The state that wouldn't fail

[Rajkumar]

No offence but the shariah law is messed up and not capable of fitting in with today's society. Shariah law will take Pakistan back to the stoneage just like during the times of Zia ul Haq and its cuz of him were in this taliban mess. We need democracy and secularism to succeed. Feudalism should be destroyed and a sincere leader maybe like Musharraf should come in. I say Musharraf because under him we were an economic powerhouse. We need to repeal all stoneage laws made by Zia ul Haq and follow the Turkish Model.

i wish there are more young Pakistanis like you who can keep their head straight yet have faith in Allah, who needs to understand that faith should live in the hearts of men and in ibaadatgaah but not in the court or rule books or parliament of country.

i believe you understood my message

 

[General General]

You do realise that Sharia Law was based upon Islamic Law and Islam was Created by ALLAH.

Are you saying the creator of this entire Universe who created Pakistan you and me, as Imperfect ?

This stupid idea of Sharia law is backward only serve the Racist and Islamophobia. You clearly have no Idea what sharia law is about and you need to study it before you could even think of giving an opinion.
You should also know the difference between what Islam, Hadith, Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) said and what the extremist use to fulfill their ridicules hate.

Don't forget, it would be pretty much contradiction as a Pakistani who doesn't support any part of Islamic value, as the country is based upon that.

As I said before Allah(swt) controls everything so if you want to leave Islam then ALlah(swt) will leave you and make your life misery . Thats also includes the entire country.

Secularism has no value and doesn't serve people in the long and in the short term. THere is already democracy establish in Islam go and read about it . Furthermore Islam was at its height in science and economy.


Feudalism has nothing to do with ISlam at all , and I don't need you to proof it as this will be a direct contratiction in Islam.

If you want to blame the failings then blame it on lack of education in both Islam and general Education in which Islam is totally against.

As I understand it, the Islamic law is for a welfare state, not for an under-developed or developing state. It is too strict for that. In a welfare state, where you are supplied with health, education, jobs and security, there wouldn't be any reason for crimes. That's when the Islamic law can maintain peace. If you look at Pakistan, there are many people who have to cheat and steal to feed their families, therefore the Islamic law itself offers lienciencies in this scenario. The constution of Pakistan was established when a number of Islamic scholars debated over this issue, in the end they came to the conclusion that until Pakistan becomes a welfare state, they will have to provide lienent laws.
Correct me if I am mistaken.

 

[RabzonKhan]

VIEW: Funding Pakistan’s jihad

Ali K Chishti
October 27, 2010

All the commitment and fanaticism notwithstanding, terrorist operations cannot be run without funds. Funds for jihad are required for procuring weapons, financing training camps, providing logistical support, compensating the families of jihadis, paying instructors and also the wide networks of agents and running recruitment offices.

During the Afghan war, western governments were a major source of funding and weapons for the groups engaged in taking on the Soviet occupation army in Afghanistan. Much of these funds came from covert accounts of the states funding the Afghans. Islamic countries also poured in billions of dollars into the coffers of the jihadi groups. While the role of Saudi Arabia has been limited to the provision of funds to the Islamist and jihadi organisations, the Kingdom, to this day, is the biggest source of official and private funding to Islamist and jihadist organisations in Pakistan, and it is to their credit that certain Deobandi and Ahle-Hadith extremist organisations became so powerful with the growth in their size.
One also has to see the Saudi financial support to Deobandi organisations in the context of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran post the Iranian revolution where both these countries had supported militant sectarian organisations to organise attacks and counter-attacks on each other’s sects and fought a proxy war inside Pakistan.

So open was Saudi support to Sipah-e-Sahaba (now the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jundullah) that the Saudi government, in 2000, gave out Rs 17 million to fund hardcore militant madrassas in Jhang alone. Another Saudi charity, called the International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIRO), is an affiliate of the Saudi welfare organisation, Rabita Alam-e-Islami, which in turn helped to set up the Rabita Trust in Pakistan that was banned after 9/11 because of a strong bin Laden connection. The most interesting aspect of the Trust was that its chairman was none other than General Pervez Musharraf, the chief of army staff. To save embarrassment to a close ally, a state department official said, “We do not think the prominent people who have their names on it were aware of the infiltration.”

In fact, so murky is the source of funds coming from Saudi Arabia that the leader of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil said, “The US had instructed, through Rabita Alam-e-Islami that we should initiate jihad in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, to which I replied that we have grown up now. We do not do jihad at your bidding.”

Lashkar-e-Tayyaba’s (LeT’s) parent organisation, the Dawat wal Irshad, initially also attracted the sympathy of certain Arab donors interested in purifying Islam in the subcontinent, which is considered to have been tainted by the influence of Hinduism. In fact, one such Saudi donor, Abu Abdul Aziz, who invested millions of dollars on LeT, LeJ and various jihadi organisations, even donated Rs 10 million to make a mosque at Markaz-e-Dawa’s headquarters.

And while it may be true that over the years the militants have developed a vast and effective network for raising funds by taking as much as a rupee from a poor man to millions from the rich, donations are pouring in for jihad from every segment of society. And while many jihadi organisations collect sacrificial hides to raise funds, many have started raising their capital from publishing magazines to even the property business, and now, as a jihadi told me sheepishly, “the national disaster business”. In a report published by the Aga Khan Development Network in 1998, approximately 50 percent of Pakistanis gave an estimated amount of Rs 770 billion in money, goods and time, of which 90 percent of the surveyed donors cited religious faith as the motivation for giving.

