Taliban leader's powerful vanishing act
Mullah Mohammed Omar may be hiding in Pakistan, where his elusiveness has created a cult-like devotion.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer: January 5, 2007
KUCHLAK, PAKISTAN — Where's Mullah Omar?
It has been more than five years since the Taliban's supreme leader, a onetime village cleric, vanished into the trackless terrain outside his fallen Afghan stronghold, Kandahar. And his likeliest source of sanctuary is thought to be the belt of rugged tribal territory straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the law of no nation prevails.
In Kuchlak, a dusty desert crossroads in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, Mullah Mohammed Omar still is referred to by the title he assumed in 1996, when he and his puritanical Islamist movement seized power in Afghanistan: Amir al-Muminin, or Commander of the Faithful.
Omar's feat of eluding a long manhunt by the Americans and their allies, even with a $10-million bounty on his head, is celebrated here as proof of his mystical powers.
"With all their sophisticated satellites that can see a single needle from high in the sky, they cannot find him," said Fazil Mohammad Baraich, a district amir, or chieftain. "It is no surprise that God almighty protects him, and this increases our faith."
Rumors of Omar sightings abound, and are repeated by locals with an air of satisfied certainty.
"I, myself, have heard on good authority that he is living in a camp" in the military enclave outside Quetta, said Mohammed Ashiq, head of a merchants association in that provincial capital.
"And," Ashiq said, leaning forward conspiratorially, "I hear that he has gotten fat. Very fat."
During the Taliban's rule, it was Omar who ordered such stringent measures as the banishment of women from schools and public life, and the destruction of one of Afghanistan's greatest cultural treasures, the giant Buddha statues at Bamian.
He outlawed simple pleasures such as music and kite flying, even as he decreed, disastrously for his country, that the Taliban would provide aid and shelter to Osama bin Laden, who likewise has remained at large.
A Taliban presence
In tribal communities such as Kuchlak, sympathy for the toppled militia is defiantly undiminished. Many townspeople are of the same Pashtun clan as Omar, who by most accounts has never flown in an airplane and has rarely strayed from his homeland.
The cult-like devotion to Omar in the mosques and makeshift classrooms of the tribal territories helps ensure a steady supply of Taliban fighters. The militia's white flags flutter over Kuchlak's small, desolate graveyard, where the names of slain fighters are scratched into bare rock.
Little boys trudge through the town's rutted streets, bearing bags of bread donated to the town's many madrasas, or Islamic religious schools. On Kuchlak's edge, single tracks, equally suitable for wandering goats or militants on motorbikes, fade into a horizon the color of khaki, the Pashto word for dusty.
Across the border in Afghanistan, allied military commanders say they are putting increasing pressure on the Taliban leadership, most notably with a precision airstrike on Dec. 19 on a lonely road in Helmand province that killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, a senior deputy to Omar.
Tracking Omar "is certainly a priority, and this kind of success shows we have the potential to reach those at his level," said Maj. Dominic Whyte, a spokesman for North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces.
But if Omar has taken shelter in Pakistan, he may be out of the reach of coalition guns. An airstrike in October on a madrasa in the Pakistani tribal region of Bajur, which left dozens dead, triggered a heavy anti-American and anti-government backlash.
For that reason, a strike on a madrasa or village thought to be harboring Omar would be politically explosive unless American forces were absolutely certain that he, or a similarly high-profile target, was present.
Kuchlak, 10 miles north of Quetta, is a convenient way station for anyone looking to move surreptitiously in and out of the tribal belt.
One road out of town leads north to the Afghan border and continues to Kandahar. Another, with only a single police checkpoint in more than 100 miles, leads northeast to the tribal area of Waziristan, where Pakistani authorities have struck controversial truces with tribal elders that prevent troops from pursuing militants.
Because of Omar's longtime aversion to being photographed — a policy he was said to have adopted on religious grounds — few in the border hinterlands would be in a position to positively identify him. His missing right eye was his most recognizable characteristic, but allied military reports say he may have been fitted with a glass eye.
In any event, many observers believe that betrayal from within Omar's tribal milieu would be unthinkable. For one thing, it would violate the rigid Pashtun code of behavior, which places a premium on clan honor and the unquestioning protection of guests. For another, any traitor probably would pay with his life, and with the lives of his family.
Political questions
Omar's role in the Taliban leadership, whether as figurehead or active military commander, is widely debated among analysts.
Last week, before the beginning of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, Western news agencies received a statement from a purported spokesman for Omar, in which the Taliban leader boasted that his fighters would drive foreign troops out of Afghanistan.
The possibility that Omar has been sheltered in Pakistan raises thorny political questions for President Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan became a crucial U.S. ally after the Sept. 11 attacks, but the motives and loyalties of its government are under increasing Western scrutiny.
The Taliban movement, in its early days, was nurtured by Pakistan's intelligence service, and some observers doubt that Omar could have survived this long without its continued help. But others say no hard-and-fast proof has emerged that Omar is hiding on the Pakistani side of the border.
"He could be in Afghanistan, or he could be in Pakistan," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a longtime Taliban watcher based in the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar.
To admirers, the near-completeness of Omar's vanishing act after fleeing his gaudily appointed compound outside Kandahar in late 2001 is a triumphant rebuttal of the allies' characterizations of him as a simpleton.
"If that is the case," said Baraich, the amir, "then why has he been able to hide so well, and for so long?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
laura.king@latimes.com
Friday, January 05, 2007
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Resolving Kashmir Conflict Needs Flexibility
Need for flexibility on Kashmir
By Dr Tariq Rahman
Dawn, January 4, 2006
GENERAL Musharraf’s statement that a solution to the Kashmir problem may be sought outside the conventional position adopted by the establishment could prove to be the best thing to have happened in 2006. The real impediments to peace are not the “hawks” on both sides.
Hard-liners do not value peace anyway even after the world has suffered catastrophes like the two world wars, the Russian aggression in Afghanistan, American aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and similar devastations.
It is the common people who have been brainwashed by over half a century of propaganda into thinking that Kashmir is more important than Pakistan, or for that matter, India.
Recently, Amanullah Khan, leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, said that the Quaid never called Kashmir the “jugular vein of Pakistan”. Pakistani hawks have always trumpeted this as the Quaid’s saying. Be that as it may, it is true that the rivers of Pakistan run through Kashmir. It is equally true that India has not tampered with those rivers, at least not in a dangerous and radical way so far.
We have had several wars but the rivers run as they have since time immemorial. So, does it stand to reason that the rivers will stop running if there is peace in Kashmir? Is that a good reason for spending millions on the instruments of war and putting a whole country, in fact civilisation, at risk of nuclear annihilation? It is far better to allow peace to prevail while preparing for a possible conflict on other issues. When and if there is real and imminent danger to the rivers we can do something about it but why risk all we have for something which may never happen at all?
The history of Pakistan’s involvement with Kashmir has been full of blunders. First, the decision to join Pakistan or India was left to the rulers of the princely states. This went against democratic principles, since the people were left out of the decision-making, as did the Muslim League’s two-nation theory that Hindu-majority areas should join India and Muslim-majority ones Pakistan).
The result was that the princely ruler of Junagarh opted for Pakistan and the latter accepted the decision — why? The population was mostly Hindu though the ruler was a Muslim. The reverse was true for Kashmir. If the League had refused the accession of Junagarh its stance on Kashmir could have appeared a more principled one.
Once the ruler of Kashmir acceded to India, Pakistan helped the Pashtun tribesmen, including army volunteers on leave, to fight against the Indian army. This venture failed but even if it had not, it would have established the principle of an appeal to arms for the future, endangering the new country because India could have resorted to armed aggression. After all, Pakistan had a very small army at that time and it was not even adequately armed. Besides, the eastern wing of the country was almost completely unprotected and surrounded on three sides by India. This was definitely dangerous policy under the circumstances.
Incredibly enough, the policy was repeated both in 1965 and in Kargil. Each time two basic assumptions were made. First, that Pakistani guerrillas, or paramilitary auxiliaries, would cut off Kashmir from India. Second, that India would not launch a full-scale war across the border. In 1965, it was proved that India did not behave how the Pakistani decision-makers believed it would. The Kargil operation may not have resulted in the devastation and misery brought on by a nuclear war but the subcontinent came near enough to the edge of the abyss.
