The Pakistan Update

Afghanistan and Pakistan plan to open a second front in negotiations with the Taliban in Saudi Arabia as US-brokered talks get under way in Qatar, officials said Sunday.

The Taliban, ousted from power by a US-led invasion in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, announced this month that they planned to set up a political office in Qatar ahead of talks with Washington.

And Taliban negotiators have begun holding preliminary talks with US officials on plans for negotiations aimed at ending the decade-long Afghan war, a former Taliban official said Sunday.

But Afghan and Taliban officials indicated in response to a BBC report about plans for talks in Saudi Arabia that both Kabul and Islamabad – usually at loggerheads on the issue – were looking for their own talks with the Taliban.

Asked for his response to the BBC report, Afghan foreign ministry spokesperson Janan Mosazai said: “Of course, we support any steps toward the Afghan peace process.” He refused to comment further.

But a senior Afghan government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP the BBC report was accurate, saying: “We will always pursue all roads toward peace in Afghanistan, including contacts with the Taliban that are not limited to the Qatar office.”

A member of the Taliban’s leadership council, the Pakistan-based Quetta Shura, also backed the report of talks in Saudi Arabia.

“The idea that the Taliban should have a point of contact in Saudi is pushed by the Pakistan and Afghan governments,” he said on condition of anonymity.

“This is because they think they have been sidelined. They want some control over peace talks.”

Supporting this theory, Kabul announced Sunday that Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar would visit Kabul on Wednesday, marking what Mosazai called a “new phase” in co-operation between the two countries.

Khar would meet President Hamid Karzai to “discuss the fight against terrorism and Pakistan’s essential support to the peace process in Afghanistan,” he said.

Khar’s visit comes after the always-touchy relations between the two countries broke down following the assassination of Kabul’s chief peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September.

Karzai accused Pakistan of responsibility for the murder and said Islamabad was sabotaging all attempts at negotiations with the Taliban.

The president was wary over being sidelined in the Qatar talks, leading Washington to dispatch special envoy Marc Grossman to Kabul last week to assure him of a central role for his government in any major negotiations.

And in another effort to soothe Karzai’s doubts, a delegation from the Qatar government is expected to visit Kabul to explain its role in the talks.

Preliminary negotiations between the US and the Taliban are already under way in the Gulf state, a former Taliban official who is now a member of the Afghan government appointed High Peace Council said Sunday.

“The actual peace talks have not yet begun – they are in the process of trust-building and obviously this will take some time,” Mawlavi Qalamuddin, who once led the Taliban’s feared religious police when the hardline Islamists were in power, told AFP.

One of the trust-building measures demanded by the Taliban is the release of five of its members from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, while Washington wants the insurgents to renounce violence.

Originally appeared in the montreal gazette

Tags: 9/11 attacks, Afghanistan, burhanuddin rabbani, Guantánamo, Hamid Karzai, hina rabbani khar, islamists, Kabul, malvi qalamuddin, Saudi Arabia, Taliban, US

Posted in Afghanistan, Around, Blog | 1,678 Comments »

By AFP

Pakistani investigators and lawyers will visit India next month to gather more evidence for the prosecution of seven suspects linked to the 2008 Mumbai attacks, they said Monday.

Pakistan indicted seven alleged perpetrators over the attacks but says that its own commission needs to gather more evidence in India.

Delhi has called for “decisive” action from Pakistan against the perpetrators of the attacks and accuses its efforts so far of being a “facade”, saying it has already handed over enough evidence to convict the accused men.

“If all goes well, the visit will take place between February 4 to February 10,” senior public prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali told AFP.

Both sides, he said, agreed that the Pakistani commission could visit India between February 1 to February 10 to cross examine witnesses of the carnage in which 166 people were killed.

But Ali said there is a “possibility that the visit may be delayed” by the death of the lawyer representing alleged mastermind, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.

The deceased’s son, Khwaja Harris Ahmad, has applied to replace his father and the issue would be taken up by the court on February 4, Ali said.

The commission is made up of two senior prosecutors, a director from the Federal Investigation Agency and five lawyers representing the suspects.

“We can proceed to India before February 10 if our authorities address all the legal requirements,” Ahmad told AFP.

Pakistan had wanted Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from the Mumbai attacks, to testify.

But Ahmad said Kasab, who has appealed a death sentence in India, was not included on the list of witnesses whom the panel wish to cross-examine.

Posted in Around, India, News | 1,742 Comments »

By Wajid Ali Syed

Pakistan’s newly appointed Ambassador to the United States Sherry Rehman has said that Pakistan today speaks as one united government and will have one united policy towards the United States. “The elected government will stand firm in its resolve to protect our military, when our soldiers are martyred in the line of duty, as they were on the border post of Salala, which has triggered a review in our relationship.”

Speaking at her first public event since assuming office last month, Ambassador Sherry Rehman said the message she carried from Islamabad is loud and clear: “We want to remain friends with the United States and we want a strong relationship that is equal, sovereign, based on mutual respect and shared values.”

In the 64 years history of Pakistan the relationship between the United States and Pakistan has not been as important yet the tensions have not been this grave, she said, adding that the mutual respect and trust between the two countries have been undermined in the last few months, hence “a comprehensive Parliamentary review is under way to establish new principles for this relationship. The review will reflect a multi-partisan parliamentary consensus and the support of the Pakistani people,” she said. The ambassador stated that this is an opportunity “to reset this relationship in a transparent, consistent and predictable manner.”

She said the review is likely to be completed in the next few weeks and will represent a multiparty trilateral consensus: “Both countries can use this opportunity to reset our relationship for more consistent, transparent and predictable pattern.”

Speaking about democracy in Pakistan, she said that this was the first time in 30 years that a democratically elected civilian government in Pakistan is nearing completion of its constitutionally mandated term — a “remarkable achievement.” “The government is committed to pluralism in Pakistan, but faces daunting obstacles, many of which have to do with the tide of extremism roiling the region.”

