By Saeed Qureshi
If the Quaid-e-Azam made Pakistan for the brand of Islam that has been planted in Swat by Taliban, then it would be better to do without it. A frail, weak, defenseless and vulnerable young woman is clutched and prostrated on the ground by three bearded monsters, while one of them is mercilessly hitting her back with a baton. There is a big crowd, witnessing this gruesome spectacle in silence either with vicarious pleasure or out of sheer fright. This heart wrenching scene is reminicent of the declining days of Roman Empire when humans were thrown before the hungry beast to be torne.The crowds then would also witness such beastlty blood letting sports and hilariously clamour with frenzied shrieks and mirthful howls.
The grisly incident of whipping a helpless female before a crowd of onlookers has eliminated the time distance between what the pagan Romans had been doing and what the relgious hounds of the modern civilized world are up to. The Islam of Swat crusaders is no different from the paganism of the Roman barbarians who were obsessed with their blood curdling pursuits. If Islamic justice system is all about flooring a feeble woman in the streets and treat her like a lamb, then what message and impression would flow out from Pakistan about both the country and the relgion practiced here?
She was charged with going out for shopping with her father in law instead of her husband thus provoking the zealots’ rage to make her a horrible example for committing an un-islamic act. The words defy the apt description of this appalling tragedy and the way the humanity has been spit on the face. From among the detached or involved crowd not a single individual had to pick up the courage to stop these monsters from the detestable execution of the draconian relgious injection that in fact was negation and violation of the pristine Islamic code.
Taliban, the ignorant yet ruthless Islamists, have been perpetrating such abominable monstrosities in Afghanistan where they had established their caliphate style empire in that perennially strife plagued country. The people of Afghanistan had to suffer similar inhuman punishments every day from these latter day unlettered Islamic revivalists. They were driven out of Afghanistan by a combined effort of American and local anti Taliban armies. It was a good riddance for the people of Afghanistan.
It is now the turn of Pakistan, which is overwhelmed by these fanatics and followers of a creed that is neither Islamic nor civilized. The discredit for giving a free hand to Taliban to establish their brand of Islamic Shariah in Swat, goes to the Pakistan government that in fact by doing so has surrendered its sovereign status to these outfits in parts of Pakistan famous for their natural beauty and serene landscape. Ironically, while going out of a meek woman with an elderly kith is decreed as a violation of Islam and immoral, the seizing her and putting the male hands on her trembling body is not taken as breach of the relgious code.
Taliban have taken over Swat, Dir and Malakand. That is just the beginning of their march to the rest of Pakistan. The counterpart extremist religious groups within Pakistan are waiting in wings to receive these newborn ferocious crusaders of a distorted and vulgar version of Islam. The civil society beware: the drumbeat is of their onslaught on the remaining territories of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan will get louder as the time moves forward.
One single incident of lashing a woman in broad day light by the relgious roughnecks is enough to terrorize the whole population now placed at their whimsical disposal and quick fix justice via physical torture. The PPP government at the center and ANP in the province of NWFP should stop self complimenting themselves for bringing peace to Swat and the adjoining land. This peace is fraught with the seeds of civil disobedience or the revival of bloody militancy if the state of Pakistan reasserts itself to forestall the re-happening of such ignominious incidents.
Nevertheless , as every cloud has a silver lining, this incident should serve as a blessing in disguise because the citizens of Swat that are relatively conservative might have second thoughts about the kind of Islamic polity that the Taliban want to establish in the territories under their control. If the army once again moves into Swat, it would hopefully, have the tacit support of the people there. This incident that has come to the domestic and international limelight, paints the Taliban in most lurid colors. The myth of Taliban’s Shariah has exploded with a big bang. Though the people under the Taliban subjugation may be momentarily terrorized, such loathsome events might turn out to be strong justification for the entire civilized world to come down with heavy hands on these intimidators of humanity and recluse fanatics.
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Very analytical.Read Usman Kahlid,Secretary General of newly formed Rifah party's latest prognosis-jihadistan in North and MQM/ANP/Azad Baluchistan.
ReplyDeleteAmbassador Syed A.Ahsani
________________________________________________-
India Awaits Green Light for Raids on Pakistan
By Usman Khalid
December 26, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- The Pentagon has announced that the US would withdraw troops from Iraq to reinforce Afghanistan sending one brigade soon after the New Year and another three in spring 2009. This has the approval of President Elect Barack Obama. It is believed that the objective is a ‘surge’ in Afghanistan on the lines General Petreus had in Iraq. But President Hamid Karazai would like the additional troops to supplement the clandestine operations by RAW (India’a CIA) on Pakistan’s border. It now appears that President Zardari of Pakistan is just as eager for India and America to shift focus to his country. His reason: he wants the ISI and the Army to be tamed. It seems that Pakistan has the reincarnation of the Sheikh Mujib as a leader. And it was Mujibs’s treachery that precipitated the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and Pakistan’s defeat.
