Deconstructing Imran Khan Taleban narrative---Farhat Taj

[Marwat Khan Lodhi]

By Farhat Taj

Imran Khan is fabricatingstories, or at least distorting facts, wherebyhe minuses the indigenous tribal resistance to the Taliban in his zeal for painting the Taliban as Pakhtun nationalists
Imran Khan, chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), speaks a lot about the war on terror and the role of Pakhtun tribes on both sides of the Durand Line in this war. On the internet, for example, there are numerous YouTube clips in which he elaborates his point of view. I have randomly selected one of the clips to deconstruct his argument, narrative and discourse, which are all misleading, marred by factual errors or perhaps wilful lies, and anti-people. Also, this deconstructionis important because Imran Khan’s views are an extension of the stereotypes about the Pakhtun tribes constructed, prompted and propagated by the British colonial and Pakistani establishment. This also includes the stereotypes that dehumanise the tribal people. Due towidespread illiteracy, the Pakhtun could not deconstruct the stereotypes. Rich and educated Pakhtuns, a few exceptions apart, never took upon themselves the moral responsibility to question the narrative and discourse by the ‘others’. The Pakhtun nationalist political parties never developed, not that they could not, but they did not due to a lack of foresightedness, the organisational capacity to have functioning think tanks in place to interact with the intelligentsia and the media around the world to disseminate information and question any misleading ideas aboutsociety that they — not the PTI with youth support base in Punjab — trulyrepresent, especially in terms of belongingness to the indigenous soil,culture, history and traditions.
This is the YouTube clip from which I take Imran Khan’s narrative, discourse and argument regarding the Pakhtun and the war on terror: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr-IFLJn00A(title: ‘Imran Khan explains ‘War of Terror’ and ‘Pakistani Taliban’).
In summary, Khan says this: “You canwin a war against terrorism if you win hearts and minds of the people among whom the terrorists operate. You can win the war when the people consider them terrorists. You can never win the war when the people consider them freedom fighters. The Taliban are the popular Pakhtun freedom fighters. Upon the US’s behest, the Pakistan Army is killing its own people with F-16s andgunship helicopters. The bombs cannot differentiate between terrorists and innocent civilians. Usually the terrorists are too clever to be caught by the bombs, including bombs from the US drones. So they get away with the bombing, but innocent people are killed. Consequently, there is a popular backlash. In lieu of the US money, the Pakistan Army entered Waziristan in 2004 to catch 800 al Qaeda men. This ended causing collateral damage, including large scale human displacement. This was reciprocated by the tribal society by a backlash in the form of multiple suicide attacks on the state institutions and society in Pakistan, including attacks on the Pakistan Army. The Pakistan Army has no will to fight its own people. Soldiers of the army began to surrender in droves to a handful of the Taliban. The army was forced to negotiate peace with the Taliban. All political parties in the ruling alliance of Pakistan, including the Pakhtun nationalist ANP, want negotiated peace settlement with the Taliban. But the US government has a one-window operation with President Asif Ali Zardari, before they had the same with President Musharraf, whereby the Americans put pressure to send the Pakistan Army to the tribal areas to fight against our own people. What is happening in FATA is not religious extremism. It is