The state that wouldn't fail

[RabzonKhan]

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.

 

[brilTek]

The state that wouldn’t fail

By Cyril Almeida
Friday, 22 May, 2009


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.

We must thanks ALLAH that munafiq talibans commited some utter stupid mistakes in haze that wide-opened the eyes of whole nation.

Tough Times Don't Last.......But Tought People Do

Pakistan Paaindabaaad!!

 

[muse]

One has to figure out what needs to be done and then create the will do what has been chosen as the correct action - but getting to that second part is not so easy for Pakistan, sometimes. But that realization is itself a big deal, and InshaAllah, the the days are not far when Pakistan are not going from crisis to crisis (though we may miss that)

Some think that when it comes to Pakistan that we are too critical, but no, Pakistan, with all it's warts, with all it's failures, is also a success story, a wildly enthusiastic success (we got lucky this time? sure, who does not need luck) -- all which means that we should not cease using our critical faculties to examine events and ideas we experience - it makes Pakistan stronger, better.

 

[ajpirzada]

interesting. i agree with the gud/bad militant part but otherwise i still think Nizam-e-Adal was a well planned move. though some mistakes commited by taliban (u might wanna call it God's help) made it from success to bigger success.

 

[ANDUBYLL]

Yes, Pakistan will not fail. Its a very large nation (unfortunately its often compared with India and therefore gets dwarfed in the scheme of things)

However Pakistanis and Pakistan needs to have a good look at itself in the mirror ! People learn from their mistakes and move on. A good place to look is at the peoples verdict. They have always voted for parties that can promise them 'roti,kapda and makaan'. Not a sharia based nation that would increase their misery even further !

 

[Xtremeownage]

Yes, Pakistan will not fail. Its a very large nation (unfortunately its often compared with India and therefore gets dwarfed in the scheme of things)

However Pakistanis and Pakistan needs to have a good look at itself in the mirror ! People learn from their mistakes and move on. A good place to look is at the peoples verdict. They have always voted for parties that can promise them 'roti,kapda and makaan'. Not a sharia based nation that would increase their misery even further !

You guys can spread nonsense against Shariah and propaganda against Islam, but the truth is that Shariah is a FUNDAMENTAL aspect of Islam and is the BEST system in the world!

The Taliban (Wahabis) do NOT follow the correct shariah! They follow their nafs!

The Shariah is the holy law of Islam brought by the greatest of all creation, the Prophet Muhammad (S)!

The Shariah of the Prophet Muhammad (S) is the system we need!

Pakistan Zindabad!

 

[rokhanyousafzai]

You guys can spread nonsense against Shariah and propaganda against Islam, but the truth is that Shariah is a FUNDAMENTAL aspect of Islam and is the BEST system in the world!

The Taliban (Wahabis) do NOT follow the correct shariah! They follow their nafs!

The Shariah is the holy law of Islam brought by the greatest of all creation, the Prophet Muhammad (S)!

The Shariah of the Prophet Muhammad (S) is the system we need!

Pakistan Zindabad!

i disagree i think in a country like pakistan religion should be kept completely out of politics obviously our culture and religion do intertwine so there will be some influence but largely keep it out no country has an Islamic system and i dont think we are capable of properly implementing it even you are bickering over whos sharia is right

 

[ajpirzada]

i disagree i think in a country like pakistan religion should be kept completely out of politics obviously our culture and religion do intertwine so there will be some influence but largely keep it out no country has an Islamic system and i dont think we are capable of properly implementing it even you are bickering over whos sharia is right

i fully support shariah but again the question raised by you is most important. if we are not capable then there is no point
its better to not have shariah if we have to kill each other

 

[Enigma SIG]

Ask any muslim and he will not be against implementation of sharia. The way the taliban want to implement it is the problem. Qisas is not delivered by men masking as mullahs and lashing out sentences to people without proper inquiry.

There is a legal system and the government delivered that with the peace deal. It was really an eye opener for the supporters of the taliban when they started taking additional territory and labelled the govt as kafirs. Question is are they the only muslims alive? Or do you just label somebody a kafir who doesn't follow your stupid ideology? Who gave them the authority to label others as kafirs?

If anyone saw the pro-talibani MNA on capital talk on the 20th and how he certified the suicide bombings as acceptable; that should really make the people of NWFP and FATA think if the taliban are really on their side.

