Mustafa Qadri

Last Updated: Nov 23, 2010

Over the weekend the leaders of Nato unanimously agreed to start withdrawing from Afghanistan by 2014. Timed so as not to clash with the expected re-election bid of the US president Barack Obama in 2012, the announcement comes at a moment when the US-led war against al Qa’eda and the Taliban is being escalated, not scaled down. The agreement on Afghanistan arrives as the US is placing pressure on Pakistan to expand the war to the restive, large province of Balochistan. Both decisions reflects a dangerous over-reliance on heavy-handed military solutions to regional problems that are largely political in nature.

It is difficult to conceive now, but in 2002, following the US invasion of Afghanistan the previous year, the Taliban were largely defeated and al Qa’eda bereft of its ability to stage attacks from Afghan soil. As the US commenced its bombardment of Afghanistan, the Taliban expressed a willingness to hand Osama bin Laden over to the coalition forces, on the condition that the superpower provide them evidence of his culpability in the attacks on September 11, 2001 and that his extradition be to a neutral country and not the US.

The offer was rejected in October 2001, as was an earlier suggestion, mooted by the Taliban and sympathetic religious groups in neighbouring Pakistan, to try bin Laden before a domestic or international tribunal.

We have no way of knowing now whether those offers were genuine or even practical. But we know the results of the last eight years. US-led and Afghan forces meander through an increasingly violent and destabilising war that has killed thousands of Afghans and foreign nationals. The costs of conflict are clear.

Most ominous of all, the strategy of targeting insurgent commanders – often with unmanned drone strikes – has created space for younger, more radical leaders who are more ideologically inclined towards al Qa’eda’s world view than the Taliban’s more limited focus on Afghanistan.

The decision has also increased support for the Taliban in the region, although such sentiments are not without reservations. “If the Taliban succeed, it will mean Pakistan will go backwards,” said Sohail Janvi, a business man who lives in the semi-tribal city of Kohat in Pakistan, a few hours’ drive from the Afghan border. “But,” he adds, “the government gives us nothing [and] we do not want Americans here,” referring to the US drone strikes that have killed scores of civilians in the past four years in Afghanistan and also near the border with Pakistan.

People living close to Taliban-held parts of Pakistan’s Orakzai tribal agency say that they often hear drones whirling overhead like giant, distant flies. The drones do instill fear but whether or not they are particularly good at dividing terrorists from civilians is an open question. The panic caused by the drones has also done much to support well-worn and crudely simplistic conceptions of the United States as a cruel empire bent on subjugating the Muslim world.

The Obama administration has escalated the drone strikes in its first two years, undertaking nearly four times as many attacks in that time than occurred in all eight years of the Bush presidency.

The Taliban are indeed repressive fanatics who marginalise women and have provided sanctuary to al Qa’eda. But escalating the US-led war in Afghanistan and Pakistan has transformed the Taliban into a Pashtun freedom force in a way that no rebel leader could have done on his own.

“Yes, they are freedom fighters because they are fighting against what they call foreign occupation of Afghanistan,” says Daud Khattak, a journalist based in Peshawar. “The Taliban don’t fight for political gain or money but want freedom from American slavery,” explained a resident of Dir, a mountainous Pashtun region bordering the tribal areas.

So long as the West’s presence in Afghanistan is primarily defined by military force, its relationship to ordinary Afghans will be based primarily on violence. By their very nature, armies must intimidate and coerce the population into accepting their authority. The coalition’s most important local allies in the three provinces of Afghanistan hardest hit by the insurgency are warlords who are widely believed to have grown rich and powerful by keeping civilians in fear and capitalising on the drug trade.

But Afghan warlords are notoriously fickle, switching sides as the fortunes of war change. A number of key Islamist warlord allies of the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, for example, are ideologically identical to the Taliban but chose to throw their lot with the US-backed Afghan leader as a matter of expediency.

By contrast, the Taliban say that they fight for freedom from western influence. Its core membership still considers Mullah Omar its leader and, over the last nine years, has not wavered from calling for foreign troops to withdraw. Rahimullah Yusufzai, the first journalist to interview Omar when the Taliban first emerged from Kandahar in 1994, says that talk of negotiating with the Taliban is premature. “They are confident, [and] in no mood to talk. Even if it takes another decade, they would wait for foreign troops to withdraw before taking negotiations seriously,” Mr Yusufzai says.