The ambassador also announced that she has not come to the US to bring a grievance narrative, and said that Pakistan’s expectation is to become economic and political partner of the United States and not just battlefield allies.

She said that her vision to change the relationship from aid to trade between the two countries was shared by the political government. “Our friends in the United States must know that our sacrifices in the war on terror far outnumber those of any other international or Nato coalition partner in Afghanistan.”

The event, which was attended by over 200 representatives of the Pakistani-American community, was organized at the Embassy in an effort to reach out to the Pakistani diasporas. The ambassador also sought the Pakistani community’s help, saying that “as Pakistani-Americans, I want you to know that I will rely heavily on you as the extended arm of this Embassy and its consulates in getting our message delivered to the American public. Every one of you is our mouthpiece. Every one of you is our lobbyist.”

One of her priorities, the ambassador said, would be the formation of a Pakistan-American leadership caucus, which would serve as the main vehicle for strategic interventions to build a new relationship with the US, and to promote the new Pakistan. She would also initiate a new cultural outreach programme to showcase the “real Pakistan”, one which is quite different from perceptions in the West.

Originally appeared in the news international

Posted in Around, News | 324 Comments »

By Nadeem F. Paracha

Last week a video clip of a morning show hosted by one Maya Khan on a local TV channel began doing the rounds. The clip shows Ms. Khan with a posse of assorted thirty-something women and a cameraman raiding a famous public park of Karachi and prowling the lush vicinity looking for young unmarried couples.

The idea was to confront ‘wayward’ young women and embarrass them for ‘betraying their parents’ trust’.

The very next day another video clip showing the same Maya Khan bouncing off the walls on TV via a dance routine that can at best be explained as a hefty personification of a rhythmic earthquake, appeared.

This thus perfectly capped the volatile moral state of Pakistan’s urban bourgeoisie that, especially in the last 15 years or so, have managed to grow two heads on a single body – one spouting loud moralistic clichés while the other animatedly bopping up and down and sideways to the tune of assorted Bollywood masala numbers, as if totally oblivious about what the other head was harping about.

This also affirms the fact that contrary to popular perception, the ‘Islamization’ wave that began cutting through and across Pakistan from the 1980s onwards had little to do with the uneducated and the have-nots.

It was always and still is a phenomenon that is largely associated with the country’s urban middle and trader classes.

In the 1980s, a number of Islamist outfits had already made in-roads in the politics and sociology of Pakistan by riding on the Ziaul Haq’s Islamisation process.

But as most of them were highly militant and eventually got themselves ‘strategically’ linked with certain sections of the radicalised military institutions, it were the evangelical movements that managed to reap the most success within the country’s social and cultural milieu.

The largest of them was also the oldest. The ranks of the Tableeghi Jamat (TJ), a highly ritualistic Deobandi Islamic evangelical movement, swelled. But since the TJ was more a collection of working-class and petty-bourgeoisie cohorts and fellow travellers, newer evangelical outfits emerged with the idea of almost exclusively catering to the growing ‘born again’ trend being witnessed in the county’s middle and upper-middle classes in the 1990s.
Three of the most prominent organisations in this context were Farhat Hashmi’s Al-Huda, Zakir Naik’s ‘Islamic Research Foundation’ and Babar R. Chaudhry’s Arrahman Araheem (AA).

Naik, Hashmi and Chaudhry were all constructing feel-good narratives and apologias for the educated urbanites so that these urbanites could feel at home with religious ritualism, myth, attire and rhetoric while at the same time continue to enjoy the fruits of amoral modern materialism and frequent interaction with (Western and Indian) cultures that were otherwise described as being ‘anti-Islam.’

Of course, the whole question of such narratives smacking of contradiction went out the window as young middle-class Pakistanis admiringly saw pop and cricketing stars ‘rediscovering God’ with the help of the mentioned organizations – but not without the things that kept them materially satisfied (corporate contracts, modern fashion businesses, music products, etc).

Such contractions and their patrons were largely passive in orientation, but with the emergence of 24/7 electronic media in the last decade, they became more visible and evangelical and a lot more ‘popular’ – a happening that went down well with the cynical ratings-hungry TV channels.

What’s more, the trend in this respect is now no more the sole domain of the trendy ‘born-agains’.

One can even see decked-up film and TV actors and actresses, pop stars, morning show hosts and even chefs on cooking shows completely bypassing the irony and absurdity of them spouting the almost obligatory sentence or two about the need for piety and good morals in society.

Not that their respective passions and professions are immoral, but they are certainly not in step with the kind of pious spiritual alignments habitually advocated by these men and women and that too, smack-dab in the middle of topics and scenarios that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

Pussycat vigilantism: A brief history

This strange phenomenon is not just about simple hypocrisy, it is also and actually about glorifying this hypocrisy through gung-ho acts in which pussycat media vigilantes prey upon soft targets to exhibit their ‘bravery’ but squeak away if ever an opportunity arises to do the same to those who can and will bite back.

Since when have so-called ‘educated’ and affluent urbanites become moral crusaders? Is this a new phenomenon

encouraged by a ratings-hungry and vindictive private electronic media that is reflecting the contradiction-laden acts of morality being flexed by the country’s urban middle-classes; or is there more to what meets the immediate eye?
A quick research on the matter suggests that nothing of the sort was ever reported in Pakistan till about 1979. I mention this year because after going through newspapers of yore, the first reported case of moral vigilantism that I stumbled upon was mentioned in an issue of Dawn of 1980.

The report is about groups of youth carrying sticks and bricks, moving into streets of some of Karachi’s areas, randomly knocking on the doors of houses and ‘ordering’ the male occupants of the houses to come with them to the mosque to say their prayers.

According to Rauf Talib, a former chief reporter of Urdu dailies Imroz and then Aman, most of such groups became active between 1978 and 1980 after the reactionary Ziaul Haq dictatorship decided to form ‘Salat Committees’ whose job it was to enforce compulsory prayers (in mosques) upon the men; and (during Ramazan), punish those found eating or smoking in public.