 

[rokhanyousafzai]

i fully support shariah but again the question raised by you is most important. if we are not capable then there is no point
its better to not have shariah if we have to kill each other

i am not against sharia but u should know that true islamic law is a form of socialism and democracy, it holds people responsible for their actions, it gives power to the people and it encourages education and welfare of the people so while the west is following all this would u rather have democracy which shares many many of the principles of Islamic law or a twisted version which will have u shot for letting ur pants go past ur ankles. Islam and religion are something that everybody should keep to themselves you are not allowed to impose it on the people. When we understand the true and beautiful Islam and understand what its real principles are then we as a nation can talk about Islamic law until then its not feasible and suppourt for an extremist version will have dire consequences.

 

[RabzonKhan]

Analysis: Jinnah’s legacy vs terrorist trinity

Suroosh Irfani
May 28, 2009

The ongoing military operation against Taliban insurgents in Malakand Division is more than a matter of national survival: it is Pakistan’s last chance to rid itself of the self-induced cancer of violent jihadi politics, and reclaim Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan as a democratic state in sync with rest of the world.

However, it is important to note that the religious parties that opposed Jinnah’s Pakistan 62 years ago are now trying to subvert the struggle for reclaiming Pakistan. This was amply reflected at the All Parties Conference held at the Prime Minister’s house in Islamabad on May 18. While the main national parties supported military operation against the Taliban, the Jama’at-e Islami and the Jamiat-e Ulema-e Pakistan (F) opposed it, leading some Conference participants to note that these “religious parties were opposing the military action because of their ethnic and religious affinity with the Taliban,” as reported in this paper. (May 20)

Even so, there is nothing new about the pro-Taliban, pro-Al Qaeda stance of the JUIF and the JI. In the past, security forces have apprehended or gunned down Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists in the homes of JI and JUIF members in Rawalpindi and Zhob, where the terrorists were hiding. Indeed, for leaders of JI and JUIF, Osama bin Laden is a hero of Islam and attempts to portray him as a terrorist are part of conspiracies against Islam.

One only has to recall the reaction of this religio-political lobby during the Musharraf era to an ad the print media carried portraying bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders as “religious terrorists”. Reacting to the ad at a public meeting, the JUIF information secretary asserted that “Osama is a hero to Islamic world and the Musharraf government would not get any sympathy by branding him a religious terrorist”.

On his part, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, then Amir of the JI, described the ad as part of an international conspiracy in which “Pakistan’s government had sided with the Zionists’ agenda”. He went on to argue that “bracketing of Islamists with terrorists (was) a Zionist conspiracy because Islam is fast spreading in Europe and America”. (The Nation, July 2, 2002)

However, it is intriguing that many Pakistanis, especially in the religious right, continue to see the September 11 attacks against America as part of an Israeli conspiracy to discredit Muslims — even after key Al Qaeda leaders have virtually owned up to the 9/11 attacks. In fact, in a website interview last year, Al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al Zawahiri accused Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah of “trying to discredit Al Qaeda network by spreading the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the 11 September attacks”. “The purpose of this lie,” Zawahiri went on, was to suggest “that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hit America as no one else did in history.” (The News, April 24, 2008)

At the same time, Zawahiri denounced the peace deal on Swat last month, describing it as part of an American strategy “encouraging Pakistan government to make deals with Taliban across the border with Afghanistan”. However, confident of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan’s loyalty to Al Qaeda’s agenda for violent global jihad, Zawahiri warned that despite the deal “the problem will not end...It will escalate”.

No wonder, then, that the TTP was quick to ‘escalate’ the problem: it turned the Swat agreement on its head and invited Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omer to “settle” in Swat. At the same time, Taliban militants moved into Buner and Lower Dir, instead of laying down their arms as required by the Swat agreement between Taliban godfather Sufi Muhammad and the government.

Clearly, the breakdown of the deal was a deliberate act rooted in the Taliban-Al Qaeda agenda for pushing violent jihad across Pakistan in the name of sharia. Indeed, as the Taliban made clear, enforcing sharia law was not to be confined to Malakand Division, as Sufi Muhammad had assured the government, but “across Pakistan and the whole world”, as Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan told CNN in a telephonic interview.

Given these home truths about the Taliban-Al Qaeda nexus, the religious right’s argument — that military action could have been avoided had the government given the peace deal a chance — carries little weight. Indeed, if there is “an international conspiracy to change the geography of Pakistan”, as JI leaders claimed last Friday at a press conference in Islamabad, such conspiracy seems rooted in a global jihadist agenda of turning Pakistan into a base for a Wahhabi-Salafist Caliphate.

