(American Perspective) Time Is Short as U.S. Presses a Reluctant Pakistan

[jeypore]

"the reality is both swat and FATA are lost..."

On the other hand in the rest of Pakistan, it is impossible for the Taliban to take over on the basis of suicide bombings and sabotage alone.

The governance and security measures of FATA and SWAT is completly eliminated, what do you think there strategy was? Why they were bombing massively on government buildings and Police stations? The sign were very clear then and they have accomplished there goals of wahabhizm utopia.

Now take this to current issues at hand, the last suicide bombings are geared toward, no other then security personals. In this successions there will be trend more towards government bodies and security personals. What do you think there goals are Now? It is hard to ponder for regular pakistanies, but the trends are there for the capture of Pakistan, and GoP is doing a horrible job at it.

 

[TruthSeeker]

muse, Sir,

Please explain a little bit what you mean by "islamist enablers". I don't understand the differentiation you are making between the "talibs" and "islamist enablers". I think you are making a distinction between groups that are willing to use violence (the talibs) and others ("islamist enablers"), who have some scholarly religious credentials and agree with the interpretation of Islam that is espoused by the talibs, and who don't want to be seen as condoning the violence, but, nonetheless, don't overtly oppose it either. Is that the distinction you are making?

 

[muse]

Yes sir, that is exactly the distinction I am making - these imagine themselves as "peaceful and moderate", this is their public face - these imagine that their political credentials and skills will allow them to use the talib and negotiate power - The Iranian revolution is lost on these.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

these imagine that their political credentials and skills will allow them to use the talib and negotiate power - The Iranian revolution is lost on these.

How is a US/British/GoA position of negotiating with 'moderate taliban' any different?

 

[white_pawn]

nwmalik,

i agree with you on this matter, because if this matter is not sorted out soon then its going to effect the whole world.

If pakistan falls to taliban, this will raise taliban moral and they will continue with their evil deeds the sooner or later the whole world will be victim of their pathos

 

[muse]

How is a US/British/GoA position of negotiating with 'moderate taliban' any different?

AM

US/British must leave and in their negotiations they are giving the talib a choice to live.

In Pakistan, it is the talib giving pakistan a chance to live so long as it lives under talib terms.


I will bet one united states dollar, that if and when negotiations occur with so called "moderate taliban", it will be the talib who are given the opportunity to live by the US/UK/GoA.

You really don't seem to understand, tomorow when the US and Uk are gone, who is going to save the likes of you and yours from the Talib??

The Talib are our problem, not theirs - they will leave and once ina while should the natives become restless, pay a visit in aircraft that will deposit the good will of the US and UK with precision.

And what about us? we will still be at the mercy of suicide bombers, islamist politicians, etc; You seem so willing to get at what you think are our enemies in US and UK that you are willing to make a deal with the devil to get at them - not all Pakistanis are persuaded that is a sane course.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

US/British must leave and in their negotiations they are giving the talib a choice to live.

In Pakistan, it is the talib giving pakistan a chance to live so long as it lives under talib terms.

Valid point - though my argument was that under the definition of 'islamist enablers' you presented, the above mentioned parties fit in as well.

And what about us? we will still be at the mercy of suicide bombers, islamist politicians, etc; You seem so willing to get at what you think are our enemies in US and UK that you are willing to make a deal with the devil to get at them

And what makes you think that?

 

[belarusian]

pakistan is a leaderless powerless defeated country.

as such you dont have the capacity to negotiate with the taliban or the united states.

this is blindingly obvious.

 

[muse]

More Alarmist Stuff - at least Islamist would have us believe -- everything is OK there's not problem here, everyone back to being comatose

But Pakistanis know better

Between violent and silent jihad
Suroosh Irfani

Lashkar-e Tayyaba’s emergence as perhaps the best organised jihadi outfit committed to violent global jihad on the one hand, and Pakistan’s role as the kingpin in international counter-terrorism on the other, are two sides of the same coin: betrayal of Jinnah’s Pakistan

From a promising developing state in the 1960s, Pakistan’s descent into swamps of terrorism has been phenomenal. Pakistan is grouped with some of the most unstable countries in the world today: Somalia, Niger and Mali, besides Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, even if Pakistan’s dream to be in league with model developing economies has run aground, it is the centrepiece of the United States and Britain’s new counter-terrorism strategies unveiled last month.

Such dubious distinction, however, is not without some irony. A breeder of violent jihadi groups for almost a generation, Pakistan’s fight against terrorism today is more about its own survival than international security.