radicalisation. People whose children are dying in the war of, not on, terror, how are they not going to be radicalised. Unless the US and NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan, there is no chance of peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reason is very simple. The Pakhtun have successfully resisted against the conquerors of the world, including Alexander the Great, the Mongolians,the Mughals, the British and the Russian. The Pakhtun tribes fight against each other but whenever an invader comes, they are all together. This time they are united against theUS and NATO forces. What you see now is not the Taliban or al Qaeda. It is Pakhtun nationalism.”
It is factually wrong that the Pakistan Army entered Waziristan in2004. The army had already entered South Waziristan in 2002 when it conducted a fake military operation near Azam Warsak, ostensibly against the al Qaeda militants and al Qaeda-led Taliban. According to the local people, the Taliban were tipped off by the army officers before the operation to vacate the area, which they did, but nevertheless the operation was conducted. Actually the operation was to humiliate and discredit the tribal leaders who were not taken into confidence before the operation.All those widely respectable tribal leaders were anti-Taliban, most of whom were killed one after the other in mysterious targeted killings from 2003 onwards. This operation and the later operations and the so-called peace deals with the Taliban were meant to tear apart thetribal socio-political order led by the tribal leaders and replace it with a Taliban order so as to provide safe havens to al Qaeda and al Qaeda-ledTaliban for cross-borders attacks on the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Within days and weeks of the UN-mandated US attack on al Qaeda and Taliban positions in Afghanistan,the militants came to South Waziristan, where the well-known cleric Maulana Noor Muhammad, famous in Waziristan for his deep longstanding links with the military establishment of Pakistan, was announcing in mosques that all Pakhtuns must stand up to welcome and protect their great guest, Osama bin Laden. This immediately prompted voices of dissent from within Waziristan, most of which were silenced through targeted killings and the remaining silenced through fear of targeted killings. Who in South Waziristan can forget Farooq Yargul Khel, a widely respected tribal leader in Wana, whoin response to Maulana Noor Muhammad’s call for hospitality to Osama bin Laden, publicly announced that “Osama or his dad, as long as I am alive no militants can enter Wana bazaar.” Indeed, as long as he lived no militants could dare to enter Wana bazaar. Farooq Yargul Khel was the first anti-Taliban tribal leader in FATA who was target killedin 2003.
The point that I wish to make is that Imran Khan is fabricating stories, or at least distorting facts, whereby he minuses the indigenous tribal resistance to the Taliban in his zeal for painting the Taliban as Pakhtun nationalists. His ideas are uncriticallyaccepted by his urban supporters who have no clue about how FATA was ‘won’ by the Taliban. Imran Khan may win the next elections with the support of the military establishment whose strategic agenda he is religiously promoting, but he must remember that — as toldto me by several tribesmen across FATA — ‘tribal memory dies very hard’. This implies that the tribal people will never forget what al Qaeda and the Taliban did to them. Imran Khan must remember how he might go down in the tribal memory: standing with the assassins of those sons of the tribal soil who gave their lives in resistance to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
(To be continued)
The writer is the author of Taliban and Anti-Taliban

