forces tried but failed to intimidate Pakistan into halting the flow of jihadis into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir.

At the same time, the United States has been pressing New Delhi to reduce tensions along the Pakistani border. Washington hopes relative stability along Pakistan's eastern border will allow Islamabad to focus more energies on securing its western border with Afghanistan. Given these circumstances, negotiating with Pakistan over outstanding disputes—and the trust-building and enhanced security that might ensue—looks like a smarter approach than what India has been doing up to now.

Meanwhile, a dialogue with Pakistan is now politically possible in India. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sincerely wants to make a "breakthrough" in bilateral relations and he's increasingly confident saying so. During the elections last year, Mr. Singh trumpeted his efforts to promote back-channel diplomacy for conflict resolution during the tenure of former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Controversially, he also met Pakistan's current prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, at Sharm al Shaikh in Egypt on July 16 last year to formally pledge a wide-ranging dialogue.

In Pakistan, too, there seems to be a significant shift in foreign policy, as formulated by the powerful military establishment. For the first time since 9/11, the American and Pakistani militaries and intelligence agencies seem to be working closely together to stem the tide of al Qaeda-sponsored terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Far from casting doubt on the Pakistani military's motives and abilities, the Americans are tripping over themselves praising the Pakistan army. The Pakistanis have subdued the al Qaeda Taliban network over most of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, though at the great cost of more than 2,500 soldiers, including one officer for every seven soldiers killed. As a result of this and other successes, the U.S. has offered Pakistan a greater future say in Afghan affairs.

All of this has brought home to Pakistan's leaders the benefits of being a team player in the region—benefits such as support from the U.S. and greater stability in the western regions. A working relationship with India will be more important as Afghan reconstruction continues, given that India has made over a billion dollars in investments in Afghanistan and thus is an important stakeholder. With militants set to be a problem in the west for the foreseeable future, Islamabad also has an interest in stabilizing its relationship with its eastern neighbor.

Despite the forces pushing and pulling both sides to the table, talks won't always go smoothly—last month's attempt shows some of what can go wrong. India doesn't want to seem like it has succumbed to "terrorist blackmail" without extracting some concrete results from Pakistan, and Pakistan doesn't want to seem like it is begging India from a position of weakness to change the status quo. So neither side can afford to reach an agreement on anything "too quickly." In addition, neither wants to admit any American pressure to change its policies. This may partly explain why the recent initiative failed to produce any results: On the eve of the talks, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton admitted a role in nudging both sides to the table.

But in other ways there are signs that both sides have learned from the mistakes of the past. Earlier attempts faltered because neither side had laid the political groundwork back home for any eventual deal. The Sharm al Shaikh meeting last year, for instance, was not preceded in India by any media briefings that might have set the stage for a change in course. Indeed, at that time Mr. Singh's eagerness for talks was like a red flag waved in front of anti-Pakistan bulls like his own national security adviser, M.K. Narayanan, and prime ministerial adviser Shyam Saran. This time, Mr. Singh has brought in a new security adviser, Shiv Shankar Menon, with extensive experience in Pakistan affairs. Mr. Singh's re-election campaign itself has also shown that the politics of this issue are changing in India.

In Pakistan, too, the signs are good. For the first time in history, the government and opposition are on the same page regarding the necessity of burying the war hatchet with India. The ruling Peoples Party led by President Asif Zardari, widower of the assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto, has always espoused the case of peace with India, even at the cost of sometimes irritating the military. And now the opposition led by Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, is on board as well. Mr. Sharif is the architect of the Lahore summit in 1999 with former Indian prime minister Atal Vajpayee, when both sides agreed to hold wide-ranging talks unconditionally. In the old days, Pakistan used to put pre-conditions on the talks—such as requiring a solution to the Kashmir dispute before anything else—but now insists that all issues should be on the table at one time.

Against this backdrop, the ball is rolling again. The Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao is expected to visit Islamabad later this month, followed by the Indian home minister in April. Then the two prime ministers will meet in Bhutan at the end of April at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit. These occasions will doubtless provide adequate opportunity to pave the way for a formal resumption of talks on most issues.

There are obvious exchanges to be made between India and Pakistan. India must stop aiding Baluch insurgents based in Afghanistan and Pakistan must cease supporting jihadis against India. Pakistan must relax the trade regime for India's exports. India must resume support for the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. Both must demilitarize border areas and allow greater flow of people between the two countries. And both must find a way forward of Kashmir.

These issues and many more will take time and trust to resolve. So it should not be surprising if the most recent India-Pakistan meeting wasn't an enormous success. The more important fact is that the two sides are now closer to being able to hash out their differences than in recent memory.

Mr. Sethi is editor in chief of The Friday Times, a national weekly, and Dunya TV, a national news channel in Pakistan.

Sunday, March 07, 2010

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With special thanks to Professor Tahira Naqvi of New York York University for creating awareness about this issue.

From: http://www.urdustudies.com/

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"US helped ISI create extremists: Petraeus" - The News

US helped ISI create extremists: Petraeus
The News, March 07, 2010

WASHINGTON: Noting that Pakistan has made significant progress in its fight against extremism that threatens its existence, a top US military general has refused the certificate of “American satisfaction” to Islamabad in its war against terrorism.