The grim anniversary of the fall of Dhaka on 16 December 1971 is commemorated every year in Pakistan but this year it had more poignancy than ever before. Pakistan appears to be living through similar trauma all over again. The war clouds gather after ‘free and fair’ elections. In 1971, an indicted RAW Agent – Sheikh Mujib – secured the most seats in Pakistan’s parliament. Despite having contested the elections on the basis of Six Points that sought to make Pakistan a confederation, President Yahya Khan decided to honour the verdict of the people. He met Sheikh Mujib in Dhaka and asked him to assume the office of the Prime Minister. Sheikh Mujib accepted the offer and the press were briefed accordingly. Three days later, he informed the President that he had to decline the offer under pressure from his party colleagues. Now we know (from the chapter written by Dr Mu’min Chowdhury of Bangladesh in ‘Authentic Voices of South Asia’) why? Sheikh Mujib had asked for confirmation directly from India Prime Minster Indira Gandhi that India would invade East Pakistan if he made UDI – Unilateral Declaration of Independence. When he met President Yahya Khan, that confirmation had not been received. When he got the confirmation he declined the offer to become the Prime Minister and preferred to become a prisoner instead. That shows the dilemma of traitors. Once Sheikh Mujib agreed to work for RAW, he was a pawn; he had to do the bidding of his agent handlers. A maverick like him was more valuable in a Pakistani jail to give substance to the propaganda that Pakistanis would never transfer power to a Bengali as Prime Minister. The fact that most of the Prime Ministers of united Pakistan belonged to East Pakistan did not matter. Propaganda is more credible than the truth in the hands of the disciples of Kautaliya.
Pakistan had another elections on 18 February 2008 in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. No one was surprised that her party won the most seats; sympathy vote was very substantial. But there had been disquiet over Asif Ali Zardari – her husband with dubious record who has been known as ‘Mr Ten Percent’ – assuming the leadership of her party on the basis of a ‘will’, which remains shrouded in secrecy. But the bold forthrightness showed by him in controlling the outrage on Benazir’s assassination and the riots, arson and plunder in Sindh that followed, he built a broad constituency of trust in himself. Everybody in Pakistan was pleasantly surprised when he set up a broad based coalition government with his archrival – Nawaz Sharif. He outmanoeuvred Pervez Musharraf and displayed impressive political skill in getting him to resign. However, his support has waned very fast because he went back on written undertaking to reinstate the Chief Justice Musharraf had removed. He is the victim of the Sheikh Mujib syndrome. Mujib could be prime minister of Pakistan but he chose to be a prisoner. He did become the President of Bangladesh only to be assassinated by his own soldiers who saw the truth – he was an Indian agent. Asif Zardari must be pinching himself every morning wondering if he was the President of Pakistan. But agent handlers are not known to be kind and merciful; their business is blackmail; they keep their agents on a tight leash. They want Asif Ali Zardari to deliver; the time is running out fast.
For some more time a debate will continue whether Asif Zardari is an Indian agent or not but the penny has dropped with the vote in the UN Sanctions Committee that declared some of the Pakistani NGOs to be the supporters of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. It has now come out that he did ask the Pakistan’s representatives at the UN to get the ‘terrorist’ label put on some very respected names among Islamic NGOs. It has also come out that he did not consult Pakistan’s Foreign Office or use the diplomatic channels. He acted through co-conspirators – Hussain Haqqani and Hussain Haroon - Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US and the UN respectively. He has thus given a handle to India and America to interfere in the internal affairs of Pakistan. The USA and India would want progress reports and mobilise international support to condemn and isolate Pakistan as a ‘terrorist’ state and a ‘failed state’ to make the country an international pariah.
Asif Zardari (AZ) may be naive but he is no fool. He has help from India and the US to focus the ire of the international community on the ISI and the armed forces of Pakistan. America wants ‘full spectrum dominance’ over the world and Zardari (and co-conspirators) are telling them that the only institutions that stand in their way in South Asia are Pakistan’s intelligence and the armed forces. India and America are already working with him to make the armed power of the state of Pakistan to be directed against the Afghan and Kashmiri resistance. If they find the military leadership un-cooperative, AZ would turn on them. AZ tell his party that he seeks to end the military defying him on the pretext of ‘professional advice’ not because of Indian or American pressure, not because of lack of sympathy for the Kashmiri liberation struggle, but to establish the primacy of politicians for all times to come.
AZ wants to establish ‘full spectrum domination’ of his party over all the institutions of the state of Pakistan with the help of India and America under the cover of ‘war on terror’. He has already got his way over all the political parties, the judiciary and the civil service; the only resistance comes indirectly from those fighting the occupation in Kashmir and Afghanistan. India, America and Asif Zardari have a meeting of minds. They all see the resistance (in Afghanistan and Kashmir) as the enemy. If they could get the armed forces of Pakistan to fight the resistance in Kashmir and Afghanistan , both the challengers to ‘full spectrum domination’ (of America over the world and of AZ over Pakistan) would be mortally wounded in fighting each other. AZ hopes that the armed forces would have so little public adulation and support that they would never stand in the way of the political class whatever its wills, wants or does.