 

[W.11]

what the hell is this, are you OK dear???......................

 

[Marwat Khan Lodhi]

ANALYSIS: Deconstructing Imran Khan’s Taliban narrative — II —Farhat Taj
It becomes even more ridiculous when one thinks of the Punjabi, Araband Uzbek militants attacking the state and society in Pakistan for revenge in line with Pakhtunwali forthe ‘innocent’ civilian casualties amongst the Dawar and the two Wazir tribes of Waziristan
Imran Khan narrates that the suicide attacks in Pakistan are a ‘backlash’ from the people of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in response to the Pakistan Army operations and the US drone attacks in the region. On several occasions he has also claimed that the attacks were tribal revenge in line with the code of Pakhtunwali. In other words,Imran Khan is saying that terrorism in Pakistan is terrorism by Pakhtun culture. This narrative is not just far from the truth but also a blatant lie, or otherwise Imran Khan has no idea about the ground reality in FATA since 9/11.
An overwhelming majority of the US drone attacks since 2004 to this date have been in the areas of the Ahmadzai Wazir, Utmanzai Wazir and Dawar tribes in South and North Waziristan. Going by Imran Khan’s argument, most ‘innocent’ casualties in the drone attacks must be from these three tribes and thus ‘backlashers’ from these tribes are rocking Pakistan with terrorist attacks. But there are no Wazir and Dawar Taliban or non-Taliban ordinary people from these tribes who have been involved in any attacks inside Pakistan!
Those who are involved in deadly attacks inside Pakistan are al Qaeda foreigners — Uzbeks, Arabs etc — the Punjabis and the Pakhtuns from other areas including terrorists from the Mehsud tribe. Now, in Pakhtun tribal culture, the loyalty and sympathy of an individual go to his own tribe, clan or even sub-clan. How is it possible that Mehsud or other Pakhtun tribesmen are taking revenge for the ‘innocent casualties’ in the Wazir and Dawar tribes, whereas the latter tribes refrain from revenge? How is this explainable in Pakhtunwali? It becomes even more ridiculous when one thinks of the Punjabi, Arab and Uzbek militants attacking the state and society in Pakistan for revenge in line with Pakhtunwali for the ‘innocent’ civilian casualties amongstthe Dawar and the two Wazir tribes of Waziristan!
Also, it must be remembered that, in the tribal context, revenge is closely linked with honour. Revenge is publicly taken to restore honour. Honour is personal and tribal. This implies that the person or tribe (sub-tribe, clan or sub-clan) whose honour has been violated must restore it by taking revenge with his/its own hands. No other person, tribe, sub-tribe, clan or sub-clan can take revenge for them to restore their honour. In this tribal context it looks hilariously non-serious to think of other Pakhtun tribesmen or other ethnic groups, such as the Punjabis, Arabs etc taking revenge to restore the honour of the Wazir and Dawar tribes!
The Ahmadzai Wazir, Utmanzai Wazir and Dawar tribesmen and women are overpowered by the ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda trio. The Taliban among these three tribes arethe ‘good’ Taliban, the ones who carry out attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan but refrain from committing terrorism in Pakistan. This is precisely the reason — their attacks inside Afghanistan — behind why their area is repeatedly attacked by US drones. The Taliban fighters and commanders from these three tribes are a tiny minority within their own homeland. The majority of the militants in their area are the Punjabis, al Qaeda foreigners and also Pakhtuns from other areas on both sides of the Durand Line, including the Mehsud militants, who were not eliminated by Pakistan in Operation Rah-e-Nijat but simply relocated to the Wazir areas in Waziristan.
The whole idea that suicide attacks in Pakistan are a tribal backlash is baseless. Let us not forget that the suicide bombers involved in the many attacks in Pakistan are teenage children. But teenage children do not take revenge on tribal society. One may argue that childhood ends in the tribal area before the modern legal age limit — 18 years. This may be true in many respects but, strictly in terms of revenge in line with Pakhtunwali, the norm is that revenge is taken by mature, adult men rather than youngsters under 18 years of age. There are rare exceptions when women and young people under 18 have taken revenge but this is only an exception. The norm is that mature adult men over 18 years of age take revenge.
Looking at the large number of young children under 18 who are used in suicide attacks, one is constrained to conclude that most of the ‘innocent’ casualties of the drone strikes are survived by no adult men over 18 years of age to take revenge! But this again is a hilarious idea especially given the fact — known to people who know the ground realities of the tribal areas —that the tribal families have been forced to offer a child and that children are also kidnapped to be trained as suicide bombers.
Above all, revenge may be imperative in the tribal context but pragmatism is even more imperative. In the tribal context, which is a bottom-up egalitarian culture, the notion of revenge successfully works as a deterrence and is rarely put into practice. The war on terror with so many powerfulstate and non-state external actors involved is a radically different context in which the idea of revenge has neither deterrence nor practical value in terms of settling scores with perceived enemies. This is precisely the reason why none of the tribal families of over 1,000 tribal leaders, who have been target killed since 2003 due to their anti-Taliban stance, have been involved in violent acts of revenge despite the fact that the families hold the ISI responsible for the killings of relatives and tribal leaders. These families can rightly be called pillars of Pakhtunwali in FATA. If these families have refrained from violent acts of revenge, the ordinary tribesmen are even less likely to commit violence for revenge. This explains why hundreds of thousands of tribesmen have preferred to live and work in degrading conditions during the displacement caused by the Pakistan Army operations rather than joining the Taliban who offer lucrative salaries. The elders of the Kala Khel tribe — in response to the deadly Taliban attack on their schoolchildren — requested the chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) to take revenge from the Taliban to give them justice. There are countless other examples of this kind in FATA.
The suicide bombings that have struck Pakistan are part and parcel of the strategic calculus of the Pakistani security establishment andthe al Qaeda jihadi ideology, which has nothing to do with the tribal culture or sufferings of the tribal people in the war on terror.
(To be continued)
The writer is the author of Taliban and Anti-Taliban

 

[Donatello]