In the face of this reality, America’s ability to change Afghanistan is dramatically limited. Now is the time for US-led forces to shift responsibility for securing Afghanistan to regional powers like China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and even Russia, who are are better situated to assist the troubled country. Even this is far from a simple or foolproof option. But local and regional actors are better suited to forge a peace through political means because they have the most to lose from instability in Afghanistan.

With their troops already in the country, the US and its ISAF allies could then help mediate a power arrangement underwritten by regional powers. But as the US-led forces continue their current escalation, it is not at all clear that they will be in a position to withdraw even in 2014.

Mustafa Qadri is an Australian journalist based in Pakistan

[This article appeared in The National newspaper on Tuesday November 23, 2010: http://www.thenational.ae/the-national-conversation/comment/natos-tactics-and-timetable-strengthen-afghan-radicals?pageCount=0]

AT THE end of another day of bad news and fasting during this hot, holy month of Ramadan, Pakistanis were rushing to their televisions to watch their cricket team take the stage after a long hiatus.

For generations, cricket has been one of the few outlets for the average Pakistani. For most, life is a joyless struggle for survival. Like our dwindling cinemas and religious festivals, cricket was one of the few things that offered people a brief escape from reality.

With floods leaving 22 million people homeless, and political violence rocking parts of the country, cricket allowed ordinary citizens to escape their circumstances. Now, with the latest match-fixing scandal, even that simple pleasure has been lost.

In the past, our players were positive ambassadors for the country, a source of pride. To be Pakistani in the 1980s was to be the custodian of Imran Khan’s lion heart, Abdul Qadir’s wiles or Javed Miandad’s determination.

Now, like the rest of us, our cricketers are viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility. There is palpable anger in Pakistan over this scandal coming just as our nation needs something, anything, to celebrate.

Although gambling is illegal, it is widespread. Like cricket itself, betting is a pastime that unites rich and poor. In many homes, men congregate after the evening meal to watch, and bet on, cricket matches. Armed with their mobiles, they sit glued to the TV, ready to SMS local bookies. Given that the subcontinent has close to 1.5 billion people, the money to be had through betting is astronomical.

From a life of obscurity and poverty, our cricketers are unleashed into this environment without supervision or guidance from cricketing authorities. Perhaps it is beyond any sporting body to remedy such a malaise. That is why so many of our elite athletes exhibit self-destructive tendencies.

Mohammad Asif, one of the most talented fast bowlers in the world who, along with two others, is at the centre of the latest allegations, is a case in point. In 2006, he was banned for a year after testing positive to a steroid. Two years later, after an unlikely comeback, he was detained at Dubai airport on suspicion of possessing illegal drugs. He only escaped prison thanks to lobbying by the Pakistan government. What athlete would be so foolhardy? Only someone who had escaped the daily scramble faced by most of Pakistan’s 170 million people to discover that, for the privileged few, the boundaries of life were negotiable.

Part of the problem is that our cricketers come from the same slums that produce our gangsters and mafia dons. Opportunities for upward mobility are sparse. In the slums of Karachi from which emerged a cricketer like Javed Miandad, the only source of electricity, drinking water and satellite TV is the black market. Is it any surprise that Miandad’s son is married to the daughter of Daud Ibrahim, a notorious underworld figure implicated in the 2008 Mumbai massacre? Ibrahim himself is a Mumbai native whose experience of poverty differs little from that in the Academy Award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

Some argue that Pakistan’s cricketers earn far less than their foreign counterparts. But the honour of playing for their country was sufficient entitlement for generations of athletes the world over, not to mention some of Pakistan’s greatest such as Imran Khan, the squash champion Khans – Jahanghir and Janshir – and our first, humble batting champion, Hanif Mohammad.

It is true that the scandal ought to be considered in proper context. The humanitarian disaster of the floods is infinitely more significant. Ordinary Pakistanis need and deserve our help like never before. But it is important to remember that for people here as the world over, there must be more to life than just surviving.

There are countless talented and dedicated young athletes who are more than capable of returning our premier sport to high repute.