If all this foreign and local funding were not enough, the Pakistani government gives out an estimated Rs 20-35 billion in grants to madrassas and jihadi movements indirectly from government resources like zakat or iqra funds. Another funding source after the crackdown on Saudi sources and tighter monetary controls is the Afghan Transit Trade, which is a cash cow for jihadis and certain rogue establishment actors who exploit the trade for procuring weapons and narcotics smuggling, earning millions of dollars to be funnelled into proxy wars from Afghanistan to Pakistan. There was a reason why the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) offered $ 10 million to replace American aid. The hundi trade is another source that is ‘welcomed’ by the State Bank of Pakistan, as it has, over the years, been buying billions of dollars to shore up its balance of payment positions. The hundi trade helps launder money for jihadis but in the land of the pure, jihad is used as a weapon to further our so-called strategic plans.

Even after 9/11, much of what is happening inside the tribal belt is a bit of a charade. In fact, what earlier used to be taking place openly has now been pushed behind the curtain, otherwise it is business as usual. Every time the Americans start getting impatient, the Pakistanis make a show of launching an operation in the tribal belt. There are arrests of Afghan and Arab jihadis or the killings of certain individuals until everything returns to normal. One big reason why our own Pakistani government will never really close the funding source and cut the roots of jihadis is because doing so would have a direct impact on the various jihads it is involved with to suit certain foreign policy goals. Moreover, by shutting down these rackets, the Pakistani state will lose an important leverage over deciding affairs inside Afghanistan. Often, the Pakistani state has used smuggling as a carrot for the various Afghan warlords and agents, and in return has managed to get them to do Pakistan’s bidding inside Afghanistan. This currency of power will be lost if Pakistan were to curb the illegal rackets. But, in the process of taking action on this trade, what will happen is that the Pakistani state will try to regain total and complete control over this trade, something it was gradually losing out on with the increasing privatisation of jihad.

The writer is a political analyst.

 

[RabzonKhan]

ANALYSIS: Is Orakzai Agency cleared of the Taliban?

Farhat Taj
October 30, 2010

Recently, the Pakistani media reported that security forces have cleared 90 percent of Orakzai Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Frontier Corps Inspector General Nadir Zeb reportedly said that a limited operation would continue in Mamuzai area, the stronghold of the Taliban in the Agency. He further said that clues pertaining to al Qaeda’s presence were found in Orakzai, but most of their operatives had been killed and others had fled the area. Moreover, he also said that internally displaced people (IDPs) from the area would start coming home in a few days.

Any notion of Orakzai being cleared of the Taliban without the elimination of the Taliban leadership in the area is meaningless. All the prominent commanders in Orakzai are still alive. None of them have even been arrested so far. They include Hakimullah, Toofan Mullah, Aslam Farooqi, Tariq Afridi, Gul Zaman Mullah, Salam Mullah, Zia-ur-Rehman, Nabi Mullah, Hafiz Saeed and Saif-ur-Rehman. The military spokesmen are not explaining how Orakzai can be secured without the elimination of the Taliban leadership.

A viewpoint of the Orakzai IDPs is that the military leadership does not wish to eliminate these Taliban commanders. The commanders are the ‘strategic assets’ of the intelligence authorities and will be used for terrorism in Afghanistan and the ‘managed chaos’ engineered by the intelligence agencies in FATA. To counter this perception, the military will have to eliminate the entire Taliban leadership. The people of Orakzai, who have suffered human rights violations at the hands of the commanders, want to see them killed. There seems to be no one in Pakistan willing to grill the military authorities over their failure to eliminate the Taliban leadership.

There are Taliban in the area between Ghiljo and Shahu Khel, who kill and kidnap people from Hangu and its surrounding areas. The area from Ghiljo to Yakh Kandaw has also not been cleared and, only a few days ago, some soldiers were killed there. Mamuzia is still under the control of the Taliban. Feroz Khel, Utman Khel and Bezot, the areas supposedly cleared several weeks ago, are still under the influence of the Taliban.

Only three areas, Mishti Khel, Shaikhan and Kalaya can be viewed as cleared of the Taliban. Kalaya is a Shia area in Orakzai and has never suffered Taliban occupation, therefore the army cannot claim to have cleared it of the Taliban.

The military authorities are putting pressure on the Orakzai IDPs in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to go back to their areas. The IDPs are apprehensive because they believe that upon return they might be trapped in clashes between the Taliban and the army. They believe that clashes between the two are inevitable since the Taliban leadership is intact.

Moreover, the IDPs are afraid that the Taliban will assault them with a vengeance upon their return. The Taliban, they argue, are more dangerous than before. They consider the IDPs to be their enemies because they fled and left the Taliban alone in Orakzai to fight the army. The Taliban wanted the IDPs — especially the able-bodied men — to fight on their side against the army. The men refused the Taliban request and preferred to flee.

The IDPs say that both the Taliban and the Pakistan Army have bombed their empty houses in Orakzai. The authorities are now handing them tents so that they go back and erect tents on the sites of their bombed out homes. They complain that first they were forced to live in homelessness in the scorching heat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and now they are being forced to spend the snowy winter of Orakzai on the debris of their destroyed homes. Moreover, both the Taliban and the Pakistan Army have bombed schools, healthcare centres and the electricity system. People’s businesses have been destroyed. How do the authorities expect the IDPs to live a normal life in such conditions? There seem to be no arrangements in place to rebuild the necessary infrastructure in Orakzai.