Imran Khan, chief of the Pakistan
Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), speaks a lot
about the war on terror and the role of
Pakhtun tribes on both sides of the
Durand Line in this war. On the internet, for example, there are
numerous YouTube clips in which he
elaborates his point of view. I have
randomly selected one of the clips to
deconstruct his argument, narrative
and discourse, which are all misleading, marred by factual errors or
perhaps wilful lies, and anti-people.
Also, this deconstruction is important
because Imran Khan’s views are an
extension of the stereotypes about
the Pakhtun tribes constructed, prompted and propagated by the
British colonial and Pakistani
establishment. This also includes the
stereotypes that dehumanise the tribal
people. Due to widespread illiteracy,
the Pakhtun could not deconstruct the stereotypes. Rich and educated
Pakhtuns, a few exceptions apart,
never took upon themselves the moral
responsibility to question the narrative
and discourse by the ‘others’. The
Pakhtun nationalist political parties never developed, not that they could
not, but they did not due to a lack of
foresightedness, the organisational
capacity to have functioning think
tanks in place to interact with the
intelligentsia and the media around the world to disseminate information
and question any misleading ideas
about society that they — not the PTI
with youth support base in Punjab —
truly represent, especially in terms of
belongingness to the indigenous soil, culture, history and traditions.
This is the YouTube clip from which I
take Imran Khan’s narrative, discourse
and argument regarding the Pakhtun
and the war on terror: Imran Khan explains "War of Terror" and "Pakistani Taliban" - YouTube (title: ‘Imran Khan explains ‘War of
Terror’ and ‘Pakistani Taliban&#8217.
In summary, Khan says this: “You can
win a war against terrorism if you win
hearts and minds of the people among
whom the terrorists operate. You can win the war when the people consider
them terrorists. You can never win the
war when the people consider them
freedom fighters. The Taliban are the
popular Pakhtun freedom fighters.
Upon the US’s behest, the Pakistan Army is killing its own people with
F-16s and gunship helicopters. The
bombs cannot differentiate between
terrorists and innocent civilians.
Usually the terrorists are too clever to
be caught by the bombs, including bombs from the US drones. So they get
away with the bombing, but innocent
people are killed. Consequently, there
is a popular backlash. In lieu of the US
money, the Pakistan Army entered
Waziristan in 2004 to catch 800 al Qaeda men. This ended causing
collateral damage, including large
scale human displacement. This was
reciprocated by the tribal society by a
backlash in the form of multiple
suicide attacks on the state institutions and society in Pakistan, including
attacks on the Pakistan Army. The
Pakistan Army has no will to fight its
own people. Soldiers of the army
began to surrender in droves to a
handful of the Taliban. The army was forced to negotiate peace with the
Taliban. All political parties in the
ruling alliance of Pakistan, including
the Pakhtun nationalist ANP, want
negotiated peace settlement with the
Taliban. But the US government has a one-window operation with President
Asif Ali Zardari, before they had the
same with President Musharraf,
whereby the Americans put pressure
to send the Pakistan Army to the tribal
areas to fight against our own people. What is happening in FATA is not
religious extremism. It is radicalisation.
People whose children are dying in
the war of, not on, terror, how are
they not going to be radicalised.
Unless the US and NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan, there is
no chance of peace in Afghanistan
and Pakistan. The reason is very
simple. The Pakhtun have successfully
resisted against the conquerors of the
world, including Alexander the Great, the Mongolians, the Mughals, the
British and the Russian. The Pakhtun
tribes fight against each other but
whenever an invader comes, they are
all together. This time they are united
against the US and NATO forces. What you see now is not the Taliban or al
Qaeda. It is Pakhtun nationalism.”
It is factually wrong that the Pakistan
Army entered Waziristan in 2004. The
army had already entered South
Waziristan in 2002 when it conducted a fake military operation near Azam
Warsak, ostensibly against the al
Qaeda militants and al Qaeda-led
Taliban. According to the local people,
the Taliban were tipped off by the