It appears that the narrative for AZ war against the ISI and the armed forces of Pakistan is being written by Hussain Haqqani with the help of his former colleagues in US think tanks. Haqqani is the author of ‘Military and the Mosque’. In that book he identifies both the Mosque and the Military as the scourge that destabilise the region and the world, meaning that they pose a challenge to Indo-US hegemony. He earned a professorship in the USA for that thesis and ambassadorship to the USA from AZ for the same. No wonder that the new direction of foreign policy in Pakistan has the signature of Hussain Haqqani all over. He is not hopeful that the military would take on the mosque; in his narrative of AZ’s war, Haqqani depends on India and America against the military and the mosque. Not since the Communist engineered the defeat of the Czarist Army in order to bring about the Bolshevik Revolution, has a national political party sought to engineer the defeat of its national army. But the Communist Party was not in power at that time. The AZ led PPP would be the first ruling political party any where in the world ever that enlisted the support of the enemy to weaken the foundation of its armed power – its nuclear deterrent as well as its intelligence and the armed forces.
All this would fit nicely into the scheme of President Elect Obama’a guru – Professor Brzezinski. He would love a war between the Armed Forces of Pakistan supporting secular-liberal parties (the PPP, ANP and MQM) against Resistance to Indo-US occupation of Afghanistan and Kashmir. That, in his view, would be a ‘good war’ that could yield a victory to the US at very little cost. The US ‘old guard’ and India want Zardari to use his armed forces relentlessly and ruthlessly to crush the ‘resistance’ in Afghanistan and Kashmir. AZ has already called the Kashmiri Mujahideen ‘terrorists’ in his Wall Street Journal interview. Now India and the USA want him to put his money where his mouth is and crush the Kashmiri and Afghan resistance. The Americans say they are already ‘helping’ with Predator attacks. But the attacks have been approved by President Zardari in defiance of the parliament, which forbids such attacks. Now India also wants to ‘help’ him by air assault on the ‘common enemy’. If the armed forces do not play ball, they would be the enemy as well. That is the position of India and Hussain Haqqani – the mullahs and the military are both the enemy. The Americans are less sure. They would like to give General Kiani more time. They tell him he has no other choice except to use Pakistani military to crush the ‘resistance’. The threat is barely veiled: otherwise they will crush the Pakistan’s armed power.
Even if the Army half-heartedly submitted to Indo-US threats, as it appears to be doing now, a civil war - like that in Algeria – in which the Army is fighting the majority, would quickly spread. That, the Americans hope, would create conditions for them to ‘lift’ the nuclear weapons of Pakistan to the US for ‘safe custody’. To preclude the Army saying ‘no’ to sustaining a civil war, the USA would like Asif Zardari to maintain a majority in the parliament by hook or crook. The lack of principles and ineptitude of the political class delivers that very easily. That is why Professor Brzezinski is convinced that Pakistan is the best place for making an ‘internecine war’ appear to be a ‘good war’. The Americans are pulling out of Iraq because no one supports American presence in that country. Those who do keep quiet otherwise they would be killed for being collaborators. The American stay in Afghanistan would not be too long because no Afghan would ever support Americans presence in Afghanistan. But in Pakistan, the ruling party is inviting not just America but also India to come and punish the country for supporting the Kashmiri and Afghan resistance. Kashmiris have suffered the longest occupation. Neither India nor America justifies occupation of Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet, both of them regularly succeed in getting Kashmiri resistance to be declared illegitimate. That is because collaborators and traitors do not killed; they get crowned in Pakistan.
Pakistanis/Bangladeshis were deceived into electing a traitor as their leader in 1971. It was a few young Bangladeshi officers who killed him and brought his farcical presidency to an end in August 1975. Once again we have an Indian/American agent sitting in the President’s House. The anger in Pakistan is palpable. What happens next is anybody’s guess. The Pakistan Army is under great pressure to engage in operation against Afghan and Kashmiri resistance. If it submitted or even half submitted to that pressure, the war would be fought on the soil of Pakistan. As a nation we must persevere is asserting that resistance is legitimate occupation is not. We are proud and we must show pride in our stand against occupation everywhere in the world. The USA has already recognised the bankruptcy of its position and is withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Indian position in Kashmir is even weaker but it is sustained in it obduracy by collaborators in our ranks who we put in position of leadership. Yet, I am hopeful that India will give us a chance to liberate Jammu and Kashmir sooner than any one expected or imagined.
The writer is Director of London Institute of South Asia.