The military authorities should share with the nation the ‘clues’ related to al Qaeda that they found in Orakzai. They should release the information about al Qaeda militants killed in Orakzai. They must also explain why and how the other al Qaeda militants fled from Orakzai, whether or not the military chased them, where they are now and whether the authorities have any plan to kill them in the areas to where they fled. Above all, they must inform the nation about when are they going to kill or capture the Taliban leadership in Orakzai. They must also inform the masses about what security arrangements have been made for those Orakzai residents who offered armed resistance to the Taliban before the army’s arrival in the area.

Similarly, the political authorities in Orakzai must elaborate what compensation they intend to make to the IDPs for the damage to their properties caused by the Taliban and Pakistan Army and what arrangements have been made to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure in Orakzai.

The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and currently writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban.

 

[SMC]

^

The militants present in Orakzai are TTP, not Afghan Taliban. I don't see how PA plans to use TTP for terrorism against Afghanistan.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Making sense of it all

Dawn
By Kamran Shafi
Tuesday, 02 Nov, 2010

When Musharraf made his U-turn on the Taliban upon American ‘urging’ after 9/11, some of us thought he meant it.

And, being the boss of bosses of the establishment of the Land of the Pure, would influence the Pakistani Deep State to change its stance too, and help the rest of the world fight the scourge wholeheartedly. And that the Taliban could do little against the rest of the world if no foreign power helped them.

Consider: the Russians, the Central Asian Republics, China, Iran, all the countries surrounding Afghanistan except for some extremist elements in Central Asia and Pakistan were against the Taliban. They were isolated and could easily have been eliminated.

Little did we know, however, that Musharraf and his junta did not mean what they said; that they were being two-faced; that the Deep State, with his approval, wanted to keep the Afghan Taliban as their proxies in the ongoing Great Game in Afghanistan, and their cousins, the Pakistani version of the bloodthirsty lot, as its ‘strategic assets’ against India.

Whilst we well remember Musharraf’s spin-doctors (aka ‘spin-quacks’) patting themselves on the back and exulting over the honorific bestowed on the dictatorship when it was anointed a ‘non-Nato ally’ of the US, they never really meant it.

While his junta milked the Americans of billions of dollars it allowed the Afghan Taliban to maintain their safe houses and bases inside Pakistani territory where they repaired after effectively targeting our ‘allies’ in Afghanistan and inflicting damage on coalition troops. This was two-facedness of a particularly vicious kind, but one that the Americans naively ignored, as it now turns out, to their cost.

Never mind too, that the Pakistani Taliban would be allowed, indeed helped, towards taking over large swathes of Pakistani territory, particularly Swat, through a mixture of acts of omission and commission of the Deep State to send a signal to the Americans that it was hard put to defend its own country, so what could it do to help in matters Afghan? And to inveigle more monies out of them, a reported $11bn in nine years, much of it unaccounted for to date.

American naiveté boggles the senses when we note that it swallowed hook line and sinker the absurd machinations of the Commando and his junta. Indeed, it was sad to see that whilst it paid out billions of dollars to the dictator, it turned a blind eye to what was being done to this poor country and the region by this ludicrous man and a Deep State that acts only in its own interest.

Indeed, the Americans went on mollycoddling the dictator even when — just one example will do — the dictatorship with none other than the chief of army staff sitting atop the heap called the government of Pakistan wouldn’t find Mullah Fazlullah (aka Mullah Radio)’s clandestine FM radio station for well on four years during which time it broadcast messages of death and destruction.

Its radio-show host Muslim Khan (who has vanished into thin air after being ‘captured’ a full two years ago!) actually exhorted the terrorists to slaughter such and such a person (including women teachers) on a particular night at a particular location.

We have to note with disgust and revulsion that there were credible reports that the security forces, including the much-vaunted Pakistan Army, did not lift a finger to stop these most awful and cold-blooded killings which in some cases were reportedly carried out under their very noses. Which reminds me: whatever happened to the inquiry into the horrific killing of the four SSG officers and men who were mercilessly tortured and then killed and then mutilated by these barbarians and in which the commissioner Malakand was said to be involved in some way? What are the actual facts, can the ISPR please tell us? Where, for example, is the commissioner fellow? Was he guilty, innocent?While I am on the subject of inquiries, what happened to the inquiry ordered by COAS Kayani into the alleged firing squad murders as seen on YouTube? Another thing — there is a video on this same site showing what seem like army soldiers beating at least two people, one an old man well above 60, both lying on their backs and trying unsuccessfully to ward off the hard blows with their raised arms and legs.

From the curses used freely and very audibly one can tell that the laughing stick-wielders are Punjabi speakers. I urge the COAS to order an inquiry into this video too. It is possible of course that, this too is a Hindu/Jewish/Christian/Indian/Israeli/American conspiracy to destabilise our country. But can we please be told if it is?

It’s all been a game for our Deep State, which little realises what a very dangerous game it is: that it is being too clever-by-half. The end is near, however, both for the Americans and for us hapless Pakistanis.

For the present let us consider this region. While formulating its Taliban strategy, the Pakistan Deep State, in keeping with its penchant for making mistake after disastrous blunder, has given no consideration to the balance sheet of the Taliban when they were last in power in Afghanistan. While their rule in Afghanistan was noted for utter brutality, specially towards women, it was no better for us, their foremost supporters and providers.