Talib said that when these committees propped up, most Pakistanis did not even know the meaning of ‘Salat’ – the Arab word for the Urdu word ‘namaz.’

Interestingly, reports about the committees simply evaporate in newspapers after 1982, but news items about how groups of moral vigilantes publically punished supposed offenders of Ramazan’s ‘decorum and spirit’ increase between 1981 and 1985.

The punishments usually included beating the offender with shoes and sticks but there were at least two reports (one in Dawn and the other in Jang) where the accused (men caught eating during Ramazan), were first beaten and then tied to lampposts, with a garland of shoes hung around their necks!

Talib suggests that the idea of forming Salat Committees by the government was soon shelved when the people of some areas where the committees were active, reacted to the constant and unwelcome knocking by strangers on the doors of their houses, ended up scuffling with the committee members.

But who were these people who ran the committees?

‘Young Jamat-i-Islami members,’ says Asghar Waris Ali, a lecturer at a local government college in Karachi. ‘It was them and some high school kids from various government schools.’

Asghar says that the organisers of the committees were usually university students belonging to religious and pro-Zia student organisations working closely with the head molvies of the areas’ mosques.

‘They were a huge failure,’ Mr. Ashgar said.

What about those who were going around punishing people caught eating or smoking during Ramazan?

‘Yes, that became common in those days as well,’ Mr. Ashgar explained. ‘I don’t know exactly who was doing that, but such behaviour was being encouraged by the government as well as by the police,’ he added.

The ‘encouragement’ that Mr. Asghar was talking about triggered two tendencies in this respect, one saw the overenthusiastic displays of moral policing by certain religiously-inclined civilians and media outlets and the other was the more cynical trend amongst many policemen who began to exploit the carelessly defined moral edicts of the Zia dictatorship to actually extort money from the public.

For example by the late 1980s groups of conservative middle-class youth calling themselves the ‘Allah Tigers’ emerged. Between 1989 and 1995, they became infamous for ‘raiding’ hotels and social clubs during New Years Eves and harassing and attacking ‘obscene women’ and ‘drunkards’ there.

Then throughout the 1980s, newspapers (especially English dailies and monthlies) are full of reports about policemen stopping couples in cars and on bikes and asking for their marriage certificates (nikanamah).

Farah Nawaz who was an active member of a women’s rights group during that period and now runs a small education-related NGO in Karachi, says that in their greed to extort money, the cops did not even spare old couples.

Farah said: ‘There was an incident at Karachi’s Sea View area in, I think 1987, where a son who was driving his old mother to her sister’s place in a rickety car. He was stopped by two cops and asked to first explain his relationship with his mother and then prove that she was his mother and not a prostitute! He got enraged and began beating up the cops who could not retaliate because a mob had gathered. So they ran away.’

Until about the late 1980s and early 1990s, the growing cases of moral policing and harassment largely involved conservative urban men coming from lower-middleclass backgrounds (the petty-bourgeoisie) or among the youth from nouveau-riche families who’d gotten rich during the Zia regime.

I returned to Rauf Talib to ask him when did these tendencies of moral policing by certain sections of the society and the police become entangled with the ways of the media?

He said that during the Zia regime the private media (mainly newspapers and magazines) did not play any major role to encourage or advocate his politics of morality.

He explained: ‘I think only Jasarat (Urdu daily sympathetic to the Jamat-i-Islami) paid any heed to highlighting the supposed areas of immorality in society, but all the major Urdu and English papers and magazines actually spend more effort in castigating the actions of those who were harassing people in the name of faith.’

‘But, he continued, ‘it was very tough for a lot us who were journalists in those days to criticise the regime. It was a time when journalists and students were being flogged, whereas known drug barons were being patronised by the regime and young men were openly harassing defenseless men and women in the name of safeguarding Islamic morals.’

Most journalists that I talked to pointed at the famous/infamous Urdu magazine Takbeer as the media organ that ‘pioneered’ the idea of turning civilian moral vigilantism into a successful media ploy.

Though a right-wing political magazine, Takbeer also became famous for publishing social ‘exposés’ in which it printed photographs and reports of men and women drinking alcohol and dancing, and couples caught dating in certain public places such as parks, cinemas and restaurants.

When Takbeer became a hit with readers, many other Urdu dailies and magazines began forming their own moral raid brigades.

Misbah Junaid a former assistant editor of an Urdu daily (now settled in Australia) points out that (in the 1990s) those journalists who would be involved in moral policing were largely conservative men who would dress in simple kameez-shalwar and more often than not have beards.

‘Yes they were from urban areas and middle-class, but they stood out because they looked conservative,’ Misbah wrote to me.

Then Misbah went on to make an interesting point: ‘The moral vigilantism by civilians and certain journalists that was encouraged by Zia (1980s) and then by rags such as Jasarat and Takbeer (1990s), introduced a form of activistic journalism among certain media personnel who did not exactly come from conservative backgrounds but realised that this kind of journalism can advance their careers faster in a society riddled with moralistic and ideological confusions.’

If so, then I guess couple this with the kind of glorification our society and state continues to provide to empty ideological and moralistic jingoism and the ready apologists a hate-monger or a quasi-fascist finger-wager is likely to bag, journalists and their bosses (especially in private TV channels), cynically (and greedily) envision Pakistanis to be a society that is always ready to applaud sensationalist exposés about someone’s morals failings but would remain ignorant (or mum) about the greater forms of indecency, amorality, greed and carelessness that usually accompanies such self-righteous media-backed behaviour.

In the last ten years we have seen how cynical, ratings-hungry televangelists have gone on to actually instigate violence against opposing sects and religions; how conspiratorial nuts and their robotic dodders have infused a rebellion against reason and rationalism amongst venerable, confused and highly impressionable sections of the youth; how careless, loud and attention-seeking blurting from anchors have fuelled the fires of hatred in those who believe that murdering a supposed blasphemer is actually a good deed.