Since then we have had other scary confrontations but sanity seems to have prevailed for the present. I do not know if the United States has persuaded the leadership of both sides, or at least General Musharraf, to try to make peace. But if it has then we ought to be grateful to Uncle Sam. In the rest of the world, regrettably the US is notorious for bringing about war and destruction. If peace is its interest in our part of world, I am all for it.
But perhaps General Musharraf himself has realised that Pakistan’s progress is hostage to the perpetual preparation for war. No country can spend on education, health, industry and modernisation while keeping a huge colonial style standing army. If the problem of Kashmir is solved we could have a small, highly efficient, professional army with most of our young people trained for defence and huge bunkers to save citizens from the devastation caused by bombing. That would be far better defence than huge armies which consume the resources needed for modernisation.
Whatever the reasons for General Musharraf’s new, flexible stand on Kashmir, it is now incumbent on all those who love peace and Pakistan to support this policy. Kashmiris we do and should care about, but not at the cost of our own benighted, starving people. If the Kashmiris want to be independent, join Pakistan or India, so be it. If they want their former state to split along religious lines, again so be it. All solutions are welcome provided they lead to peace.
In this context, any joint rule of Kashmir by India and Pakistan will probably lead to reprisals, antagonism and war. So, if Kashmir is to be administered by any powers other than Pakistan and India, it should be the United Nations. Then the UN can hold any form of plebiscite, referendum, election etc. to determine what the Kashmiris really desire. Flexibility is the crux of the matter. If we stick to any of the bad old mantras (‘atoot ang’, ‘Kashmir banega Pakistan’) and so on, we will fail again.
The real impediments in the path of peace are the brainwashed people of Pakistan and north India. What is necessary now is to counter this brainwashing. But this need not be done by the “murder of history’ (in K. K. Aziz’s inimitable phrase). It should be done by telling the truth for a change: the truth about the initial Muslim League mistake, the wars and the cost of the conflict.
There are several books on this cost and it is appalling. Also, all lessons in textbooks glorifying war should be removed. In India, all the anti-Pakistan films should be done away with and, once again, the excessively chauvinistic line adopted on Kashmir should be modified. If this is done in both countries the brainwashed people will allow their leaders to think ‘out of the box’. If it is not done, or done only in one country, there will be no peace.
The people of South Asia should realise at what cost they maintain their huge standing armies and their arsenals bristling with weapons. They should be conscious of the terrible nuclear payloads and the missiles pointed at Indian and Pakistani cities. Pakistan and India owe it to their people to allow them to live happily and without fear.
Let us not lose civilisations that go back beyond the Vedic age to gain a piece of land called Kashmir, a land which, in reality, no one can gain because modern warfare has no real victors. The only real gain we can have is peace. If General Musharraf and the present Indian leadership can gift this to the people of South Asia then that will be something worth remembering in the years ahead.
By Dr Tariq Rahman
Dawn, January 4, 2006
GENERAL Musharraf’s statement that a solution to the Kashmir problem may be sought outside the conventional position adopted by the establishment could prove to be the best thing to have happened in 2006. The real impediments to peace are not the “hawks” on both sides.
Hard-liners do not value peace anyway even after the world has suffered catastrophes like the two world wars, the Russian aggression in Afghanistan, American aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and similar devastations.
It is the common people who have been brainwashed by over half a century of propaganda into thinking that Kashmir is more important than Pakistan, or for that matter, India.
Recently, Amanullah Khan, leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, said that the Quaid never called Kashmir the “jugular vein of Pakistan”. Pakistani hawks have always trumpeted this as the Quaid’s saying. Be that as it may, it is true that the rivers of Pakistan run through Kashmir. It is equally true that India has not tampered with those rivers, at least not in a dangerous and radical way so far.
We have had several wars but the rivers run as they have since time immemorial. So, does it stand to reason that the rivers will stop running if there is peace in Kashmir? Is that a good reason for spending millions on the instruments of war and putting a whole country, in fact civilisation, at risk of nuclear annihilation? It is far better to allow peace to prevail while preparing for a possible conflict on other issues. When and if there is real and imminent danger to the rivers we can do something about it but why risk all we have for something which may never happen at all?
The history of Pakistan’s involvement with Kashmir has been full of blunders. First, the decision to join Pakistan or India was left to the rulers of the princely states. This went against democratic principles, since the people were left out of the decision-making, as did the Muslim League’s two-nation theory that Hindu-majority areas should join India and Muslim-majority ones Pakistan).
The result was that the princely ruler of Junagarh opted for Pakistan and the latter accepted the decision — why? The population was mostly Hindu though the ruler was a Muslim. The reverse was true for Kashmir. If the League had refused the accession of Junagarh its stance on Kashmir could have appeared a more principled one.
Once the ruler of Kashmir acceded to India, Pakistan helped the Pashtun tribesmen, including army volunteers on leave, to fight against the Indian army. This venture failed but even if it had not, it would have established the principle of an appeal to arms for the future, endangering the new country because India could have resorted to armed aggression. After all, Pakistan had a very small army at that time and it was not even adequately armed. Besides, the eastern wing of the country was almost completely unprotected and surrounded on three sides by India. This was definitely dangerous policy under the circumstances.
Incredibly enough, the policy was repeated both in 1965 and in Kargil. Each time two basic assumptions were made. First, that Pakistani guerrillas, or paramilitary auxiliaries, would cut off Kashmir from India. Second, that India would not launch a full-scale war across the border. In 1965, it was proved that India did not behave how the Pakistani decision-makers believed it would. The Kargil operation may not have resulted in the devastation and misery brought on by a nuclear war but the subcontinent came near enough to the edge of the abyss.
Since then we have had other scary confrontations but sanity seems to have prevailed for the present. I do not know if the United States has persuaded the leadership of both sides, or at least General Musharraf, to try to make peace. But if it has then we ought to be grateful to Uncle Sam. In the rest of the world, regrettably the US is notorious for bringing about war and destruction. If peace is its interest in our part of world, I am all for it.
But perhaps General Musharraf himself has realised that Pakistan’s progress is hostage to the perpetual preparation for war. No country can spend on education, health, industry and modernisation while keeping a huge colonial style standing army. If the problem of Kashmir is solved we could have a small, highly efficient, professional army with most of our young people trained for defence and huge bunkers to save citizens from the devastation caused by bombing. That would be far better defence than huge armies which consume the resources needed for modernisation.
Whatever the reasons for General Musharraf’s new, flexible stand on Kashmir, it is now incumbent on all those who love peace and Pakistan to support this policy. Kashmiris we do and should care about, but not at the cost of our own benighted, starving people. If the Kashmiris want to be independent, join Pakistan or India, so be it. If they want their former state to split along religious lines, again so be it. All solutions are welcome provided they lead to peace.
In this context, any joint rule of Kashmir by India and Pakistan will probably lead to reprisals, antagonism and war. So, if Kashmir is to be administered by any powers other than Pakistan and India, it should be the United Nations. Then the UN can hold any form of plebiscite, referendum, election etc. to determine what the Kashmiris really desire. Flexibility is the crux of the matter. If we stick to any of the bad old mantras (‘atoot ang’, ‘Kashmir banega Pakistan’) and so on, we will fail again.
The real impediments in the path of peace are the brainwashed people of Pakistan and north India. What is necessary now is to counter this brainwashing. But this need not be done by the “murder of history’ (in K. K. Aziz’s inimitable phrase). It should be done by telling the truth for a change: the truth about the initial Muslim League mistake, the wars and the cost of the conflict.
There are several books on this cost and it is appalling. Also, all lessons in textbooks glorifying war should be removed. In India, all the anti-Pakistan films should be done away with and, once again, the excessively chauvinistic line adopted on Kashmir should be modified. If this is done in both countries the brainwashed people will allow their leaders to think ‘out of the box’. If it is not done, or done only in one country, there will be no peace.
The people of South Asia should realise at what cost they maintain their huge standing armies and their arsenals bristling with weapons. They should be conscious of the terrible nuclear payloads and the missiles pointed at Indian and Pakistani cities. Pakistan and India owe it to their people to allow them to live happily and without fear.
