Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 August 2010 10.00 BST

Contempt for human life is at the heart of Pakistan’s miseries. Although the relationship between rich and poor is complex and far from monolithically asymmetrical, fundamental inequalities make progress difficult.

How else to explain our president’s decision to visit Europe while the country suffers one of its greatest natural disasters? In any other country, a head of state would surely cut his or her foreign visit short to lend moral support in a time of catastrophe. The government’s failure in the face of the floods, along with the army’s primary role in confronting it and Asif Ali Zardari’s apparent nonchalance, has been a disaster for democracy in this country.

It is sad, too, as one local commentator noted, that it is only in moments of disaster that the rest of us unite as one nation. The floods have not discriminated against ethnic Punjabis – long resented by other minorities for dominating the state – Pashtuns or Balochis, the latter two already ravaged by insurgencies heavily laced with international intrigue.

As a foreign-born Pakistani, our acute anxiety over a national identity has always struck me as odd because there are self-evidently so many separate Pakistans. In every city, there are entire regions that never intersect, except via the dusty, colourful buses that transport day workers and servants to and from their slums to the homes of the more privileged. Growing up, doting aunties and uncles would constantly warn me not to forget my Pakistani heritage. And yet, as Pakistanis, we seem to easily forget those compatriots who clean our homes, hawk on the streets and fight in our wars.

As wild floods ravage the north west, our president is busy touring Europe in luxurious comfort. Staying back would have helped the assistance effort little, but it demonstrates poor political judgment. It also reflects the elite’s flagrant indifference to human suffering. That is why in the heat of summer and widespread power outages last year our main opposition leader, the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, decided toimport a rare tiger that required a specially built, refrigerated enclosure.

To understand this strange opulence remember that our wealthiest live in a fantasy realm of mansions, servants and privilege derived mostly through nepotism. Superficially cosmopolitan – for their children typically study abroad and imitate foreign accents and customs – they are left with utter contempt for those who are less fortunate. Few show izzat, or respect, to the lowest who work in their kitchens, drive their cars or hawk trinkets to them in the markets. In a society based largely on honour and riven with resentment, it is a dangerous mix.

Resentment is a powerful political weapon in this country. Most of the so-called anti-Americanism in Pakistan is a sideshow used to enable the mass to vent its anger, admittedly at an empire that has done more than most to patronise our elites and feed their megalomania. Criticism of the west, Jews, or Hindus has become the catch-all that enables the oppressed to forget how casually brutal we have become to one another.

That does not mean humanity is dead in Pakistan. There is a lively philanthropy sector. Millions donated to charities helping those made homeless by the war in the Swat valley last year. And appeals for assistance to victims of this year’s floods have already proliferated. Islamist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayaba linked Jamat-ud-Dawa, now operating under different names, have been quick to respond to the tragedy, too. The army has been at the forefront of humanitarian relief efforts.

Although liberal opinion calls for greater democratisation, what can be said when elected officials stand idle in the face of the two sectors of Pakistan society – the mullahs and the military – that are supposed to be our greatest problems? To be sure there are hundreds if not thousands of secular charities that have for decades sought to alleviate poverty and suffering in Pakistan. They cannot match the funding or political support garnered by the Islamic welfare groups or the military. Only support from elected governments can stem the influence of extremists or the military.

One of the principle reasons why the Taliban spread so quickly through the tribal areas in the north west was their promise to provide justice and equality where the state never did. Their leaders are virtually all salt-of-the-earth men of humble origins. Within the state, only the military has demonstrated a capacity to offer meritocratic advancement to every day citizens, albeit in a very limited form. According to the World Bank, 26.5% of Pakistan’s wealth is held by the top 10% of the population. The lowest 20% hold a mere 9.1%. A measure of poverty including social exclusion used by the UN ranks Pakistan 141st of all nations, just above Swaziland but below Burma.

But no statistics or amounts of foreign aid can challenge a mindset. Without compassion and respect for all of our fellow citizens we will never be capable of grappling the disasters that routinely rock our nation.

[Published in The Guardian's Comment Is Free website here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/04/pakistan-corrosive-inequality-zardari-floods]

Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 July 2010, 16.00 BST

Pakistan’s special relationship with the United States may have taken centre stage since the attacks of 11 September 2001, but in China it has another enduring great power ally. With Pakistan’s President Zardari returning from a visit of several days to China last week, it is worth considering the country’s other asymmetrical alliance.

China has been Pakistan’s most reliable ally for six decades. Pakistan was quick to recognise China’s communist regime a mere two years after it first came to power in 1949. Ever since, it has looked to the east Asian power to counterbalance its historical reliance on western geopolitical largesse.

After the 1962 war between China and India, the US supplied India for the first time with substantial arms, creating profound disenchantment among the Pakistani military leadership. That disenchantment led Pakistan to seek Chinese military aid.

In the last two decades the economic component of the alliance has taken centre stage. Pakistan has the potential to give China a land link to Middle Eastern energy reserves. A central reason for US involvement in the region is to maintain its global influence at a time when rivals are steadily if slowly emerging. None is larger than China. For China, an added element is developing a regional coalition against an increasingly pro-US India.