The Taliban were bad for Afghanistan and its people; they were bad for Pakistan and its people; they were bad for Iran and its people, and for the region as a whole. Whilst we are told by their apologists that they have learnt their lessons and will be ‘kinder, gentler’ this time around there is no evidence to suggest that they have changed in any way. Every piece of evidence suggests that they will be as backward as heretofore; as brutal.

 

[RabzonKhan]

COMMENT: Kurram: the forsaken FATA

Daily Times
Dr Mohammad Taqi
November 04, 2010

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani visited a tribal agency last week but he did not tender an apology to some local families, whose dear ones — including children — were killed by the Pakistan Army gunship helicopters this past September. Not that one was holding one’s breath for the general’s regrets but it would have presented some semblance of fairness given the Pakistan Army’s demands for apology and furore over the NATO choppers killing its troops in the same region during the same month. Well, life is not fair as it is, especially for the people of Kurram — the third largest Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA).

The crime of these civilians, killed by their own army, was that they had been resisting the influx of foreign terrorists into their territory. Despite the claims put forth by the military about the NATO incursion, it is clear now that the latter had attacked the members of the Haqqani terrorist network who were using the village of Mata Sangar in Kurram to attack the ISAF posts in neighbouring Khost, Afghanistan. Reportedly, the de facto leader of the Haqqani network, Sirajuddin Haqqani, was in the region at the time of the NATO attack.

What has also become increasingly clear is that the Pakistani establishment is trying its level best to relocate its Haqqani network assets to the Kurram Agency in anticipation of an operation that it would have to start — under pressure from the US — in the North Waziristan Agency (NWA) sooner rather than later. This is precisely what the establishment had intended to do when it said that the NWA operation would be conducted in its own timeframe. The Taliban onslaught on the Shalozan area of Kurram, northeast of Mata Sangar, in September 2010 was part of this tactical rearrangement. When the local population reversed the Taliban gains in the battle for the village Khaiwas, the army’s gunships swooped down on them to protect its jihadist partners.

This is not the first time that the security establishment has attempted to use the Kurram Agency to provide transit or sanctuary to its Afghan Taliban allies. It did so during the so-called jihad of the 1980s and 1990s when the geo-strategic tip of the region called the Parrot’s Beak served as a bridgehead for operations against the neighbouring Afghan garrisons, especially Khost. In the fall of 2001, the Pakistan Army moved into Kurram and the Tirah Valley straddling the Khyber and Kurram agencies, ostensibly to block al Qaeda’s escape from the Tora Bora region. The Tirah deployment actually served as a diversion, as al Qaeda and key Afghan Taliban were moved through Kurram and in some instances helped to settle there.

The use of diversions and decoys has also become a de facto state policy when it comes to Kurram. The crisis in the region has been described as a sectarian issue since April 2007. However, the fact of the matter is that the Wahabi extremists, sponsored by the state’s intelligence apparatus, were used to prepare the ground for a larger Taliban-al Qaeda presence in the area. A local mosque in Parachinar served then as the staging ground for rolling out the Taliban rule in the Kurram Agency like similar operations in other tribal agencies. At the time, the Nasrullah Mansur network — an affiliate of the Afghan Taliban — along with the Pakistani Taliban was part of the alliance that had taken over the mosque. The resistance by the Kurram people was extraordinary and the jihadists were dislodged, albeit at great cost to the life, property and peace of the region. A son of Nasrullah Mansur, Saif-ur-Rahman was reportedly killed in a later round of fighting in December 2007.

From that point on, the Kurram tribesmen have come under increasing pressure from the establishment and its Taliban assets to allow the use of their territory for waging war against Afghanistan. The Parachinar-Thall road was effectively closed to the people from upper Kurram through jihadist attacks right under the establishment’s nose. The blockade became so intense that the people had to either use an unreliable and highly expensive small aircraft service operated by the Peshawar Flying Club to reach Peshawar or look for alternative routes.

A land route to Kabul was later opened through the efforts of some Peshawar based tribal and political elders. For about two years, this 230 mile-long arduous journey has literally been upper Kurram’s lifeline and its only land route to reach the rest of Pakistan via Peshawar. Given the fact that the Kurram Agency, with its over half a million population and a 3,380 square kilometre area, is the third largest tribal agency, this route has helped avert a massive humanitarian disaster by allowing food, medicine and supplies to reach the locals. The state did not stand just idle; it actively assisted in the blockade of its own citizens.

The establishment’s strategy over the last month has been to impose the Haqqani network as the ‘mediators’ over the Kurram Agency to help resolve the ‘sectarian’ conflict there. They had coerced and co-opted three leaders from Kurram, Aun Ali, Zamin Hussain and the MNA Sajid Turi, to meet Ibrahim and Khalil Haqqani, sons of the network’s ailing chief Jalaluddin. The three Pakistani men, however, did not have the waak — a customary power of attorney or designation — to conduct a jirga or negotiation or seek nanawatai (sanctuary) on behalf of the Kurram people and therefore were not able to guarantee that Kurram would not resist the new Taliban-Haqqani network incursion there.

The flat out refusal of the Kurramis, who have lost over 1,200 souls since April 2007, to cede their territory and pride to the jihadists and their masters has thrown a wrench in the latter’s immediate plans. Having failed to dupe the citizenry, the establishment has elected to bring them to their knees by force. It announced last week that it is closing down the Parachinar-Gardez-Kabul route, trapping the people of Kurram in a pincer of twin blockades. Announcing the embargo, Colonel Tausif Akhtar of the Pakistani security forces claimed that they are closing down five border entry points to clamp down on sectarian violence. The people of Kurram, however, see this as the state opening the floodgates of oppression on them. But as long as the rest of Pakistan and the world at large do not take notice of the establishment’s tactics in Kurram, this forgotten part of FATA will be completely forsaken.