Most of these men and women and the channels they are or were part of have come under criticism from the more concerned sections of the society, but the recent Maya Khan episode suggests that absolutely nothing has been learned by the channels and nor are they willing to learn.

So what if it was due to a televangelist that four Ahmedis were murdered in Lahore; so what if a reactionary doll’s fist-pumping on TV against former Punjab Governor’s stand on the Blasphemy Law most likely led a fanatic to shoot the Governor in cold blood; and so what if a hefty morning show hostesses’ exposure of young women (who are not as affluent as she is nor willing to dance on TV like a walrus on amphetamines), puts their lives and reputations in danger in a highly chauvinistic male oriented society.

The show must go on because such irresponsible, hypocritical and self-righteous nonsense can bag something for the channels that may actually rank above God’s blessings and promises of paradise: i.e. high ratings.

Originally appeared in the Dawn.

Tags: General Zia ul-Haq, islamists, Islamization, lal masjid, Maya khan, Pakistan, Pakistan Media

Posted in Blog | 386 Comments »

India and Pakistan on Wednesday announced several initiatives to accelerate cooperation in the oil and gas sector, as the two energy-starved nuclear-armed neighbors try to mend economic ties despite political differences.

Energy ministers from India and Pakistan said the two nations may jointly take part in developing a gas field in Turkmenistan.

In addition, India has proposed to export petroleum products to its South Asian neighbor, said Oil Minister Jaipal Reddy, while addressing a joint briefing with his Pakistani counterpart, Asim Hussain.
Mr. Hussain is in New Delhi for talks on a proposed 1,680-kilometer pipeline that will transport gas from Turkmenistan’s Yolotan-Osman field to India and Pakistan through Afghanistan.

“We intend to have a joint strategy on the upstream sector where Turkmenistan is to develop its gas field,” Mr. Hussain said.

“We will have to wait for the response of the Turkmenistan government,” Mr. Reddy said. “Since everything is progressing smoothly, we are optimistic about it.”

An agreement to build a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline will help both India and Pakistan secure gas supplies and also benefit Turkmenistan, which has the world’s fourth-largest gas reserves, including the Yolotan-Osman Gas field with estimated reserves of as much as 13 trillion cubic meters.

The $7.6 billion proposed pipeline could carry about 90 million standard cubic meters of gas per day. According to the plan, Afghanistan would get 14 million cubic meters of the gas, while India and Pakistan would equally share the balance.

Discussions on the pipeline have been continuing for about two decades and the project has U.S. backing as it will provide millions of dollars to Afghanistan in the form of transit fees and also job opportunities. The pipeline will also reduce South Asia’s dependence on Iran, which has been seeking to supply gas to India and Pakistan through another proposed pipeline.

About 1,535 kilometers of the Turkmenistan pipeline will pass through Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the Kandahar province that has high Taliban presence, and tribal areas, posing a security challenge to the project.

Mr. Hussain said Pakistan is separately going ahead with a multibillion-dollar gas-pipeline project with Iran. “The gas-supply purchase agreement has been signed with Iran. We are meeting all schedules on time.”

India, which was part of the project initially, isn’t actively pursuing it as the talks stalled on security and pricing issues. Mr. Reddy declined to comment on India’s participation.

Pakistan’s comments come as the U.S. and the European Union push toward banning or discouraging Iranian oil trade as part of efforts to force Tehran into suspending its alleged nuclear-weapons program.

Mr. Reddy said India has offered to export gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and fuel oil besides sulfur, polyethylene and polypropylene to Pakistan, according to an Indian government statement.

It said Pakistan will save freight costs as several Indian refineries are located close to the border between the countries.

Indian refiners will study the feasibility of product pipelines to Pakistan provided they receive long-term guarantees for product purchases, Mr. Reddy added.

Tags: Afghanistan, Pak India Dialogue, Pak-India Relations, turkmenistan

Posted in India, News | 427 Comments »

The Crisis in US relations with Pakistan has been overtaken, in Pakistan itself, by a power struggle among three competing authorities: the civilian government, the military and the judiciary. Its outcome could determine whether Pakistan will seek to repair its alliance with the United States or become a more open adversary in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Not coincidentally, it will also show whether the country’s powerful military and intelligence service can be checked by civil institutions. Though history would suggest that the generals are bound to win, so far the result has been a stalemate.

At the center of the furor is Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, a highly capable representative of the government of President Asif Ali Zardari and a longtime advocate of democracy and civilian rule. Mr. Haqqani was forced to resign his post in November and now is under investigation by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. A Pakistani businessman claimed that Mr. Haqqani helped craft an appeal to the Obama administration to protect the civilian government from a possible military coup; this is being treated as an act of treason. Mr. Haqqani, who denies the story, has taken refuge in the home of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. He has good reason to fear he will be targeted for assassination, like other liberal politicians slain in the last year.
Besides the military and Mr. Zardari’s government, the third party to the dispute is the court, which seems to have embraced the generals’ cause of ousting the civilian government. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry has had outsize political ambitions ever since he helped depose former president Pervez Musharraf. He has sought since 2009 to prosecute Mr. Zardari for corruption, even though he enjoys immunity as president. In addition to investigating Mr. Haqqani, the court is threatening to hold Mr. Gilani in contempt for failing to ask Switzerland to reopen a financial investigation of Mr. Zardari.

The good news in this complex struggle is that the case against Mr. Haqqani appears to be crumbling — as it should be — for lack of evidence. Mr. Gilani has pushed back against the military, by firing the defense secretary. And Mr. Chaudhry’s overweening actions have divided a legal community that once supported him overwhelmingly. With luck, Mr. Zardari’s government will survive until an election in March for the upper house of parliament, which the ruling party is likely to win; that could provide more leverage against the generals.