Today, the relationship is not so culturally infused. As with so many other countries, China has been happy to develop defence and economic ties with Pakistan while avoiding criticism of its political situation. Perhaps the biggest friction of recent times has been over alleged Pakistan-based Islamist infiltration into China’s restive Xinjiang province, home to the indigenous Uighur Muslim population. That friction prompted a visit by Pakistan’s most powerful Islamist politicians to assure Beijing that they would not stoke Islamist insurgency in China.

Those concerns, however, have proved shortlived. Pakistan has been busy integrating its economy into China, although it has generally been slow going. The much-vaunted deep sea port built in restive Balochistan with the apparent aim of giving a Chinese presence at the mouth of the Persian Gulf has barely scratched its full potential. Expansion of the Karakoram Highway that links northern Pakistan to China seems to have been in development for decades.

Less incremental was the recent announcement that China will sell nuclear reactors to Pakistan. A $2.4bn deal hopes to quench Pakistan’s thirst for energy, and recognition as a responsible nuclear citizen on the world stage.

There are thinly veiled concerns that the agreement could be in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Despite this, the US, on whose words and action so much of western policy in our region is determined, has offered only limited criticisms. This may have something to do with theUS and India deal that would see the former reprocess spent nuclear fuel for the latter, although India got an exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group for that purpose.

In Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province, China has been busy trying to exploit coal, copper, and zinc deposits and gas and oil reserves. The indigenous Baloch population says these ventures systematically disenfranchise them. Pakistan authorities counter claim that, emboldened by countrywide instability and foreign support, Baloch feudal leaders have petulantly demanded ever more royalties. An increasingly brutal insurgency and counterinsurgency has developed around this resource politics. After some sobering experiences involving the kidnapping and murder of its nationals, China has learned to accept the bribery culture that keeps both Pakistani and Baloch tribal leaders happy.

China’s relationship to our region stretches back at least 2,000 to the period when scholars and traders introduced Buddhism from what is now Pakistan to the Middle Kingdom, an episode of history celebrated in Chinese literature and the Monkey TV series. Yet in the intervening centuries, the relationship has not had any major cultural or ideological impact on Pakistan, as noted in a satirical poem by the great dissident poet Habib Jalib.

Like Pakistan’s current robust relations with the US, this is because China-Pakistan relations have largely been dictated by elite notions of the national interest and prestige. China may still be happy to play second fiddle to the US here. But with polls revealing Pakistan’soverwhelmingly favourable view of its northern neighbour and continued western missteps in Afghanistan, the dispiriting reality is that our country is a client of more than one state.

[Published in The Guardian's Comment Is Free website here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/18/pakistan-client-state-china-western-influence]

Both nuclear armed, and with one of the most militarised borders in the world between them, India and Pakistan have one of the most entrenched of modern rivalries. But as high-level diplomacy recommences, there’s hope now that the subcontinent’s two largest nations may just be back on the long road to normalised relations.

Yet while few question the necessity of normalisation, the road ahead is riven with obstacles to lasting peace between two nations that have fought four wars and countless indirect skirmishes.

India’s main gripe has long been that Pakistan is not, in its view, doing enough to remove a jihadist infrastructure that it says is used to target Indian interests in Kashmir and Afghanistan. According to Indian Defence Minister AK Antony, Pakistan has yet to close 42 ‘terrorist training camps’ that it says fuel attacks against India in both regions. Senior Pakistani officials, for their part, have responded with vocal public claims of an Indian hand in the recent spate of bombings that have rocked major cities (India vehemently denies this, and the claims are treated sceptically outside Pakistan).

With such a climate, it has become easy for politicians in both countries, particularly those on the right, to score easy political points with jingoistic diatribes against their neighbour—hardliners and political opportunists are eager to ‘remind’ a frustrated populace that their neighbour is the root of all evil.

It doesn’t help, of course, that there’s strong anecdotal evidence to suggest India and Pakistan have supported violent insurgencies in each other’s territory. Although militancy in India emanating from Pakistan is what hit the headlines again following the Mumbai attacks, several Indian commentators speaking off the record to The Diplomat claimed Pakistan had anyway also been supporting a widespread Maoist insurgency in India’s rural heartland.

Pakistan, too, is insecure over India’s alleged involvement in recent bombings, and its long time support for indigenous separatist militancy in the restive province of Balochistan, a large and resource rich area that borders Iran and southern Afghanistan. In an apparent admission of sorts, Indian authorities agreed to a reference to Balochistan in a joint statement issued by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari at Sharm el Shaikh. The reference was condemned by many sections of the Indian press and right-wing opposition parties as a costly ‘blunder.’ In neighbouring Pakistan, in contrast, the reference to Balochistan was celebrated as a welcome admission.

‘[Indian Prime Minister] Singh wanted to give something to [the civilian government of Prime Minister] Gilani,’ says Indian analyst Kanti Bajpai, who believes Singh’s acknowledgment over Balochistan was an attempt to build confidence with Pakistan’s democratically elected government, rather than an admission.

Singh’s approach has been widely heralded by less impassioned observers like Bajpai and journalist Kamran Shafi, himself a trenchant critic of Pakistan’s military excesses who routinely receives death threats. ‘Dialogue must remain spearheaded by the elected governments of both nations,’ Shafi says.