The fact of the matter is that the Taliban insurgency is spurred by a religiosity where terrorism and assassination are religious traditions; concepts that Al Qaeda ideologue Abu Mu’sab al Suri brought from Muslim Brotherhood camps in the Middle East to the Taliban training camps in Afghanistan where he was an instructor. These ideas continue to be flaunted in jihadist CDs celebrating beheadings of their opponents in Pakistan.

Ironic as it may seem, perhaps no leader in the Muslim world had a deeper grasp of the dark side of Al Qaeda and Taliban than former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. This is reflected in Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West (Schuster, 2008), the book she completed on the day of her assassination on December 27, 2007.

Indeed, her observations on the insurgents in northwestern Pakistan and their hatred for democracy encapsulates the present crisis of Pakistan — where “Al Qaeda and Taliban operate...with impunity, arrogance and brutality.” For Bhutto, the answer to the crisis lay in strengthening democracy, which “removes the oxygen from the air of extremists. They understand this better than anyone else and deliberately target democratic forces as a strategy for expanding their goal of an obscurantist Empire, which they call ‘Islamic’. Muslims such as myself reject the notion that Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or extremists are the real face of the Muslim masses.” (p.208)

In a sense, then, the ongoing battle for Pakistan reflects a contestation between two opposite narratives: on the one hand, Pakistan as a modern democratic Muslim state spurred by an egalitarian spirit of Islam as envisioned by Jinnah; on the other, Pakistan as a launchpad for a theocratic Islamic caliphate envisioned by a trinity of Arab terrorists — the Saudi bin Laden, the Egyptian Al Zawahiri and the Syrian Al Suri.

Here, the religious groups that opposed Pakistan’s creation in 1947 — namely, the JUIF and the JI — are closing ranks for a common cause: opposing military action against the Taliban and undermining Pakistan’s rebirth as a moderate Muslim democracy.

In the long battle that lies ahead, it is imperative to rally around Jinnah’s legacy to confront jihadi terror, which has wormed its way into Pakistan and destroyed Afghanistan.

Suroosh Irfani is an educationist and writer based in Lahore

 

[AchtungSpitfire]

i disagree i think in a country like pakistan religion should be kept completely out of politics obviously our culture and religion do intertwine so there will be some influence but largely keep it out no country has an Islamic system and i dont think we are capable of properly implementing it even you are bickering over whos sharia is right

No idea about Sharia but I do concur that there must be a separation of church and state for any semblance of rational governance.

This works both ways as there are times when the state can use religion to further its own nefarious ends. History is littered with such examples and I believe this was the case with Pakistan under Haq. I've read about Pakistan being one the original Asian Tigers with tremendous momentum before the influence of the military in politics that unleashed the inevitable setbacks.

 

[third eye]

I am pleasantly surprised to read moderate views ( less one) thus far in this thread.

How a nation decides to govern itself is entirely its own prerogative & no one can & should bother or interfere so long as its governing ideals do not cause turbulence outside its borders & within to a point thats its stability and identity of a nation gets impaired.

On the subject of sharia I cannot comment being unaware and unexposed to it. However, I feel since the existing system of governance has neither been institutionalized nor allowed to be 'tested' to its full even after 62 yrs it should be given a fair chance.

lastly, its good to be ' lucky' but countries do not run on luck alone.. it can run out someday.

 

[Captain03]

If Allah is on our side we shall never fall

 

[RabzonKhan]

New determination?

Editorial
Friday, May 29, 2009

There is a change in the attitude of the government, most of the political parties and the various law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. The change is that finally the scales seem to have fallen from their eyes and, to double the metaphor, the gloves have come off. Hitherto there has been an obvious reticence to take on some of the terrorist and extremists that threaten all of us. The reasons for this are – were – many and complex; ranging from those who saw the terrorists as somehow 'on our side' to those who understood them only in the context of them being a tool in the hand of external forces.

There are several indicators that allow us to make the deduction that something really has changed. One of them is the arrest in Islamabad of a man said to be a senior Taliban commander, who was picked up whilst being taken from the house of a cleric prominent in the Lal Masjid movement to another safe house. The car he was travelling in was being driven by a former FATA parliamentarian – a man who might have expected a degree of immunity in all but the most recent past. Such men are not strangers come amongst us to fight some proxy battle on behalf of foreign powers. They are our own people who, for whatever reason, have gone down a path that leads them away from the principles that our state was founded upon. Now is the time for us all, every man woman and child who has an investment in the stability and prosperity of Pakistan, to stand four-square against them, for they are the evil that darkens all our lives.