The Obama administration has been outwardly supportive of Pakistan’s civilian government but has often bypassed it, dealing directly with the chiefs of the army and intelligence agency on matters such as Afghanistan. While there is a certain pragmatic logic to this, what the past two years have demonstrated — again — is that an enduring partnership between Pakistan and the United States will be possible only if moderate civilians establish control over the military and dismantle its toxic nationalist agenda, which is founded on enmity toward India and rejects an independent and stable Afghanistan. There may not be much the Obama administration can do to tip the ongoing power struggle in Islamabad, and any overt attempt to intervene would probably backfire. But the administration should be hoping that Mr. Haqqani’s side wins — or at least survives.

Tags: CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry, Husain Haqqani, Pak US relations, President Asif Ali Zardari, Yusuf Raza Gilani

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By Rizwan Ghani

Pakistan is about to redefine its relations with America after the Salala tragedy. The parliament is going to discuss Pak-US relations. Our policy makers should remember France’s reaction over deaths of its soldiers. A careful look at domestic and international developments will show that beyond transactional relationship based on Afghanistan and NATO, there is no future of permanent Pak-US relations. PPP supports the relations but Mualana Fazl ur Rehman has said that America is the enemy of Pakistan. The overwhelming majority of public (more than 90 %) is against Pak-US relations. Just like US military-industrial complex, a powerful lobby in Pakistan supports Pak-US relations to protect its profits in US and Afghanistan. There are fundamental differences in Pak-US policies on human rights, Constitutions, economic models, political systems and even the internet. However, countries are redirecting their foreign policies to face recession, increasing oil prices and avert military conflicts.

Where does Pakistan stand on China and permanent NATO presence in the region? How does the government plan to react beyond the rhetoric of redlines to any future US attacks on Pakistan? China has decided to deal with America diplomatically. Obama’s recently issued defense review is China centric. It aims to maintain permanent US presence in Asia. A NATO like alliance has been forged between America and five East Asian nations (Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and South Korea). Under the doctrine of “offshore balancing”, the troop number will be cut in future military operations. Instead, there will be an increase in use of air force and navy. It will be replaced with high technology use and missile shields (in Turkey). Unmanned surveillance vehicles including drones, nanotechnology and 24/7 (satellite) surveillance will substitute human intelligence networks. War outsourcing is part of the Obama doctrine. The imposition of passage levy on NATO is one part of the complex picture, which deals with constitution, armed forces and public opinion. Our liberal media blames government policies for paid military operations. The armed forces feel let down for their services to the nation and obeying government orders. The constitutionalists object to use of national armed force within state boundaries as unconstitutional and gross violations of fundamental rights and international conventions. It brings state, government, civil society and media at crossroads, which in turn exposes the state and its institutions to foreign exploitation. Memo is just one example of this complexity, in which each party believes it is on high moral ground or is a victim. However, from America’s perspective, it is a good business deal. No body bags, media scrutiny, domestic pressure to end dirty wars, accountability for crimes against humanity, power to prolong wars due to reduced costs and safety fallouts for the American public (NATO spent one crore plus monthly for Pakistani route as compared to ten crores for other routes). To protect its national unity and interests, Pakistan cannot be part of America’s outsourcing policy.

Can Pakistan support US imperialism? US takes it as its right to interfere in others affairs under its illegal doctrine of imperialism- no to national boundaries and sovereignties. Hillary’s redline threat is nothing new, it is part of American policy since 1963. Kennedy invited national poet Robert Frost to his inauguration speech to send a new foreign policy message of “Good Fences make good neighbors” to the world, an end to Vietnam war, and fight against what he called the “common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself”. He was murdered (in Texas), and Frost was replaced by Walt Whitman as beacon of new foreign policy, “Democracy is like grassland with no boundaries”. Reportedly, Tokyo is paying $2bn plus annually for 70 US military bases in Japan instead of giving the money to unemployed Japanese demanding eviction of US forces. Washington has formed an anti-China “String of Pearls” in the Far East comprising Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. America does not respect nations and international laws, which recognize sovereign rights and boundaries of states. It is about time Pakistan upholds Iqbal’s message of freedom from the west, adopts Islamic values and restores faith in self and nation.

Not-so-covert warfare is part of US foreign policy. The thawing of North, South Korea relations under the Sunshine Act was derailed by sinking of South Korean military vessel leading to 42 deaths because united Korean Peninsula undermines US interest in the region. The Chinese tourists were shot dead in Philippines resulting in scrapping of scheduled talks between Beijing and Manila. Manila was rewarded with Philippines Sea. Mumbai blasts rocked Pak- Indo talks on Kashmir. International conspiracy has stopped Islamabad from demanding resolution of Kashmir issue as per the UN Resolutions and it is struggling to prove its innocence as a terror sponsoring state. Delhi was rewarded with Indo-US nuclear deal for adopting “friendly” policies against China, Afghanistan and Baluchistan. Islamabad should not send Mumbai Judicial Commission to India because old ploy of terrorism is being used to sell so-called war against terrorism (SWAT) to justify permanent occupation of Asia through Afghanistan, Philippines and CARS (Not-so-covert warfare…, Jan. 21, Arab News). Our parliament should scrap all US sponsored agreements to protect national interests. The US sponsored Afghan Trade Agreement must be scrapped to start energy and trade corridor between Pakistan, ME, China, Russia and Europe. All NATO agreements and foreign intelligence networks should be ended (Norway’s security agents in Pakistan, Jan. 20, Pak. observer), Pak-Afghan border should be sealed and regulated as per international laws. Pakistan must demand the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan so that three million Afghan refugees can return to Afghanistan and the Afghans can take control of their country. Telecommunication and energy sectors should be privatized to regain control of security and economy. Reportedly, invisible ‘closed phone’ networks can be established within existing telecommunication networks. In Greece, a local engineer was murdered for reporting spy software. A judicial inquiry should be ordered to determine the role of multinationals, foreign forces and anti-state elements in mobile-triggered attacks in Pakistan. The material used in these attacks is not available in the region and attack timings show that they were aimed at winning public support in the west and conning Pakistanis. Under Beggar Thy Neighbor policy, the energy sector was used to initiate a pancake collapse of our economy to control our foreign policy, national security including denuclearization, and to sustain America’s SWAT. Therefore, Pakistan needs to expose acts of sabotage against armed forces, public and the state. Also, those responsible, not the public, should pay the Rs. 160 bn debt. There should be public inquiries of 7/7 and 9/11. The Ripple Effect (BBC documentary) should be shown on our national TV.

