The Pakistan Update

His medical colleagues at Jamrud Hospital in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber tribal agency suspected he was having an extramarital affair. When they asked Dr. Shakeel Afridi, the hospital’s chief surgeon, why he was absent so often last spring, he replied curtly that he had “business” to attend to in Abbottabad. The mystery only grew when one doctor accused Afridi of having taken a half-dozen World Health Organization cooler boxes without authorization. The containers are for keeping vaccines fresh during inoculation campaigns, and yet no immunization drives were underway in Abbottabad—or the Khyber agency either, for that matter.

In fact, Afridi wasn’t cheating on his wife—he was in the thick of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. At the request of the CIA, which had reason to think the al Qaeda leader was holed up in a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, the doctor had mounted a fake hepatitis-immunization program. Having spearheaded several polio-immunization drives over the years, Afridi knew how to stage the campaign convincingly. Renting a house near the compound, he hired a local nurse who thought the drive was genuine. The idea was for her to visit the compound and get a blood sample from at least one of the children who lived there. If the kids in the compound were bin Laden’s, DNA from the sample would tell the Americans they were on the right track.

The nurse got in, a knowledgeable Pakistani official tells Newsweek. He can’t say if she was able to get the DNA sample, but the ruse evidently paid off. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently acknowledged that Afridi’s efforts were “very helpful” in the run-up to the US raid that killed bin Laden last May. Now, however, Afridi is in a world of trouble. Three weeks after the raid, Pakistani intelligence officers arrested him. His Pakistani-born wife (an American citizen) and children have vanished from the family’s Peshawar home. A special government commission has recommended that he be charged with “conspiracy against the state of Pakistan and high treason” for taking part in a foreign intelligence operation. If tried and convicted, the doctor could theoretically be hanged.

The anonymous Pakistani official is sympathetic to Afridi’s plight, saying he “was not a proper CIA spy.” Unfortunately, the official says, the Pakistani media have trumpeted the case. “If his name had not appeared so prominently in the media, perhaps a way could have been found to let him go,” the official says. But Afridi may never again be out of danger—not even if Pakistan somehow decides to free him and send him and his family to America. A physician who knows him well worries that Afridi will always be a marked man. “I know some people would make a kebab of his body if they found him,” he says.

One question persists: why didn’t the CIA whisk Afridi and his family out of the country before Pakistan’s intelligence agencies discovered his role? “Letting him hang out to dry like this is not going to help the CIA to recruit oth-er Pakistanis,” says a Western diplomat in Islamabad, declining to be quoted by name. Still, Afridi may bear some responsibility himself. The agency looks after its own, a former high-level CIA officer argues. “I do not believe they left him high and dry,” says the officer, who tracked al Qaeda in Central Asia after 2001. “Our core value is taking care of those who support us.” Afridi may not have understood the risk, the officer suggests: “I’ve seen it before, where you have a guy at a very high-risk situation, and you offer help and they turn it down. They misread the situation.” It’s easy to do. Just ask Afridi’s old colleagues.

Originally appeared in the newsweek.

Tags: Abbottabad, Al Qaeda, CIA, Khyber, leon panetta, Osama Bin Laden, US raid

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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

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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

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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

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“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

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By Amin Ahmed

As Pakistan-Afghan Joint Economic Commission began its session in Islamabad on Monday, Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh underlined the need for a comprehensive review of current tariff and non-tariff regime to enhance the pace of bilateral trade between the two countries.

Inaugurating the joint economic session together with his Afghan counterpart Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, the finance minister said that the two countries should carry out identification of ways to diversify tradable goods and services; transacting informal trade through lawful channels, and increased interaction between Pakistan-Afghan private sectors.

For the realisation of suggested measures, Hafeez Shaikh proposed early operationalisation of the memorandum of understanding signed between the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) in March 2008 for establishment of Pakistan-Afghan Joint Chamber of Commerce.

The Ministry of Commerce has already approved registration of Pakistan-Afghan Joint Chamber of Commerce, and Pakistan proposes its inaugural session on the sidelines of the current joint economic commission meeting, Hafeez Shaikh said.

In the meantime, the Japanese government`s special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Tadamichi Yamamoto arrived in Islamabad on Monday.

He is expected to participate in the deliberations of the joint economic commission and hold talks with finance ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan, official sources told Dawn.

In his inaugural speech, Hafeez Shaikh stated that Pakistan recognises that the new Afghan Transit Trade Agreement was now fully operational `but we are more than willing to discuss any issue that leads to furthersmooth bilateral trade relations between the two countries.

