The Pakistan Update

The Pakistan army recently agreed to allow US and coalition officers to set up an office in Quetta, Balochistan. The move will help increase the cooperation between Afghanistan, ISAF and Pakistan forces along the border to provide a comprehensive approach to eradicating the insurgency. According to a report on the war effort by US defense officials, the office will be in the Pakistan army’s local headquarters.

The report claims that the insurgent safe heavens along with Pakistan-Afghanistan (more…)

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The United States has designated Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, or FIF, as an alias of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. According to a US State Department statement, “these actions will help stem the flow of finances to LeT through FIF and provide the Department of Justice with a critical tool to prosecute those who knowingly provide material support to LeT and its senior leaders.” LeT is already designated as a terror group.

US State department said that FIF was closely connected to banned terrorist group LeT (more…)

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By Bilal Qureshi

“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” Bertrand Russell

A careful examination of contemporary Pakistan presents a bleak picture and objective analysts have been sounding alarms about Pakistan’s overall economic, social and political health for a while, but now, it seems that the Pakistan’s stability has started to shudder. Time has really come for the country to seriously examine situation and chart a (more…)

Tags: Democracy, election, PML (N), PML (Q), political parties, Politics, PPP

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by Aram Roston

On a Friday night in June 2009, New York Times reporter David Rohde and his translator made a dramatic escape from captivity in Pakistan, climbing over a wall while their Afghan Taliban guards slept. Rohde wore sandals and a traditional salwar kameez, and he had a long beard, grown during his seven-month imprisonment. The two men walked in the darkness of the city, a Taliban ministate, past mud-brick huts, and found their way to a Pakistani military base just minutes away.

Rohde had been a prisoner shared by two competing groups of Taliban fighters, both of which appear to have held him not as a political or military tool in their operations against the US and Afghan governments but for his monetary value as a hostage.

Rohde’s escape was an unexpectedly joyous ending to a harrowing episode for him, his wife, his colleagues and friends. But it was by no means the end of the story.

An Afghan who is well acquainted with several of the participants in the kidnapping has provided The Nation and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute with new details about the perpetrators, as well as new information about what happened after Rohde’s escape. This source’s account reveals how Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) serves as an arbiter for the various Taliban groups that compete with one another for influence, loot and profits. According to the source, the ISI, acting on behalf of one Taliban faction, took two of Rohde’s guards into custody to interrogate them about how he escaped. Then, despite its knowledge of the men’s role in the kidnapping, the ISI simply set them free.

Though this new information merely lends more substance to already strong suspicions about the ISI’s close relationship with the Taliban, it’s still an explosive allegation: rather than cooperating with US authorities, Pakistan’s intelligence agency essentially became an accessory after the fact to Rohde’s kidnapping.

The saga began on November 10, 2008, when Rohde, researching a book about Afghanistan, was driven to Logar province to meet a Taliban commander with the nom de guerre Abu Tayyeb. Rohde was seized on a stretch of road by gunmen in a well-practiced maneuver and taken into the custody of a heavyset Taliban leader who introduced himself as Mullah Atiqullah, as Rohde details in his soon-to-be-released book, A Rope and a Prayer, which he wrote with his wife, Kristen Mulvihill.

In the months to come, Rohde would learn that Mullah Atiqullah and Abu Tayyeb, whom he had intended to interview, were the same person.

The real name of Rohde’s kidnapper, not reported until now, was Haji Najibullah (Haji, of course, is the honorific for those who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca). Najibullah was an ambitious Taliban commander in his 30s, with a swelling reputation. He had made his bones as an aide to the legendary one-legged Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah Lang. Though Dadullah is not a household name in the United States, he certainly is in Afghanistan. One US Army general called him the Taliban’s “functional leader,” and noted Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid has called him “the most ruthless Taliban commander after 9/11.” Dadullah was killed in a US attack in 2007. Najibullah would be remembered in Taliban circles as one of his minor protégés.

After capturing Rohde, Najibullah quickly saw dollar signs. Realizing that he might have to hold on to Rohde for a long time to shake loose real money in ransom, Najibullah brought him to Pakistan, where the American reporter, his translator and his driver were placed in the custody of the Haqqani network. Rohde, in his forthcoming book, explains how he had made a mistake his second night in captivity: desperate to stay alive, he told Najibullah that he could be traded for “prisoners and millions of dollars.”

The Haqqanis, a mujahedeen clan from Khost province, may be some of the most effective commanders battling US forces. They deploy terrorist tactics—waves of well-trained attackers wearing explosive vests deployed in operations such as the assault on the Kabul guesthouses, the assassination attempt against Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a series of large-scale actions against US combat outposts on the border near Pakistan.