Let us not lose civilisations that go back beyond the Vedic age to gain a piece of land called Kashmir, a land which, in reality, no one can gain because modern warfare has no real victors. The only real gain we can have is peace. If General Musharraf and the present Indian leadership can gift this to the people of South Asia then that will be something worth remembering in the years ahead.
Interesting Connections...
Saudi King, Hezbollah leader discuss Lebanon
RIYADH: A Saudi diplomat said on Thursday that Saudi King Abdullah made his first-ever personal contact with Lebanon’s Hezbollah party in a bid to ease the Lebanese political crisis. The meeting was held in the kingdom on Dec. 27 between Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheik Naim Qassem and the Saudi monarch and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the talks. The Saudi and Hezbollah leaders discussed ways to end the internal conflict in Lebanon that pits Hezbollah against the Saudi- and US-backed government of President Fouad Siniora. The Saudi King invited Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to the kingdom to perform the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage, but Nasrallah turned down the invitation, the diplomat said. Talks between Hezbollah and the Saudi government are continuing through the Saudi embassy in Beirut, the diplomat said. ap
RIYADH: A Saudi diplomat said on Thursday that Saudi King Abdullah made his first-ever personal contact with Lebanon’s Hezbollah party in a bid to ease the Lebanese political crisis. The meeting was held in the kingdom on Dec. 27 between Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheik Naim Qassem and the Saudi monarch and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the talks. The Saudi and Hezbollah leaders discussed ways to end the internal conflict in Lebanon that pits Hezbollah against the Saudi- and US-backed government of President Fouad Siniora. The Saudi King invited Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to the kingdom to perform the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage, but Nasrallah turned down the invitation, the diplomat said. Talks between Hezbollah and the Saudi government are continuing through the Saudi embassy in Beirut, the diplomat said. ap
Taliban Challenge in NWFP
New Frontier police chief faces Taliban challenge
By Iqbal Khattak
Daily Times, January 4, 2006
PESHAWAR: The new police chief of NWFP, Sharif Virk, will face a difficult time trying to stop the Taliban extending their influence over districts in the province and abolish the notorious ‘thana culture’, observers say.
Mr Virk takes charge as local Taliban have extended their sway to Darra Adam Khel, a tribal town just 30 miles from Peshawar. A Daily Times investigation based on interviews with officials dealing with tribal areas and tribal elders in several regions reveals that the frontier regions of Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Kohat have also been “taken over” by the Taliban.
“Because of the takeover of frontier regions, the Taliban influence extends to settled areas of Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Kohat districts and there the police have failed on many counts,” said a police official who served in one of the affected districts, wishing not to be named.
Administratively, the frontier regions are regarded as “soft targets” for the Taliban since neither the police nor paramilitary force are deployed there in normal peacetime.
The Taliban are performing the police job particularly in Tank city, close to the border with South Waziristan, arresting criminals and parading them through the streets in front of the public.
“Such moves by the Taliban serve two purposes. First, they show the people that they can perform better than the police. Second, such a humiliation has a strong psychological effect on the common man,” the police official said.
Darra Adam Khel is particularly important as the town manufactures lots of weapons that can be sent to fighters in Waziristan, and is close to the provincial metropolis.
“They (Taliban) are in control of Darra Adam Khel now and they must be trying to hook themselves up with like-minded people in Peshawar to extend their influence to the provincial metropolis,” said a resident of Darra Adam Khel who is associated with an NGO.
Upon arrival in Darra Adam Khel, the Taliban have terrorised music and video shop owners, non-governmental organisations and girls’ schools with bomb blasts.
Official reports suggest the Taliban in Darra Adam Khel have a direct link with the Taliban in North Waziristan, where they are sending young recruits for training, while weapons are being supplied to militants in North Waziristan from Darra Adam Khel. Some time ago, the military seized weapons near Kohat that it said were being transported to militants in North Waziristan from Darra Adam Khel.
In the north of the province, the situation does not look good as jihadis are spreading across Malakand region and moving up to Hindukush Mountains in Chitral district.
Officials blamed the growing influence of the Taliban beyond North and South Waziristan on the police failure to stop the “Talibanisation” of settled areas.
‘Thana culture’, a reference to police misbehaviour with citizens in police stations, means people don’t trust the police, and this, coupled with the near-collapse of the justice delivery system, will play into the hands of the Taliban, warned a retired police official.
“Where law and order and justice vanish there the Taliban emerge and the public response is positive because the people want protection irrespective of who provides it,” he added. Mr Virk must fight on the two fronts– the Taliban and the thana culture – simultaneously. Observers say the new police chief is knowledgeable about the area and all that remains to be seen is his determination to take on the two major problems the Frontier province is faced with.
By Iqbal Khattak
Daily Times, January 4, 2006
PESHAWAR: The new police chief of NWFP, Sharif Virk, will face a difficult time trying to stop the Taliban extending their influence over districts in the province and abolish the notorious ‘thana culture’, observers say.
Mr Virk takes charge as local Taliban have extended their sway to Darra Adam Khel, a tribal town just 30 miles from Peshawar. A Daily Times investigation based on interviews with officials dealing with tribal areas and tribal elders in several regions reveals that the frontier regions of Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Kohat have also been “taken over” by the Taliban.
“Because of the takeover of frontier regions, the Taliban influence extends to settled areas of Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Kohat districts and there the police have failed on many counts,” said a police official who served in one of the affected districts, wishing not to be named.
Administratively, the frontier regions are regarded as “soft targets” for the Taliban since neither the police nor paramilitary force are deployed there in normal peacetime.
The Taliban are performing the police job particularly in Tank city, close to the border with South Waziristan, arresting criminals and parading them through the streets in front of the public.
“Such moves by the Taliban serve two purposes. First, they show the people that they can perform better than the police. Second, such a humiliation has a strong psychological effect on the common man,” the police official said.
Darra Adam Khel is particularly important as the town manufactures lots of weapons that can be sent to fighters in Waziristan, and is close to the provincial metropolis.
“They (Taliban) are in control of Darra Adam Khel now and they must be trying to hook themselves up with like-minded people in Peshawar to extend their influence to the provincial metropolis,” said a resident of Darra Adam Khel who is associated with an NGO.
Upon arrival in Darra Adam Khel, the Taliban have terrorised music and video shop owners, non-governmental organisations and girls’ schools with bomb blasts.
Official reports suggest the Taliban in Darra Adam Khel have a direct link with the Taliban in North Waziristan, where they are sending young recruits for training, while weapons are being supplied to militants in North Waziristan from Darra Adam Khel. Some time ago, the military seized weapons near Kohat that it said were being transported to militants in North Waziristan from Darra Adam Khel.
In the north of the province, the situation does not look good as jihadis are spreading across Malakand region and moving up to Hindukush Mountains in Chitral district.
Officials blamed the growing influence of the Taliban beyond North and South Waziristan on the police failure to stop the “Talibanisation” of settled areas.
‘Thana culture’, a reference to police misbehaviour with citizens in police stations, means people don’t trust the police, and this, coupled with the near-collapse of the justice delivery system, will play into the hands of the Taliban, warned a retired police official.
“Where law and order and justice vanish there the Taliban emerge and the public response is positive because the people want protection irrespective of who provides it,” he added. Mr Virk must fight on the two fronts– the Taliban and the thana culture – simultaneously. Observers say the new police chief is knowledgeable about the area and all that remains to be seen is his determination to take on the two major problems the Frontier province is faced with.
150th anniversary of 1857 "Sepoy Mutiny"
HUM HINDUSTANI: BJP, Ayodhya and 1857 —J Sri Raman
Daily Times, January 5, 2006
Thanks to the futurists in the media, we, the television-watching and newspaper-reading public of India, know what to expect in 2007. We know, for example, that, in the world of films, it will be a riveting year of remakes and, in fashion, one of over-long necklaces. None of the curtain-raisers and crystal-gazers, however, has talked of the coming year as one that will mark a major historical memory for the country.
The year will witness the 150th anniversary of what colonial chroniclers called the Sepoy Mutiny and the subcontinent’s historians prefer to consider the First War of Independence. There are special reasons for us all now to recall 1857 — and for some of us to deny its striking relevance to important issues of today.