One perennial problem with this is the subservience of Pakistan’s elected government to military planners in Rawalpindi. Sadly, Pakistani President Asif Zardari has proved incapable of breaking this imbalance. As a result, even if bilateral dialogue continues to improve, it’s difficult for Indian officials to know precisely how solid the promises are. But Shafi says it would help Pakistan’s civilian leaders if India were to ‘draw down its [troop levels] in Kashmir’ and maintain government-to-government dialogue as it has done.

As the cause of three conventional wars and a continuous Islamist insurgency linked with groups based in Pakistan, Kashmir still looms large over ties between the two, and resolving the competing claims is vital if a lasting peace is to be secured.

But it’s still a prickly subject. Many in Pakistan view Kashmir as a rightful part of the nation owing to its majority-Muslim population. And, although the flow of militants into the mountainous area has greatly reduced in recent years, decades of state patronage of jihadists to fight Indian forces in Kashmir make it difficult for Pakistani authorities to brand them enemies of the state like the Taliban because they come from the Punjabi heartland, not the remote tribal areas.

Meanwhile, despite reducing troop levels in Kashmir, India remains sensitive to foreign interventions over Kashmir, something US President Barack Obama learned himself when, owing to Indian pressure, he back-peddled on an election campaign reference to US intervention to resolve the dispute.

All this is complicated by an impasse over Pakistan’s access to water supplies from India. The Indus Basin Water Treaty, a bilateral agreement signed by India and Pakistan in 1960, is meant to regulate water usage. But India effectively controls water flows into Pakistan that begin in Jammu and Kashmir. As India commences a string of ambitious water projects experts say disputes over water allocation are likely to rise, adding further impediments to a resolution of the Kashmir dispute in the foreseeable future.

But it’s not just terrorism that is holding back closer ties—both countries are also vying for US support. A recent high level Pakistani delegation implored Washington to develop and normalise ties over the country’s nuclear power programme, citing the double standard that sees India recognised as a nuclear power despite its earlier breaches of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Indian lobbyists, for their part, complain that the United States is far too reliant on Pakistan for its strategy in Afghanistan, effectively sidelining India’s successful trade and development programmes in the country. They also argue that Pakistan has in the past used US military aid earmarked for the war on terror to fight India instead.

‘[Indian decision makers] don’t trust Obama,’ says Harsh Pant of Kings College London, because of a perception of ‘US alignment with Pakistan going back to the Cold War.’ As the United States looks primarily to Pakistan to stabilise its strategic interests in neighbouring Afghanistan, Indian leaders feel increasingly left out of a key part of Central Asia’s great game.

It’s possible, however, that one of the region’s major flashpoints could ultimately act to calm tensions between the two.

So far, India and Pakistan have competed for influence over Afghanistan, with India backing the former Northern Alliance and Pakistan the Taliban and other predominantly Pashtun Islamist groups. This rivalry has, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States has said, been costly for the country’s stability.

But analysts say there are signs that both sides may be re-thinking their approach to Afghanistan. ‘I think there’s been a gradual realisation that they [India and Pakistan] must stop competing in Afghanistan,’ says Shuja Nawaz, an analyst with the Atlantic Council in Washington DC.

There’s no doubting that realism has quietly permeated Indo-Pak diplomacy. The strong calls for unilateral attacks on Pakistan following Mumbai have been followed not with military posturing but quiet diplomacy. ‘Everything else India has tried,’ says Bajpai, including the threat of war following the 2001 Indian parliament attack, ‘has failed to change the dynamic.’ India has accepted that Mumbai could not have occurred without involvement from Indian nationals and that Pakistan can’t be entirely blamed for an Islamist menace that it has also fallen victim to. And while Pakistan has not arrested Lashkar-e-Tayaba leader Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, many of his cadres are facing prosecution in its courts.

The difference now, says Nawaz, ‘is that Pakistan is now facing the spectre of [Islamist terrorism] at home. The immediate enemy is internal now, not India.’ In the past 2 years, about 5000 civilians and 1700 soldiers have been killed.

‘A destabilised Pakistan is not good for India,’ says Shafi, who points to the strong informal trade and social links that have survived despite the tensions. Indeed, normalising relations would be a boon for business. When Pakistan recently signed a gas pipeline deal with Iran, the world’s second largest supplier, India was notable by its absence. India was originally part of the venture, only to withdraw owing to its present frosty relationship with Pakistan. But if trade links can be improved, access to each other’s huge consumer base and faster, easier access to the rich prize of Central Asian and Middle Eastern resources awaits.

Yet despite the signs of hope, observers on both sides of the border are virtually unanimous in their pessimism over whether there’ll be a breakthrough soon. And the reason for that remains Kashmir.

It’s not clear who can ‘sell’ peace in Kashmir, says Pant. Only an Indian government led by the rightwing BJP, Pant argues, could accept the kind of overture from Pakistan that in 2007 nearly saw the commencement of concrete steps toward resolving the dispute because voters trust it more on national security issues. In opposition, however, the BJP has been happy to score political points against the current Congress-led government, claiming its overtures to Pakistan represent appeasement of the enemy.

In politics as with everything else, however, the benefits of cooperation may end up compelling India and Pakistan to normalise relations.