The question, however, is whether Pakistan has the political will and vision to pull off this fight: the conviction the war it is fighting is her own war, and that the vision underpinning Pakistan’s creation has gone awry — and must be reclaimed.

At the heart of Pakistan’s crisis lies the infusion of radical Islamic conservatism into state and society over the last three decades, ever since General Zia-ul Haq staked Pakistan’s future on the jihadi politics of Afghanistan and Kashmir. At the same time, with the virtual collapse of state education, religious schools linked with jihadi outfits rapidly expanded as breeders of violent jihadi culture. This altered the ethos of public education in Pakistan, and radically transformed the historical nexus of education and politics that underpinned Pakistan’s genesis.

Such linkage of education and politics goes back to 19th century India, when a ‘silent jihad’ for educational reform led by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (d.1898) began transforming the Muslim consciousness. While Sir Syed’s movement founded new schools, colleges, scientific journals and a university, its centrepiece was Madrsatul Ulum Musalmanan, better known as the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College.

Founded at Aligarh in 1875, the college aspired to raise a new generation of Muslims that could fuse religious concerns and modern knowledge with the Muslim struggle for a place in the sun. As historian David Lelyveld notes in Aligarh’s First Generation (Oxford, 1996), Aligarh students had no special advantage over other English-educated Indians, but what made them special was a quest for moral and intellectual regeneration that also implied creative engagement with others.

At the same time, Sir Syed founded the first national network of Indian Muslims, the Muhammadan Educational Conference. The Educational Conference took a political turn in 1906: it founded the Muslim League, the first political party of Muslims in India. The Aligarh spirit and League politics, exemplified by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, spurred the movement leading to Pakistan’s creation in 1947.

In fact, it can be argued that if by the 1960s Pakistan had achieved a modicum of social development and economic stability, this was partly because Jinnah’s ethos (the Aligarh-League nexus) was still alive and kicking. However, as Pakistan staked its future on jihadi politics and abdicated responsibility for public education, the creative nexus of education and politics that spurred the Pakistan movement was turned into an instrument of destruction and regression.

A recent example of this inversion is the systematic destruction of schools in Swat as politics of the Tehreek-e Taliban — “Movement of Students seeking Religious Knowledge”. The destruction of schools/education gave the Taliban control of Swat. If Sir Syed empowered Muslims in India by constructing schools, the Taliban empowered themselves in Swat by destroying them. Conceptually, this marked displacement of the Aligarh-League dynamic by a nexus of violent jihadi culture and jihadi outfits.

However, in mainstream Pakistan, a compelling example of the displacement of Jinnah’s ethos is reflected by the nexus of the Markaz Da’wa Wal Irshad (Centre for Preaching and Guidance) and its armed wing, the Lashkar-e Tayyaba.

Founded in 1987 by Pakistanis who studied in Saudi Arabia, Markaz is a self-contained model town in Muridke, built on 190 acres donated by General Zia’s military regime. The town includes an educational complex, farms, a clothing factory and numerous residential and community facilities for creating “a purely Islamic environment wholly removed from the authority of the Pakistani state”. Funded mainly by Saudi and Pakistani donors from around the world, the network of some 200 Markaz schools teaches “a Wahhabi version of Islam as distinct from popular Pakistani Islam”, where the importance of jihad against Hindus and Jews is emphasised. (Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy, Islamist networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection; C Hurst, 2004. Pp 32-36).

On its part, the Laskhar is committed to “global conquest with the goal of restoring the Caliphate”, even as it views Kashmir as “no more than a gateway to India...for liberation of 200 million Indian Muslims.” Zahab and Roy further note that school texts promoting jihad for jihad’s sake “include the last testaments of mujahideen about to go into battle”, often on the Kashmir battlefront.

At the same time, Markaz schools are way ahead of traditional madrassas: they offer education that provides employment skills, besides religion. However, rather than ‘factories’ producing jihadis, Markaz schools are producing a triumphalist jihadi culture — a potentially violent culture absorbed by various segments of society, especially students and dropouts of government schools who have little prospects for the future.

Indeed, as Zahab and Roy note, majority of the Lashkar’s mujahideen come from “the Urdu-language system of public education, while only 10 percent come from madrassas.” Markaz schools were spreading rapidly throughout Pakistan and “especially in Sindh due to the weakness of state education.”

Such weakness of government schools is supported by a recent survey in Sindh. The survey reveals that 500 primary schools were non-functional in Dadu district alone. Many schools were dysfunctional because they were used “as guest houses and cattle pens” by feudal lords and influential persons. Furthermore, several schools that never got started when the buildings were completed were shown to be functional in official records, so that “teachers got salaries while sitting at their homes”. (Dawn, March 13, 2009).