The Haqqanis were even more effective against the Soviets in the 1980s, when they worked closely with the CIA. The late former Congressman Charles Wilson famously referred to Jalaluddin Haqqani back then as “goodness personified.” A former agency official who used to know Jalaluddin said, “I really regret the fact that we are tangling with him, because he is not a guy to fuck around with.”

When the United States invaded Afghanistan, the Haqqanis sided with the Taliban, not Karzai. By 2002 the Haqqanis were almost on the ropes. Jalaluddin was injured in a US bombing raid. So the younger generation took over. Jalaluddin’s son Siraj, trained like his father in the twin arts of paramilitary warfare and charismatic religious leadership, was now in charge.

The Haqqanis are also known to live well. “They do business,” The Nation’s source said. “They’ve done business for years. They are involved in war, but if they find some business opportunity, they do it. They like buying houses and selling them and stuff like that. Now they have trucks and trucking equipment in Peshawar.”

Rohde’s kidnapping was in essence a business opportunity. Najibullah, the young commander who first captured Rohde, was not a subordinate of the Haqqanis; but by bringing Rohde to them, he would build up his reputation with the clan, giving him a safe base from which to conduct negotiations. Najibullah and his men brought Rohde across Afghanistan’s border to the Haqqanis to make it easier to hold him for an extended period, according to the source familiar with the kidnapping. In Pakistan, they figured, they were safe from American rescue efforts, since they understood that the Haqqanis had the protection of the ISI.

Many experts say that the Haqqanis are supported by the ISI today, just as they have been for decades. The network has “been on the payroll of Pakistan’s ISI since the 1970s, and the ISI still allows them to operate freely,” in the words of Ahmed Rashid.

The ISI denies this. “That is not true,” a senior ISI official told The Nation. He spoke on behalf of the agency but insisted on anonymity. “We have attacked Haqqani a number of times. Right now we are not conducting operations against him because primarily we are busy with the TPP [Pakistani Taliban, as opposed to the Afghan Taliban] in South Waziristan, and we do not have the wherewithal to conduct operations against both of them.”

Still, even the US government is skeptical of Pakistan’s denials. Indeed, this past summer Gen. David Petraeus underlined the difficulty in “trying to assess what the ISI is doing…in contacts with the Haqqani network or the Afghan Taliban.”

* * *

The initial ransom requests issued by Rohde’s kidnappers were wildly aggressive. For Rohde’s release, the Haqqanis wanted $25 million, and they wanted prisoners released from Guantánamo. Then it was $15 million and prisoners released from Pul-i-Charkhi prison near Kabul. Then $8 million.

The Nation’s Afghan source said that guarding Rohde was a task shared by Najibullah and the Haqqanis, who provided the logistical support, housing and a secure environment in which to operate near Afghanistan. With so much money at stake, each faction was mistrustful of the other. Of Rohde’s three chief guards, one was a Haqqani loyalist and two were Najibullah’s men. So important was this operation to Najibullah that he had his brother Timor Shah act as a full-time guard for Rohde. (These details are corroborated in Rohde’s book.)

Not only were the Haqqanis and Najibullah eager to use Rohde for profit but the main Taliban Shura—the head council that oversees the Afghan Taliban—hoped to get involved as well, according to The Nation’s source. Afghanistan expert Michael Semple said that has become common in kidnappings. “It is standard practice of Taliban High Command to seek control of kidnapping situations,” he told me.

The Taliban often insisted to Rohde that they had noble motives—that he was being held for the cause, not for money. “They told me repeatedly that they were doing this for the jihad,” Rohde told me in an interview. “They kept telling me that it wasn’t about them getting rich themselves. But given the size of the ransom they were demanding, I find that hard to believe.”

Throughout his captivity, Rohde was well aware of the likely connections between the ISI and the Haqqanis who held him, though he said no ISI agents made themselves known during his captivity. “I didn’t witness any direct contact between the ISI and the Haqqanis.” That said, he was living proof, in a sense, that Pakistani authorities gave the Haqqanis full freedom to do as they liked. “What I did see,” he emphasized, “was that Pakistan forces never came off their bases, and the Haqqanis were allowed to operate their own Taliban ministate in North Waziristan.”

Meanwhile, the Pakistani government stuck to the fiction, until late in Rohde’s captivity on its soil, that it believed he wasn’t being held in Pakistan. Rohde said his wife was repeatedly told by Pakistani officials that he was being held in Afghanistan.