The finance minister stated that bilateral trade environment needs support of an efficient transportation network and sound trade infrastructure. Pakistan is committed to G8 initiatives for PeshawarJalalabad Expressway as well as Peshawar-Jalalabad rail link and to complete the Torkham-Jalalabad highway project, he said.

The finance minister said that Pakistan has embarked upon a major reform programme that aims at fiscal stabilisation, mobilising domestic resources, phasing out subsidies, restructuring the power sector and other public sector enterprises and strengthening social safety nets.

`We are working towards laying the foundation for a new growth model driven by domestic demand with a flexible exchange rate that moves in response to market forces with a more open, markedbased economy and a more developed and diversified financial system,` said Hafeez Shaikh.

The finance minister stated that the biggest challenge Pakistan was encountering was to rebalance the economy that will achieve multiple goals of high economic growth, employment and reasonable price stability in an uncertain international economic and financial environment.The volume of PakistanAfghan trade has risen from less than $200 million in 200001 to $2.5 billion in 2010-11, yet it does not reflect the true potential that exists between the two countries, notes the finance minister.

According to an official announcement, the joint commission will review the status of $300 million grant committed by Pakistan for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Afghanistan.

A number of projects have already been started by Pakistan utilising the grant to build infrastructure, provide transport and educational and health facilities.

Originally appeared in the dawn

Tags: Afghan, chamber of commerce, Hafeez shaikh, hazrat omar zakhilwal, japanese government, Pakistan

Posted in Afghanistan, Around, Blog | 13 Comments »

By Zafar Syed

I have been out of Pakistan for nearly seven years. Although I came back twice during that period but my stay had been in and out: from airport to the village, spend the Eid and back to the airport a couple of weeks later. However, this time around I had much more time at my hands to travel to various cities and towns to imbibe the “sounds and colors” of the motherland. Here are some of the impressions that I gathered:

A cousin told me that she was wearing abaya. Abaya, what abaya? I asked, as this word was not a part of my vocabulary. Surly I was familiar with all varieties of burqa – shuttle-cock and all – I knew aba, or clock, but abaya? It turned out that it’s an Arabic outer wear for Muslim women, and over the last few years, it has proliferated throughout the country like a juicy rumor. And then I saw signboards outside shops: “Quality Saudi Abayas and Hijabs Available!” “Imported Abayas at Local Prices!” I even saw an ad for a shampoo specifically designed for women who wear abayas and hijabs!

I mentioned juicy rumors. Well, the entire country has turn into a seething cauldron in which all kinds of outlandish rumors, spicy scandals and titillating gossips are stirred. In Abbottabad, I heard that the “Americans killed an old hawker and claimed it was Osama.” “If it was real Osama, then where are the pictures?” “Dumping the body in to the ocean? Isn’t that a joke?” “Even the wives of OBL are claiming that he was killed years ago in Tora Bora.” In Islamabad a senior government official told me that the Americans have siphoned off all oil from Iraq and gold and copper from Afghanistan, and now since that there is nothing to be drained off, they are calling the wars off.

I noticed that there is a parallel information network running in the country which is totally independent of the mainstream electronic or the print media. This alternative media is the age-old idle talk, with a crucial difference. Where in the olden times the gossip remained confined to the barber shop or the tea house, now the gossip has got a steroid shot in the arm by the modern technology, aka the ubiquitous mobile phone. Whatever fantastical idea you heard from your neighbor in Nowshera can now reach your cousin in Karachi ten seconds later. In this parallel universe everything said and written in the traditional media is recieved with a big pinch of salt. But, strangely, whatever the guy said in the barber’s shop is taken as a gospel, no questions asked. Nato’s strike at the Salala camp? Oh, that was the handiwork of Zardari to divert the nation’s attention from the ‘Memogate,’ and the Americans just went ahead with the plan to bail out their old friend-in-need. Indeed!

Having said that, I must admit that some of these theories do seep into the traditional media as well, and you watch political pundits rehashing some of them ad nauseam in nightly political talk shows, which – the shows, not the pundits – I’m told, are watched more eagerly than the photo shoots of Veena Malik!.

I thought I knew Islamabad quite well, as I have lived here for more than a decade. Nevertheless, I lost my way several times while driving in the city. It was uncanny. I felt like a stranger in my home. Apart from the juxtaposition of many new highways, overhead bridges and underpasses over the city’s aging street map, barbed wires abound and concrete slabs gridlock half the city’s roads and alleys. Even many small backstreet in residential areas have been cordoned off by hefty concrete slabs. There are security barriers at every kilometer or so, where you have to slalom through obstacles. A police officer looks at you and the car, and gives clearance through a flick of the hand or the nod of the head, and you are on your way.