The above is just the tip of an iceberg of cultural regression, where the virtual collapse of public education has made jihadi schools an attractive alternative, and violent jihad a desired pathway for instant empowerment in the ‘here’, and paradise in the ‘hereafter’.

As for the Lashkar-e Tayyaba, although banned in 2002, the organisation continued to thrive under different names, and is believed to have carried out the Mumbai attacks of November 2008. A briefing to the United States Senate Armed Services Committee on March 11, 2009, noted that given its organisation and cadres’ commitment, the Lashkar may well replace Al Qaeda as the vanguard of violent global jihad in the future.

Rising from the heart of Pakistan’s violent jihadi culture, Lashkar-e Tayyaba’s reportedly 300,000 trained cadres are, however, not up in arms against Pakistan. Their sphere of violent jihad is outside Pakistan.

Even so, the Lashkar’s emergence as perhaps the best organised jihadi outfit committed to violent global jihad on the one hand, and Pakistan’s role as the kingpin in international counter-terrorism on the other, are two sides of the same coin: betrayal of Jinnah’s Pakistan.

Clearly, in its battle for survival, Pakistan is at the mercy of an “internal mortal threat”, as British Foreign Secretary David Miliband recently warned. However, Pakistan’s battle will remain elusive, unless it sheds the jihadi violence it has spawned, and reclaims the ‘silent jihad’ that gave it birth.

Suroosh Irfani is an educationist and writer
based in Lahore

 

[ajpirzada]

Pak-US ties at the lowest ebb

Thursday, April 09, 2009

By Hamid Mir

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan suffered a loss of more than US$34 billion and received only US$11 billion as aid in the last seven years for participating in the war against terror. Pakistan Army, the FC and the police lost more than 2,100 lives in the tribal areas and the NWFP. Over 50 officials of the ISI were also killed and 74 injured by the militants but even then the Army and the ISI are not trusted by the US government.

All these losses and causality figures were shared with top US officials Richard Holbrooke and Michael Mullen in their visit to Islamabad by their Pakistani counterparts. They were told repeatedly that the US must stop its drone attacks in Pakistan but Holbrooke and Mullen did not make any promise.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani chaired a high-level meeting on law and order just one day before the arrival of top US officials in Islamabad. Four chief ministers and Interior Adviser Rehman Malik were also present in that meeting. DG of Intelligence Bureau Shoaib Suddle informed this meeting that US drones had missed their actual targets in most of the cases. Only 10 per cent of the attacks were successful and in 90 per cent cases only innocent people were killed. Next day, it was not only PM Gilani who opposed the drone attacks but PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif and Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif also condemned the drone attacks in strong words in their meetings with Holbrooke and Mullen.

While their was no positive response from the visiting guests, the US defense secretary announced the same day that he was going to buy 50 more drones for the US Army next year at the cost of two billion dollars.

Pakistani officials told the US visitors that some recent statements from top US advisers and many CIA leaks to the American media against the ISI had increased the frustration level within the Pakistan Army ranks.

This mistrust is not only a total waste of sacrifices and losses of Pakistan in the war against terror but also a political and diplomatic failure of the new civilian government. Pakistan has become a very complicated case for most of the Americans not only in the State Department but also in top US think-tanks and universities.

Many Pakistani officials in Washington do not try to defend their country, in fact they agree privately with US officials. Top American universities are running after Pakistani government to help them in hiring the services of some Pakistani scholars to teach about Pakistan in the US but they are not getting any positive response.

Quaid-i-Azam Chair of Pakistan Studies at University of California Berkeley is empty for the last four years. This chair was established in the Centre for South Asia Studies, UC Berkeley, in the 1990s for prominent Pakistani scholars to come to the one of the most prestigious universities of the world and teach American students about Pakistan. Only one Pakistani professor utilised this opportunity for one year in 2004. UC Berkeley has repeatedly written to the Pakistani government for filling the vacant Quaid-i-Azam Chair but nobody from Islamabad or the Pakistan Embassy in Washington DC felt any urgency for promoting “Pakistan Studies” in a country where Pakistan is being viewed as the world’s most dangerous place these days.

The Centre has also managed a “Berkeley Urdu Language program” for 30 years, which was permanently based in Lahore. This program trained a large number of American scholars in advanced Urdu for a long time.

Unfortunately, this language program was suspended after 9/11 because US State Department travel warnings for Pakistan stopped American students from visiting Pakistan and now this program is temporarily run through the American Institute of Indian Studies in Lucknow, India.