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Source Url: http://the-diplomat.com/2010/04/02/indo-pak-ties-lost-cause/

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 March 2010 16.35 GMT

Like siblings locked in an endless rivalry, India and Pakistan have bickered for well over six decades. Transforming that rivalry into a mature, productive relationship will be difficult. But the consequences of continued animosity will be much worse.

Two words punctuate the dangers of one of the world’s longest running cold wars: nuclear weapons. For years both countries have militarised at a breathtaking pace based on a shared belief that the other may attack at any moment. Although the international community regularly calls for a scale-back of forces in the heavily fortified Indo-Pak border, many of the same nations, spearheaded by the United States and Russia, have been happy to sell billions of dollars’ worth of deadly weaponry to India and Pakistan, escalating the risks and magnitude of any future conflict.

Such hypocrisy is compounded by the fact that most citizens in the subcontinent remain desperately poor and deeply frustrated by generations of neglect and exploitation by elites to whom they are invisible except when it is politically expedient. Politicians opportunistically drum up jingoistic diatribes, complete with rent-a-crowd protesters, against our neighbours, who can be conveniently blamed for everything, but mostly terrorism. It doesn’t help that India and Pakistan have gone to war on four occasions and have a history of supporting violent insurgencies in each other’s territory.

The sad irony is that we Desis remain bound at the cultural hip – be it our love for cricket, Bollywood and Pakistani tele-dramas, or class consciousness. Travel restrictions mean only a handful of us ever get to meet one another, creating a dangerous isolation that feeds racist stereotypes and turns dialogue into a political liability.

Practicalities have meant that diplomatic back channels have remained open, even in the darkest of days that followed the murderous rampage through Mumbai in 2008 or theattack on the Indian parliament in 2001. But along with terrorism, regional pretensions have stymied conciliation. Both India and Pakistan have strived to be ever more incorporated into the American imperial project at the expense of the other. Both complain that the US favours the other at their expense. As you read this, a high-level Pakistani delegation is in Washington trying to convince the Obama administration to endorse a civilian nuclear energy programme akin to that it has already reached with India. For their part, Indian lobbyists argue that US reliance on Pakistan for its strategy in Afghanistan sidelines India’s successful trade and development approach to stabilising that troubled country.

If there are any silver linings amid the grey clouds of competition, it is the fact that normalising relations would be a boon for business in both countries. This is greatly hampered, however, by the lack of an effective business lobby in Pakistan – like everything else here, the economy is firmly dominated by generals. When Pakistan recently signed a gas pipeline deal with Iran, the world’s second largest supplier, India was notable by its absence. India was originally part of the venture only to withdraw owing to its present frosty relationship with Pakistan.

Much of that frost comes from the snowy peaks of Jammu and Kashmir, the Himalayan region India and Pakistan have fought three wars over. Resolving this dispute is pivotal to normalising relations, but observers on both sides of the border are unanimously pessimistic this will occur in the foreseeable future. It is “not clear who can sell” peace in Kashmir, says Dr Harsh Pant from Kings College. Only an Indian government led by the rightwing BJP, Pant argues, could accept the kind of overture from Pakistan that in 2007 nearly commenced concrete steps towards resolving the dispute because voters trust it more on national security issues. In opposition, however, the BJP has been happy to score political points against the current Congress-led government, claiming its overtures to Pakistan represent appeasement of the enemy. Civilian observers in Pakistan are sceptical their army would ever endorse any such move because the Kashmir issue is its raison d’être.

Civilian leaders in both countries, and particularly India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh, have pushed for continued talks between officials from their elected civilian governments. “Dialogue is the only way forward” says Indian analyst Kanti Bajpai, because “everything else India has tried”, including the threat of war following the 2001 Indian parliament attack, has failed to change the dynamic. The perennial problem is the subservience of Pakistan’s civilian government to military planners in Rawalpindi. Sadly, Pakistan’s president Asif Zardari has proved incapable of breaking that imbalance. But, says Kamran Shafi from Dawn newspaper, it would help Pakistan’s civilian leaders if India were to “draw down its [troop levels] in Kashmir” and maintain government to government dialogue as it has done.

It may seem simplistic, but building relationships is the key to peace in the subcontinent in the foreseeable future. Even now our expatriates freely mingle abroad at universities and in professional circles. Our retired military men routinely swap war stories over bottles of aged scotch whiskey in international capitals. Despite the barriers, the informal relationships we forge are, in the words of one Indian correspondent recently returned from Pakistan, “the key to peace”. To achieve peace, the subcontinent’s largest siblings must grow out of old rivalries.

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 March 2010 17.30 GMT

Pakistan’s army, the bedrock of an otherwise fragile state, may not be the most progressive institution. But recent developments suggest that military leaders realise it needs to change, even if key concerns remain.

No issue puts Pakistan under the international spotlight more than its relationship with Islamist militancy. Questions over its continued links with the Taliban and other jihadist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba – widely believed to be responsible for the murderous attacks on Mumbai – have fuelled doubts over its capacity to bring stability to the region. At the heart of the debate is Pakistan’s army, an at once nebulous yet strangely cohesive collective that has been blamed for playing a double game that has irked foreign allies and domestic hardliners alike.

Those fears have led the army to some significant conclusions. At a press conference with foreign journalists last month, the usually media-shy army chief Pervez Kayani noted that a “Talibanised” society at home or in Afghanistan was not in Pakistan’s interests.