A notable feature of the First War of Independence was that the rebels of all classes and all religious communities consciously adopted the last of the Mughals as their common leader, as their counter to the colonial rulers. By proclaiming Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’, the poet-king, as Shahenshah-e-Hind, the Emperor of India, on May 11, 1857, they proclaimed an anti-colonial Hindu-Muslim unity that horrified the British.
Clearly, any serious commemoration of the event runs counter to the campaign and designs of those pursuing politics of communal mobilisation. Memories of 1857 cannot be welcome to those who have consciously adopted the first of the Mughals as a common hate object for their constituency and who presided over Babri Masjid’s demolition in 1992.
Discussing the meaning of that crowning moment of 1857 a century later, Marxian PC Joshi wrote: “It was a stroke of instinctive genius on the part of the insurgent sepoys of Meerut when they crossed the Jamuna and liberated...the...capital of our ancient country and crowned the disinherited heir of Akbar, Bahadur Shah....The revolutionary significance of this event was universally accepted and has been characterised by Charles Ball in the following words: ‘The Meerut sepoys in a moment found a leader, a flag and a cause’.”
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its far-right ‘family’ (‘parivar’), too, thought of the Ayodhya movement, culminating in the demolition, as a stroke of genius. The party and the ‘parivar’ were supposed to have found a promising leader and a politically profitable cause. History, however, did not repeat itself even as a farce this time.
The party did make impressive gains in the next general election, but the utility of the issue proved to be one of diminishing returns. As for the leader thrown up by the movement, Lal Krishna Advani had to yield place to Atal Bihari Vajpayee once the party needed to share power with Ayodhya-unfriendly allies. Ayodhya then became a cross for Advani to carry.
All it did for him was to defeat his attempt to acquire a Vajpayee-like visage of ‘moderation’ after a visit to Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s mausoleum in Pakistan. Lying low for a while, after losing the party president’s post to once far less fancied Rajnath Singh, Advani recently announced a higher political ambition. Talking to a TV channel, he argued that, under India’s Westminster-model democracy, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lower House of Parliament (like him) was the prime ministerial candidate, and not the president of the main opposition party, if it is returned to power.
This pointed to an inner-party struggle, and Ayodhya was bound to figure in any factional bout in the BJP.
On the eve of the landmark anniversary of 1857 as well as of Assembly elections in India’s most populous State of Uttar Pradesh, the party has raised Ayodha again. It has done so in tones of belligerence abandoned ever since the BJP put it on ‘the back burner’ to keep a Vajpayee-headed coalition in power. At a meeting in December of the party’s national executive in Lucknow, Rajnath Singh donned Advani’s discarded mantle and violated the city’s famed decorum to dare political opponents to rebuild what the most rabid members of the ‘parivar’ have described as a demolished ‘edifice of secularism’.
Singh’s lieutenants, including former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh whose administration looked discreetly away as the demolition squad danced on the mosque’s dome, carried the campaign further. They projected the demolition as a kind of pre-emptive strike against a dangerous Islamic terrorism. Those who waited for wise disapproval of such wild talk from the ‘moderate’ Vajpayee — which usually comes after a lapse of days to let the communal damage be done — are still waiting.
Will 1857 prevail over 1992? The people of India will, hopefully, provide a positive answer in 2007.
The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled ‘At Gunpoint’
Daily Times, January 5, 2006
Thanks to the futurists in the media, we, the television-watching and newspaper-reading public of India, know what to expect in 2007. We know, for example, that, in the world of films, it will be a riveting year of remakes and, in fashion, one of over-long necklaces. None of the curtain-raisers and crystal-gazers, however, has talked of the coming year as one that will mark a major historical memory for the country.
The year will witness the 150th anniversary of what colonial chroniclers called the Sepoy Mutiny and the subcontinent’s historians prefer to consider the First War of Independence. There are special reasons for us all now to recall 1857 — and for some of us to deny its striking relevance to important issues of today.
A notable feature of the First War of Independence was that the rebels of all classes and all religious communities consciously adopted the last of the Mughals as their common leader, as their counter to the colonial rulers. By proclaiming Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’, the poet-king, as Shahenshah-e-Hind, the Emperor of India, on May 11, 1857, they proclaimed an anti-colonial Hindu-Muslim unity that horrified the British.
Clearly, any serious commemoration of the event runs counter to the campaign and designs of those pursuing politics of communal mobilisation. Memories of 1857 cannot be welcome to those who have consciously adopted the first of the Mughals as a common hate object for their constituency and who presided over Babri Masjid’s demolition in 1992.
Discussing the meaning of that crowning moment of 1857 a century later, Marxian PC Joshi wrote: “It was a stroke of instinctive genius on the part of the insurgent sepoys of Meerut when they crossed the Jamuna and liberated...the...capital of our ancient country and crowned the disinherited heir of Akbar, Bahadur Shah....The revolutionary significance of this event was universally accepted and has been characterised by Charles Ball in the following words: ‘The Meerut sepoys in a moment found a leader, a flag and a cause’.”
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its far-right ‘family’ (‘parivar’), too, thought of the Ayodhya movement, culminating in the demolition, as a stroke of genius. The party and the ‘parivar’ were supposed to have found a promising leader and a politically profitable cause. History, however, did not repeat itself even as a farce this time.
The party did make impressive gains in the next general election, but the utility of the issue proved to be one of diminishing returns. As for the leader thrown up by the movement, Lal Krishna Advani had to yield place to Atal Bihari Vajpayee once the party needed to share power with Ayodhya-unfriendly allies. Ayodhya then became a cross for Advani to carry.
All it did for him was to defeat his attempt to acquire a Vajpayee-like visage of ‘moderation’ after a visit to Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s mausoleum in Pakistan. Lying low for a while, after losing the party president’s post to once far less fancied Rajnath Singh, Advani recently announced a higher political ambition. Talking to a TV channel, he argued that, under India’s Westminster-model democracy, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lower House of Parliament (like him) was the prime ministerial candidate, and not the president of the main opposition party, if it is returned to power.
This pointed to an inner-party struggle, and Ayodhya was bound to figure in any factional bout in the BJP.
On the eve of the landmark anniversary of 1857 as well as of Assembly elections in India’s most populous State of Uttar Pradesh, the party has raised Ayodha again. It has done so in tones of belligerence abandoned ever since the BJP put it on ‘the back burner’ to keep a Vajpayee-headed coalition in power. At a meeting in December of the party’s national executive in Lucknow, Rajnath Singh donned Advani’s discarded mantle and violated the city’s famed decorum to dare political opponents to rebuild what the most rabid members of the ‘parivar’ have described as a demolished ‘edifice of secularism’.
Singh’s lieutenants, including former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh whose administration looked discreetly away as the demolition squad danced on the mosque’s dome, carried the campaign further. They projected the demolition as a kind of pre-emptive strike against a dangerous Islamic terrorism. Those who waited for wise disapproval of such wild talk from the ‘moderate’ Vajpayee — which usually comes after a lapse of days to let the communal damage be done — are still waiting.
Will 1857 prevail over 1992? The people of India will, hopefully, provide a positive answer in 2007.
The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled ‘At Gunpoint’
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
The Consequences of Killing Saddam: A different perspective
The Consequences of Killing Saddam
by ROBERT DREYFUSS
The Nation, December 31, 2006
Since the US invasion of Iraq, by one widely reported estimate, as many as 655,000 Iraqis have been killed, in air strikes, by bombs, in death-squad executions and generalized civil strife. Now, add one by hanging: the kangaroo-court trial and execution of Saddam Hussein. In life, even in prison, he inspired many loyalists to fight for his legacy; but his death is certain to spark even fiercer violence, not just from his remaining lieutenants and senior Baath party officials but throughout the broader Sunni Arab community in Iraq. It pushes any hope of Sunni-Shiite reconciliation farther away, inflames passions on both sides and solidifies the image of the United States in Iraq as a bloodthirsty occupier.