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India Awaits Green Light for Raids on Pakistan
By Usman Khalid
December 26, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- The Pentagon has announced that the US would withdraw troops from Iraq to reinforce Afghanistan sending one brigade soon after the New Year and another three in spring 2009. This has the approval of President Elect Barack Obama. It is believed that the objective is a ‘surge’ in Afghanistan on the lines General Petreus had in Iraq. But President Hamid Karazai would like the additional troops to supplement the clandestine operations by RAW (India’a CIA) on Pakistan’s border. It now appears that President Zardari of Pakistan is just as eager for India and America to shift focus to his country. His reason: he wants the ISI and the Army to be tamed. It seems that Pakistan has the reincarnation of the Sheikh Mujib as a leader. And it was Mujibs’s treachery that precipitated the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and Pakistan’s defeat.
The grim anniversary of the fall of Dhaka on 16 December 1971 is commemorated every year in Pakistan but this year it had more poignancy than ever before. Pakistan appears to be living through similar trauma all over again. The war clouds gather after ‘free and fair’ elections. In 1971, an indicted RAW Agent – Sheikh Mujib – secured the most seats in Pakistan’s parliament. Despite having contested the elections on the basis of Six Points that sought to make Pakistan a confederation, President Yahya Khan decided to honour the verdict of the people. He met Sheikh Mujib in Dhaka and asked him to assume the office of the Prime Minister. Sheikh Mujib accepted the offer and the press were briefed accordingly. Three days later, he informed the President that he had to decline the offer under pressure from his party colleagues. Now we know (from the chapter written by Dr Mu’min Chowdhury of Bangladesh in ‘Authentic Voices of South Asia’) why? Sheikh Mujib had asked for confirmation directly from India Prime Minster Indira Gandhi that India would invade East Pakistan if he made UDI – Unilateral Declaration of Independence. When he met President Yahya Khan, that confirmation had not been received. When he got the confirmation he declined the offer to become the Prime Minister and preferred to become a prisoner instead. That shows the dilemma of traitors. Once Sheikh Mujib agreed to work for RAW, he was a pawn; he had to do the bidding of his agent handlers. A maverick like him was more valuable in a Pakistani jail to give substance to the propaganda that Pakistanis would never transfer power to a Bengali as Prime Minister. The fact that most of the Prime Ministers of united Pakistan belonged to East Pakistan did not matter. Propaganda is more credible than the truth in the hands of the disciples of Kautaliya.
Pakistan had another elections on 18 February 2008 in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. No one was surprised that her party won the most seats; sympathy vote was very substantial. But there had been disquiet over Asif Ali Zardari – her husband with dubious record who has been known as ‘Mr Ten Percent’ – assuming the leadership of her party on the basis of a ‘will’, which remains shrouded in secrecy. But the bold forthrightness showed by him in controlling the outrage on Benazir’s assassination and the riots, arson and plunder in Sindh that followed, he built a broad constituency of trust in himself. Everybody in Pakistan was pleasantly surprised when he set up a broad based coalition government with his archrival – Nawaz Sharif. He outmanoeuvred Pervez Musharraf and displayed impressive political skill in getting him to resign. However, his support has waned very fast because he went back on written undertaking to reinstate the Chief Justice Musharraf had removed. He is the victim of the Sheikh Mujib syndrome. Mujib could be prime minister of Pakistan but he chose to be a prisoner. He did become the President of Bangladesh only to be assassinated by his own soldiers who saw the truth – he was an Indian agent. Asif Zardari must be pinching himself every morning wondering if he was the President of Pakistan. But agent handlers are not known to be kind and merciful; their business is blackmail; they keep their agents on a tight leash. They want Asif Ali Zardari to deliver; the time is running out fast.
For some more time a debate will continue whether Asif Zardari is an Indian agent or not but the penny has dropped with the vote in the UN Sanctions Committee that declared some of the Pakistani NGOs to be the supporters of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. It has now come out that he did ask the Pakistan’s representatives at the UN to get the ‘terrorist’ label put on some very respected names among Islamic NGOs. It has also come out that he did not consult Pakistan’s Foreign Office or use the diplomatic channels. He acted through co-conspirators – Hussain Haqqani and Hussain Haroon - Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US and the UN respectively. He has thus given a handle to India and America to interfere in the internal affairs of Pakistan. The USA and India would want progress reports and mobilise international support to condemn and isolate Pakistan as a ‘terrorist’ state and a ‘failed state’ to make the country an international pariah.
Asif Zardari (AZ) may be naive but he is no fool. He has help from India and the US to focus the ire of the international community on the ISI and the armed forces of Pakistan. America wants ‘full spectrum dominance’ over the world and Zardari (and co-conspirators) are telling them that the only institutions that stand in their way in South Asia are Pakistan’s intelligence and the armed forces. India and America are already working with him to make the armed power of the state of Pakistan to be directed against the Afghan and Kashmiri resistance. If they find the military leadership un-cooperative, AZ would turn on them. AZ tell his party that he seeks to end the military defying him on the pretext of ‘professional advice’ not because of Indian or American pressure, not because of lack of sympathy for the Kashmiri liberation struggle, but to establish the primacy of politicians for all times to come.