The FBI, the CIA and the New York Times worked quietly behind the scenes to secure Rohde’s release, believing that news of his kidnapping could derail their efforts if it became public. But there was much confusion about the circumstances of the kidnapping, both in the United States and in the Taliban camps, before and after his escape.

During the kidnapping, one of the “security consultants” on the case was Duane “Dewey” Clarridge. Clarridge, 78, has a stormy past. Indicted for perjury in the Iran/Contra case in 1991, he was pardoned a year later by the first President Bush. Then Clarridge became an eager supporter of the discredited Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi.

Clarridge boasted to a small group of people that he had a network of sources with rock-solid information about the kidnapping. While Rohde was in captivity, Clarridge circulated information that some of Rohde’s guards were Chechens, that Rohde had been separated from his driver and translator, and that he was held in a specific border village. Many of those claims turn out to have been erroneous, contradicted not just by The Nation’s source but also by Rohde in his book.

Later, there were news reports that Rohde’s escape had been engineered somehow by the people Clarridge claimed to be working with. ABC News reported that a security firm bribed Taliban guards, and that the Times “used a controversial former CIA official, Duane ‘Dewey’ Claridge [sic], to help plot the escape of Rohde.” That theory, though, is contradicted by Rohde, who believes no guards were bribed, as well as by The Nation’s source. (The claims that his escape was engineered are highly implausible anyway, since it was Rohde’s decision, and his translator’s, to escape that night, and they had no help or contacts.)

Clarridge declined to comment for this article.

In Pakistan, Rohde’s escape was devastating for the Taliban. Not only had they lost their prize prisoner but the loss caused the Haqqanis and Najibullah to turn on each other. They were both convinced, in a case of mirror imaging, that the other one must have released Rohde as part of a secret arrangement in which they kept the ransom money for themselves. Instead of suspecting incompetence on the part of the guards, they believed someone was cheating and getting rich.

“There was a big problem between Siraj [Haqqani] and Najibullah,” the source familiar with the kidnappers told me. “A huge issue. Siraj was blaming Najibullah, that he’s the one who took money from the Americans and let the guy go. And [Najibullah] was blaming him, that he did it, because it was his compound.”

Even the Taliban Shura in Quetta got involved, the source said. They “thought that Siraj kept the money.”

Semple, the Afghanistan expert, also heard about the crisis that hit the Taliban after Rohde’s escape. “There was a witch hunt,” he said, “to see who might have taken the money.”

To arbitrate the dispute about the kidnapping, the Haqqanis turned to the Pakistan government’s intelligence service, according to The Nation’s source. Siraj, the source said, turned over the two guards affiliated with Najibullah to the ISI for questioning. “One of them,” the source said, “was Najib’s brother Timor Shah.”

The guards were allegedly interrogated fiercely and tortured by the ISI. The interrogators demanded to know exactly how Rohde had escaped. Who had let him go, and why? Were the men paid a ransom they had not shared? In other words, the ISI was making sure that the relations between the Taliban factions weren’t destroyed by anyone’s betrayal.

Once the ISI was convinced that there had been no bribes and no ransom, Rohde’s guards were set free. Despite their role in the kidnapping, they were not charged in court or handed over to the Americans. After more than a month in custody, they were let go.

I asked Rohde for his reaction to this information. “It’s very disturbing that the Pakistani authorities would not keep in custody people that were involved in my kidnapping,” he said. “If they had two of my guards in their custody and then released them, that seems to fit a broader pattern of the ISI sheltering the Taliban.”

The senior ISI official who spoke with The Nation would neither confirm nor deny the report. “I don’t know about it. I haven’t heard about it,” he said.

As this case shows, the corruption and profiteering that characterize the Karzai government, propped up by the United States, are often mirrored in the financial dealings of America’s fractious enemies, who are propped up by Pakistan.

As Semple pointed out, “We need to think of Waziristan as this tribal criminal enterprise masking as jihad.”

The Nation’s source put it this way: “There is a lot of money. You have no idea how fragile things are within the Taliban. This is not a small war they are fighting. They are fighting over power. The money goes to whoever has the power.”

This article originally appeared in The Nation

Tags: Abu Tayyeb, Afghanistan, Ahmed Rashid, CIA, Congressman Charlie Wilson, david rohde, Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, FBI, Gen. David Petraeus, Guantánamo, Haji Najibullah, Hamid Karzai, haqqani network, ISI, Jalaluddin Haqqani, khost province, Michael Semple, Mullah Atiqullah, Mullah Dadullah Lang, New York Times, North Waziristan, Pakistan, Quetta, Siraj Jalaluddin, Taliban, Timor Shah, TTP

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog, News | 653 Comments »

by Dr. Manzur Ejaz

Sufis were witnessing the misuse of religion by qazis and other ‘pillars’ of religious institutions. They were aware of the corruption, nepotism and injustice being practiced in the name of Islam. Therefore, to save the spirituality of religion, they preached the separation of religion from the state and other worldly affairs

Once again Muslims are celebrating Eid on two different days, some on Tuesday and others on Wednesday. I wonder if most of the countries with Muslim majority populations were secular, they may have fixed one day for everyone. This raises the question — is a secular state necessary to keep the spirituality of religion unpolluted?