 

[RabzonKhan]

COMMENT: No consensus on security policies

Daily Times
Babar Ayaz
November 09, 2010


What the Pakistani establishment is doing to the country and what it would do with Pakistan, is the question that concerns not only the people of Pakistan, but also the people around the world. The emphasis on ‘Pakistani establishment’ is deliberate because the fate of the country is in their hands and the people of Pakistan have little say in it. The people — the country has diverse sub-nationalities — have a different outlook on major political and foreign relations issues of the country. So they cannot be considered having one monolithic view, as our establishment wants us to believe.

Why is the world worried about Pakistan more than say Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population? The reasons are obvious. To underline a few: it is the country with the largest set-up of militant Islamic organisations; it is the country which is unfortunately strategically placed next to the ever-turbulent Afghanistan where NATO forces are fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda; it is the country which has a strong al Qaeda support base; it is the country which has nuclear weapons; it is the country which has had three wars and many covert battles with its second biggest neighbour; its next door neighbour India’s smooth economic growth is now needed by the world economic powers; it is a fuming volcano which if allowed to erupt may cause a Tsunami, damaging the whole region; and it is the country which has not been able to make sense of itself even after 63 years of its existence.

The trouble is that there is no doubt that the establishment and the civilian government do not agree on national security issues. As a consequence we have landed ourselves in an international nutcracker. With the Republican Party taking over the majority in the US Congress, there would be more pressure on Pakistan to deliver the Afghan Taliban, either at the negotiating table or back the surge against them wholeheartedly.

Obama has already announced his policy, putting the burden of success on Pakistan’s support. Thus the international pressure is getting stifling and the establishment’s clever tricks will not work. It is true that the US-led alliance needs Pakistan to be successful in Afghanistan. But we should realise that this demand can only be met by taking on or at least withdrawing shelter to the Afghan Taliban and by winding up the India-specific jihadi organisations. The political government wants to deliver this but the establishment does not. The present political conflict is a consequence of this conflict on the national security policy; resurrection of the president’s corruption cases is only the wrapping.

With this backdrop, the probable scenario is that the country would not only see more terrorist onslaughts but political instability as well. If the president is forced to step down by the over-zealous men in black coats and gowns, the khaki co-evolutionists believe the democratic system would not be damaged and a new angel politician can be elected. They may be right but what they do not comprehend, consciously or unconsciously, is that the more crucial and urgent issue is the paradigm shift in the country’s national security policy and not finding some ‘mister clean’ as the president or the prime minister. Please try to see through the thinly veiled tricks of the establishment. They have always used the corruption stunt to bring down political governments, as if military rule was kosher!

The ramifications of this political conflict would be that the shortsighted establishment of Pakistan would be forced to fight the terrorists on the one hand, while on the other they are going to lose the support of the largest political party, which had the courage to come out openly in support of the military operation against the jihadi terrorists. Benazir Bhutto was the only national leader, not discounting some of the regional leaders, who had the courage to take on the jihadi terrorists. Even in her last speech before she was assassinated, she thundered against the Swat Taliban. Her party has followed this policy and provided support to the army in its operations in Malakand and South Wazirstan. They are the ones who are clear about changing the threat perception of Pakistan, which is in conflict with the faulty establishment theory. The policy of non-interference in the affairs of Afghanistan and India is wise; the establishment’s outdated strategy to support non-state actors against these neighbours is indeed otherwise. Going by Nawaz Sharif’s statement at a conference the other day, one can say that he has moved away from his party leaders who are confused on the jihadists’ role in Pakistan.

An alternate scenario could be that the PPP-led coalition government is brought down, as I had mentioned in this column a few weeks back, by engineering the withdrawal of support of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and FATA members of the National Assembly. This might give Mian Nawaz Sharif a chance to cobble some sort of alliance with his old compatriots in Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) and maybe MQM also if it is pushed that way. But so far Mian Nawaz Sharif has shown sagacity and has not fallen in the same trap that had proved dangerous for him when he came to power with the support of the establishment. Political leaders should be given their due that in the Musharraf period when they were forced to be out of politics they matured to a certain extent. However, Mian Nawaz Sharif has to watch for those who incite him to seek some kind of unconstitutional strategy to oust the present government; such people are in his party and, sadly, also in the media.

His suggestion that all the political parties should get together and agree on a 25 years development course for Pakistan is something that the PPP should not ignore. He was honest in admitting at the same conference that the country is faced with existential problems no single party can manage alone. And, above all else, political parties have to take the foreign and national security policy away from the military establishment. A clean shift from India-myopia-driven policy is essential if Pakistan has to get back on the peace and prosperity trajectory. On its part, India has to also show the magnanimity of a big power and resolve the pending issues, giving Pakistan the space required to change.

 

[LAKHNAVI]

The state that wouldn’t fail

By Cyril Almeida
Friday, 22 May, 2009

PAKISTAN is the country that just won’t fail. It threatens to, seemingly always on the brink, always giving the world a collective migraine, always on the verge of chaos, but just when you think we’re done for, when all hope is lost, when it seems nothing can save it from itself, somehow we end up doing just enough of the right thing to keep the country afloat, to live another day to drift into another crisis.

And so it is this time with the operation in Malakand division. The government wants you to believe that it had a plan all along, that the Nizam-i-Adl was a way of stripping away the last vestiges of justification for the militancy in Swat, that the negotiations with the TNSM were a necessary charade to expose the motives of Maulana Fazlullah and his band of savages.