According to all reports, former World Cup-winning captain Younis Khan and current one-day captain Shahid Afridi have not been tainted by match-fixing. Our talented athletes and a devastated nation deserve better than this scandal.

[This article was first published on Sunday September 5, 2010 in The Age newspaper: http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cricket/sorry-affair-steals-a-little-more-light-from-pakistanis-lives-20100904-14v9w.html]

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, Monday 8 February 2010 08.00 GMT

Memory spans are short in modern politics, but even by those standards the relative ease with which the discourse on Afghanistan has shifted from fighting the Taliban to negotiating with them is remarkable.

Even more incredible is our collective refusal to admit the obvious. The Taliban are stronger than ever because the US chose a heavy-handed, unilateral military response to the 9/11 attacks. What’s more, the insurgency is now more ideologically aligned with al-Qaida than ever before. Thanks to bin Laden’s network, the Taliban have changed from rag-tag army to deadly insurgency and, most ominous of all, they believe they are more than a match for the world’s only superpower.

Some will say that the climate following the deadly attacks on the US nearly nine years ago made it impossible to take the more nuanced approach now being attempted. Diplomacy back in 2001 was left to the Taliban. As the US began its carpet bombardment of Afghanistan, however, Mullah Omar expressed a willingness to hand bin Laden over provided the US gave evidence of his culpability. Any extradition, he added, would have to be to a neutral country and not the US.

The offer was flatly rejected in October 2001, along with an earlier suggestion to try bin Laden in a domestic or international tribunal. It is impossible to judge in hindsight the veracity or practicality of these overtures. But as US-led foreign and Afghan forces meander through an increasingly violent and destabilising war that has killed thousands of Afghans and hundreds of foreign nationals, including 253 British soldiers, the decision to favour unilateral war over diplomacy has proved disastrous.

The Afghan war is also a political liability for foreign governments embroiled in it. A majority of voters in most countries involved in the International Assistance Force for Afghanistan, including Britain, want their troops to return home. Western planners have realised that there can be no hope of a withdrawal in the foreseeable future unless there is dialogue with the Taliban.

This is no simple task. On the one hand, negotiating with the Taliban is a victory for realism. They may represent one of the most fanatical and oppressive streams of Islam, but the Taliban are now the dominant social movement in Afghanistan’s Pashtun population, the country’s largest ethnic group who inhabit the regions of the south and east – major frontlines in the current conflict. Support for the Taliban among Pashtuns, far from universal before 2001, has increased because the US and its allies decided to invade their country.

But these facts should not detract from other truths. There can be no doubt that the Taliban and the warlords backing the pro-US regime in Kabul pose a long-term threat to the development of Afghanistan, particularly for its women and minorities. New research suggests that support for the Taliban is based not on ideology but social ties, cultural affinities and the hope that the insurgents can improve living conditions more than President Karzai’s hopelessly corrupt administration.

Karzai is a product of the US decision to unilaterally invade Afghanistan. Along with resentment towards the US for installing the Karzai regime, however, many Afghans are also openly hostile to regional powers, especially Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for promoting conflict in their country even after the Soviets left in 1989. Interestingly, Afghans view India more favourably than any other foreign presence in their country – up to 71% of them according to one recent opinion poll – including the UN. It cannot be a coincidence that there are no Indian soldiers in Afghanistan. India has invested billions of dollars in developing the country’s civil infrastructure. India’s involvement in Afghanistan is not an act of charity and it has a long history of supporting former Northern Allies warlords widely implicated in atrocities. But in post-2001 Afghanistan, the soft power of Indian development assistance has accrued enormous goodwill.

An extensive survey carried out by the Asia Foundation last year found that the central thing on Afghan minds is not the Taliban or the US, but access to education and employment for both men and women. And as Khalid Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, points out, poverty is a far greater cause of death in Afghanistan than war.

In the rush to end our participation in the Afghan war it is important to remind ourselves that what Afghanistan needs is not an end to foreign involvement but an acceptance that it was a victim of the international community’s collective interference long before bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks.

Talking to the Taliban should not mean appeasing extremists in exchange for a quick withdrawal. Rather, solving this morally ambiguous conflict will require a commitment to engage with all Afghans over a long period of time.