Usually, Pakistanis and many other Muslims take the word secular as being equivalent to atheism and an anti-religious system of governance. On the contrary, the founders of the US constitution argued that religious purity can only be maintained if it is kept away from the business of the state. US politicians, from the president downwards, go to their places of worship regularly but they do not bring their personal faith to the affairs of the state. They enjoy the spirituality of their faith without encumbering the state.

When George Washington and his colleagues were debating the foundations of the US constitution, they were quite aware that statecraft required strategies of reconciliation that may not be justified through religious ideology. Therefore, if the constitution is based on religious ideology, matters of faith will be polluted by the state’s own specific needs. To address this question, George Washington wrote, “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

The founders of the US constitution had witnessed widespread persecution on the basis of religion and sectarianism. They were aware of the role that the Catholic clergy had played in corrupting Christianity. Early US history was no different than that of Europe, where witch-hunt trials were burning/drowning hundreds of women on allegations of witchcraft. Therefore, they were clear that to save the spirituality of religion, it had to be separated from the business of the state.

Contrary to this, Muslim rulers in the subcontinent used religion as the basis of their system of justice and other institutions created to rule society. A whole system comprised of hundreds of thousands of qazis was put in place. These qazis were educated at religious monasteries before taking over state jobs. Sometimes, the ruler persecuted the people who belonged to a different sect. Aurangzeb’s onslaught against Shia Muslims is a known fact of history. Consequently, the spiritual aspect of Islam may have been polluted and compromised.

This is the main reason that Sufis in the subcontinent kept emphasising the spiritual essence of religion. They were witnessing the misuse of religion by qazis and other ‘pillars’ of religious institutions. They were aware of the corruption, nepotism and injustice being practiced in the name of Islam. Therefore, to save the spirituality of religion, they preached the separation of religion from the state and other worldly affairs. In practice, this meant that religion should be practiced on an individual level leaving the state to be run by the worldly rulers. This was the reason that Muslim Sufis had a following of people from every religion. It is known that the majority of Shah Hussain’s followers were Hindus.

From Baba Farid to Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah, everyone emphasised the separation of individual spirituality from the state-sanctioned formal religion. Recurrence of the concept of embracing shoh (the beloved) was meant to induce spiritual purification on an individual level. Baba Farid’s lifestyle was such that the qazi and ruler of Pakpattan ganged up against him and his family.

Guru Nanak was much more open and critical of the alliance between the state and clergy of every kind. For example, when Babar was ruining the Indian landscape, Baba Nanak taunted the Muslim religious leaders for their useless prayers to stop the invasion. Similarly, he laughed at the Hindu clergy who had assured the Indian ruler that their mantras would destroy Babar. And, Nanak jeers at them because Babar made no differentiation between mosques and temples or between Turk (Muslim) and Hindu women. Baba Nanak ridiculed both Muslim and Hindu ritualistic practices and projected spirituality devoid of any state manipulation or ritualistic routine.

Shah Hussain rejected the role of the qazi and mullah when he said, “Mullan qazi mattin dainde…Ishq keeh lagge rah de nal” (The mullah and qazis tell us about the right path but love has nothing to do with it). He reiterates spiritualistic integrity as separated from state and other worldly affairs.

“Badshahan nu badshahian, shahan nu ugrahian

Mahar nu pind graon di aasaan, Talab sain de naam di.”

(Kings are busy in their kingdoms, the moneylenders are collecting their debts and the tiller is concerned about his village. We only seek the pleasure of our sain (lord, beloved)).

Sultan Bahu also rejected a religious establishment that sells religious knowledge. For him the mullah’s service to the ruling class in every shape and form pollutes the religion, where scholars become bargaining commodities.

“O dohin janin muthay Bahu jinhan khahdi waich kmai hoo.”

(The ones who sold their scholarship are dejected in both worlds.)

Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah were much more openly critical of the state’s use of religion. For example, when Bulleh Shah says, “Bulhia rab kaho na kaho, aai soorton sacha raho” (Oh Bulla, it is immaterial if you openly profess God or not. However, the important thing is that you should be truthful in a given situation).