Those remarks have been backed with action. In the last two years, Pakistan’s security forces have at last met a homegrown Taliban insurgency with significant force and skill. Their counterinsurgency capacity has increased from virtual non-existence in 2004, when a new insurgency later to be called the Pakistan Taliban started to force the state to reach humiliating ceasefire agreements in the tribal areas. Now there is a major military presence in each of the country’s seven tribal areas, while Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan and Bajaur have been captured.

Most significant of all, Pakistan has finally cracked down on the senior Afghan Taliban leadership sheltering in its territory. It is too early to measure the nature and significance of these captures – there are doubts as to Pakistan’s true intentions in detaining erstwhile militant allies at a time when US-led forces are engaged in a massive operation in Afghanistan. It is widely believed here that Pakistan was effectively forced into future negotiations by the US over integrating insurgents into the Afghan state by, quite literally, capturing their leaders.

Even if that most cynical of explanations is accurate, however, the military establishment’s decision to target the Afghan Taliban is a brave move. What has caused the shift in policy?

“The difference is that Pakistan is now facing the spectre of [terrorism by] Taliban groups at home,” says long-time army observer Shuja Nawaz. In the years following Pakistan’s decision to cut formal ties with the Taliban in 2001, military operations in the lawless frontier with Afghanistan were angrily derided in the media and mosques as part of a foreign agenda to divide the country. One reason the insurgents have targeted civilians in Pakistan is to stoke this anger.

But an escalation of deadly suicide attacks in most major cities since 2008 has created tremendous anger towards the insurgents. Just as important, however, has been a successful propaganda campaign to convince the population that this is their war.

It has helped that current army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has earned widespread respect as a modest man focused on military matters – even if in reality the army still looms large over domestic politics. Unlike his predecessor, former army chief and president Pervez Musharraf, Kayani has generally avoided rhetorical flourishes or getting involved in public politics.

All the more reason, then, that Kayani’s few public statements are worth noting. After promising not to get the army involved in politics as Musharraf had before, for example, Kayani refused to support the Zardari government when it tried to suppress peaceful mass protests in support of an independent judiciary last year.

Still, serious questions remain. This has been a dirty war, and security forces stand accused of atrocities like reprisal killings against perceived Taliban sympathisers and indiscriminate bombardments that have also killed thousands and displaced millions. And despite operations against the Taliban within its borders, the recent fidayeen attack on Kabul targeting Indian nationals bore sobering similarities to previous violence in the Afghan capital likely sponsored by Pakistan.

India remains the great foreign policy challenge in Pakistani eyes. Although troop levels in the disputed Kashmir region have slightly decreased and formal dialogue has recommenced, army observers remain concerned by India’s continued influence in Afghanistan. That is why, along with conciliatory speeches, Kayani has reiterated that India remains Pakistan’s “primary concern”.

But international pressure to abandon the anti-India narrative is likely to leave the army “floundering to craft a fresh narrative based on ‘Islam’,” argues Chatham House analyst Farzana Shaikh. During last year’s independence day celebrations, Kayani said that Pakistan was achieved in the name of Islam. With no consensus on what that precisely means, however, the military’s search for an Islamic narrative, Shaikh adds, “is almost certainly doomed to failure”.

These contradictions do not make for easy categorisation. They also suggest that the army is still grappling with a new geopolitical dynamic. At the very least, it deserves credit for trying to adapt to the changed landscape.

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Source url: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/pakistan-army-terrorism

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 January 2010 15.10 GMT

With his chequered past and unlikely rise to the top, it is understandable that Asif Ali Zardari has faced constant calls to resign ever since becoming president of Pakistan two years ago. The central focus of the grievances has been Pakistan’s supreme court where a raft of charges have been submitted against Zardari and most of the senior leaders of the ruling Pakistan Peoples party by a motley mix of political parties, private citizens, and the court itself.

But in the glasshouse that is Pakistani politics the risk is that perceptions of judicial independence will be shattered by all the stone throwing. To understand the fracas it is necessary to consider recent history. After public pressure forced the Zardari government to reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, there was widespread celebration that at last Pakistan had found one institution that was above the cronyism that has plagued political life here.

Tables turn quickly in Pakistan. So it is perhaps no surprise that almost immediately the reconstituted supreme court began hearing challenges against members of the Zardari government. That included a petition by the chief justice himself against the National Reconciliation Ordinance, an amnesty granted by former President Pervez Musharraf after the United States pushed him to welcome Zardari and his wife, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, back into Pakistani politics.

Last December the Chaudhry supreme court ruled the NRO was unconstitutional, opening the floodgates for the current cases. Although attention has focused on charges against Zardari, the irony is that many of those bringing them have a history of intimidating the courts, disavowing them for being un-Islamic or have themselves faced charges ranging from corruption to murder at some point in their career.

What makes the current drama intriguing is the way that age-old double standard has become enmeshed with new political twists. Historically incapable of reining in the powerful, the courts have always been a favoured forum for otherwise disparate opposition groups to occasionally forget their mutual disdain in order to channel their common enmity towards whoever happens to be in government. The difference now is that, for the first time, the powerful are fearful of Pakistan’s highest court. That exposes it to the risk of being swept along with the political zeitgeist.