AZ wants to establish ‘full spectrum domination’ of his party over all the institutions of the state of Pakistan with the help of India and America under the cover of ‘war on terror’. He has already got his way over all the political parties, the judiciary and the civil service; the only resistance comes indirectly from those fighting the occupation in Kashmir and Afghanistan. India, America and Asif Zardari have a meeting of minds. They all see the resistance (in Afghanistan and Kashmir) as the enemy. If they could get the armed forces of Pakistan to fight the resistance in Kashmir and Afghanistan , both the challengers to ‘full spectrum domination’ (of America over the world and of AZ over Pakistan) would be mortally wounded in fighting each other. AZ hopes that the armed forces would have so little public adulation and support that they would never stand in the way of the political class whatever its wills, wants or does.
It appears that the narrative for AZ war against the ISI and the armed forces of Pakistan is being written by Hussain Haqqani with the help of his former colleagues in US think tanks. Haqqani is the author of ‘Military and the Mosque’. In that book he identifies both the Mosque and the Military as the scourge that destabilise the region and the world, meaning that they pose a challenge to Indo-US hegemony. He earned a professorship in the USA for that thesis and ambassadorship to the USA from AZ for the same. No wonder that the new direction of foreign policy in Pakistan has the signature of Hussain Haqqani all over. He is not hopeful that the military would take on the mosque; in his narrative of AZ’s war, Haqqani depends on India and America against the military and the mosque. Not since the Communist engineered the defeat of the Czarist Army in order to bring about the Bolshevik Revolution, has a national political party sought to engineer the defeat of its national army. But the Communist Party was not in power at that time. The AZ led PPP would be the first ruling political party any where in the world ever that enlisted the support of the enemy to weaken the foundation of its armed power – its nuclear deterrent as well as its intelligence and the armed forces.
All this would fit nicely into the scheme of President Elect Obama’a guru – Professor Brzezinski. He would love a war between the Armed Forces of Pakistan supporting secular-liberal parties (the PPP, ANP and MQM) against Resistance to Indo-US occupation of Afghanistan and Kashmir. That, in his view, would be a ‘good war’ that could yield a victory to the US at very little cost. The US ‘old guard’ and India want Zardari to use his armed forces relentlessly and ruthlessly to crush the ‘resistance’ in Afghanistan and Kashmir. AZ has already called the Kashmiri Mujahideen ‘terrorists’ in his Wall Street Journal interview. Now India and the USA want him to put his money where his mouth is and crush the Kashmiri and Afghan resistance. The Americans say they are already ‘helping’ with Predator attacks. But the attacks have been approved by President Zardari in defiance of the parliament, which forbids such attacks. Now India also wants to ‘help’ him by air assault on the ‘common enemy’. If the armed forces do not play ball, they would be the enemy as well. That is the position of India and Hussain Haqqani – the mullahs and the military are both the enemy. The Americans are less sure. They would like to give General Kiani more time. They tell him he has no other choice except to use Pakistani military to crush the ‘resistance’. The threat is barely veiled: otherwise they will crush the Pakistan’s armed power.
Even if the Army half-heartedly submitted to Indo-US threats, as it appears to be doing now, a civil war - like that in Algeria – in which the Army is fighting the majority, would quickly spread. That, the Americans hope, would create conditions for them to ‘lift’ the nuclear weapons of Pakistan to the US for ‘safe custody’. To preclude the Army saying ‘no’ to sustaining a civil war, the USA would like Asif Zardari to maintain a majority in the parliament by hook or crook. The lack of principles and ineptitude of the political class delivers that very easily. That is why Professor Brzezinski is convinced that Pakistan is the best place for making an ‘internecine war’ appear to be a ‘good war’. The Americans are pulling out of Iraq because no one supports American presence in that country. Those who do keep quiet otherwise they would be killed for being collaborators. The American stay in Afghanistan would not be too long because no Afghan would ever support Americans presence in Afghanistan. But in Pakistan, the ruling party is inviting not just America but also India to come and punish the country for supporting the Kashmiri and Afghan resistance. Kashmiris have suffered the longest occupation. Neither India nor America justifies occupation of Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet, both of them regularly succeed in getting Kashmiri resistance to be declared illegitimate. That is because collaborators and traitors do not killed; they get crowned in Pakistan.