Waris Shah’s entire creation of Heer was meant to show and denounce the unholy alliance between the rulers and the religious establishment. He maintains, throughout his creation, that qazis are the thoroughly corrupt and illegitimate partners of the ruling elite. He repeats the theme of “Qazi rishwatan mar ke koor keete” (Qazis have been blinded by bribery). His implicit argument is that to save the spiritual aspect of religion, it has to be kept away from the state and its institutions.

Unfortunately, the Sufi tradition has been grossly neglected in Pakistan. This has led to social decay as well as the pollution of religious spirituality. Allama Iqbal’s one line has been quoted to shut down the discussion on secularism:

“Judah u deen siasat se tu reh jati he Changaizi” (Separation of religion and politics leads to barbarianism).

The fact of the matter is that, “Milae jab deen siasat se tu ban jati he Changaizi” (when religion is mixed with politics, it leads to barbarianism).

The writer can be reached at manzurejaz@yahoo.com

Tags: Aurangzeb, Baba Farid, Bulleh Shah, catholicism, Christianity, eid, europe, george washington, Guru Nanak, Islam, Pakistan, Religion, Shah Hussain, shias, sufis, Sultan Bahu, United States, us constitution, Waris Shah

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by Ishtiaq Ahmed

There is no doubt that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi brought religion into politics in a big way, but religious revivals were underway among all religious communities of India since the late 19th century. He wanted religion to play a positive role in bringing India’s myriad of religious, sectarian, ethnic and caste-based communities into an inclusive grand composite nation.

Gandhi was by no means an advocate of fundamentalism. He did more than any other upper-caste Hindu to speak out against the curse of untouchability. On a number of occasions Hindu fundamentalists attempted to assassinate him because of his campaign against untouchability. The first such attempt took place in 1934 when a bomb was thrown at him in Pune. While critiquing untouchability, he did find arguments for the justification of the caste system. According to him and other Hindu reformists, the castes were based on the division of work and equal dignity of all professions. Such an explanation may not sound convincing to many of us since caste is hereditary in practice. However, such a middle position helped him bring Hindus from all sections behind the anti-colonial struggle and therefore compromises were necessary.

However, India was home not only to the Hindus but millions of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and other groups as well. He developed a novel idea, Sarva Dharma Sambhava: equal respect of all religions. His daily morning sessions began with prayers and hymns and recitations from the Bhagwad Gita, Quran, Bible and other religious scriptures to underline the common moral roots of all humanity. I have a recorded interview with Syed Ahmed Saeed Kirmani, a staunch Muslim Leaguer and a prominent Muslim student leader of the 1940s. He attended one such morning session in Delhi in 1946. It deeply moved him, though he remained convinced that a separate state for Muslims was the solution to the Hindu-Muslim problem.

When Gandhi was asked to explain his idea of good government or Ram Raj, he said it would be inspired by the governments established by Hazrat Abu Bakr and Hazrat Umar. About Imam Husain he said, “My faith is that the progress of Islam does not depend on the use of the sword by its believers, but the result of the supreme sacrifice of Husain, the great saint.” In saying so, he was not supporting blind devotion to each and every act of these illustrious Muslim leaders but to their historical roles as champions of good government and justice.

On the other hand, when some Muslims told him that they were bound by their faith to submit to each and every word in the Quran he disagreed with them. He said that religious texts should also be subjected to the changing standards of morality and conscience. Therefore, Muslims have to interpret their sacred scriptures with an open mind and distinguish between the core ideas of their faith and the literal texts. He was unreservedly in favour of India becoming a secular state with equal rights for all citizens. In fact, the idea of affirmative action or positive discrimination on behalf of the Dalits was his way of keeping his word given to Dr Ambedkar that his Dalit community will not be subjected to the humiliation and degradation it had suffered down the centuries. Consequently, preferential treatment in educational institutions, legislative assemblies and in government jobs was constitutionally guaranteed for the Dalits and Adivasis. Without it the Dalits stood no chance of getting education or getting elected to the legislatures.

Today, a Dalit intelligentsia and political class exist and contribute to intellectual and political debate. Some Dalit intellectuals and leaders are very critical of Gandhi, accusing him of denying them their liberation by insisting that they were an integral part of the Hindu community, and going on a fast-unto-death when the British were considering giving them separate representation just as the Muslims had been granted in 1909. It is a debatable question whether separate electorates for Dalits would have gotten them a separate state because unlike the Muslims they were not in a majority in any region of the subcontinent.