Convicted of war crimes by a puppet Iraqi regime that dispensed with niceties such as evidence and rebuttal, Saddam Hussein was blamed by his fiercest critics--such as Kanan Makiya, author of Republic of Fear, and others with strong motive to inflate the scale of Saddam's crimes--of killing 300,000 Iraqis during his thirty-five-year rule (1968-2003). In less than four years, George W. Bush has more than doubled that, with no end in sight. As war criminals go, Bush wins hands down.
The 655,000 US victims in Iraq do not include the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, who died during a twelve-year era of US-imposed sanctions on Iraq from 1991 to 2003, but those deaths, at least, were obscured by a fig leaf of legality, since the sanctions had been approved by the UN Security Council. Bush's Iraq War had no such cover: It was deemed "illegal" by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general.
In a statement written in advance of Saddam's hanging, Bush warned that his death "will not end the violence in Iraq"--truer words have not been spoken. No longer Iraq's ruler, since his capture Saddam had become a symbol of the power struggle between the Shiite Arab religious parties that have come to rule parts of Baghdad and southern Iraq and the growing, Sunni-led resistance army that controls most of several provinces to the north and west of the capital, along with significant swaths of western Baghdad.
His death will, of course, inspire the religious Shiites into intensifying their jihad, cementing their belief in the righteousness of their cause. Far more important, however, it will spark a burning desire for revenge among the Sunni Arabs, and not just among Baath party veterans. The commanders and organizers of the insurgency are primarily drawn from those veterans and from the former Iraqi army officer corps, who were mostly Sunni. But their base is among the tribes and clans of western, Sunni Iraq--and since the US invasion, the sons of those tribes have been increasingly enlisting in the resistance army, often to the dismay of some of the more conservative tribal elders.
An overwhelming majority of the Sunni Arab population of Iraq now supports the resistance, and its intensity is likely to grow significantly in the wake of Saddam's death. Earlier this year, 300 Sunni tribal leaders met in Anbar to issue a demand that Saddam Hussein be released from prison, just one indication that support for the former president of Iraq was widespread. "The execution of Saddam means that the flame of vengeance will be ignited and it will hurt the body of Iraq with unrecoverable wound," a Sunni tribal leader told the New York Times.
Indeed, despite the talk of a surge of US forces to pacify the Iraqi capital, the fiercest fighting in Iraq is north and west of Baghdad, in the heart of Sunni Iraq. On December 24, the US military command announced the deaths of three more Marines and two more soldiers there, bringing the total for December to 108 Americans dead and making the month the bloodiest of 2006. At least a year ago, the US military determined that the war in Sunni Iraq was lost militarily, and that it could only be resolved through a political deal between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Now, the United States faces a stark choice: Either abandon Anbar altogether, or face a years-long counterinsurgency campaign there that will mean Fallujah-style, house-to-house fighting in dozens of cities and towns.
A political accord for national reconciliation, always an iffy proposition, is now even more difficult to achieve, in the wake of Saddam's execution. The Shiite religious bloc, were it not intent on an all-out victory that humiliates the Sunni community, might have held out a life sentence for Saddam as part of a deal that included amnesty for insurgents, the cancellation of the draconian de-Baathification laws, the reconstitution of the army and a power-sharing formula that includes Iraq's oil wealth. Now that bargaining chip--and it is a major one--is lost.
And something else is lost. Since his capture in 2003, Saddam has been interrogated by US officials, including CIA officers. According to sources close to the resistance, US officials--including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld--met with Saddam Hussein earlier this year, to ask if he would cooperate in some way to urge the resistance to lay down its arms. (He refused.) But whatever transpired between US officials and Saddam since he was captured, none of it is public. Not a single journalist interviewed Saddam. As far as we know, he wrote no memoir in prison. The countless secrets that he had, about thirty-five years of his leadership, he has taken to the grave. Decades of history have been lost, irrecoverably. Perhaps one of the reasons for the hurried rush to the gallows, even before a series of other staged, show trials could be arranged, was to make guarantee that Saddam's secrets never see the light of day.
Sectarianism in Pakistan: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi & Co.
EDITORIAL: Dangerous phase of sectarianism
Daily Times, January 4, 2007
According to our security agencies, three incidents of terrorism in Karachi in 2006 — the blast at the US Consulate, the Nishtar Park massacre and the murder of Allama Hasan Turabi — were all carried out by the sectarian militia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and were planned in South Waziristan under the tutelage of Al Qaeda. The new combination is Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Wana and Al Qaeda. One can also say that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is the blanket term now used for all manner of jihad in which all the Deobandi-Ahle Hadith militants have made common cause.
We also know that all three incidents were staged through the device of suicide-bombings. This is clearly the Arab signature in the violence spreading in Pakistan. The same signature was appended to the attempts made on the lives of President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz earlier. Therefore one of the lessons that those who object to the hanging of Saddam Hussein on the day of Hajj should remember is that sectarianism is blind to such considerations: the Nishtar Park massacre in which scores of Barelvi leaders died took place on Eid Miladun Nabi!
All three incidents have been traced to Wana by the investigators: one ostensibly committed for Al Qaeda and two for the local sectarians. The bombing jacket of the boy who killed Allama Turabi was made in Darra Adam Khel at the behest of Al Qaeda, now spearheaded by Abdullah Mehsud who was released by the Americans from Guantanamo Bay in 2003. He returned to Pakistan and took his first revenge for the death of his mentor Mufti Jamil at the Banuri Mosque by abducting two Chinese engineers in the Tribal Areas, one of whom was killed during the rescue operation.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has finally moved to centre stage. Past news of its demise after the capture of Akram Lahori were, it seems, highly exaggerated. In fact now the entire conglomerate of jihadi militias has accepted a common sectarian banner, and this has come in the wake of Al Qaeda’s own transformation from an intellectually fashioned anti-American organisation into an intra-Islamic exterminator of the Shia. This has been done through the mental somersault of equating the Shia — the government in Iraq plus, strangely, Iran — as allies of the United States!
To understand what is going on we have to go back to the late 1980s when Al Qaeda was formed in Peshawar in the midst of a gathering sectarian storm in Pakistan. Because this wave was orchestrated by Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda tried to keep away from it. But later, starting with the return of Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda elements to Jalalabad from Sudan after 1996, Al Qaeda had to accept a kind of coexistence with the sectarian militias which were taking training in its camps. That is why whenever Pakistan demanded the return of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi killers from the ‘friendly’ Taliban government, a deaf ear was turned to it, and the Lashkar terrorists continued to live in Al Qaeda camps outside Kabul.
There were times when Al Qaeda was actually helped by Iran, especially during the tenure of Abu Musab Zarqawi as head of a training camp in Herat from where he infiltrated into Kurdistan through Iranian territory. After 2003, however, there was a cleavage of opinion inside Al Qaeda. Mr Zarqawi spearheaded the new trend of viewing the Shia of Iraq — and Iran itself — as the beneficiaries of the American invasion. At first Mr Al Zawahiri resisted this trend and Al Qaeda officially advised him in Iraq to stay away from Shia-killing, but later the prospect of a grand Sunni Arab consensus against Iran became irresistible and Mr Zarqawi was hailed as a martyr when he finally died in Iraq.
Now Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is supposed to have planned a fresh targeting of the Shia community in the cities where they are found in large numbers: Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Multan, Khanewal, Layya, Bhakkar, Jhang, Sargodha, Rahimyar Khan, Karachi, Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Kohat, Parachinar, Hangu, Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Mirpur Khas and Quetta. This is certainly a new challenge for the government in charge of facing up to sectarian violence in the country. Both the mainstream parties — the PPPP and the PMLN — faced it when they were in government but failed because of the exclusive handling of jihad by the intelligence agencies. Today all parties must stand united to reject what is coming.
Above all, it is the MMA which has to look deep into its conscience and separate the biggest curse of religion, sectarianism, from the Taliban-style governance it supports. The alliance has lost many of its leaders to this curse without taking any effective action against some of its own members. It must not exploit the new situation by pinning the blame on the current government alone. If the opposition takes some sneaking pleasure in the rise of sectarianism in Pakistan as an instrumentality of removal of government, it will live to regret it. Pakistan is a large Muslim state with Shias that outnumber the Shias of Iraq. Its population has never been sectarian but is now gradually succumbing to the fear of violence.