As the country continues to struggle with terrorism and a flagging economy, Asif Zardari, long considered uncritically obedient to diktats from Washington, has become emblematic of a government that most Pakistanis find easy to hate and impossible to love. Known derisively as “Mr 10%” for his alleged embezzlement of government revenues while his wife was prime minister in the 1990s, the president has faced several lawsuits in Pakistan, Britain, France and Switzerland over the last 15 years. Although most of them were dropped after the NRO, the supreme court’s ruling that it was unconstitutional has breathed new life into Pakistan’s courts and at least two cases in Switzerland and France.

Like any politician, Zardari will do everything in his power to cling to the presidency. In a departure from what has hitherto been an aloof tenure, he has begun a countrywide speaking tour aimed at rousing public confidence. But, ironically, there is a good chance he will agree to curtail his legal and de facto powers as president. Already he has transferred the authority to launch Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to the prime minister, a largely symbolic gesture given the army’s control of military affairs.

Yet Zardari still retains the power to appoint the chief of army staff, the most powerful post in the country, and dismiss the National Assembly. With General Ashfaq Kayani‘s term as army chief set to expire this year and parliament the only institution with the lawful power to revoke his presidential immunities, Zardari retains key bargaining chips should his situation deteriorate.

As president, Zardari enjoys constitutional immunity from criminal prosecution. But some legal experts argue that it does not preclude civil suits. Some, invoking nebulous provisions of the constitution inserted by the Islamist dictator Zia ul-Haq in 1985, have called for his removal on the grounds of poor character. Whatever the result of these arguments, it is clear that Zardari will be exposed to a toxic cocktail of civil and criminal charges the moment he leaves office.

Do not be surprised, then, if Zardari flees the country once his presidency ends, or if the Obama administration demands that he be left unmolested as a private citizen – much as the Bush administration protected former president Pervez Musharraf from prosecution when he resigned in August 2008. How does the supreme court fit into this? No one really knows. With the ball firmly in the court, however, it remains to be seen if the judges will pursue the military, mullahs and other politicians with the same vigour as they are pursuing Asif Zardari.

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 5 December 2009 18.00 GMT

It may be more a matter of wits than weapons, but the battle for control of Pakistan‘s executive branch of government is as significant for the country as the war against the Taliban. Resolving this latest crisis, the fiercest tussle over the stewardship of the country since Pervez Musharraf was ousted from the presidency in August 2008, will determine the future of Pakistan’s parliamentary democracy for many years to come.

Although ostensibly centred on current President Asif Ali Zardari’s immunity from a raft of court cases, the dispute has engulfed many of the most senior members of government.

It all boils down to a national reconciliation ordinance drawn up by Musharraf in November 2007 when he was still president. As his popularity and legitimacy plummeted, the Bush administration pushed for a power sharing arrangement between the general and one of his great rivals, the slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto who was living in exile between Dubai and London at the time. But a raft of court cases against Bhutto, her husband Asif Zardari, and many of their cohorts precluded an easy return to Pakistan to contest national elections. The NRO effectively gave them the immunity they desperately need to return to politics.

Following victory in national elections last year, the Pakistan People’s party, under Asif Zardari’s stewardship following Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007, formed a coalition government with a number of other parties and pressed for the NRO to be passed as law. But parliament and the supreme court conspired to scupper those plans, leaving the controversial amnesty to expire last Saturday, 28 November.

As far as we know, 8,041 individuals were given immunity under the NRO. They include Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan’s influential ambassador to the United States, and Rehman Malik, a key Zardari lieutenant and spearhead of the civilian administration’s push against extremists. Pakistan’s high commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, is also on the NRO list. So is the Britain-based head of the Muttahida Quami Movement, Altaf Hussain who, along with two of his deputies, faces more charges than any other individual on the list.

The charges against the thousands on the list, alleging everything from corruption, abuse of authority and even murder, make for harrowing reading. And although the government claims it will not protect anyone from the court’s findings, there can be no doubt that many of the charges are politically motivated. Virtually every prominent politician in Pakistan has faced or is facing a court case lodged by their foes.

But in among the mudslinging and the uncertainty it has created, the move to refer the NRO to the courts is a powerful, if indirect endorsement for the rule of law and parliamentary democracy. The government, faced with a hostile mix of political opponents and opportunists, says it will abide by any court rulings against those on the NRO.

A revitalised supreme court headed by Iftikhar Chaudhry, the fiercely independent chief justice who survived first Musharraf and then Zardari’s attempt to remove him, is expected to rule on the legality of the NRO in the not too distant future. He has already set a supreme court bench to commence hearings against those named in the NRO from Monday 7 December.

What the court eventually determines will also likely determine the fate of the present government.

So long as he remains head of state, President Zardari will retain immunity from any prosecution. Desperate to remain in office, however, he has already ceded control of the country’s nuclear arsenal to the prime minister. It is expected that he will also concede the powers to dismiss the national assembly and appoint military chiefs. That would be a welcome move as the prime minister is more answerable to the parliament than the president.