army officers before the operation to vacate the area, which they did, but
nevertheless the operation was
conducted. Actually the operation was
to humiliate and discredit the tribal
leaders who were not taken into
confidence before the operation. All those widely respectable tribal leaders
were anti-Taliban, most of whom were
killed one after the other in mysterious
targeted killings from 2003 onwards.
This operation and the later
operations and the so-called peace deals with the Taliban were meant to
tear apart the tribal socio-political
order led by the tribal leaders and
replace it with a Taliban order so as to
provide safe havens to al Qaeda and al
Qaeda-led Taliban for cross-borders attacks on the US and NATO forces in
Afghanistan.
Within days and weeks of the UN-
mandated US attack on al Qaeda and
Taliban positions in Afghanistan, the
militants came to South Waziristan, where the well-known cleric Maulana
Noor Muhammad, famous in
Waziristan for his deep longstanding
links with the military establishment of
Pakistan, was announcing in mosques
that all Pakhtuns must stand up to welcome and protect their great guest,
Osama bin Laden. This immediately
prompted voices of dissent from
within Waziristan, most of which were
silenced through targeted killings and
the remaining silenced through fear of targeted killings. Who in South
Waziristan can forget Farooq Yargul
Khel, a widely respected tribal leader
in Wana, who in response to Maulana
Noor Muhammad’s call for hospitality
to Osama bin Laden, publicly announced that “Osama or his dad, as
long as I am alive no militants can
enter Wana bazaar.” Indeed, as long
as he lived no militants could dare to
enter Wana bazaar. Farooq Yargul Khel
was the first anti-Taliban tribal leader in FATA who was target killed in 2003.
The point that I wish to make is that
Imran Khan is fabricating stories, or at
least distorting facts, whereby he
minuses the indigenous tribal
resistance to the Taliban in his zeal for painting the Taliban as Pakhtun
nationalists. His ideas are uncritically
accepted by his urban supporters who
have no clue about how FATA was
‘won’ by the Taliban. Imran Khan may
win the next elections with the support of the military establishment
whose strategic agenda he is
religiously promoting, but he must
remember that — as told to me by
several tribesmen across FATA —
‘tribal memory dies very hard’. This implies that the tribal people will never
forget what al Qaeda and the Taliban
did to them. Imran Khan must
remember how he might go down in
the tribal memory: standing with the
assassins of those sons of the tribal soil who gave their lives in resistance
to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Imran Khan narrates that the suicide
attacks in Pakistan are a ‘backlash’
from the people of the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in response to the Pakistan Army
operations and the US drone attacks in
the region. On several occasions he
has also claimed that the attacks were
tribal revenge in line with the code of
Pakhtunwali. In other words, Imran Khan is saying that terrorism in
Pakistan is terrorism by Pakhtun
culture. This narrative is not just far
from the truth but also a blatant lie, or
otherwise Imran Khan has no idea
about the ground reality in FATA since 9/11.
An overwhelming majority of the US
drone attacks since 2004 to this date
have been in the areas of the
Ahmadzai Wazir, Utmanzai Wazir and
Dawar tribes in South and North Waziristan. Going by Imran Khan’s
argument, most ‘innocent’ casualties in
the drone attacks must be from these
three tribes and thus ‘backlashers’
from these tribes are rocking Pakistan
with terrorist attacks. But there are no Wazir and Dawar Taliban or non-
Taliban ordinary people from these
tribes who have been involved in any
attacks inside Pakistan!
Those who are involved in deadly
attacks inside Pakistan are al Qaeda foreigners — Uzbeks, Arabs etc — the
Punjabis and the Pakhtuns from other
areas including terrorists from the
Mehsud tribe. Now, in Pakhtun tribal
culture, the loyalty and sympathy of an
individual go to his own tribe, clan or even sub-clan. How is it possible that
Mehsud or other Pakhtun tribesmen
are taking revenge for the ‘innocent
casualties’ in the Wazir and Dawar
tribes, whereas the latter tribes refrain
from revenge? How is this explainable in Pakhtunwali? It becomes even more
ridiculous when one thinks of the
Punjabi, Arab and Uzbek militants
attacking the state and society in
Pakistan for revenge in line with
Pakhtunwali for the ‘innocent’ civilian casualties amongst the Dawar and the