Gandhi opposed the creation of Pakistan. Such opposition was based on his conviction that Hindus and Muslims and other communities could live together and make their particular contributions to building a multi-religious, multi-cultural nation with equal rights for all citizens. However, when partition did take place he took positions that have no parallels, historically or contemporaneously. Thousands of Hindus and Sikhs who fled West Punjab arrived in Delhi to find that large numbers of Muslims were still around. This infuriated them and they began to harass and terrorise the Delhi Muslims. A delegation of prominent Muslims, which included among others Dr Zakir Hussain (later president of India) and Dr Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi (later education minister and vice-chancellor Karachi University) approached Gandhi for help. He promised to do his best. Dr Qureshi has written that Gandhi and his volunteers went around Delhi and to the tomb of Emperor Humayun to see to it that the Muslims were not harmed. Further attacks on Muslims ceased.

The second case is about the last fast-unto-death of Mahatma Gandhi. The background to it was that the Indian government was withholding Rs 550 million due to Pakistan as its share of the cash left behind in the common kitty of the colonial state. India and Pakistan had been drawn into a military conflict over Kashmir, and the Indian government took the stand that Pakistan will purchase weapons with it. Gandhiji did not accept such reasoning and started a fast-unto-death to compel the Indian government to pay Pakistan its share. That infuriated Hindu nationalists. On January 30, 1948, Gandhiji was assassinated by Nathuram Godse.

The outpouring of grief in Pakistan was no less than in India. In fact, I was told by a senior Lahoriite that Lahore Radio’s programmes that day were even more moving than what was relayed elsewhere in the subcontinent. Muslim women who had safely arrived in Pakistan from Delhi because Gandhiji would not let Hindus and Sikhs take revenge for what happened to their women in West Punjab, broke their bangles and beat their chests. It is important to remember such facts when sitting in judgement on Gandhi. Without intellectual honesty and an open mind, political analysis degenerates into mere propaganda.

The writer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University. He is also Honorary Senior Fellow of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He can be reached at billumian@gmail.com

Tags: Adivasis, Bhagwad Git, bible, christians, dalits, delhi, Dr Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi, Emperor Humayun, Hazrat Abu Bakr, Hazrat Umar, hindus, Imam Husain, India, koran, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Muslim League, Muslims, Nathuram Godse, Pakistan, punjab, Ram Raj, Religion, Sarva Dharma Sambhava, sikhs, Syed Ahmed Saeed Kirmani

Posted in Blog, India | 2,003 Comments »

By Nancy A. Youssef

The Obama administration has decided to begin publicly walking away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to de-emphasize President Barack Obama’s pledge that he’d begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011, administration and military officials have told McClatchy.

The new policy will be on display next week during a conference of NATO countries in Lisbon, Portugal, where the administration hopes to introduce a timeline that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the year when Afghan President Hamid Karzai once said Afghan troops could provide their own security, three senior officials told McClatchy, along with others speaking anonymously as a matter of policy.

The Pentagon also has decided not to announce specific dates for handing security responsibility for several Afghan provinces to local officials and instead intends to work out a more vague definition of transition when it meets with its NATO allies.

What a year ago had been touted as an extensive December review of the strategy now also will be less expansive and will offer no major changes in strategy, the officials told McClatchy. So far, the U.S. Central Command, the military division that oversees Afghanistan operations, hasn’t submitted any kind of withdrawal order for forces for the July deadline, two of those officials told McClatchy.

The shift already has begun privately and came in part because U.S. officials realized that conditions in Afghanistan were unlikely to allow a speedy withdrawal.

“During our assessments, we looked at if we continue to move forward at this pace, how long before we can fully transition to the Afghans? And we found that we cannot fully transition to the Afghans by July 2011,” said one senior administration official. “So we felt we couldn’t focus on July 2011 but the period it will take to make the full transition.”

Another official said the administration also realized in contacts with Pakistani officials that the Pakistanis had concluded wrongly that July 2011 would mark the beginning of the end of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

That perception, one Pentagon adviser said, has convinced Pakistan’s military — which is key to preventing Taliban sympathizers from infiltrating Afghanistan — to continue to press for a political settlement instead of military action.

“This administration now understands that it cannot shift Pakistani approaches to safeguarding its interests in Afghanistan with this date being perceived as a walk-away date,” the adviser said.

Last week’s midterm elections also have eased pressure on the Obama administration to begin an early withdrawal. Earlier this year, some Democrats in Congress pressed to cut off funding for Afghanistan operations. With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives beginning in January, however, there’ll be less push for a drawdown. The incoming House Armed Services chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., told Reuters last week that he opposed setting the date.

