Thursday, March 21, 2013

How to Defeat Sectarianism in Pakistan: Atlantic Council Event


Education, Police Reform, and Personal Responsibility Necessary to Stop Sectarian Violence in Pakistan

Hassan Abbas, professor of international security studies at National Defense University; and Knox Thames, director of policy and research at the US Commission on International Religious Freedom visited the South Asia Center on March 13 to discuss ethnic and sectarian violence in Pakistan.

Summary:
The speakers addressed the dire domestic security situation facing Pakistan in light of recent growing targeted killings and ethnic violence, and offered their advice to the country’s leaders and the international community. Expressing concern over an inadequate response by the government, Mr. Thames stated the need for more visible consequences for perpetrators and suggested international engagement with the provinces, beyond the federal level in Pakistan. Dr. Abbas, citing an unprecedented 34 attacks on Sufi shrines, underscored the widespread nature of this problem affecting everyday Pakistanis. He stated the two paths to change are education and police reform, and cautioned the US of favoring sides in sectarian conflict. In his opening remarks, Moderator and Director of the South Asia Center Shuja Nawaz challenged the common critique of the Pakistan government by stating, “if Pakistani society fails to protect its own, it is the failure of everyone, the State, the civil government , the military establishment, the civil society, and each and every Pakistani. Passing the buck will not solve this cancerous problem. Nor will simply citing the litany of loses caused by the mayhem.”

For audio of the event, click here

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Afghanistan - Pakistan Debates: An Ideas Whose Time Has Come

Af-Pak Debate: Across the Border
Thursday, 14 March 2013 14:40 Written by TOLOnews.com

In the first show of a series of Afghanistan-Pakistan debates, On Soy-e Marz, or, Across the Border, TOLOnews and Pakistan's Express TV jointly discuss how the two countries can move forward in fight against terrorism, with panelists in Kabul and Islamabad studios.

Former Afghan spy chief Amrullah Saleh and ex-interior minister Hanif Atmar are on the panel in Kabul and ISI's former chief Asad Durani, Musharraf's information minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and senator Haji Adeel are on the Islamabad panel.

Dozens of civil society activists and journalists accompany both panels in the two capitals.


To watch the show, click here or here:

Related:
Click: The Role of Regional Nations in Afghanistan's Future

Monday, March 18, 2013

What Really Happened in Afghanistan ?

The REAL reason the U.S. failed in Afghanistan
Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, March 15, 2013

Why did the U.S. fail in Afghanistan? (I know we are pretending to have succeeded, but that's just camouflage to disguise what is in fact an embarrassing if predictable defeat). The reasons for our failure are now being debated by people like Vali Nasr and Sarah Chayes, who have offered contrasting insider accounts of what went wrong.

Both Nasr and Chayes make useful points about the dysfunction that undermined the AfPak effort, and I'm not going to try to adjudicate between them. Rather, I think both of them miss the more fundamental contradiction that bedeviled the entire U.S./NATO effort, especially after the diversion to Iraq allowed the Taliban to re-emerge. The key problem was essentially structural: US. objectives in Afghanistan could not be achieved without a much larger commitment of resources, but the stakes there simply weren't worth that level of commitment. In other words, winning wasn't worth the effort it would have taken, and the real failure was not to recognize that fact much earlier and to draw the appropriate policy conclusions.

First, achieving a meaningful victory in Afghanistan -- defined as defeating the Taliban and creating an effective, Western-style government in Kabul -- would have required sending far more troops (i.e., even more than the Army requested during the "surge"). Troop levels in Afghanistan never approached the ratio of troops/population observed in more successful instances of nation-building, and that deficiency was compounded by Afghanistan's ethnic divisions, mountainous terrain, geographic isolation, poor infrastructure, and porous borders.

For complete article, click here

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

National Reconciliation & Education Critical for Defeating Sectarianism in Pakistan

Sectarian and Ethnic Violence Escalates in Pakistan

By Catherine Cheney, World Political Review,
Trend Lines, March 5, 2013
A bomb blast in a Shiite district of Karachi, Pakistan, killed at least 45 people Sunday in the latest example of escalating sectarian and ethnic violence in the country.

Hassan Abbas, a former Pakistani government official who is now an academic and a senior adviser to the Asia Society, told Trend Lines that relations between South Asia’s Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities have historically been cordial, but that the recent uptick in sectarian attacks is linked to growing tension and violence in the region more generally.

“Religious bigotry, ignorance, ethnic tensions and regional tensions are driving this trend,” Abbas said in an email interview. “Many religious institutions with political agendas are teaching lessons of hatred while sectarian tensions in Middle East are also having an impact,” he said. “In both Quetta and Karachi, where recent terrorist attacks happened, ethnic rivalries were also at play.”

“Despite being a relative minority within the larger Muslim community, Shiites are very well represented in Pakistani politics, military and media,” Abbas explained. “Though secular in orientation, Pakistan’s founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah and many of his close political associates were Shiite, and this was never an issue.”

But the situation deteriorated in the aftermath of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, as “religious radicals from around the world moved to the region and influenced religious discourse in problematic ways,” Abbas said.

“Religious extremists within the Islamic context are first and foremost sectarian fanatics,” he said. The groups that carry out terrorist activities in pursuit of political goals are “narrow-minded and ill-educated in their understanding of Islam,” he argued.
For complete article, click here
Related:
Missing in Action By Mosharraf Zaidi, Foreign Policy, March 4, 2013
Hunting Down Shias: Society's Defening silence - Dawn, March 3, 2013

Relevant: Atlantic Council Event - March 13, 2013
Focus: Ending Ethnic and Sectarian Violence in Pakistan
For details, click here

Saturday, March 02, 2013

Islam Without Sectarianism - A Conference in Malaysia



International Seminar on Islam Without Sectarianism
Date: Sunday, March 10, 2013: Time: 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Venue: Studio R, The Renaissance Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Register at: http://islamwithoutsectarianism.eventbrite.com/

And hold fast, all together, unto the bond with God, and do not draw apart from one another.
And remember the blessings which God has bestowed upon you: how, when you were enemies,
He brought your hearts together, so that through His blessing you became brethren; and [how,
when] you were on the brink of a fiery abyss. He saved you from it. In this way God makes clear His
messages unto you, so that you might find guidance.

[Al-i Imran, 3: 103]

It seems that God’s reminder in the Qur’an has befallen onto many deaf ears. Despite claiming to be the defenders of sunnah, many fell prey to the venomous doctrine of sectarianism. The fires of sectarianism schism are stoked for political means and many are unable to think through the real
world. How do we claim to adhere to the Qur’an and Sunnah when we are propogating hatred and discrimination? There is no basis for this in the empowering Qur’an and the enlightening sunnah.

For more details, click here and here