Pakistan and America cannot get along due to fundamental differences. The violation of human rights including use of drones, no accountability for forced sterilization, police state and racism is part of America’s policies. Unlike US, the extra judicial killings, racism and forced sterilization are crimes in Pakistan. Our Constitution envisages a welfare state, a parliamentary form of government, no fixed term for the PM, independent judiciary, Sharia based law, Freedom of Information, internet freedom, and a government obliged to protect rights of weak against strong including equitable wealth distribution. Americans have however made the judiciary subservient to parliament, practice full presidential terms and protect them for war crimes and crimes against humanity (pending court case against Nixon for ordering the killing of Vietnamese civilians). The US state cannot protect poor from the rich, hold rich accountable (Swiss Banks and 50,000 US tax evaders), media from paying for information despite FoIA (New York Times), public from SOPA ‘nanny state surveillance’ and separate religion from State (political resistance against right to abortion).

Originally appeared pakistan observer.

Tags: Afghanistan, NATO, Pak US relations

Posted in Afghanistan, Around | 509 Comments »

By Declan Walsh

Once they were heroes, cloaked justices at the vanguard of a powerful revolt against military rule in Pakistan, buoyed by pugnacious lawyers and an adoring public. But now Pakistan’s Supreme Court is waging a campaign of judicial activism that has pitted it against an elected civilian government, in a legal fight that many Pakistanis fear could damage their fragile democracy and open the door to a fresh military intervention.

From an imposing, marble-clad court on a hill over Islamabad, and led by an iron-willed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the judges have since 2009 issued numerous rulings that have propelled them into areas traditionally dominated by government here. The court has dictated the price of sugar and fuel, championed the rights of transsexuals, and, quite literally, directed the traffic in the coastal megalopolis of Karachi.

But in recent weeks the court has taken interventionism to a new level, inserting itself as the third player in a bruising confrontation between military and civilian leaders at a time when Pakistan — and the United States — urgently needs stability in Islamabad to face a dizzying array of threats.

Judges say their expanded mandate comes from the people, dating back to the struggle against the military rule of Gen. Pervez Musharraf that began in 2007, eventually helping to pry him from power. Memories linger of those heady days, when bloodied lawyers clashed with riot police officers, and judges were garlanded and paraded as virtual saints.

In recent months, however, the Supreme Court has ventured deep into political peril in two different cases. Last week, as part of a high-stakes corruption case, it summoned Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to testify in court under threat of contempt charges that, if carried to conviction, could leave him jailed and ejected from office.

The court has also begun an inquiry into a scandal known here as Memogate, a shadowy affair with touches of soap-opera drama that has engulfed the political system since November. It has claimed the job of Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States and now threatens other senior figures in the civilian government, under accusations that officials sought American help to head off a potential military coup.

Propelled by accounts of secret letters, text messages and military plots, the scandal has in recent days focused on a music video featuring bikini-clad female wrestlers that is likely to be entered as evidence of immorality on the part of the central protagonist, Mansoor Ijaz, an American businessman of Pakistani origin.

Hearings resume Tuesday when Mr. Ijaz is due to give evidence. The fact that the courts have become the arena for such lurid political theater has reignited criticism, some from once-staunch allies, that the Supreme Court is worryingly overstepping its mark.

“In the long run this is a very dangerous trend,” said Muneer A. Malik, a former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association who campaigned for Justice Chaudhry in 2007. “The judges are not elected representatives of the people and they are arrogating power to themselves as if they are the only sanctimonious institution in the country. All dictators fall prey to this psyche — that only we are clean, and capable of doing the right thing.”

The court’s supporters counter that it is reinforcing democracy in the face of President Asif Ali Zardari’s corrupt and inept government. On Saturday, Justice Chaudhry pushed back against the critics.

The court’s goal was to “buttress democratic and parliamentary norms,” he told a gathering of lawyers in Karachi. Deep-rooted corruption was curtailing justice in Pakistan, he added.

“Destiny of our institution is in our own hands,” he said.

Mr. Chaudhry was appointed to the Supreme Court under General Musharraf in 2000. Two years later he wrote a judgment that absolved the military ruler for his 1999 coup. But Mr. Chaudhry shocked his patron and his country seven years later with decrees that challenged General Musharraf’s pre-eminence. Senior security officials were ordered to track down individuals being illegally held by the military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, in some cases working with the F.B.I. and C.I.A. The privatization of state companies came under sharp scrutiny.
Then, on March 9, 2007, General Musharraf tried to fire Justice Chaudhry and placed him under house arrest. Protesting lawyers rushed into the streets in support of the chief justice. New cable television channels broadcast images of the tumult across the country. Power drained from General Musharraf, who resigned 18 months later.
The euphoria was soon tempered, however, by growing tensions with the new government. Mr. Zardari hesitated to reinstate Mr. Chaudhry, believing that he was too close to his political rivals and the military.

The standoff led to fresh street protests in 2009, led by the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif. That March, amid dramatic scenes that included a threatened march on the capital, Mr. Zardari relented and Justice Chaudhry returned to the bench.

Within months, the Supreme Court had cleared the way for the possible prosecution of Mr. Zardari in a Swiss corruption case dating to the 1990s. The government cited Mr. Zardari’s presidential immunity, and argued, along with some international analyst groups, that the court was specifically targeting the president.

But among the wider public, the court was winning broad support. It engaged in a series of muscular interventions to champion the cause of ordinary Pakistanis, some of which broke new ground. Judges expanded the civil rights of hijras, transgendered people who traditionally suffered discrimination, called senior bureaucrats and police officials to account, halted business ventures that contravened planning laws, including a McDonald’s restaurant in Islamabad and a German supermarket in Karachi, and issued a decree against the destruction of trees along a major road in Lahore.