The White House vehemently denies that there is any change in policy. “The president has been crystal clear that we will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011. There is absolutely no change to that policy,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.

On Tuesday, a White House official who spoke with reporters in a conference call arranged to discuss the December review, said the administration might withdraw some troops next July and may hand some communities over to Afghan authorities. But he said a withdrawal from Afghanistan could take “years,” depending on the capability of the Afghan national security forces.

He also said the December review would measure progress in eight areas, though he declined to specify what those are. Congress will get a report by early next year, but Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan, will not testify.

“This is designed to be an inside the administration perspective,” he said, adding it will “set the policymaking calendar” for the Obama administration’s first six months of next year.

De-emphasizing deadlines also allows the administration greater flexibility in responding to conditions in Afghanistan, officials said.

While the Taliban are facing increasing coalition airstrikes, they have no driving incentive to negotiate with an unpopular government. Officials here quietly worry that while they, too, are seeing some drops in violence and the Taliban’s hold in pockets of Afghanistan, those limited improvements aren’t leading to better governance.

A U.N. report issued in August showed that civilian casualties rose 31 percent during the first half of the year compared with the previous year, 76 percent were caused by the Taliban, it said. So far, more than 400 U.S. troops have been killed this year.

Many officials here privately worry that talk of a withdrawal without results will cost the military credibility, with Americans and Afghans alike.

“What we ultimately need in Afghanistan is good governance,” said one senior military officer. “Right now there is a gap” between security gains and governance.

Christopher Preble, the director for foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, said he’s not surprised that the scope of the December review has narrowed and that Obama administration officials are no longer highlighting the July 2011 date.

“The very players who were arguing so strenuously for a deepening of our involvement in Afghanistan a year ago are unlikely to now declare that their earlier recommendations were faulty,” he said.

Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay contributed to this article, which originally appeared in the McClatchy Newspapers

Tags: Afghanistan, afghanistan withdrawal, deadline, general Petraeus, Hamid Karzai, house armed services committee, NATO, Obama, Pakistan, Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, Taliban, u.s. central command

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by Dr. Cheryl Bernard

The top-secret minutes, now declassified, make for a gripping, terrifying read.

Here they are, the top policymakers, meeting behind closed doors to discuss what to do about the worsening situation in Afghanistan. There is disagreement, born of frustration—the whole enterprise has become incredibly costly; it is dragging on, and unsavory compromises increasingly seem inevitable.

Some argue for a push forward, the commitment of even more forces. Others think it’s time to negotiate with the extremists. Some just want to get out. “We can leave quickly, saying that the former leadership was to blame for everything,” one official suggests, but is overruled. There are security concerns as well as the matter of international respect and credibility. To pull out, the argument goes, will embolden extremists everywhere.

Reading these minutes but blotting out the names and the dates, you might think you are reading Bob Woodward’s recent book, ‘Obama’s Wars’. But these documents detail a debate among another “innermost” circle—the Soviet Politburo debating the faltering policy in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

And the parallels are striking.

First off, there was the problem of holding the territory that had been won in battle. Soldiers can drive the insurgents out but as soon as the troops “return to their bases, the regions fall back under the control of the rebels,” as one official notes. Leaving smaller detachments behind to “hold” the territory didn’t work, and pursuing and killing the insurgents led to too much collateral damage. “In the course of those operations, the houses and fields are often destroyed, the civilian population is killed, and in the end everything remains the same,” an expert noted.

So there was talk of a military surge combined with a program of “tribal engagement,” seeking the backing and cooperation of local tribal leaders. Once an area had been stabilized, there would be a push for economic development to garner the support of the local population.

But then there was the problem of the local security forces.

“I do not believe even for a moment that an Afghan army can be created, regardless of how much we invest in it. Nonetheless, we do not have an alternative,” as one official bitterly complained.

“Our efforts over the last eight years have not led to the expected results. Huge material resources and considerable casualties did not produce a positive end result—stabilization of the military and political situation in the country,” another concluded.

The leaders in the Afghan government had turned out to be neither competent nor trustworthy. Instead of doing what was best for their country, they engaged in petty squabbles and were busy enriching themselves. The information they provided was unreliable and they fought among themselves.

Meanwhile, the Afghan president acted erratically and doubts had arisen about his mental health. “A deep political crisis of the Afghan society is obvious,” one participant glumly concluded.

And then there was Pakistan. Its government needs to be pressed much harder, the group agreed. Pakistan had to stop allowing the insurgents to operate from its territory across the border.

At the conclusion of the increasingly anguished meetings came the inevitable session when the group finally abandoned all hope of success in Afghanistan and decided to withdraw before even more precious resources were squandered and more lives lost.