But the phenomenon of barbed wires and concrete impediments is not limited to the physical landscape. I perceived that the mental landscape of the society at large has also changed. There are as many, or even more, gridlocks, obstacles and barriers in people’s minds. I got a firsthand taste of in the first week of my arrival in Islamabad. I was traveling in a cab. When it stopped at a red light in China Chowk, suddenly a score of young men sprung up, apparently from nowhere. Carrying green flags and disheveled beards, they blocked the crossroads and crudely ordered all traffic to back off and find some other way. I was stunned by the hatred, anger and animosity that was burning in their eyes. As the driver tried to maneuver the cab out of this chaos, I kept on looking at the mob from the window in wide-eyed amazement. It felt like a scene straight out of a Mad Max movie. One of the banners they were brandishing read: Mumtaz Qadri, teri azmat ko salaam! I’m a shutterbug, so my hand crept to my camera, but the taxi driver stopped in a stern note, “Babu ji, don’t you dare! They smashed a new Corolla today at Murree Road. The owner had to run for his life, leaving his car behind!” Again, stranger in home!

Food: Within the first week or so I noticed that I was usually the last one to leave the table, although in the US, more often than not, I was the first to stop eating. Everything here tastes so much better. I liked everything, whether in a restaurant or at home, but daal e maash and fresh chapaties hot off the tawa are totally divine. In America, chicken is always white from inside, no matter if it’s roasted or broiled or whatever, no spices can marinate to the center of the pieces. But here, chicken is spicy to the bone.

However, the fruit was a bit of disappointment. I didn’t see any variety of grapes, just seeded “Chinese” grapes. I just wondered where all those Sunder Khanies have gone?

Tags: abaya, Abbottabad, burka, hijab, Islamabad, Mumtaz Qadri, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, print media, Zardari

Posted in Blog, News | 24 Comments »

By Greg Miller

For years, U.S. officials have pushed Pakistan’s military to attack the Haqqani network, or at least block its ability to cross the Afghan border, or at least cut off whatever financial and other support Pakistan’s spy service continues to provide to the insurgent group.

All to little avail.

But it turns out that U.S. officials have at times also tried another, more humble approach: simply asking Pakistani leaders to appeal to Haqqani to refrain from certain attacks.

Earlier this month, Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, traveled to Rawalpindi to share intelligence with the head of Pakistan’s armed forces, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. The intelligence indicated that the Haqqanis were planning a truck bomb attack on a U.S. military installation in Afghanistan.

A U.S. military official familiar with the Sept. 8 visit, which was first reported by The Guardian, said Allen asked Kayani to intervene not by disrupting the plot but by using his influence to dissuade Haqqani forces from carrying it out.

“We knew [an attack] was coming but we didn’t know where,” a U.S. military official said. “We didn’t know when, what trucks.”

Three days later, on Sept. 11, a truck bomb killed two Afghan civilians and wounded nearly 80 NATO soldiers at a military base in the Wardak province.

The official said the U.S. military had drawn “no conclusions” as to whether Kayani had tried to intervene. But Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, told a Congressional panel last week that the Haqqani network was a “veritable arm” of the Pakistani intelligence service–an assertion that other top U.S. officials involved in the region are calling provocative and overstated.

The Sept. 8 meeting and request suggests a U.S. resignation to two realities: the Pakistan-Haqqani relationship may never be severed, and CIA drone strikes and U.S. military raids aren’t enough to stop Haqqani attacks in Afghanistan.

This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.

Tags: Admiral Mike Mullen, Drone Attacks, General Kiyani, haqqani network, us military

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog | 159 Comments »

By Mahir Ali

A few days before Barack Obama`s much-anticipated announcement about reversing the troop surge in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai issued one of his sporadic declarations of relative independence from the forces that have sustained him in office for nine years.

“They are here for their own purposes, for their own goals, and they are using our soil for that,” he said in reference to the American and Nato military presence. Karzai also spoke of “chemical materials” in the western weaponry — presumably a reference to the use of uranium or other radioactive materials — which he said meant that “our people get killed, but also our environment is damaged.”

The first American response was a rebuke from retired general Karl Eikenberry, the outgoing US ambassador in Kabul (who, incidentally, advised Obama against a surge two years ago). “America has never sought to occupy any nation in the world,” he declared. “We are a good people.”