Pakistanis/Bangladeshis were deceived into electing a traitor as their leader in 1971. It was a few young Bangladeshi officers who killed him and brought his farcical presidency to an end in August 1975. Once again we have an Indian/American agent sitting in the President’s House. The anger in Pakistan is palpable. What happens next is anybody’s guess. The Pakistan Army is under great pressure to engage in operation against Afghan and Kashmiri resistance. If it submitted or even half submitted to that pressure, the war would be fought on the soil of Pakistan. As a nation we must persevere is asserting that resistance is legitimate occupation is not. We are proud and we must show pride in our stand against occupation everywhere in the world. The USA has already recognised the bankruptcy of its position and is withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Indian position in Kashmir is even weaker but it is sustained in it obduracy by collaborators in our ranks who we put in position of leadership. Yet, I am hopeful that India will give us a chance to liberate Jammu and Kashmir sooner than any one expected or imagined.
The writer is Director of London Institute of South Asia.
The Future of Pakistan
By Usman Khalid, Secretary General Rifah Party of Pakistan
May 05, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- I have just returned from
Pakistan after two weeks in Lahore and Islamabad. I found every citizen
concerned that the onslaught of the Taliban from the North and the
MQM/Baloch Nationalists from the South – aided and abetted by India, Israel
and America – would end in the break up Pakistan. Without naming India,
Israel and America as the originators of such a scheme, the American and
British media and think tanks also articulate the same dire scenario. What is
worrying is that the public in Pakistan is also aware that the present
government of Pakistan is neither willing nor able to do anything to prevent
such a calamity. And yet there is no panic. The country functions and is
comfortable with a government that does little but express hopes for a better
tomorrow as ‘democracy has returned’. The American press has stopped
accusing the military of ‘duplicity’ (supporting the Taliban while making half-
hearted efforts to crush them) but the Indian media continues to toe that line
which was first articulated by the American neo-cons. The intelligentsia of
Pakistan does get a fair airing of its views on the many private TV channels
that challenge the American as well as the Indian line but there no discernible
Pakistani line.
The absence of a statement of Pakistan’s national interests and policies both
by the government and leading political parties of Pakistan is creating
complications and raising anxieties among the many friends of Pakistan.
Mahboob Mahmood (known to have the ear of President Obama) has written
a long article under the title “A New Beginning for Pakistan: America’s
strategy for success.” He begins by saying, “President Barack Obama has
been a strong supporter of the twin propositions that (a) a stable, peaceful
and progressive Pakistan is crucial for success in the global engagement
that his predecessor had so trippingly mislabelled the ‘war on terror’ and (b)
the problem of Pakistan must be addressed at a military, political, diplomatic
and economic level. While these propositions appear to make sense, the
battle for Pakistan is close to being lost. Only a strategy born at the ground
zero of defeat will be able to engender a new beginning for Pakistan.”
Mahmood’s conclusion is a dire warning but it is not misplaced in its
accuracy or the foundation on which it is premised. Pakistan does appear to
be on the verge of a triumph by a Taliban led theocracy. But it is also true
that 95% of the population of Pakistan dread it. How come those who
command less than 5 % support can overpower one of the finest armed
forces in the world and no civil society mechanism is able to resist their
onslaught? The answer is: ‘war lords’. We are all familiar with the warlords of
Afghanistan who engaged in a decade long internecine war after the exit of
the Soviet Union until the Taliban emerged as the ‘warlords with the Quran’ to
bring some semblance of order in that country. But the Taliban were warlords
and still are; theirs is a fascist cult albeit an Islamic one. But Pakistan’s
largest city – Karachi – has also been ruled by ward lords of the MQM after
they ‘defeated’ the law enforcing agencies. The ordinary people are afraid of
the police and the military; the MQM made the police and the military their
target. The people as well as the politicians took notice. The MQM mafia has
been partners in every ‘democratic coalition’ in post Zia era. The Pakistani
Taliban regularly cite their example. They say: why is enemy (India)
sponsored armed mafia that killed more than 600 policemen in Karachi
acceptable in power and upholders of Islam as a polity are unacceptable?
General Musharraf was a Mohajir himself and the MQM supported him
eagerly in appeasing India or ignoring the aspirations of the people of the
Punjab (over the Kalabagh Dam) and of Kashmir by making unilateral
concessions to India. It did not take long for the Taliban to realise that they
were the only force that could challenge the MQM and other ‘secular-ethnic
parties’ in Pakistan. The base of support for an effective force to fight and
resist ‘ethnic-nationalist’ and ‘India appeasers’ is much wider. Three parties
in the ruling coalition – ANP, MQM and JUI – are well known for their Indian
links but that the PPP is also led by ‘India appeasers’ was new to the public.
The ‘opposition’ has yet to come to terms with that. The religious parties
continue to support the Taliban as they always have but the factions of the
Muslim League are uncertain how to view their new Taliban role as
‘enforcers of Sharia’. The population dread the Taliban style rule but they
dread being split into four countries and to go under Indian suzerainty even
more. The Taliban appear to be the lesser evil just as they were in
Afghanistan.
