Mustafa Qadri

After a decade-long hunt, Osama bin Laden has been killed. But the grievances and poverty that give rise to terrorism remain, writes Middle East correspondent Mustafa Qadri No individual has influenced the course of US military strategy more over the last 10 years than Osama bin Laden. In an age of increasingly narrow ideologies, Osama has been [...]

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Asia Link Melbourne University Public Forum: Pakistan – Between Despair and Disaster video available here As winter approaches, 2 million hectares of crops have been lost and the damage and destruction of 2 million homes has left 7 million people without shelter. Disease is now setting in creating even more despair in Pakistan. Malaria is [...]

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Pakistan has faced a myriad of crises over the last decade. No one has had a better perspective on them than its journalists. Join Chatham as we meet experienced journalists from Pakistan talk about the country they know and report on every day. 30 minutes of panel discussion introduced by Mustafa Qadri and chaired by [...]

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Pakistanis are furious about western double standards – but to create change we must drop our habit of outraged victimhood Mustafa Qadri guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 October 2010 13:30 BST The fact that a troubled al-Qaeda sympathiser has been branded the daughter of Pakistan speaks for the madness that has engulfed our region. There is no place for [...]

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My analysis of the Obama Administration’s new AfPak policy for the Common Grounds News Service was published today:

Obama’s new “AfPak” strategy – the view from Pakistan
by Mustafa Qadri

30 April 2009

Karachi, Pakistan – People with a hammer only see nails. This well-worn maxim aptly describes the United States’ relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past several decades. As early as 1954, the United States identified the country as a bulwark against regional encroachment by the Soviet Union when Pakistan received its first substantial tranche of American military and economic aid.

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Here is my analysis of the Obama Administration’s new ‘AfPak’ policy for newmatilda.com:

Not All Terrorists Are The Same

Obama’s new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan is much more nuanced than Bush’s “war on terror”, writes Mustafa Qadri. As a starting point, it recognises that al Qaeda and the Taliban are distinct groups

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There’s nothing new in Barack Obama’s foreign policy – but the way it is knitted together offers hope… See also TIME magazine’s appraisal: Did George Bush leave one of his old speeches in the Resolute Desk? As President Obama unveiled his Afghanistan-Pakistan policy Friday, it was hard to miss the echoes of his predecessor’s “surge” [...]

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Here is my report on Australia’s military presence in Afghanistan and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s visit to the United States this week, published in NewMatilda.com today:

Don’t Mention The War

They managed to avoid the sticky subject of a troop increase. However, despite growing opposition back home, Rudd has backed the Obama Administration’s questionable strategy in Afghanistan.

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With two missile strikes over the past week, the Obama administration has expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, attacking a militant network seeking to topple the Pakistani government.

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Al Qaeda leaders no longer feel safe in Afghan-Pakistan border areas, where they face heavy U.S. and Pakistani pressure and their local welcome has worn out, CIA chief Michael Hayden said on Thursday.

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The network of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, which was a major supporter of the ISI in the whole region, especially in Bangladesh, was shattered and fell into the hands of al-Qaeda when Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri, chief of Harkat, a hero of the armed struggle in Kashmir who had spent two years in an Indian jail, was arrested [...]

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The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

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The following interview of Philippe Sands QC regarding his book ‘Torture Team’ appeared in Dawn newspaper (Pakistan) on 12 October 2008.

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The following review of ‘Torture Team’ by Philippe Sands QC appeared in Dawn Newspaper (Pakistan) on 12 October 2008.

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“Pakistan, United States: Brink of War?” Foreign Policy in Focus 2 October 2008

“As the United States steps up border raids into Pakistan, troops from both countries have commenced a deadly game of brinksmanship. Although aimed at asserting each other’s military presence along the Pakistan-Afghan border, the skirmishes risk outright hostilities.”

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The English-language press is obssessed with the Obama-McCain presidential race. So much so that they’ve almost entirely failed to report on their policies. It was interesting to note in the first debate between the two candidates that McCain was actually less hawkish than Obama on US policy towards Pakistan: “If the United States has Al [...]

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“Beyond violence in Pakistan” NewMatilda.com 22 September 2008

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A military jury’s verdict on Wednesday in the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II — that Yemeni Guantanamo prisoner Salim Hamdan is guilty of material support for terrorism, but not guilty of terrorism itself — was the culmination of two weeks of proceedings that provided some extraordinary insights into the United States’ [...]

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In a demonstration of growing U.S. frustration, the CIA’s deputy director flew to Islamabad this month to warn Pakistani officials that they need to do more to address dangerous ties between the country’s spy agency and resurgent Al Qaeda-linked militants, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

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It seems that every so often a new terrorist mastermind emerges who is to be hunted down and brought to justice. Now it seems these masterminds also offer blanket, if remarkably convenient confessions. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the latest individual to fit this description. Mohammed has allegedly confessed to being the mastermind behind the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States and to beheading American journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

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