Would that the illusion of a government with a plan in hand were the truth. The fact is, the government, and us, the people, by extension, got lucky. If the ANP government in NWFP and the PPP government in Islamabad had their way, Sufi Mohammad would still quietly be rearranging society in Malakand to his liking, with the TTP the stick with which Sufi would enforce his law in his bailiwick. And thus, with one problem confined to one area, the governments in Peshawar and Islamabad could go about their business of pretending to govern the other areas under their control.

But two things happened to spoil the plan, and while both were always likely to have occurred, it would be charitable in the extreme to argue that the provincial and federal governments anticipated them and had factored them into their plans for Malakand.

First, the militants in Swat, freed from fighting in the district, set forth and began to spread their seed in neighbouring districts. We can know the government didn’t expect this because it installed a pro-Taliban commissioner in Malakand and didn’t do anything to try and stop the militants from slipping into Buner, Lower Dir and Shangla and setting up shop for business.

Fact is, if the government’s plan always was to eventually fight the militants it would have acted to limit the theatre in which the militants were to be fought. But now, even weeks after trying to retake even a small mountain village like Pir Baba in Buner, the army is struggling. What could have been nipped in the bud by local police and administrative action, has become a full-fledged military operation.

Second, Sufi Mohammad reverted to his kooky ideas publicly. Neither the ANP nor the PPP expected it — in fact they planned for something quite the contrary. The massive gathering on that scenic grassy field in Mingora was arranged by the government to give Sufi a grand stage from which to denounce Fazlullah and declare a fatwa against his intransigent militants. But when Sufi got up on the stage, he became giddy at the sight of all those thousands gathered to listen to him and thought, “Heck with it, this is my moment. I’ll speak from the heart.”

And so he did, declaring everybody and everything in Pakistan un-Islamic. The cameras focused on the wild applause of the audience, but if they had looked elsewhere they would have captured the stricken faces of government officials. Things had most definitely not gone according to plan.

So, once the original plan — if it can even be called a plan — had failed, the government had to come up with something else; and by then the only option left was the military option. Criticism of the government at this stage may seem churlish, given that so rarely does a Pakistani government do the right thing even after all the wrong options have been exhausted.

But the story of how this government arrived at the military option in Malakand is important because it is not the final stop in the fight against militancy — there is a long road ahead, and it weaves through Fata and Punjab and Pakistan’s cities. The point is, if the road ahead is navigated with a similar mix of lucky breaks and nonsense planning, a fortuitous result is far more unlikely than likely.

Steering blindfolded may yet get the government around another bend or two and burnish the legend of Pakistan being the state that just won’t fail, but it won’t affect the inexorable logic of failure in the long run — you can only get away with mismanagement of a country for so long in the face of a violent threat. If not tomorrow or next year, then five, 10, 15 years down the road, at some point our luck will run out. That isn’t abject cynicism, it is a logical certainty.

But for all the sins of omission and commission, the failures of the government of today — or even the one of tomorrow — are only part of the problem. At the root of the problem of militancy is the security establishment — essentially the Pakistan Army high command with sections of the intelligence apparatus and retired officers as its instruments of policy implementation.

It is that group which sets the parameters of what the state can or cannot do against the militants, and it still cleaves to the distinction between good and bad militants. There is no reason to believe that it is not serious about eliminating the militants in Malakand this time. The militants there have proved intractable and of no utility to the state — in fact, they are a threat to it and therefore are being taken on.

But there is every reason to believe that the security establishment is serious about maintaining that distinction elsewhere. And that is especially problematic when it comes to dealing with Ground Zero of militancy — the Waziristan agencies.

Separating good from bad is tactically possible when the good and bad militants are spatially separated, in small numbers and not in control of territory. So in Punjab and the cities the state can go after Al Qaeda militants — the bad ones — while turning a blind eye to the good ones, our home-grown jihadi networks.

But in the Waziristan agencies the good and the bad are intertwined, exist in larger numbers and control the territory. Trying to whack the bad militants there while avoiding trampling the good ones is a non-starter. To succeed there — and there is no doubt that militancy in Pakistan cannot be defeated without success there — the good/bad distinction would need to be abandoned first.

And if we don’t drop that distinction soon, the legend of the state that just wouldn’t fail may eventually prove untrue.

pakistan as a state fails or not is a matter of debate and only time will tell but it is quite demeaning for a nation when such doubts are raised.

 

[RabzonKhan]

ANALYSIS: Between the military and militants

Daily Times
Farhat Taj
November 13, 2010

Recently, there has been news in the national and international media that Jalaluddin Haqqani’s network, based in North Waziristan, is being shifted by the military establishment of Pakistan to Kurram to flee the relentless US drone attacks that have considerably damaged the group. Most media discussions about this development focus on external factors, like how difficult it may become for NATO and US forces to gather intelligence and strike the Haqqani group in Kurram, and the possibility of an extension of the US drone attacks to Kurram. The last possibility is also claimed as leading to more anti-Americanism in the wider society of Pakistan, which, unlike tribal society, seems to oppose the drone strikes as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

No due attention is being paid to the impact of the arrival of the Haqqani fighters on the people in Kurram and the areas close to it. With the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, all the nearby districts were destabilised. D I Khan, with its mixed Sunni and Shia population, was rocked by sectarian attacks, the people in Tank and Bannu were attacked and the civilians in all frontier regions came under repeated terrorist actions.