“I wouldn’t allow you to put words in my mouth,” General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command told Charlie Rose of the PBS in an interview when he asked: “So the bottom line is you are satisfied with the Pakistani effort and the Pakistani cooperation and the Pakistani effort to wipe out the Taliban in Pakistan?”

Rose posed such a question to Petraeus, when the American general was praising Pakistan for its recent success against the Taliban and arrest of its top leaders inside the country. “What I would say is that Pakistan has made significant progress in its fight against extremists threatening its existence. And there is a growing recognition that the other extremist elements, also in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, have a symbiotic relationship with the tribal areas threatening them, and over time they are dealing with them as well,” Petraeus said.

“But, again, look, we have a chequered past with Pakistan, and we need to be up front about it and recognise it. We’ve walked away from that country three different times, including after Charlie Wilson’s war after we established the Mujahideen,” he said.

“Our money, Saudi money, others joined together, helped the ISI, indeed, form these elements which then went in and threw the Soviets out of Afghanistan with our weaponry. And then we left and they were holding the bag,” he said, acknowledging that it was the US which helped ISI to form these extremist elements. General Petraeus, however, acknowledged that the interests of Pakistan and the US differ in Afghanistan. He said Pakistan and the US has the same interest in Afghanistan in not allowing al-Qaeda to re-establish safe havens. “But it also has an interest that is somewhat different than ours, and that is their strategic depth and always has been for a country that’s very narrow and has its historic enemy to its east. So again, we just have to appreciate this.

“This is not unique, of course, just to Afghanistan and Pakistan and throughout the world. We have interests, they have interests. What we want to do is find the conversion interest, understand where they are divergent and try to make progress together,” Petraeus said.

Related:
Petraeus refuses to give Pak 'certificate of satisfaction' over its efforts against militants - Onindia

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Taliban leader's Biography: Humanising the monster

BOOK REVIEW: Humanising the monster — by Dr Mohammad Taqi, Daily Times, March 5, 2010


My life with the Taliban

By Abdul Salam Zaeef
Translated from Pashto and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn; Hurst/Columbia University Press; Pp 331

In his foreword to Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef’s book, Professor Barnett Rubin of New York University sets the stage for the launch, ostensibly, of a refreshingly authentic work of this inaccurate and revisionist take on contemporary Afghan history.

My Life with the Taliban, written by the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, has been praised across the board by the media ‘Afghanologists’ such as Ahmed Rashid and Peter Bergen to academics like Antonio Giustozzi of the London School of Economics, without any critical evaluation. Some, like Christina Lamb, have gone as far as calling it a must read.

To those of us who grew up in the NWFP or Afghanistan at the height of US-Saudi-Pakistani anti-Soviet war, the crude lies presented in the account are all too apparent from the get-go, as is the translators-cum-editors’ shallow understanding of the local languages and culture.

From the outset, the village prayer leader (imam) is presented as a religious scholar and mosque madrassa as almost the counterpart of Notre Dame University. The basic Arabic text booklet — Quaida Baghdadi — which all Muslim children from Kabul to Kolkata read as an Arabic primer, is mentioned as “Al-Quaida”, only to be differentiated from the terrorist group in a tedious footnote — of which there is no dearth in the book. Frivolous and superfluous information is dignified by stuffing such footnotes with it, as is the glossary and an initial biography section. A flurry of names and events — as insignificant as a pinprick on the skin of Afghan history — have been deployed to bloat the work to roughly 300 pages.

Zaeef has taken serious liberties with the truth, which, to their discredit, the reviewers and endorsers have failed to point out. He confabulates that the Taliban were a distinct group during the anti-Soviet mujahideen wars and operated as such under their own identity and leadership.

For complete article, click here

Will Others Follow Dutch and Leave Afghanistan?

Will Others Follow Dutch and Leave Afghanistan?
VOA, March 3, 2010

The Dutch government has collapsed over whether to keep its soldiers in Afghanistan. In this report from Washington, Senior Correspondent André de Nesnera looks at what effect - if any - that will have on other nations that have troops in that country under the banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

About 2,000 Dutch troops have been in Afghanistan's southern province of Uruzgan since 2006. They are part of the 86,000 troop NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Analysts say NATO has three objectives in Afghanistan. The first is to assist the Afghan government in its efforts to rebuild and stabilize the country. The second is to train the Afghan army and police. And the third is to hunt down and eliminate insurgents in southern Afghanistan - home of the Taliban, ousted from power by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001.

About 1,500 of the 2,000 Dutch troops, along with American and British forces, are engaged in fighting insurgents and the Taliban. The remaining 500 Dutch forces are involved in civilian reconstruction efforts and training the afghan army and police.


Dutch troops withdrawal

But now Dutch troops will begin to return home this August, following the collapse last month of the government over its Afghan policy. One of the major coalition members - the Labor Party - left the government saying it would not support extending the Afghan deployment.

For complete article, click here
Related:
Dutch anti-Islamists makes key gains in local elections - BBC
The Netherlands lands a blow to the Afghanistan coalition - Editorial Los Angeles Times
Dutch Social Democrat Thijs Berman on Afghanistan - European Parliament