All politicians must come together to save the next generation of Pakistanis from the new orientation spreading in the Muslim world. Already, in some of the cities — like Gilgit, Parachinar, Bannu, etc — a kind of sectarian war among the people seems to have started. It must not spread further. So far the venting of anger has been targeted and not general. But the very foundation of a state founded by a Shia leader — the Quaid — is now at risk. Once they throw down roots these budding ethnic and sectarian conflicts never go away. And the states that allow them to become embedded are then faced by their own annihilation. We must learn this lesson before such a fate befalls us. *
Daily Times, January 4, 2007
According to our security agencies, three incidents of terrorism in Karachi in 2006 — the blast at the US Consulate, the Nishtar Park massacre and the murder of Allama Hasan Turabi — were all carried out by the sectarian militia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and were planned in South Waziristan under the tutelage of Al Qaeda. The new combination is Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Wana and Al Qaeda. One can also say that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is the blanket term now used for all manner of jihad in which all the Deobandi-Ahle Hadith militants have made common cause.
We also know that all three incidents were staged through the device of suicide-bombings. This is clearly the Arab signature in the violence spreading in Pakistan. The same signature was appended to the attempts made on the lives of President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz earlier. Therefore one of the lessons that those who object to the hanging of Saddam Hussein on the day of Hajj should remember is that sectarianism is blind to such considerations: the Nishtar Park massacre in which scores of Barelvi leaders died took place on Eid Miladun Nabi!
All three incidents have been traced to Wana by the investigators: one ostensibly committed for Al Qaeda and two for the local sectarians. The bombing jacket of the boy who killed Allama Turabi was made in Darra Adam Khel at the behest of Al Qaeda, now spearheaded by Abdullah Mehsud who was released by the Americans from Guantanamo Bay in 2003. He returned to Pakistan and took his first revenge for the death of his mentor Mufti Jamil at the Banuri Mosque by abducting two Chinese engineers in the Tribal Areas, one of whom was killed during the rescue operation.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has finally moved to centre stage. Past news of its demise after the capture of Akram Lahori were, it seems, highly exaggerated. In fact now the entire conglomerate of jihadi militias has accepted a common sectarian banner, and this has come in the wake of Al Qaeda’s own transformation from an intellectually fashioned anti-American organisation into an intra-Islamic exterminator of the Shia. This has been done through the mental somersault of equating the Shia — the government in Iraq plus, strangely, Iran — as allies of the United States!
To understand what is going on we have to go back to the late 1980s when Al Qaeda was formed in Peshawar in the midst of a gathering sectarian storm in Pakistan. Because this wave was orchestrated by Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda tried to keep away from it. But later, starting with the return of Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda elements to Jalalabad from Sudan after 1996, Al Qaeda had to accept a kind of coexistence with the sectarian militias which were taking training in its camps. That is why whenever Pakistan demanded the return of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi killers from the ‘friendly’ Taliban government, a deaf ear was turned to it, and the Lashkar terrorists continued to live in Al Qaeda camps outside Kabul.
There were times when Al Qaeda was actually helped by Iran, especially during the tenure of Abu Musab Zarqawi as head of a training camp in Herat from where he infiltrated into Kurdistan through Iranian territory. After 2003, however, there was a cleavage of opinion inside Al Qaeda. Mr Zarqawi spearheaded the new trend of viewing the Shia of Iraq — and Iran itself — as the beneficiaries of the American invasion. At first Mr Al Zawahiri resisted this trend and Al Qaeda officially advised him in Iraq to stay away from Shia-killing, but later the prospect of a grand Sunni Arab consensus against Iran became irresistible and Mr Zarqawi was hailed as a martyr when he finally died in Iraq.
Now Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is supposed to have planned a fresh targeting of the Shia community in the cities where they are found in large numbers: Lahore, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Multan, Khanewal, Layya, Bhakkar, Jhang, Sargodha, Rahimyar Khan, Karachi, Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Kohat, Parachinar, Hangu, Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Mirpur Khas and Quetta. This is certainly a new challenge for the government in charge of facing up to sectarian violence in the country. Both the mainstream parties — the PPPP and the PMLN — faced it when they were in government but failed because of the exclusive handling of jihad by the intelligence agencies. Today all parties must stand united to reject what is coming.
Above all, it is the MMA which has to look deep into its conscience and separate the biggest curse of religion, sectarianism, from the Taliban-style governance it supports. The alliance has lost many of its leaders to this curse without taking any effective action against some of its own members. It must not exploit the new situation by pinning the blame on the current government alone. If the opposition takes some sneaking pleasure in the rise of sectarianism in Pakistan as an instrumentality of removal of government, it will live to regret it. Pakistan is a large Muslim state with Shias that outnumber the Shias of Iraq. Its population has never been sectarian but is now gradually succumbing to the fear of violence.
All politicians must come together to save the next generation of Pakistanis from the new orientation spreading in the Muslim world. Already, in some of the cities — like Gilgit, Parachinar, Bannu, etc — a kind of sectarian war among the people seems to have started. It must not spread further. So far the venting of anger has been targeted and not general. But the very foundation of a state founded by a Shia leader — the Quaid — is now at risk. Once they throw down roots these budding ethnic and sectarian conflicts never go away. And the states that allow them to become embedded are then faced by their own annihilation. We must learn this lesson before such a fate befalls us. *
"stan"...
Zia hailed as language pioneer
Daily Times, January 4, 2007
WASHINGTON: It was Gen Zia-ul-Haq who made the first recorded mention of the suffix “stan” that is now attached to many nouns, according to William Safire, who writes a column on the English language in the New York Times. That 1982 citation of the suffix – “stans” in the form of a noun - rooted in the Persian for “home of” - was dug up by Paul McFedries of worspy.com. Safire notes that “Zia picked up the suffix used by critics of South Africa’s proposed black African homelands in 1949”, which had been nicknamed Bantustans. He says the pejorative use of the suffix was then used to describe Muslim areas. Time magazine, in 2001, noted French anti-terror officials had re-named UK capital “Londonistan”, as many Qaeda men were using London as a base between visits to Afghan camps. khalid hasan
Daily Times, January 4, 2007
WASHINGTON: It was Gen Zia-ul-Haq who made the first recorded mention of the suffix “stan” that is now attached to many nouns, according to William Safire, who writes a column on the English language in the New York Times. That 1982 citation of the suffix – “stans” in the form of a noun - rooted in the Persian for “home of” - was dug up by Paul McFedries of worspy.com. Safire notes that “Zia picked up the suffix used by critics of South Africa’s proposed black African homelands in 1949”, which had been nicknamed Bantustans. He says the pejorative use of the suffix was then used to describe Muslim areas. Time magazine, in 2001, noted French anti-terror officials had re-named UK capital “Londonistan”, as many Qaeda men were using London as a base between visits to Afghan camps. khalid hasan
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Understanding the Rise of Shiites in Middle East
Time, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006
Behind the Rise of the Shi'itesTo understand current issues in the Mideast landscape, Washington must first understand the influence of Shi'ite forces across the region
By VALI NASR
The most significant challenge facing the U.S. in an increasingly unstable Middle East, today, is understanding the rise of the Shi'ites across the region. The U.S. invasion of Iraq unleashed a process of Shi'ite empowerment that won't be confined to that country: From Lebanon to the Persian Gulf, through peaceful elections and bloody conflicts, the Shi'ites are making their presence felt. The headlines of 2006 have been dominated by the likes of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army as sectarian warfare surged in Iraq; by Hizballah, emboldened by its summer war with Israel to challenge Lebanon's fragile political order; and by Iran's defiance of international demands over its nuclear program.
When the U.S. destroyed the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, parties based in the Shi'ite majority — brutally suppressed for decades — were quick to stake their claim to the shape country's future. They embraced the American promise of democracy and, ordered to vote by their most respected spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, they turned out in their millions at the polling booths to elect the Arab-world's first Shi'ite government. And that inspired Shi'ites across the region to clamor for more rights and influence, challenging centuries-old arrangements that had kept them on the margins.