The point is that Jalaluddin Haqqani is widely respected among the Taliban groups and he uses his position to influence them and to make peace among warring Taliban groups. When two Taliban groups anywhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan have a go at each other’s throats, Jalaluddin asks his sons to invite the two to one of his guesthouses in North Waziristan. He ultimately convinces them to stop fighting against each other by giving money to some and weapons to others. People in Waziristan constantly complain that our intelligence agencies always try to push all militants, Pakhtun, Punjabi and foreigners, into the ‘Haqqani loop’. Staunchly anti-Shia sectarian groups are also linked to the Haqqani network. So many militant groups now coming to Kurram, including the sectarian groups, will inevitably intensify sectarian violence against the civilians from Kurram to Kohat, the region with a mixed Sunni-Shia population.

This means that the Sunni IDPs from Parachinar (Kurram), displaced since 2007, and Shia IDPs from Sadda (Kurram), displaced since the 1980s, should forget about going back to their native areas in the near future. The Shias in upper Orakzai suffered at the hands of the Taliban and this was followed by the Taliban atrocities against the Sunnis in upper Orakzai. The Ali Khel, the biggest tribe in Orakzai, lost its entire mixed Sunni and Shia leadership (over 100 tribal leaders) in a suicide attack by the Taliban. The Shia area in lower Orakzai that has remained largely stable could face acute, violent attacks from the anti-Shia groups. Some of the Orakzai Sikh families displaced by the Taliban have been given refuge by the Shias in lower Orakzai. Instability in lower Orakzai could displace the Sikh families once more. Both Kohat and Hangu with their mixed Sunni-Shia population have already been victims of several sectarian attacks. There have also been suicide attacks on the general public in both cities regardless of sectarian distinction, including the attacks on markets and families of policemen. Residents of the two cities may now be exposed to intensified violence of the kind never seen by them before.

Moreover, the US is putting pressure on Pakistan to start a military operation in North Waziristan and, seemingly, Pakistan will give in. With the Haqqanis moved to the safety of Kurram, a military operation will begin in North Waziristan that will kill innocent civilians and also lead to large-scale human displacement from the area. In all the areas of FATA where military operations have been conducted, people complain that the army deliberately targeted civilians and let the Taliban flee or avoided firing at the terrorists. This is the key reason why so many people became displaced in the tribal areas where the military operations have been conducted. This is also precisely the reason why the people in FATA favour drone strikes on the militants instead of military operations; the former never miss their target, the latter always kills civilians in large numbers and have been unable to kill any leading Taliban commander in so many military operations. Despite the relentless drone attacks in North Waziristan, there is no mass scale displacement from the area. There would be large-scale human displacement from North Waziristan if a military operation begins in the area.

How long will the ‘strategic assets’ — the Haqqanis — of the military establishment be moved from one area of FATA to another to destabilise it along with nearby districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa? It has been years since the people of FATA and the adjoining districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been trapped between the military and the militants. The two have killed civilians when they are fighting each other as well as when they are not fighting each other. The recent media debate about the Haqqani’s new destination in Kurram is from the point of view of NATO and US forces, the strategic considerations of the military establishment of Pakistan, and state level relations between Islamabad and Washington. There seems to be no one to voice the local people’s perspective in the whole debate, the people who will most likely become innocent victims of the strategic transport of the Haqqanis from North Waziristan to Kurram.

The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and currently writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban

 

[RabzonKhan]

VIEW: Take them head-on

Daily Times
Daud Khattak
November 16, 2010

Pakistanis, perhaps, belong to the most unfortunate nation on earth because they continue to fall victim to the bad policies — past, present and probably future — of their own state in such a large number. And the November 5 bloodbath in the semi-tribal Darra Adam Khel town, located around 37 kilometres south of Peshawar, is the latest example.

The apparent reason behind the attack on the mosque and hujra of tribal elder Haji Wali Muhammad is said to be the result of intra-militant groups’ fighting. The Taliban group, led by Tariq Afridi, claimed responsibility for the attack that targeted people believed to be supporters of the Momin group. From the Pakistani government’s point of view, the former comes in the category of anti-government or ‘bad Taliban’ while the latter is considered pro-government or ‘good Taliban’.

The attack which targeted innocent tribesmen, however, is not the first in Darra Adam Khel, and surely not in other parts of the country. A similar attack on a jirga of pro-government tribal elders in the same town on March 2, 2008 killed 40 top elders from different tribes and sub-tribes who had gathered to discuss peace, withdrawal of the army and expulsion of the Taliban from their area.

The town of Darra Adam Khel is under the control of the Pakistani security forces since 2008 with numerous operations being conducted from time to time, but just like the operations in other parts of the tribal areas, the militants are yet to be eliminated there.

Since the beginning of what presented itself as a war against the Taliban by the state of Pakistan, the army troops usually move into an area and then force the locals to form lashkars to fight the armed gangs presented as the Taliban.

Finding themselves caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, the common citizen usually agrees to organise lashkars and usually bears the brunt of Taliban attacks. A bloody scene was witnessed when a suicide bomber targeted a jirga in Mohmand tribal agency on July 9 killing 55 people, including those leading an anti-Taliban lashkar.

Similar attacks have been registered on unarmed people, who were forced to support the idea of a lashkar in Shalbandi village of Buner district, Upper Dir district, as well as Orakzai, Bajaur, Kurram and Khyber.

It is ironic that the state and its security agencies, instead of protecting the citizen, are pushing them into the mouth of danger where they are meeting nothing less than tragic death.