The surge only had only brought more exposure, more casualties and more resentment on the part of the Afghans. The difficult terrain defeated modern military technology. Plus, Afghan society was too divided and the leadership too inferior to capitalize on any military gains. It was time to leave. “There is a reason why people say that each person is a unique world, and when that person dies, that world dies forever,” the surprisingly emotional, philosophical official statement noted.

It is hard to read these documents and hold on to the honest hope that we can do better. The Soviets, who were far from stupid or inept, had world-class regional experts and strategists and anthropologists and linguists on their team. There are no ideas or any alternative strategies that the Soviets didn’t try. The only real difference between what is in the Kremlin documents and the contemporary U.S. policy debate is that we know how the first debacle ended.

The circumstances that defeated them were nearly identical to what we are facing today—from malicious obstruction by regional rivals to the double-dealing by Pakistan. Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires; it is perhaps more accurate to call it the graveyard of hubris.

Former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev has vehemently urged the U.S. to end its Afghan intervention and withdraw its forces as quickly as possible, stating that victory is impossible. Gorbachev isn’t just any random pundit. His perestroika changed global politics, ended the Cold War, and won him a Nobel Peace Prize. As a leading policy maker, who experienced the Soviet Union’s own painful Afghanistan venture and ultimately oversaw the withdrawal of Russian troops from that country, he may be assumed to have some insights to contribute.

In the U.S., however, the twin reactions to his advice have been: disinterest and cynicism. The few commentators who could be bothered to react at all mostly attributed his remarks to sour grapes—the Soviet Union suffered a huge, even catastrophic setback in Afghanistan, and the U.S. operating through its Afghan surrogates was largely responsible, they imply, so he just wants to see us suffer the same fate.

A dispassionate comparison of the two superpower interventions, however, suggests that motives and agendas aside, Gorbachev’s advice—and particularly his plea that we “learn from the Russian experience”—deserves very serious consideration.

Reading the Kremlin documents, it is clear: Gorbachev’s warning is worthy of very serious consideration.

Dr. Cheryl Benard is a writer based in Washington, D.C., and the president of The Bamiyan Project, a nonprofit organization that supports cultural activists in areas of conflict and post-conflict. From 2001 until 2009, she was the director of the Alternative Strategies Initiative at the RAND Corporation. Her books include ‘Civil Democratic Islam’, ‘Women in Nation-Building’, and the forthcoming ‘Behind the Wire, Detainee Operations in Iraq.’ This article originally appeared in The Daily Beast.

Tags: afghan security forces, Afghanistan, gorbachev, kremlin, Pakistan, Russia, Soviet Union, US

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By Bilal Qureshi

Pakistani community in America is watching the mid-term elections in America with fascination as for some of them; it is a great exercise in human freedom.

For this community, this election is also the source of anxiety because of its impact on Washington’s relationship with Islamabad. Some argue that it will further complicate a very tense relationship, some worry that a change in balance of power will drive both parties to take a very hard line towards Pakistan for domestic political reasons. Few of the Pakistanis hope that ‘drone attacks will end’ and many in the community believe that Pakistan will be forgotten as the divided Congress will focus on winning the (more…)

Tags: Democracy, House, Islamabad, Pakistani community, senate, US, US elections, US Pak relations, US Polls, Vote, Voting, washington

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by Zafar Syed

Pakistani short story writer Daniyal Mueenuddin recently told an interviewer that he might not have enjoyed the kind of media attention he is getting if he were a Bulgarian. This was a reference to the fact that Pakistan is all over the place in international news these days, and there is an interest in people to know about the country which has been called by President Obama as “the most dangerous place in the world.” The interviewer was quite taken aback by this frank disclosure from Daniyal but there might have a modicum of truth in it. Whether it’s because there is a sudden burst of creativity or perhaps for non-literary reasons, there is no denying that Pakistani writers are getting a lot of attention in the West these days. Realizing this, Granta, a renowned British literary magazine, has recently published a rich “Pakistan Number.”

Although this special number is not on the scale of the monumental “khaas numbers” of Nuqoosh that most Urdu readers would be familiar with, what the issue lacks in girth it gains in depth, as the 288 page are brimming with (more…)

Tags: Baab e Khyber, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Declan Walsh, Faisal Shehzad, Fatima Bhutto, General Zia ul-Haq, Granta, Guardian, Intizar Hussain, Islam Gull, Jane Perlez, Kamila Shamsie, Mohsin Hamid, Muhammad Hanif, Nadeem Aslam, New York Times, Pakistan, Pakistani literature, Urdu, Uzma Aslam Khan

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