The court’s populist bent has infuriated the government but won cheers from urban, middle-class Pakistanis — the same people who had supported the lawyers’ drive against General Musharraf. Largely young, frustrated by traditional politics and angered by official graft, they constitute a political class that has in recent months flocked to Imran Khan, the cricket star turned politician who is enjoying a sudden surge in popularity, and is a strong defender of the judiciary.

But the court’s activism has also taken many erratic turns. Justice Chaudhry has fought trenchant battles to win control of judicial appointments, a process traditionally in the government’s purview. While the judiciary has vigorously pursued Mr. Zardari, it absolved Mr. Sharif of his alleged crimes. And critics accuse Mr. Chaudhry of failing to reform the chaotic lower courts, which remain plagued by long backlogs. “Three years after the restitution of the chief justice, the delivery of justice remains as poor as it has ever been,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, of Human Rights Watch.

The gravest charges, though, swirl around the memo scandal. Mr. Ijaz claims to hold an unsigned memorandum showing that Mr. Zardari’s government sought covert United States government help to avert a military coup in the poisonous aftermath of the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May.

But the memo’s provenance is unclear and Mr. Ijaz’s credibility has come under assault in the news media. Last week a music video that went viral on the Internet showed Mr. Ijaz acting as the ringside commentator in a wrestling contest between two bikini-clad women and that, in one version, featured full nudity — a shocking sight in conservative Pakistan.

The furor, which made front-page news, injected a fresh sense of absurdity into proceedings that already were under question, and that many here insist would never have started without military intervention: the Supreme Court ordered the inquiry on Dec. 30 at the direct request of the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the ISI director general, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who harbor little love for Mr. Zardari. Also, the court ignored other claims by Mr. Ijaz that the army secretly sheltered Bin Laden, and sought outside support to mount a coup — acts that, if proven, could be equally treasonous.

Suspicions about the court’s impartiality were renewed last Friday, when Mr. Chaudhry ordered the government to disclose whether it intended to fire General Kayani or General Pasha — even though such decisions are normally the government’s prerogative.

The titanic three-way struggle among generals, judges and politicians comes at a time when Pakistan has become increasingly chaotic. Taliban insurgents continue to roam the northwest, the economy is in dire straits and urgently needed reforms in education, health and other social sectors have been largely ignored.

From the standpoint of the United States, the deadlock has diverted the spotlight from military airstrikes that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers in November and brought the two countries’ troubled relationship to a new low. But it has also drawn attention away from a pressing priority of the United States in Pakistan: engaging cooperation here to help negotiate a peace settlement with the Afghan Taliban as a major troop withdrawal slated for 2014 draws near.

“In the midst of this institutional wrangling, nobody has a clear plan as to how politics or foreign policy are going to move forward, said Dr. Paula Newberg of Georgetown University, who has written a book about Pakistani constitutional politics. “Pakistan could easily have a much brighter future. But it gets itself worn down by these incessant disputes about where power lies.”

Originally appeared in the New York Times

Tags: Afghan Taliban, Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, General Kiyani, Iftikhar Chaudhry, mansoor ijaz, pakistan supreme court, Pervez Musharraf, President Asif Ali Zardari

Posted in News | 155 Comments »

By David Ignatius
Behind the “Memogate” affair that has embroiled Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States. and the civilian government he represents, there is a quixotic accuser named Mansoor Ijaz who seems like a character in a fanciful spy novel of his own design.

Ijaz is an American businessman of Pakistani descent who lives in high style on the French Riviera. He made money as an investor, but his fame has come as a writer of op-ed pieces and a sometime intermediary with Pakistani and American officials. He has alleged that Husain Haqqani, the former ambassador, encouraged him to write a memo to Adm. Mike Mullen last May urging tighter controls on the Pakistani military.

That charge has snared Haqqani and triggered a crisis pitting Pakistan’s civilian government against its military. But even if Ijaz’s allegation is true, it’s reasonable to ask: So what? Haqqani doesn’t appear, even from Ijaz’s evidence, to have done anything illegal — or even outside his job as diplomatic representative of the government.

Pakistan’s supreme court is scheduled to begin hearing the case on Tuesday. But before it gets too deep into the blizzard of alleged electronic messages between Ijaz and Haqqani, the court should ask whether the fundamentals of the case make sense — and whether it will prove an embarrassment to both the military and the civilian leadership.

A review of the evidence suggests there may be less to the case than all the noise would suggest. That’s the view of Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council and an authority on the Pakistani military, with which he has close contacts.

“This is now a sideshow that is taking on importance beyond the needs of the country,” Nawaz told me Sunday. “There is no evidence that the security of the state has been compromised. Husain Haqqani has already been removed from his post. Perhaps it would be best to close this matter and move on to more serious things.”

Let’s start with the memo itself. Ijaz outed the story in an Oct. 10, 2011, opinion piece in the Financial Times in which he said that on May 9, a “senior Pakistani diplomat” had had contacted him with an “urgent request” that he convey a message to Mullen urging the U.S. to back tighter controls on Pakistan’s military and intelligence. Ijaz later identified that diplomat as Haqqani, who denies that he was the instigator.

In any event, Ijaz wrote a memo making the argument — including a statement that a new “national security team” in Islamabad would abolish the notorious “S” wing of Pakistani intelligence, which maintains liaison with the Taliban and other jihadist groups. He then arranged for Jim Jones, the former national security adviser, to send the memo to Mullen.

Ijaz’s memo was a stronger statement of arguments he had made publicly back in May, in the Financial Times and a Washington Post blog, after the death of Osama bin Laden. “Taken advantage of properly by U.S. policymakers, exposed treachery [in bin Laden’s long residence in Pakistan] could usher in a new era of transparency in Pakistan’s internal affairs,” he wrote in the Post item.