It is true that the formation of lashkars has been part of tribal custom and tradition but it was never meant to fight regular wars or dubious insurgencies where everything is wrapped in mystery and confusion and where the common villagers cannot differentiate between a foe and a friend.

Lashkars used to be organised on the levels of villages, towns or tribes and sub-tribes for a temporary period of time and the elders used to resolve the matter within days. However, that was a time when the tribal elders used to have a say in the affairs of the tribes.

The situation in the tribal areas is altogether different now. How can a lashkar effectively face the groups of gangsters and mercenaries being protected by ‘powerful hands’ and enjoying enough power and skills to hit any target anywhere with full ease?

Secondly, instead of going after the rogue elements and eliminating them without any discrimination, the state is signing peace agreements by dubbing some as ‘good’ and others as ‘bad’.

Interestingly, the army and paramilitary troops are present and have been occupying all the hilltops in the tiny Darra town over the past two years, but they have yet to purge the area of a few hundred rogue elements who are out to challenge the writ of the state by attacking government installations and killing innocent citizens. The countrymen reserve every right to ask the president, the prime minister and the army chief about the role and responsibilities of the state’s security agencies when the common man is asked to take up arms and fight the armed gangs, both local and foreign.

Alongside this, the formation of lashkars at a critical time like this when half of Pakistan seems to be at war with reports of death and destruction everywhere is no more than further moving society towards militarisation and more violence.

Religious extremism, sectarianism and Talibanisation are already taking a heavy toll on the lives of common Pakistanis — thanks to the misguided policies of military rulers General Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf — besides bringing sea changes in social attitudes and ways of thinking, but the arming of the common citizen will further exacerbate the situation instead of bailing the country out of its present mess.

No one could have imagined, even for a while, the lynching of two young men by a group of people as ‘mob justice’ only a few years ago. However, it is the blessing of religious extremism, for which one can rightly blame the state of Pakistan, that has brought society to the brink where human life is cheaper than the cheapest commodity at a grocery store.

Arming the citizen to fight the Taliban cannot be a permanent solution. Rather, it will promote warlordism in a society already grappling with warlords and armed gangs. And who knows this better than the Pakistani establishment that fought the jihad against the Soviets by arming the Afghans?

 

[rameez ahmed]

No offence but the shariah law is messed up and not capable of fitting in with today's society. Shariah law will take Pakistan back to the stoneage just like during the times of Zia ul Haq and its cuz of him were in this taliban mess. We need democracy and secularism to succeed. Feudalism should be destroyed and a sincere leader maybe like Musharraf should come in. I say Musharraf because under him we were an economic powerhouse. We need to repeal all stoneage laws made by Zia ul Haq and follow the Turkish Model.

the Quran and Shariah is applicable to every age till the day of Judgement .. Make yourself clear in this first..... So it is very much effective today if it applied.... Any Muslim who doesn't agree with this is making his/her afterlife in trouble....

Saudi Arabia have just Applied the Islamic rules of Punishment for crime cases, and see how low is their crime rate.... If Islamic laws are applied in every area like politics, monetory system, etc in Pakistan, then we will be one of the most powerful nations in the world.

Not following Shariah today and involving our state in every Prohibited things like Haraam Interest based Banking System, and so called Supreme Parliament, etc and not following Islam 100% in our life is the only reason of what we are facing today...

Its not Democracy and Secularism that can save us.. both of them are the reason that has taken us in the Wrath of Allah and now Allah is Punishing us for all our sins, in the forms of various natural Disasters and Intervention of Non Muslim countries in our Policies ....

Secularism makes the Government and Parliament Supreme and Sovereign, whereas these two are for Allah Alone. the laws of Allah in the Quran and the saying of Holy Prophet (SA) are the Supreme Laws. Any person or any State who says that their Laws are Supreme and further says that their State and Government is Sovereign, is indeed Committing SHIRK by saying so because these two are the Attributes of Allah alone..

No law created by man is Supreme and no state made by man made boundaries is Sovereign. The Laws of Islam (Quran and Shariah) are Supreme and Allah SWT is alone SOVEREIGN . If any Muslim says that any law, other than Islamic Laws are Supreme is indeed a Mushrik as he has made others Partners in the Attributes of Allah....

So if you think that Secular State is good for Muslims then you are completely Mistaken.

 

[rameez ahmed]

Following are the videos of Late Dr Israr Ahmed (May Allah Bless him with Jannat), and it describes all the reasons of Our downfall as a nation and the ways through which we can emerge again....

Believe me if we follow it, insha Allah, Allah will make us the most powerful and blessed country.. Otherwise we will further go in the Wrath of Allah.....

please start the first video from the 7th minute to listen to the Speech of Late Dr Israr Ahmed (May Allah Bless him with Jannat)

YouTube - (14/18) Pak Bharat Talokaat

YouTube - (15/18) Pak Bharat Talokaat

YouTube - (16/18) Pak Bharat Talokaat

YouTube - (17/18) Pak Bharat Talokaat

YouTube - (18/18) Pak Bharat Talokaat

 

[Karachiite]

We didn't fail when we lost East Pakistan and we didn't fail when we had corrupt democratic leaders in the 90's and we aren't going to fail now.

 

[rameez ahmed]

We didn't fail when we lost East Pakistan and we didn't fail when we had corrupt democratic leaders in the 90's and we aren't going to fail now.

We should use "inshaAllah" for the future . Shouldn't we????

Only Allah knows what is our future......