Mahmood’s View of the Future of Pakistan
I am not as pessimistic about the future of Pakistan as Mr Mahmood, who
says:
“ Over the next several years, there are three basic scenarios that could
unfold in Pakistan. The first scenario, the realization of which I rate at a
probability of 50-60% (or 95% in the
event intensive US support is withdrawn), is the transformation of Pakistan
into the world’s first Sunni militant fascist state”. He calls this state
‘Jihadistan’ for the sake of ‘convenience’.
“The second scenario involves the perpetuation of the division of power
among the military, the existing political parties and the militant forces.
“The third scenario, the realization of which I rate at a probability of 5%, is
that a small, effective and positive new force emerges which has the
potential to unify the progressive elements in the country and bring about a
much-needed transformation in the fortunes of the people of Pakistan.”
He goes on say: “Jihadistan, which could within a few years embrace all or
most of Pakistan and Afghanistan, will be the first substantial state
ideologically dedicated to the creation of a worldwide order based on a
narrow and inflexible interpretation of Sunni Islam imposed through a dynamic
of permanent militancy towards individuals within the state and towards other
states. Consistent with its ideology of permanent militancy, Jihadistan will
come about in stages. In between stages, Pakistan may splinter, only to be
reunited by the compelling forces of Jihadistan.
“In the first stage, Jihadistan will straddle the mountainous divide between
Afghanistan and Pakistan and proximate valleys and plains. The state will be
largely coterminous with the territories dominated by the Pathans, who
comprise 40% of Afghanistan’s population of 32 million and 15% of
Pakistan’s population of 165 million. During this stage, predominantly Pathan
groups such as the Taliban will form the political and military front line of the
state, with militant groups in Pakistan (such as Jamaat ul Dawa) and more
globally inclined Islamic groups (such as Al-Qaeda) playing a critical strategic
and supportive role.
“In the second stage, the mountain valleys of Northern Pakistan linking the
Northwest Frontier Province to Indian Kashmir will be occupied so that an
easily defensible contiguous mountainous state is formed which controls the
water resources of the remaining 140 million people in Pakistan (and is
poised to control the water resources of 500 million people in India). During
this stage, the Taliban and the fundamentalist Kashmiri independence groups
(such as the Harakat-al-Mujahideen) will initially join hands and, inevitably,
clash with each other as the ethnic composition of Jihadistan is broadened.
During this stage, the pan-Islamic militant groups will expand in influence to
create a more global and less ethnically and geographically tied ideological
basis for governance.
“In the third stage, Jihadistan will thrust outwards in all directions. In the
West, the new state will seek to bring under control the segments of
Afghanistan that are dominated by non-Pathan ethnic groups (such as the
Tajiks and Hazaras). In the North, the support of Islamic militant groups in
China and Kazakhstan will be intensified. In the East, the resolve of India to
defend its segment of Kashmir and in dampening down the highly corrosive
radicalisation of its own 160 million Muslims will be severely tested. But the
most immediate, easiest and biggest prize will lie in the South – control over
the remaining portions of Pakistan.”
American Anxieties & Responses
Mahmood’s analysis – the first scenario - is realistic but it also suffers from
the same defects as all the other views that originate from the USA. It is
loaded in favour of the solution that America has already decided upon.
Obama Administration appears to have decided that: 1) the US can win the
war in Afghanistan if the ‘war of liberation from occupation’ is transformed
into Pakistan’s fight against ‘obscurantism’; 2) that China and India should
also join this ‘holy war’ against Talibanization for which end they are being
urged to see it as posing a threat to them in Xinjiang and Kashmir
respectively. The Obama Administration is already telling President Zardari
(who needs no convincing) to see the ‘Taliban’ (not India) as the threat that
menaces both India and Pakistan. That is the line of the Government of India
and the Obama administration has fallen for it. That is the making of a
disaster – not of victory in Afghanistan. If Pakistan embraces the Indian line,
it would give the best argument to the people of Pakistan to embrace the
Taliban. If the military of Pakistan also accepts that line and uses military
force against the Taliban and appeases the secular-ethnicists, their
endeavours would fail in bringing peace or establishing the writ of the
government. The stillborn second scenario would not even get the benefit of
a burial.
The US Administration scents victory in Pakistan as the Taliban are routed
from more and more districts of the NWFP. They can if they wish to attribute
the success to the ‘surge’ and use it to prepare the ground for the USA to
withdraw from Afghanistan while leaving a large enough footprint behind to
safeguard its interests. But what are the US interests in Afghanistan? Since
these are vague, I fear that the USA would make the same mistakes in
Afghanistan as it did in Iraq and Palestine. It saw its interests in the Middle
East through the Israeli lens thus making all the friendly rulers appear to be
Israeli collaborators. The USA is looking at Afghanistan (and Central Asia)
through the Indian lens. The military planners of the USA are eager to get
Indian troops into Afghanistan and pressurise Pakistan into allowing India to
use its territory for over land movement of troops and logistics. If President
Zardari accepts that, which is quite likely, the first scenario would precipitate
and all of Pakistan would become a battleground much sooner. It seems that
the USA is already preparing for a war on the soil of Pakistan. The Obama
administration is treating its growing intervention in Pakistan as a separate
counter-insurgency war for which it is demanding the same extraordinary
military powers obtained by the Bush administration in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This was the main message delivered by Pentagon officials on Capitol Hill
together with increasingly dire warnings that without immediate and
unconditional US military funding for Pakistan, the government could
collapse.