Pakistan is under discussion in the American media for many years for many reasons. Lots of young American students want to understand Pakistan but they are missing Pakistani experts in their universities. What should the university do then?

They are trying to provide understanding about Pakistan to their students through non-faculty experts. Last week, the Centre for South Asia Studies and the Graduate School of Journalism in the UC Berkeley jointly invited me to speak about the rising wave of terrorism in Pakistan. I was also invited to the prestigious Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, the Asia Society in New York and the Yale University in New Haven to discuss the security situation in Pakistan with young students as well as prominent American scholars, journalists and the State Department officials. It was a great opportunity to understand the thinking of American intelligentsia about Pakistan. I can say without any doubt that Pakistan is the most misunderstood country in America today. Pakistan can do a lot to remove these misunderstandings by simply presenting some facts but unfortunately some of the high-ups are not doing that because they have high stakes in America not in Pakistan.

Most of the Americans think that Muslims in general and particularly Pakistanis are terrorists. They fear that Taliban and al Qaeda will soon take over Pakistan and this country may collapse within six months. Top-level American policy makers have no trust in the new Pakistani civilian government. They think that President Asif Ali Zardari is weak and surrounded by corrupt people and he has no capability to lead Pakistan.

In a dinner hosted at the US Embassy in Islamabad, Holbrooke met many politicians, journalists and civil society activists. He mostly asked the same questions from most of his guests: “Do you think President Zardari must be removed now? How can you remove him?” Lawyers leader Athar Minallah responded by saying that Zardari could be removed only through parliament and not through any undemocratic way. But the questions of Holbrooke surprised many on the table, including Sartaj Aziz and PPP MNA Farah Naz Isphahani, who militantly defended her president.

Moreover, the Obama administration now has some serious reservations about Army Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani as well. During my visit to the Asia Society in New York, one senior journalist and Asia Society member Mary Anne Weaver openly claimed that the State Department officials provided her an opportunity to listen to the alleged telephonic conversation between General Kayani and al-Qaeda leader Jalaludin Haqqani.

A top Pakistani diplomat was present in the meeting. He looked very disturbed on that allegation. Mary Anne confirmed his suspicions that the State Department and the CIA were secretly sponsoring the propaganda campaign against the Pakistan Army and the ISI in the American media. Holbrooke was the head of the Asia Society until a few months ago and he also spoke negatively many times about the Pakistan Army with many American journalists. Washington Post correspondent David E Sanger mentioned the changed thinking of the US administration about General Kayani in his latest book “The Inheritance”. He quoted some top-level US intelligence officials who have telephonic intercepts of Pakistani Army chief in which he is saying that Jalaluddin Haqqani is an “asset” for Pakistan.

Despite all the tall claims of friendship, the two countries have lot of mistrust at the top level. Pakistani security officials suspect the Americans are playing a double game to destabilise the only Muslim state with nuclear weapons in the world. They think that violence in Balochistan province was escalated only after the arrival of the US troops in Afghanistan. They have complained to American officials many times that India is allegedly helping the Baloch separatists.

Americans too have complained many times that the ISI is secretly helping the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have tried to convince Holbrooke and Michael Mullen that the main trouble spot in the country is the tribal area, which is just three per cent of Pakistan. US drone attacks in these areas are providing justification to the tribal militants to organise attacks in big cities like Lahore and Karachi. If US wants to stop the cross border movement of these militants into Afghanistan, it must improve the security on border.

Presently, the Pakistan Army has deployed 117,000 troops on the 2,700- kilometer-long Pak-Afghan border and established more than 821 check posts. On the other side, the ISAF coalition troops have only 25,870 troops in the east and 22,330 troops in the south of Afghanistan, with only 120 check posts.

Causality rates of coalition troops in Afghanistan are far less than Pakistani casualties. Pakistani officials are of the view that it is not only the tribal area that is becoming a safe haven for the militants but east and south of Afghanistan is also ruled by the Taliban and the coalition forces need to improve the situation on their side also.

Prime Minister Gilani has now decided to implement a new strategy to fight terrorism with the support of parliament. A special parliamentary committee on national security will come up with this new strategy on April 9. This strategy will focus on dialogue and development in the tribal areas. It will recommend inflexible attitude towards the drone attacks. PM Gilani will no more tolerate any diplomats, ministers and advisers who are not ready to follow this new strategy.