two Wazir tribes of Waziristan!
Also, it must be remembered that, in
the tribal context, revenge is closely
linked with honour. Revenge is
publicly taken to restore honour. Honour is personal and tribal. This
implies that the person or tribe (sub-
tribe, clan or sub-clan) whose honour
has been violated must restore it by
taking revenge with his/its own
hands. No other person, tribe, sub- tribe, clan or sub-clan can take
revenge for them to restore their
honour. In this tribal context it looks
hilariously non-serious to think of
other Pakhtun tribesmen or other
ethnic groups, such as the Punjabis, Arabs etc taking revenge to restore
the honour of the Wazir and Dawar
tribes!
The Ahmadzai Wazir, Utmanzai Wazir
and Dawar tribesmen and women are
overpowered by the ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda trio. The Taliban among these
three tribes are the ‘good’ Taliban, the
ones who carry out attacks on US and
NATO forces in Afghanistan but refrain
from committing terrorism in Pakistan.
This is precisely the reason — their attacks inside Afghanistan — behind
why their area is repeatedly attacked
by US drones. The Taliban fighters and
commanders from these three tribes
are a tiny minority within their own
homeland. The majority of the militants in their area are the Punjabis, al Qaeda
foreigners and also Pakhtuns from
other areas on both sides of the
Durand Line, including the Mehsud
militants, who were not eliminated by
Pakistan in Operation Rah-e-Nijat but simply relocated to the Wazir areas in
Waziristan.
The whole idea that suicide attacks in
Pakistan are a tribal backlash is
baseless. Let us not forget that the
suicide bombers involved in the many attacks in Pakistan are teenage
children. But teenage children do not
take revenge on tribal society. One
may argue that childhood ends in the
tribal area before the modern legal
age limit — 18 years. This may be true in many respects but, strictly in terms
of revenge in line with Pakhtunwali,
the norm is that revenge is taken by
mature, adult men rather than
youngsters under 18 years of age.
There are rare exceptions when women and young people under 18
have taken revenge but this is only an
exception. The norm is that mature
adult men over 18 years of age take
revenge.
Looking at the large number of young children under 18 who are used in
suicide attacks, one is constrained to
conclude that most of the ‘innocent’
casualties of the drone strikes are
survived by no adult men over 18
years of age to take revenge! But this again is a hilarious idea especially
given the fact — known to people
who know the ground realities of the
tribal areas — that the tribal families
have been forced to offer a child and
that children are also kidnapped to be trained as suicide bombers.
Above all, revenge may be imperative
in the tribal context but pragmatism is
even more imperative. In the tribal
context, which is a bottom-up
egalitarian culture, the notion of revenge successfully works as a
deterrence and is rarely put into
practice. The war on terror with so
many powerful state and non-state
external actors involved is a radically
different context in which the idea of revenge has neither deterrence nor
practical value in terms of settling
scores with perceived enemies. This is
precisely the reason why none of the
tribal families of over 1,000 tribal
leaders, who have been target killed since 2003 due to their anti-Taliban
stance, have been involved in violent
acts of revenge despite the fact that
the families hold the ISI responsible
for the killings of relatives and tribal
leaders. These families can rightly be called pillars of Pakhtunwali in FATA. If
these families have refrained from
violent acts of revenge, the ordinary
tribesmen are even less likely to
commit violence for revenge. This
explains why hundreds of thousands of tribesmen have preferred to live
and work in degrading conditions
during the displacement caused by the
Pakistan Army operations rather than
joining the Taliban who offer lucrative
salaries. The elders of the Kala Khel tribe — in response to the deadly
Taliban attack on their school children
— requested the chief justice of
Pakistan (CJP) to take revenge from
the Taliban to give them justice. There
are countless other examples of this kind in FATA.
The suicide bombings that have struck
Pakistan are part and parcel of the
strategic calculus of the Pakistani
security establishment and the al
Qaeda jihadi ideology, which has nothing to do with the tribal culture or
sufferings of the tribal people in the
war on terror