Pakistanis’ Response
The Taliban enjoyed the affection and support of the people of
Pakistan as long as they were the main force resisting US occupation of
Afghanistan. Then they came under the spell of Takfiris of Egypt. It is their
idea to make Pakistan a ‘Sunni militant fascist state’ as a base for global
jihad. They hold the view that the people of Pakistan are ready and eager for
purging Pakistan of Shias and Shirk thus preparing it for a role as centre of
‘global jihad’. Their views send a chill down the spine of every Pakistani but
no one dares express those fears. Their power lies in no one daring to stand
up to them just as no one dares stand up to the MQM in Karachi. The political
class of Pakistan is still afraid of the MQM and even more scared of the
Taliban. But the people have now started to stand up to the MQM and they
must now stand up to the Pakistani Taliban. The argument of the people is
simple: “Why are the armed Taliban roaming the country; there is no foreign
army to fight?” That they want to enforce the ‘Sharia’ is not acceptable; that
is the role of the state, not of individuals. Now that they have started to kill
Shias and Mushrikeen they are no longer Mujahideen, they are murderers.
The people have to protect themselves against criminals as they always
have – by locking doors; denying intruders entry into their villages and towns;
and holding the ring when the security forces strike them. If the Frontier
Corps (FC) and the Army became the first line of defence, the war could be
lost.
Rifah’s Response
Rifah believes that the third scenario, which is given 5% probability in
Mahmood’s analysis, must be made the most credible and the most popular.
Pakistan has three of the four essentials fore a self-confidant dynamic
society, and a secure country with global influence. Pakistan is a nuclear
power with powerful armed forces that can protect the territorial and
institutional integrity of the state. It has an independent judiciary that has just
defied one civil and one military dictator and is enjoying unprecedented level
of public trust. Pakistan also has a free press that has also defied the very
same dictators and come out triumphant. All that is missing is political parties
able to articulate the national interests, to develop strategies, and to mobilise
public support. The political class does not have among its members,
persons with such capabilities. But there is a large reservoir of talent –
accomplished persons with high repute tested in fight against evil and
oppression – that Rifah intends to invite to join its ranks provide leadership in
this hour of crisis.
Bangladesh is also gripped by a crisis; it is ruled by India appeasers who
may also open the doors to the Indian Army in the wake of the RAW
clandestine operation called the ‘BDR mutiny’. The concern in the Muslim
World is that the leaders of Bangladesh and Pakistan do not even have the
courage to name their enemy; how can they be expected to lead a fight
against that enemy. The people in Bangladesh hoped that by voting for an
Indian protégés into power, India would relent in tightening its imperial
stranglehold. India has tightened the screw instead. Pakistan still blames
itself rather than India for the invasion of East Pakistan in 1971 that resulted
in its secession Pakistan. It has evidence of RAW support to the MQM and
the Baloch secessionists but it dares not present that evidence to the public.
The Pakistani Taliban have turned into a Takfiri cult who target the armed
forces of Pakistan and slaughter their soldiers with relish in the name of Allah
(SWT). But political parties are still unwilling to accept their mistakes of
having collaborated with or submitted to criminal mafias. They have a
credibility gap in facing up to the new warlords – the Pakistani Taliban.
Conclusion
America may mean well (which I doubt) but it is too much tied to the apron
strings of India and Israel to develop policies that could bring peace and
permit safe exit Even the Obama Administration, apparently eager to exit
from war in Iraq and Afghanistan, is still under the spell of the neo-cons and
is still unable to charter a course for success. The countries of the region
have an interest in the US making a clean break. The Iraqis and their Arab
neighbours have got their act together and the end of war in Iraq is now in
sight. But the Pakistani political class neither has any solutions nor has the
ability to make use of abundance of talent outside its ranks. In its eagerness
to please, which it believes is a safe course, it permits blunders that
complicate rather than resolve matters. India’s imperialist objectives menace
peace in all of South Asia. That has to be said to prevent more blunders.
Peace in Afghanistan is the interest of all its neighbours but not of India,
which sees an opportunity for further break up of Pakistan. It is unlikely that
the dumb rulers of Pakistan can articulate and protect Pakistan’s interests
but the people can and will. Rifah is willing and able to lead the way.