There has always been a political dimension to the Sunni-Shi'ite split, which originated in a seventh century dispute over who would succeed the Prophet Muhammad as the leader of Islam's faithful. Over time, the two sects developed their own distinct conception of Islamic teachings and practice, much as Catholicism and Protestantism did in the centuries following their split. Shiites are a minority of 10-15% of the global Muslim community, but in the geographic arc that runs from Lebanon to Pakistan, they are around half of the Muslim population — some 150 million people in all. They account for about 90% of Iranians, 65% of Iraqis, and 40-45% of Lebanese, as well as a sizable portion of the people living in the Persian Gulf region.
The change in Shi'ite fortunes has been resisted by Sunnis, nowhere more violently than Iraq, where the insurgency that continues to rage unchecked is as anti-American as it is aimed at intimidating Shi'ites who were perceived as U.S. collaborators. For two years Shi'ites showed remarkable restraint in the face of repeated provocations in the form of bloody terror attacks by Sunni insurgents, but the ferocity of those attacks eventually took its toll. And the Shi'ites did not take kindly to the U.S. strategy of wooing reluctant Sunni politicians to join the political process, which they took as a sign of weakening U.S. resolve. Their anxiety turned into anger in February 2006 when a massive bomb destroyed the Golden Mosque in Samarrah, one of the holiest Shia shrines. Despite calls for restraint, sectarian militias seeking vengeance stepped into the breach, promising protection to a community rapidly losing its trust in the political process and the U.S. And the character of the war began to change as the U.S. military found itself on the same side as Shi'ite militias in the fight against the Sunni insurgency, but increasingly at odds with those militias as it tried to stop sectarian violence.
Washington pressed Shia leaders to reign in their militias but to no avail. They saw the Sunni insurgency as the source of the violence and insisted the U.S. focus on disarming it. Tensions increased as growing numbers of Shi'ites dismissed U.S. appeasement of Sunnis as a failure: The insurgency was stronger a year after Sunnis joined the political process at the end of 2005.
The sectarian conflict in Iraq has implications for the whole Middle East. Long before Americans recognized sectarianism as a problem it was already shaping attitudes beyond Iraq's borders. Not long after Saddam fell from power, King Abdullah of Jordan warned of an emerging Shi'ites crescent stretching from Beirut to Tehran — emerging Shi'ites power and Sunni reaction to it was on everyone's mind in the region.
King Abdullah's fear appeared to be confirmed by the month-long war in Lebanon in summer of 2006. The war turned Hizballah and Iran into regional power brokers, and brought jubilant Shi'ites into the streets in Iraq, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Traditional Sunni powers such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt found themselves pushed to the sidelines, unable to influence events. Even al-Qaeda was caught off-guard as it watched Hizballah steal some of its thunder. The reaction of Sunni rulers and radicals was swift: They denounced Hizballah's campaign as an Iranian-sponsored Shia power grab. And even though the war popularized Hizballah on the Sunni Arab street, it did not close the sectarian divide — particularly as sectarian tensions soared in Lebanon after Israel's bombing ceased.
The Lebanon war showed that Iraq has rewritten the rules in the Middle East, adding sectarian loyalties to the equation. But Lebanon — particularly the U.S. refusal to push for an early cease-fire as Shi'ite communities were pummeled — also cost the U.S. much of the goodwill it had gained among Shi'ites following the Iraq war.
For Washington, developments in Lebanon and Iraq now form part of the larger challenge of dealing with Iran. Iran sees itself as a great power, and it is pursuing the nuclear capability that would confirm this self-image. Since 2003, it has shown a more confident but also radical face. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's goal of positioning Iran as the leader of the entire Muslim world requires focusing on hostility to Israel and the West that tend to unite Arabs and Iranians, Sunni and Shia, even as it seeks to marginalize traditional Sunni allies of the West. This is the logic behind increasing tensions with the West on the nuclear issue, and through virulent attacks on Israel. Iran's growing challenge has alarmed not only the U.S. and Israel, but also the Sunni Arab governments threatened by Tehran's challenge to their standing at home and regionally. The prospect of Tehran dictating security and oil policy, and most worrisome, intervening on behalf of local Shi'ite populations, has Sunni rulers across the region pressing Washington to confront Iran.
The U.S. sees Iran through the prism of the impasse over its nuclear program, but its importance extends to U.S. concerns ranging from Iraq and Afghanistan to the Arab-Israeli conflict and oil prices. In toppling the Taliban and Saddam, Washington eliminated two of Iran's key regional enemies, and gave it an opportunity to spread its influence. Although the U.S. view Iranian support for Iraq's Shi'ite parties and militias as destabilizing, it can do little to stop it. And last summer's war between Israel and Hizballah showed the reach of Tehran's influence. Iran supported Hizballah and supplied it with sophisticated weaponry, and not surprisingly basked in the glory of its perceived victory to overshadow the Sunni regimes that had condemned the Shi'ite movement. Iran's shadow continues to loom large over Lebanon as Hizballah tightens its grip on Lebanon and the specter of civil war looms large again.
What Iran sowed in Lebanon, it expects to reap in Iraq. Washington is debating the merits of talking to Iran about Iraq at a time when Tehran has hinted that it holds most of the cards. Before the Iraq Study Group argued the case for engaging Iran, Tehran held its own security summit on Iraq, suggesting that it does not need an American invitation to become involved in Iraq, and that if the United States wants to deal with Iran — not only over Iraq but also Lebanon, Palestinian issue, or Afghanistan — it will have to accept Tehran's terms.
The U.S. faces an increasingly fractious Middle East, in the grip of old and new conflicts, each with its own issues and tempo, but all connected to the broader Shi'ite revival that began in Iraq. To get the Middle East right, Washington must contend with this new force and understand how it is shaping the region.
Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved
Resolution of the Kashmir Conflict from MMA's Perspective: Political rhetoric or Voice of the people?
U-turns on Kashmir
By Qazi Hussain Ahmad
The News, January 1, 2007
Kashmir is the disputed territory between Pakistan and India, which has to be resolved through a referendum by the Kashmiri people under UN resolutions. It was India that took this issue for the UN mediation after the Kashmiri people rejected Delhi’s military occupation of the state and rose in rebellion against it. Indian leadership agreed to implement UN resolutions calling for referendum in the state to ensure the right of self-determination for the Kashmiri people, allowing them the option to either annex with Islamabad or Delhi.
There was no third option in the UN resolutions since it was against the spirit of the division of the Indian sub-continent to allow nearly 550 states in the un-divided India an option to stay independent. If all of them or a majority would opt for independence it could push the entire region into anarchy and chaos. Therefore, all the states were asked to annex either with Pakistan or India, considering the will of their people and their geographical situation.
Looked from any perspective, Kashmir is a natural part of Pakistan. All of its valleys have natural access from the Pakistani side, all of its rivers flow towards Pakistan, while all of the natural access routes pass through Pakistan. Above all, over 90 per cent of its population is Muslim and it must be kept in mind that the overwhelming Muslim majority was already in a state of liberation against the Hindu maharaja before the partition of the sub-continent.
In clear denial of the fundamental rights to Kashmiri Muslims, Delhi occupied the state by sending its military and forced an annexation through the minority Hindu administration. However, the UN Security Council disallowed this annexation and called for a plebiscite, which India has been denying since then despite admitting before the UNSC that Kashmir was a disputed territory that should be resolved by a plebiscite. Later, India began claiming Kashmir as its integral part, and staged elections in its occupied valley and declared it a manifestation of the Kashmiri people’s nod to the maharaja’s annexation with Delhi.
However, the UNSC rejected the elections, holding that it could never substitute the plebiscite and that Kashmir could only be solved through a plebiscite. The UN resolutions form the basis of the Kashmir dispute and acknowledged Pakistan a party to it. That is why there is every right for Kashmiris to wage freedom struggle against the illegal occupation of Delhi, which is adamantly declaring it as her integral part, and Islamabad is bound morally, politically and diplomatically to support the Kashmiris’ just freedom movement since it conforms to UN resolutions.