Current prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has undoubtedly been the biggest winner in this saga. Although installed by Zardari to be a pliant prime minister, he has increasingly drifted away from his orbit. It is well known that he has courted the Sharif brothers, former prime minister Nawaz and Punjab chief minister Shahbaz, who control the largest opposition party and dominate politics in the most populous province of Punjab. If key members of the PPP-led government falls due to the NRO , Gilani, who was a member of Sharif’s party until falling out of favour in the 1990s, could form government with them. To his distinct advantage, Gilani was not on the NRO list because the courts have already cleared him of corruption charges.

The political wrangling certainly reduces Pakistan’s capacity to deal effectively with the three largest crises plaguing the nation: the ongoing war with the Pakistan Taliban, the inability to match energy supplies with demand, and a weak, highly inflationary economy.

With so many Pakistanis sceptical of a democratic process that historically has failed to deliver, however, now is the best opportunity to showcase the merits of Pakistan’s fragile secular institutions.

]]> http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/the-other-battle-for-pakistan/feed/ 0 http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/public-unites-against-taliban-in-pakistan/ http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/public-unites-against-taliban-in-pakistan/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:37:39 +0000 mustafa http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/?p=542

Public Unites Against Taliban in Pakistan

Mustafa Qadri | 16 Jul 2009

KARACHI, Pakistan — There has been a perceptible shift in the battle against militancy in Pakistan. The massive army operations that recently concluded in the Swat valley, the largest ever conducted by Pakistan against the Taliban, are but one facet of it. For the first time, the government is also winning the propaganda war.

Ordinary citizens and political parties from across the spectrum — including religious ones — have rallied around the army. At a series of government-organized religious conferences in May, scholars denounced the Taliban as a perversion of Islamic teachings.

While stopping short of apologizing for their role in stoking the Taliban in the past, mainstream religious parties have had to tailor their rhetoric to reflect the change in popular sentiment. Where once parties like Jamaat-e-Islami would all but openly support the Taliban, they have now been forced to denounce the current spate of suicide bombings and other insurgent attacks against the army, government institutions and ordinary citizens as the work of “enemies of Pakistan” and Islam.

As part of its effort to rally its troops and the public, the Pakistan army has even set up a YouTube channel juxtaposing pop music with images of its soldiers engaged in operations against the Taliban. The nation’s satellite television channels are also broadcasting music videos decrying the spiraling violence.

Other efforts to shape public opinion include “Yeh hum naheen (This Is Not Us),” a movement set up by a number of Pakistani pop stars to combat terrorism and extremist interpretations of Islam, such as those preached by the Taliban and other groups.

It hasn’t always been this way.

Ever since the Taliban launched its insurgency against the Pakistan state in 2003, the population has oscillated between outright denial of its existence and resentment towards army operations seen as pitting countrymen against countrymen for the sake of foreign powers — especially the United States. Many have questioned whether it is really the Taliban that is committing atrocities in Pakistan, like the massive suicide bombing of the Marriot Hotel in September last year, or the destruction of hundreds of girls schools in the former resort area of Swat.

Given the high-stakes great-power politics of this region — Pakistan is a vital crossroads between Central and South Asia and the Middle East — conspiracy theories in the country abound. Yet ordinary Pakistanis remain largely ignorant of the extent to which their own army has for decades supported the Taliban and other militant groups, an issue that remains the “great white elephant” of Pakistani politics. That ignorance has led many to suspect an Indian, American or even Israeli hand in the almost-daily insurgent attacks mounted across the country — and especially in the North West Frontier Province that sits along Pakistan’s largely unguarded border with Afghanistan.

Yet even that ignorance has slowly started to be challenged. There has been no more dramatic example of this than President Asif Ali Zardari’s admission last week that militancy had been “created and nurtured” by the state with the help of the international community in the 1980s.

For years, there have been a minority of commentators and citizens, especially among the liberal educated elite, that have warned of the threats posed to Pakistan by extremism. Their voices have in recent months been joined by the broader community and politicians. What has caused this significant shift in perceptions? The answer lies in the Taliban itself.

There was country-wide support for the government when, in February, it announced a peace deal with the Taliban in the Swat valley, via a local cleric sympathetic to the movement. But when the Taliban continued its violent insurgency in neighboring districts like Buner and Bajaur, and when its spokesmen publicly justified the violent execution of those, like policemen and dancers, considered enemies of Islam, the public began to wake up to the threat.

There has been widespread outrage over Taliban attacks on fellow Muslims, such as the frequent bombing of mosques that have killed hundreds in the last three years alone. When a video of Taliban members flogging a young woman for allegedly eloping with a man went viral, ordinary Pakistanis were shocked into the realization that the Taliban did not reflect their experience of Islam.

Of course, even with the welcome shift in opinion, the situation remains dire in Pakistan.

The conflict has been a humanitarian disaster for the now 3.5 million Pakistanis displaced since last August, when the army commenced its latest major offensives. From close to the border with Afghanistan at Peshawar to the foothills above Islamabad, in Mardan and Swabi, a sea of human grief has been streaming down since the army started a massive, often indiscriminate bombing campaign on May 8.

The U.N. believes the mass exodus of civilians is the greatest since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and possibly even since the bloody partition of the subcontinent in August 1947. Few preparations were undertaken before the army started firing its mortars, although relief efforts from the government and the private sector have now begun in earnest. Welfare and political organizations, both secular and religious, have been involved in the massive relief effort, while appeals for donations have proliferated on shop windows and on television.