Haqqani, as a representative of the civilian government, probably shared a similar feeling that Pakistani military and intelligence had been embarrassed by the fact that bin Laden had been living for years in Abbotabad. But he hardly needed Ijaz’s help in conveying his views to people like Mullen. He was in daily contact with top U.S. officials, trying to represent President Asif Ali Zardari. The Pakistani military had a representative of its own, a respected military attaché who could speak on the generals’ behalf.

Ijaz seems to have relished his role as a freelance adviser. His relationship with Jones, who passed the memo, is a case in point: They had met in 2006, and Jones, who was then NATO commander, had asked Ijaz to join a strategic advisers group and travel with him to Afghanistan. Later, Ijaz was asked to join the board of the Atlantic Council, where Jones is a former chairman. But his stint as a board member didn’t last long, nor did he make major donations to the group.

When a government official asked several years ago for a CIA check on Ijaz’s background in international matters, he is said to have received an “orange flag” — nothing that would rule out dealing with him, but a caution that he had a taste for publicity and sometimes talked more than he delivered.

One of the intriguing aspects of Ijaz’s role is whether, in his contacts with Mullen, he was in effect acting as a representative of Zardari. Jones said in an affidavit for the Pakistani court that Ijaz “mentioned that he has a message from the ‘highest authority’ in the Pakistan government.” And in his cover letter to Jones, accompanying the infamous memo, Ijaz wrote: “This document has the support of the President of Pakistan.” (The cover note, along with all the other documentation, has been submitted to the court in Pakistan.)

Which leads some critics of Ijaz to raise the question: If Ijaz was acting on Zardari’s behalf (or Haqqani’s, for that matter) should he have registered as an agent of a foreign government? That’s just one of the wrinkles in a story so colorful and unlikely that it would have been branded unrealistic if written as fiction.

Originally appeared in the Washington Post.

Tags: Abbotabad, Admiral Mike Mullen, Husain Haqqani, mansoor ijaz, memogate, NATO, Osama Bin Laden, shuja nawaz, U.S policy makers

Posted in Blog | 284 Comments »

“There are forces in Pakistan that want us to live in fear — fear of external and internal enemies.” So warns Husain Haqqani, until November Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington and now a de facto prisoner of the Pakistani generals whose ire he has provoked.

“But just as the KGB and the Stasi did not succeed in suppressing the spirit of the Soviet and East German people, these forces won’t succeed in Pakistan in the long run, either,” Haqqani told the Wall Street Journal in a wide ranging interview at the Prime Minister House. “I did not craft or write the memo that is currently the cause of controversy,” Haqqani told the Journal.

Admiral Mullen claims to have only a hazy recollection of having received, but not taken seriously, an unsigned memo that did not bear the imprimatur of the Pakistani government. The upshot, as Haqqani points out, is a Pakistani scandal that “involves a memo written by an American and delivered through an American (retired Gen Jim Jones), to an American military official who consigned it to the dustbin.”

“I lived in the United States and taught in the United States,” Haqqani says, referring to his time as professor of international relations at Boston University and his stint as ambassador. “But I never sought American citizenship because I wanted to be able to contribute to the process of reform and the idea of civilian supremacy in Pakistan.”

Haqqani says one of the reasons some people in the establishment hate him so much is because of his book — “Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military”. “In fact, when I was made ambassador, somebody said to me that until you recant your book, you will never be forgiven by the Pakistani establishment.”

He explains that “Pakistan has a long history of military intervention in politics. There were years when the military did not directly intervene but used proxies. “Throughout the 1990s, we had four changes of government and forced early elections each time. For example, among the first allegations against Benazir Bhutto was that she was somehow going to compromise the country’s nuclear programme. So, there are elements entrenched in the apparatus of state who are very reluctant to fully trust the elected leaders of the country.”

The Journal pressed Haqqani on the invisible pressures on President Asif Ali Zardari’s unpopular government. “Soon after I resigned President Zardari fell ill,” he notes. “The psychological-warfare machine tried to give it the colour of President Zardari fleeing the country. He went (to Dubai) to get treated and then came back.” Speaking perhaps as much to reassure himself as to lend some support to Zardari, Haqqani adds that “In all psychological warfare, if the targets keep their nerves, then nothing happens.”

As ambassador in Washington, Haqqani was often referred to as “silver-tongued,” a man able to communicate effectively with officials of different political persuasions. Cultivating a relationship with a senator based on shared appreciation of a book on, say, tribal warfare, was the kind of thing that came easily to him. He says he represented Pakistan diligently at a time when US-Pakistani relations were deeply strained. “There is a longstanding culture of grievance in Pakistan,” he says. “A lot of Pakistanis feel the US has not always been responsive to Pakistan’s geo-strategic concerns. The Pakistani national narrative also says that Pakistan has been deserted by the United States many times. And the US has not done enough to try and change that national narrative.”

As for the current US administration, he says that it “does not have the human resources right now to fully understand the complexities of Pakistan and engage with them. They don’t have the people who understand.”

The traditional pattern of US-Pakistan relations has been that American intelligence wants working relations with Pakistani intelligence, and the State Department wants working relations with Pakistan’s foreign office. “The US will have to find a balance between their immediate needs and the long-term usefulness of their actions,” says Haqqani. “They always say the civilian government is ‘too weak’ for them to engage with. But how will the civilian government become strong if, on all major issues, US officials keep running to Pakistan’s military leaders for advice and consultation?”

Still, Haqqani is not about to blame the US for Pakistan’s failures to develop into a normal state. The progressive dreams of the country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, have been “shattered by religious extremism and repeated military interventions in politics.” Enunciating his words carefully, he adds: “While I respect the Pakistani armed forces, I certainly do not support the idea of a militarised Pakistan.”

“Sometimes I wonder if Salman Taseer’s fate awaits all those of us who stand up for a different vision for Pakistan.”

Originally appeared in The News International.

Tags: Admiral Mike Mullen, Asif Zardari, Husain Haqqani, prime minister house, salman tasser, US ambassador

Posted in Blog | 73 Comments »