But unfortunately, the present regime in Islamabad has not only shirked itself from discharging the duty to support the Kashmiris’ freedom struggle but also retreating from its historic principled stance. At times Islamabad presents various formulas to divide the valley between India and Pakistan, and at others floats ideas to forego it’s right on Kashmir by stating that it is not an integral part of Pakistan. What is more the government has even dared to ignore the sayings of the father of the nation who declared Kashmir as the lifeline of the country, and the foreign office was made to announce that Islamabad never declared Kashmir as her lifeline nor its annexation has ever been her stance. On the other hand, India never moved an inch from her stance of declaring that the whole of Kashmir state, including Northern Areas, was an her integral part under her constitution.
For decades India has been evading to address the Kashmir issue by taking the same stance whenever it was forced to negotiate with Pakistan under world pressure. At the negotiation table the Indian side insists that the dispute between Islamabad and Delhi was that the whole of the Kashmir state was an integral part of India but Pakistan was occupying some of its territory and negotiations should be held to vacate it. This attitude clearly shows that Delhi is not ready to even display some kind of serious discussion to solve the Kashmir dispute, what to talk of taking practical steps in this regard.
It is most unfortunate that Islamabad’s deviation from its principled stance reflects its weakness and amounts to accept Indian hegemony. The present military rulers have clearly displayed it that they are devoid of the required capabilities to resist unjustified foreign pressure and they have been gradually retreating from protecting the interests of Islam and Pakistan. Their continuous retreat has now put at stake what Quaid-e-Azam had declared as Pakistan’s jugular vein. The colonial powers have been working on an agenda to cut Pakistan away from the Muslim world, and confine her to South Asia to put her under Indian hegemony.
It is under the same perspective that we hear the talk of cutting Pakistan to size, and Washington declares Delhi its strategic partner by signing nuclear cooperation agreements while on the other hand Pakistan’s nuclear programme is being rolled back and the world is terrified by dubbing it as the ‘Islamic bomb.’ Their objective is to make India the regional super power to counter China’s development and influence, and freeing Delhi from any threats from Islamabad is a prerequisite. The efforts to forge a trade and cultural partnership between Pakistan and India are part of the same plan.
The Islamabad’s blind following to this agenda is not only violating her national interests but also alienating Kashmiri people from Pakistan that could seriously jeopardise Pakistan’s security. Overwhelming majority of both Pakistani and Kashmiri people have rejected Islamabad’s strategic retreat from her principled stance, UN resolutions, and moral obligation to back Kashmir’s freedom, that amounts to violating her own vital interests. Slogans like ‘Kashmir baney ga Pakistan’ (Kashmir will become Pakistan) are a common feature on both sides of the LoC, and no power has the right to work against this slogan. The whole Pakistani nation stand behind the Kashmiris’ freedom struggle and pays tributes to leaders like Syed Ali Gilani for their valiant struggle against the Indian occupation and brutal atrocities against unarmed innocent civilians.
Kashmiris should rest assured that the whole Pakistani nation completely backs their freedom from Indian occupation and annexation to Pakistan, and would never allow any power to change the historic and principled national stance under foreign dictation.
The writer heads the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal and is also ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. Email: amir@ji.org.pk
By Qazi Hussain Ahmad
The News, January 1, 2007
Kashmir is the disputed territory between Pakistan and India, which has to be resolved through a referendum by the Kashmiri people under UN resolutions. It was India that took this issue for the UN mediation after the Kashmiri people rejected Delhi’s military occupation of the state and rose in rebellion against it. Indian leadership agreed to implement UN resolutions calling for referendum in the state to ensure the right of self-determination for the Kashmiri people, allowing them the option to either annex with Islamabad or Delhi.
There was no third option in the UN resolutions since it was against the spirit of the division of the Indian sub-continent to allow nearly 550 states in the un-divided India an option to stay independent. If all of them or a majority would opt for independence it could push the entire region into anarchy and chaos. Therefore, all the states were asked to annex either with Pakistan or India, considering the will of their people and their geographical situation.
Looked from any perspective, Kashmir is a natural part of Pakistan. All of its valleys have natural access from the Pakistani side, all of its rivers flow towards Pakistan, while all of the natural access routes pass through Pakistan. Above all, over 90 per cent of its population is Muslim and it must be kept in mind that the overwhelming Muslim majority was already in a state of liberation against the Hindu maharaja before the partition of the sub-continent.
In clear denial of the fundamental rights to Kashmiri Muslims, Delhi occupied the state by sending its military and forced an annexation through the minority Hindu administration. However, the UN Security Council disallowed this annexation and called for a plebiscite, which India has been denying since then despite admitting before the UNSC that Kashmir was a disputed territory that should be resolved by a plebiscite. Later, India began claiming Kashmir as its integral part, and staged elections in its occupied valley and declared it a manifestation of the Kashmiri people’s nod to the maharaja’s annexation with Delhi.
However, the UNSC rejected the elections, holding that it could never substitute the plebiscite and that Kashmir could only be solved through a plebiscite. The UN resolutions form the basis of the Kashmir dispute and acknowledged Pakistan a party to it. That is why there is every right for Kashmiris to wage freedom struggle against the illegal occupation of Delhi, which is adamantly declaring it as her integral part, and Islamabad is bound morally, politically and diplomatically to support the Kashmiris’ just freedom movement since it conforms to UN resolutions.
But unfortunately, the present regime in Islamabad has not only shirked itself from discharging the duty to support the Kashmiris’ freedom struggle but also retreating from its historic principled stance. At times Islamabad presents various formulas to divide the valley between India and Pakistan, and at others floats ideas to forego it’s right on Kashmir by stating that it is not an integral part of Pakistan. What is more the government has even dared to ignore the sayings of the father of the nation who declared Kashmir as the lifeline of the country, and the foreign office was made to announce that Islamabad never declared Kashmir as her lifeline nor its annexation has ever been her stance. On the other hand, India never moved an inch from her stance of declaring that the whole of Kashmir state, including Northern Areas, was an her integral part under her constitution.
For decades India has been evading to address the Kashmir issue by taking the same stance whenever it was forced to negotiate with Pakistan under world pressure. At the negotiation table the Indian side insists that the dispute between Islamabad and Delhi was that the whole of the Kashmir state was an integral part of India but Pakistan was occupying some of its territory and negotiations should be held to vacate it. This attitude clearly shows that Delhi is not ready to even display some kind of serious discussion to solve the Kashmir dispute, what to talk of taking practical steps in this regard.
It is most unfortunate that Islamabad’s deviation from its principled stance reflects its weakness and amounts to accept Indian hegemony. The present military rulers have clearly displayed it that they are devoid of the required capabilities to resist unjustified foreign pressure and they have been gradually retreating from protecting the interests of Islam and Pakistan. Their continuous retreat has now put at stake what Quaid-e-Azam had declared as Pakistan’s jugular vein. The colonial powers have been working on an agenda to cut Pakistan away from the Muslim world, and confine her to South Asia to put her under Indian hegemony.
It is under the same perspective that we hear the talk of cutting Pakistan to size, and Washington declares Delhi its strategic partner by signing nuclear cooperation agreements while on the other hand Pakistan’s nuclear programme is being rolled back and the world is terrified by dubbing it as the ‘Islamic bomb.’ Their objective is to make India the regional super power to counter China’s development and influence, and freeing Delhi from any threats from Islamabad is a prerequisite. The efforts to forge a trade and cultural partnership between Pakistan and India are part of the same plan.
The Islamabad’s blind following to this agenda is not only violating her national interests but also alienating Kashmiri people from Pakistan that could seriously jeopardise Pakistan’s security. Overwhelming majority of both Pakistani and Kashmiri people have rejected Islamabad’s strategic retreat from her principled stance, UN resolutions, and moral obligation to back Kashmir’s freedom, that amounts to violating her own vital interests. Slogans like ‘Kashmir baney ga Pakistan’ (Kashmir will become Pakistan) are a common feature on both sides of the LoC, and no power has the right to work against this slogan. The whole Pakistani nation stand behind the Kashmiris’ freedom struggle and pays tributes to leaders like Syed Ali Gilani for their valiant struggle against the Indian occupation and brutal atrocities against unarmed innocent civilians.
Kashmiris should rest assured that the whole Pakistani nation completely backs their freedom from Indian occupation and annexation to Pakistan, and would never allow any power to change the historic and principled national stance under foreign dictation.
The writer heads the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal and is also ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. Email: amir@ji.org.pk
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