Despite all the Pak-US misunderstandings, I am hopeful that we can move forward together with a new agenda with new priorities. I am hopeful because lot of young American students told me that they wanted peace not war. Many of them condemned the US drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal areas because these attacks were a violation of the international law.

They wanted to separate fiction from reality. We can definitely make each other secure by identifying the real problems with right solutions.

Pak-US ties at the lowest ebb

 

[ajpirzada]

‘I’ve got to run’: Holbrooke’s sham press conference



Comment

Thursday, April 09, 2009
By Qudssia Akhlaque

ISLAMABAD: US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke’s much awaited first press conference here on Tuesday turned out to be an utter anti-climax, if not a sham, with the unaccommodating American diplomat not conceding an inch to the curious Pakistani media.

For many journalists, it was a three-hour-long wait for his joint press conference with Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi after their bilateral talks at the Foreign Office. However, the press conference ended in about just 15 minutes with Holbrooke taking no more than two questions and then abruptly declaring: “I‘ve to run” ostensibly to escape live telecast of some piercing and embarrassing questions that he was bound to face following the announcement of the new US strategy for Pakistan last month. Instead, as it transpired later, Holbrooke preferred to have a chat with a select group of journalists handpicked by the US Embassy at the American ambassador’s residence.

Notably, it was Holbrooke’s first press conference in Pakistan after his appointment as the US president’s special representative for the region this January. However, he made an exit rather ungraciously after only two questions, one of which came from an American journalist accompanying him.

Also, curiously the supposedly seasoned American diplomat spoke less and whispered more at the crowded press conference that was consumed mostly by the opening statements from both sides.

Holbrooke, who was here on his second visit since assuming his new position, was put on the defensive by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s uncharacteristically hard-hitting opening statement in which for the first time Pakistan-US sharp differences on key issues, particularly the drone strikes, surfaced loud and clear.

Holbrooke seemed disconcerted by Qureshi’s straight talk in the open about the existing irritants in the ongoing cooperation in the war on terror between the two allies: the gap on drone attacks, the vital questions of trust deficit and mutual respect and certain “red lines” that Pakistan will not allow the US to cross, which include no foreign boots on its soil in any hot pursuit for al Qaeda or Taliban militants and no joint operations with US in the tribal areas against militancy. The bottom line being: no blank cheques from Pakistan to the US to act unilaterally in the fight against terrorism.

Sources privy to the 70-minute meeting at the Foreign Office told this correspondent that Qureshi ably presented and advocated Pakistan’s case during the delegation-level talks with the top American civilian and military officials. Their view was that the foreign minister articulated Pakistan’s position as forcefully behind the closed-doors as he did during the joint press conference.

Perhaps taken aback by Qureshi’s loaded opening remarks, Holbrooke whispered twice something to Mullen who stood next to him and for most part fielded the questions. Compared to the foreign minister’s opening statement, Holbrooke made a brief diplomatic statement in which he did not even once refer to the controversial US drone attacks that have been among Pakistan’s overriding concerns.

While Mullen responded to a question regarding the US drone attacks which have killed hundreds of civilians, Holbrooke went up to the foreign minister and whispered something to him as well. Minutes later, the press conference was wrapped up with key questions reflecting serious concerns of the Pakistani nation going unanswered.

As Holbrooke simply refused to take even half a question more, his host Qureshi tried to pacify the fuming media members who had been waiting there for hours, saying: “He has to go for an important lunch.” His reference was to the lunch hosted by US Ambassador Anne Patterson at her residence where the special guests were the “Sharif brothers”.

“Understandably, the luncheon menu must have been much easier to swallow for Holbrooke compared to the questions that he would have had to face at the press conference that was beamed live on all national and some foreign TV channels,” remarked one journalist.

Holbrooke left for Delhi later in the evening where unlike Pakistan he was not granted an audience by the Indian president and the prime minister. He was only received by the external affairs minister and the foreign secretary on Wednesday. Significantly, Holbrooke’s interaction with the Indian media during which he completely ignored a key question about the Kashmir dispute exposed his discriminatory attitude towards Pakistan. This raised serious questions about his being a credible interlocutor and more importantly his role as an honest peace-broker in this troubled region.

The US marines and security men along with the Foreign Office (FO) staffers and local security personnel kept a close watch on all movements and a gunship helicopter with commandos hovered over the FO building to guard the top American officials amid reports of a serious threat of another suicide bomber striking the capital city that day. Ironically, the rampant suicide bombings are believed to be a direct consequence of the drone attacks sanctioned by the government of these top US officials hosted by the Foreign Office on Tuesday.

‘I’ve got to run’: Holbrooke’s sham press conference