Quite a few nations that have borne the brunt of American imperialism would beg to differ. Yet his statement that “when we hear ourselves being called occupiers and worse … our pride is offended and we begin to lose our inspiration to carry on” is open to interpretation as a partial explanation for the withdrawals whereby American troop strength in Afghanistan will be reduced by 33,000 before the end of next year.

But that will still leave twice as many boots on the ground as there were at the start of Obama`s tenure. The US president`s explanation for his drawdown — in the face of opposition from the military hierarchy and administration hawks — did not pursue the Eikenberry line of thought. Nor did he make the mistake of declaring `mission accomplished`, despite the suggestion that the withdrawal was justified because its goals had been achieved.

There is plenty of evidence, however, that domestic political considerations are the primary driving force behind the slashing of resources expended on military adventures overseas. Nearly 10 years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, opinion polls suggest that a majority of Americans oppose the military presence in Afghanistan. And the urge to conclude American participation in this open-ended conflict is by no means restricted to Democrats: a substantial proportion of prospective Republican candidates for next year`s presidential contest appear to be keen on a more rapid withdrawal of forces.

None of them are willing to admit, of course, that the American response to 9/11 was essentially misdirected. At the time, a commando operation against Al Qaeda would have made considerably more sense than an all-out invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban regime — officially recognised only by its sponsors in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — was indeed appalling in any number of ways, but it did not pose a threat to the US.

The sanctuary it afforded to Osama bin Laden and his cohorts was incidental. The 9/11 attacks were not contingent on a base in Afghanistan. The conspirators held consultations in Hamburg and trained in the US. The location of their mentors was only marginally relevant. It did not suffice as justification for all-out war. Yet hardly anyone in the US opposed that war when it was launched. The thirst for retribution is not hard to fathom; the nation described in the second half of the 20th century by one of its outstanding personalities, Martin Luther King Jr, as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” wasn`t accustomed to being attacked on its own soil. But the effort to quench that thirst was misdirected from the outset. It exhibited a bloodlust that more than matched that of its foes — who had, let`s not forget, been its allies until a few years before.

It is now being argued that the incipient pullout from Afghanistan is somehow related to the successful targeting of bin Laden and the degradation of Al Qaeda. Bin Laden was tracked down to a not-very-safe house in Pakistan, far away from the drone zone where American forces have long operated with impunity from unassailable heights. Al Qaeda`s remaining adherents in the region — believed to number in the dozens — as well as the Taliban leadership are believed to mostly be in Pakistan.

That makes it hard to explain why combat operations are being conducted in Afghanistan — amid, mind you, contacts that could lead to negotiations with the Taliban.

American security relations with Pakistan, meanwhile, have hit a new low in the wake of the bin Laden raid. It does not require particularly deep insight to fathom why the CIA decided against sharing its plans for that raid with Pakistani authorities. Although no substantial evidence has emerged of high-level Pakistani involvement in providing a sanctuary to bin Laden, the manner in which Harkat-ul-Mujahideen — a banned militant group with suspected links to military intelligence — and Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) reacted almost simultaneously with vehement denials of American insinuations of contacts between Harkat and Al Qaeda is certainly intriguing.

ISPR has also been keen to reject American press reports about a brewing revolt within the Pakistani armed forces against the military hierarchy on account of its relations with the US. Doth it protest too much?

Perhaps. It has long been obvious, though, that the struggle against violent religious extremists in Pakistan is something of a lost cause unless it can be portrayed as a Pakistani war. The drone attacks regularly launched from the Shamsi air base in Balochistan have not been particularly helpful in this regard, especially when they entail civilian casualties. The idea that the Americans will maintain forces numbering 25,000 or so even after a `complete` withdrawal from Afghanistan a few years hence, in order to retain the capacity for military interventions in Pakistan, is not particularly reassuring.

The notion that Pakistan is host to terrorists with an international reach is hardly a fantasy. But the notion that US military adventures and expeditions abroad — be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen or Pakistan — are somehow going to diminish the likelihood of attacks on American soil remains a dangerous illusion.

This article originally appeared in Dawn.

Tags: 9/11 attacks, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Hamid Karzai, Iraq, karl eikenberry, martin luther king, NATO, Pakistan, somalia, Taliban, us military, yemen

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog | 1,765 Comments »

By Amir Mir

Despite claiming to be a non-violent group whose sole objective is to recommence the Islamic way of life by re-establishing caliphate, those questioning Brigadier Ali Khan of Pakistan Army for his links to Hizbul Tehrir, believe the latter had a violent agenda to overthrow the government in Islamabad and remove the military leadership, for their pro-US stance, through a coup it wanted to stage with the help of its moles in the armed forces.