Those crammed into the squalid conditions of the displaced persons camps of the North West Frontier Province all speak of the need for relief and support from the government. A coherent policy is needed to provide humanitarian, economic and social rehabilitation to the displaced. Otherwise, as with previous army excursions into Taliban strongholds over the past four years, militancy will return, fueled by the unmet grievances of frustrated civilians. Without a coherent strategy, even the current wellspring of popular support will dry up.

Mustafa Qadri is Middle East and South Asia correspondent for The Diplomat and newmatilda.com. He also writes a weekly column on Pakistan for The Guardian newspaper’s Web site.

[Originally published at: http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=4082]

‘Collateral damage’ in AfPak hurts the US too

The bombardment of civilians in Afghanistan undermines the security credentials of western forces in the region

o Mustafa Qadri
o guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 May 2009 16.30 BST

The timing may have been a disaster for Washington, but for villagers in Afghanistan’s south it was far worse. A day after a US bombing killed up to 120 civilians in Afghanistan’s southern Farah province, President Obama asked the visiting presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari, to step up their attacks on Taliban and al-Qaida militants.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, expressed “personal regret” for the loss of lives as she looked in the direction of Karzai who, along with Zardari, addressed the media in the White House last Wednesday.

But in Afghanistan there were howls of condemnation and protests.

Bodies were being piled into trucks near the Bala Boluk district in Farah where the bombing occurred. If estimates of more than a hundred fatalities prove accurate, it will represent the greatest loss of life in a single day since the US invasion of Afghanistan commenced in October 2001.

Casualties are inevitable in any war. But, as with Iraq since 1990, it seems those directing the conflict from western capitals are not the ones whose societies are bearing the greatest losses. That price is paid by ordinary Afghans and Pakistanis.

According to US airforce figures, 438 bombs were dropped over Afghanistan by American planes last April – a record number.

Last year was the worst for civilians caught up in the war against the Taliban that started in 2001. According to the Afghanistan Rights Monitor, 3,917 civilians were killed, more than 6,800 wounded and 120,000 were forced to leave their homes.

In neighbouring Pakistan, the conflict has proved a humanitarian catastrophe for villagers along the tribal belt that hugs the Durand line and the lower Himalayas in the north-west. It is estimated that up to a million have been displaced by the conflict with the Taliban in Pakistan, while unknown thousands of civilians have been killed. Pilotless US aircraft have killed around 700 of them. Only a handful of those – around 14 – were militant leaders.

For years now Afghan officials have been asking American forces to take greater care in their operations to prevent civilian casualties. Their Pakistani counterparts have constantly warned against military operations which, by harming so many civilians, stoke greater support for the Taliban.

“Afghans are human beings, too,” President Karzai remarked at a media conference two years ago. That applies equally to Pakistanis caught in the conflict, but the fact is often lost in the heady rhetoric about defeating extremism and keeping our western borders secure from terrorism.

As usual, US officials announced an investigation into the Farah bombing. Whether it will lead to a demonstrable reduction in civilian casualties is uncertain. US military officials were quick to claim that the bombing was called in by Afghan National Army forces and could not be compared to the devastating aerial attack in Azizabad that claimed 90 civilian lives last August. The US had earlier said that a handful of Taliban fighters had been killed during the raid, only to later acknowledge that civilians had died, albeit far fewer than the 90 claimed by the Afghan government and an independent UN investigation.

In the meantime, the war talk has reached fever pitch. Despite calls for increased non-military aid aimed at improving socioeconomic conditions in areas most at risk of Taliban infiltration, the key thrust will be massive military operations by US and Pakistan forces.

In Congress last week, US defence secretary Robert Gates requested $400m for the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund aimed at training and arming Pakistani soldiers. The fund is effectively Centcom commander David Petraeus’s money tin and would give the general a freer hand in directing operations by Pakistani forces.

A further $1bn in immediate or military aid has been proposed for Pakistan from a pool of requested “emergency” funds.

The Obama administration has praised Pakistan’s recent return to military operations against the Taliban. The army is presently engaged in massive operations in the north-west of the country where militants had infiltrated into the Buner valley, a few hours’ drive west of the capital Islamabad, and Dir, further west towards the Afghan border.

In Dir, like Kohat and Dera Adam Khel to the south, districts to which I travelled recently, popular support for the Taliban is high thanks to ethnic loyalties and simmering resentment over inequality and civilian casualties. The Taliban derive mostly from the Pashtun communities indigenous to Pakistan’s tribal areas, but non-Pashtun recruits, particularly from poor rural communities in southern and western Punjab, are believed to be increasing.

Fighting has recommenced in the Swat valley after Taliban militants who spilled out into neighbouring districts – like Buner and Dir – failed to abide by the terms of a recent peace agreement between the provincial government and a local pro-Taliban religious movement.

The situation is precarious for “AfPak”. To avoid international isolation, governments from the two nations must continue the American agenda of overwhelming military response to the Taliban problem. But as these operations continue to claim lives, support for the Taliban can be expected to grow.

For Obama and his western allies in the region, failure to bring stability could have serious political consequences. The consequences for ordinary civilians, however, are already far more dire.