Why is this like a poem? a Prose? or is this an essay? help me read it...

 

[Pakistanisage]

Why does this smack of a " CIA DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN" ?

 

[Omar1984]

The enemies of Pakistan dont want Imran Khan to be elected Prime Minister.

I've been a member in this forum for over 3 years now. Monkey D Luffy is known for his anti-pakistan views. Check his previous posts. He also has intense hatred towards some major ethnic groups of Pakistan especially Punjabis.

 

[Marwat Khan Lodhi]

ANALYSIS: Deconstructing Imran Khan’s Taliban narrative — III —Farhat Taj
The government led by Mr Zardari’s party can be questioned for giving in to the establishment’s pressure by surrendering its authority and responsibility regarding foreign policy but to blame it for anything wrong with theforeign policy, including the war on terror, is misleading
Imran Khan claims that there were no suicide attacks in Pakistan beforethe US drone attacks and Pakistan Army operations in FATA. This is factually wrong. Suicide attacks have been happening before the US drone attacks and/or military operations in FATA. One of the deadliest suicide attacks was on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad in 1995. The other devastating suicide attack, also known as Karachigate, was on French engineers in Karachi. Both attacks have nothing to do withFATA, its people, culture and the US drone attacks or the Pakistan Army operations in the area. The attack onthe Egyptian embassy was carried out by al Qaeda Arabs and the other attack is said to be revenge from the French authorities over a dispute about kickbacks in a French submarine sales contract with Pakistan. The French investigators have also been investigating al Qaeda linkages to the attack.
The suicide attacks rooted in FATA began to happen in Pakistan after the ISI implanted the jihadi infrastructure in the area through fake military operations that killed innocent civilians but left the Talibanunharmed, and peace deals that slipped the area into the hands of the Arab, Uzbek, Punjabi and Pakhtun militants. The last ethnic group of the militants, the local Pakhtun, were also strengthened through awards of development contracts, including those funded by western donors, to the relatives and friends of the Taliban.
In other words, the Pakistani state surrendered its internal sovereignty by design to the terrorists in FATA, some of whom are conducting ‘unauthorised’ attacks inside mainland Pakistan in response to their disputes with the their handlersin the intelligence agencies of Pakistan. But several of the attacks inside Pakistan, such as those on the ANP workers and leaders, should be seen as ‘authorised’ attacks to keep the Pakhtun nationalist party under pressure and above all to cut it off from reaching out to the people while at the same time keeping the field open to right-wingers like Imran Khan and the religious parties to reach out as much as they wish to spread the strategic depth propaganda. The ANP is an anomaly in the calculus of strategic depth. Imran Khan is clearly guilty of distorting the facts when he claims that the ANP wants negotiations with Taliban. As far as I understand, the ANP does not want negotiations with the Taliban but is forced by the establishment through acts or threats of terrorism to compromise such as on the occasion of the Swat peace deal.
Imran Khan is also playing fast and loose with the truth when he blames President Zardari for the way the war on terror is conducted by Pakistan. Everyone knows that the Pakistani generals are running the country’s foreign policy. The government led by Mr Zardari’s partycan be questioned for giving in to theestablishment’s pressure by surrendering its authority and responsibility regarding foreign policy but to blame it for anything wrong with the foreign policy, including the war on terror, is misleading.
Imran Khan’s claim that the Pakhtun tribes have successfully resisted world powers in the past is a misleading sweeping judgement. One really has to go into history to see that the real situation is not so black and white. For example, it is true that certain tribes or clans in FATA put forward an excellent resistance to the British, but is it not also a fact that many other tribes, clans and even people within the tribes resisting the British, cooperated with the colonial power? How were the British able to establish the FCR system in FATA if all tribes were united against the British? The tribesmen joined the British Imperial Army, the paramilitary forces established by the British, and became Khasadars (tribal police force) in the British administration in FATA. The tribes, clans and individuals who have beenclosely cooperating with the British were never eliminated through massacre by the other tribesmen who were resisting against the British even after the departure of the colonial power. This is unlike the Taliban who have massacred anti-Taliban tribesmen across FATA. In other words, what we see in tribal history is pragmatism in relation to foreign powers rather than an exclusively violence-driven resistance across the tribes.
Suicide attacks in Pakistan cannot bea tribal response to the US drone attacks. The US drone attacks on FATA intensified in 2008. Before that there have been only a few drone attacks on the area since 2004. Bu the suicide attacks inside Pakistan had intensified before 2008.
Imran Khan is running a propaganda for the so-called ‘civilian casualties’ in the drone attacks but has not uttered a word about hundreds of anti-Taliban tribal leaders target killed across FATA since 2003. The government of Pakistan never investigated those targeted killings and will never do it either as long as the generals dominate Pakistan. Do the families of these tribal leaders not deserve justice? But Imran Khan, I am afraid, will never raise his voice for justice for these families because any independent investigation into those assassinations will establish the establishment’s deep links with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Such an investigation will also elaborate the ISI tactics whereby it has been able to trigger an artificial insurgency in FATA and convincingly present it to the world as the popular tribal backlash to Pakistan’s alliance in thewar on terror.
Imran Khan highlights the violation of Pakistan’s external sovereignty by the US drone attacks, but never points to the violation of the country’s internal sovereignty by foreign al Qaeda and Taliban militants based in FATA who are carrying out attacks inside Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan on the US, NATO and Afghan forces aswell as Afghan civilians. Their attacks across the border are causingthe drone attacks, most of which have actually targeted the foreign terrorists in the area rather than the Taliban. The internal violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty has to stop before one can demand a stop to the external violation.
(Concluded)
The writer is the author of Taliban and Anti-Taliban

 

[Marwat Khan Lodhi]

@Omar
I did go through my previous posts, did'nt find any thing anti-pakistani or anti-punjabi. Being a pashtun doesnt mean that i have to prove my
Pakistani identity to american citizens like you. I live in pakistan and you live in america...think about it.

The article highlights the fact that either imran khan is immature or he is puppet of agencies. He tries to depict pashtuns as primitive people with taliban mentality and according to him talibans = Pashtuns and that talibans are pashtuns taking revenge. Which is a fcked up misconception.