Investigations being conducted by the authorities following the arrest of Brigadier Ali Khan and several other officers of the Pakistan Army for their links with Hizbul Tehrir have revealed that the leadership of the banned group had actually marked Pakistan as a base from which it wanted to spread Islamic rule across the world. Hizbul Tehrir has managed to maintain its presence in Pakistan despite being outlawed by the Musharraf regime following the July 7, 2007 London subway suicide bombings, conducted by four British nationals of Pakistani origin who were reportedly indoctrinated in London by extremists belonging to militant groups like Al-Mohajiroun and Hizbul Tehrir. Asif Mohammed Hanif, the terrorist who blew himself up in a cafe in Tel Aviv on April 29, 2003, and his accomplice and would-be bomber, Omar Khan Sharif, were British-born Muslims affiliated with HT. The group recruits members from the urban, educated and professional segments of the society and is also known to have spread its influence in the military ranks in recent years.

The Pakistani intelligence sleuths who are responsible for monitoring the HT activities believe that the group might be working in tandem with al-Qaeda under the garb of pan-Islamism. They reminded that 35 members of Hizbul Tehrir were arrested from a house in Islamabad, which was being used to plan a coup plot to overthrow the government and replace it by Caliphate, as envisaged by the group’s founder Umar Bakri. Hardly a few weeks before these arrests were made, the Pakistan chapter of the HT talked about spilling blood to stage an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. At the same time, Tayyab Muqeem, a key Hizbul leader in London, had declared that many HT activists had been sent to Pakistan to bring about Shariah “by force”. He had further claimed that the Hizbul had converted four Pakistani army officers during their training at Sandhurst in England.

However, despite being declared a banned organization in Pakistan after all these developments, the HT members can be seen at various key mosques on Fridays in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, distributing volatile literature propagating the revival of the Caliphate. Apart from organizing underground meetings and seminars, the HT has used text messages on cell phones and social networking sites to spread its message. An open letter dated June 3, 2011, addressed to the “sincere officers” of the Pakistani armed forces, and posted on the website of the Pakistan chapter of the Hizbul Tehrir (www.hizb-pakistan.com), called for removal of the “traitors” amongst the civilian and military leadership of the country for their alliance with the United States. The letter stated: “The need of the time is the Khilafah (the Caliphate) to gather the Ummah (the Muslim community) as the single most resourceful state in the world. Whilst you look upon the humiliation of the Muslims, their misery and despair, the Ummah looks upon you as sincere officers of the most powerful armed forces across the globe that can make Pakistan the starting point for Khilafah.”

The contention of the Pakistan chapter of the Hizbul Tehrir is that the current rulers of Pakistan, civilian as well as khaki, are agents of the United States, and their only agenda is to protect the American interests. The group further propagates that the American and the Pakistani governments are responsible for the killing of innocent men, women and children in drone attacks and military operations which are being conducted in the name of the war on terror.

According to media reports, the Pakistan branch of HT was established in December 2000 when a group of British youth of Pakistani descent, headed by Imtiaz Malik and guided by British-Pakistanis Dr Abdul Wajid in Lahore and Dr Abdul Basit Shaikh in Karachi among others decided to use Pakistan as the base camp for their movement to re-establish Islamic Caliphate. While Imtiaz Malik, a British-born Pakistani is considered to be the underground leader of the Hizbul Tehrir in Pakistan, his deputy, Naveed Butt, a graduate of University of Illinois in the United States, remains the most vocal leader of the group in Pakistan. Butt is assisted by two youngsters, Imran Yousafzai and Shahzad Sheikh.

According to an October 2010 study report compiled by Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) and titled “Hizbul Tehrir in Pakistan: Discourse and Impact”, far from being deterred, the Hizbul Tehrir has continued its efforts to infiltrate into high echelons of the Pakistan Army and the elite of the Pakistani society. The report quoted Shahzad Sheikh, a Hizbul spokesman of Karachi, as saying that the group had been persuading the Pakistan Army to stage a bloodless coup in the country to overthrow the government in Islamabad. Interestingly, in a bid to effectively promote its agenda, the HT clandestinely enlisted some Pakistan Army officers, who were receiving training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS), commonly known as Sandhurst, an elite British training academy. But these officers were arrested in 2003 after their links with the HT were discovered by the Musharraf regime.

This article originally appeared in The News

Tags: Al Qaeda, Al-Mohajiroun, Brigadier Ali Khan, General Musharraf, Hizbul Tehrir, london subway bombing, pakistani intelligence

Posted in Blog | 2,409 Comments »