Pakistan's Frequent-Fall Problem and the JEM link: Perplexing

Daily Times, August 18, 2006
EDITORIAL: Pakistan’s frequent-fall problem

Yesterday this newspaper quoted General Pervez Musharraf as saying that foreign terrorists would not be allowed to operate from Pakistan or train in Pakistan’s territory. As a logical extension of this argument General Musharraf also said that the spread of extremism in Pakistan would not be tolerated either. This would be great news if only we hadn’t heard it for the nth time. In fact, we see a pattern in these announcements: whenever Pakistan finds itself — for the right or wrong reasons — in the eye of a storm revolving around terror, General Musharraf assures the world and this nation that he will not allow terrorists — foreign or indigenous — to sully Pakistan’s image. But damned be these terrorists who seem to have no regard either for General Musharraf’s pronouncements or this country’s image. They continue to operate and strike whenever they can without paying any heed to the fact that newspapers find these statements important enough to place them as lead stories.

There is also another problem with the way General Musharraf’s pronouncements are structured. “We will not allow terrorists to use Pakistan’s soil” would beget the obvious question: have we done so at some point? The other obvious, and equally embarrassing, question would be: are we somehow in a position to actually ensure that these terrorists can be stopped, which, it should be evident, would imply that we could call them off.

We are only being semi-facetious. The fact is that the frequency with which these pronouncements are made has rendered them largely irrelevant. In the PR domain, when a strategy begins to extract a bored yawn, it is time to change it. General Musharraf may like to consider this broad point. Other points to consider relate to a number of things that have happened to this country and some of which, despite General Musharraf’s enlightenment model, continue to happen. All these developments, major and minor, have helped evolve a mindset conducive to committing acts of terrorism. Preventing terrorism, therefore, is not just a function of good intelligence — crucial though that is — but also requires restructuring society and the attitudes it has developed over the last three decades.

Daily Times, August 18, 2006
US team visits Rauf’s in-laws

BAHAWALPUR: An American team visited the in-laws of Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind of the foiled UK terror plot, here in Model Town on Thursday. Sources told Online that the two-member American team met the father of Maulana Masood Azhar, former head of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad, and in-laws of Rashid Rauf and gathered information about Rauf’s life. A Pakistani interpreter, Asim, and cameraman, Akhtar, were also with the US team, which later returned to Multan. A team of British officials is already in Pakistan to discuss Rauf’s detention, but it is unclear if it would also discuss his possible extradition. Online