Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 February 2011 18:43 GMT

The murder of Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by his own guardhas prompted an ever growing witch-hunt, driven by religious groups but controlled by no one. The threat of this uncontested vigilantism posing as Islamic empowerment should be taken as seriously as the Taliban.

There was a moment last weekend that juxtaposed beautifully with the latest crisis faced by Pakistan. As hundreds of thousands – Islamists and Marxists, centrists and otherwise apolitical working men and women – marched for democratic regime change in Egypt, 40,000 mostly men marched in Pakistan’s heartland city of Lahore to protest against changes to the country’s controversial blasphemy law regime. Protesters in Lahore threatened to cause greater anarchy if the blasphemy laws were changed – threats reminiscent of the Pakistan Taliban.

It is important to note that, as an instrument for protecting the honour of Islam, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been an abject failure. As rights groups point out, the laws are vaguely defined and do not require accusers to prove criminal intent. Police rarely investigate before arresting alleged blasphemers. Taseer’s murderer may say he killed him for committing blasphemy, but there is no evidence he ever did anything of the sort. Taseer’s only crime was to highlight the severe failings of the blasphemy laws, a point lost on many who endorsed his murder.

“If a campaign were to be carried out on all the electronic media explaining exactly what the blasphemy laws are, the fact that vigilantes have murdered other people due to political, economic or other rivalries and motives, people would not favour it,” says veteran journalist and human rights campaigner Beena Sarwar.

Since the current laws made defiling the Qur’an and defaming the prophet crimes punishable respectively by life imprisonment and death in 1986, anywhere between 300 and 3,000 people have been accused of blasphemy. Of these, roughly 50% belong to religious minorities, a group that constitutes only 3% of Pakistan’s 180 million population.

But the blasphemy laws do not just target religious minorities and the poor. The slain Taseer, a wealthy businessman and key ally of President Asif Zardari is testament to that. But even Muslims are not safe from the witch-hunt. During a visit to a village in the Punjab late last year, I was told that local Sufi Muslims had charged “a young Wahhabi” with blasphemy for arguing that Prophet Muhammad was a human being and that prayers should not be directed to him or venerated saints but only Allah.

Last Saturday a magistrate remanded a 17-year-old boy on charges of blasphemy after he allegedly wrote insulting comments about the Prophet during an exam more than eight months ago. Most disturbing, the charges were brought by the intermediate board of education in Karachi. The board noted that the boy confessed to the “unpardonable sin” and blamed it on frustration over inability to answer an exam question and the influence of a discussion about Islam he had with some cousins from Norway.

In a society where the law and order system is already fragile and amenable to vigilantism, the blasphemy law has opened up a Pandora’s box of opportunities for people to take the law into their own hands, or force fearful police and courts to provide a rubber stamp to their vendettas. None of Pakistan’s major politicians or its powerful army chief, not traditionally averse to making public statements on matters of national interest, has condemned Taseer’s murder or the misuse of the blasphemy laws.

Political parties were glaringly absent from public prayers organised for the slain Taseer over the weekend. In response to a request to attend one of them, Senator Abdul Rahim Khan Mandokhel from Balochistan said, “he [Taseer] met his fate. This is our religion. You have to accept it or leave Pakistan.” In an open letter, a broad coalition of citizens called the Citizens for Democracy condemned the remarks and urged the president of the senate to take disciplinary measures against Mandokhel if he did not offer a public apology. Others have called on the courts and police to charge people who have publicly called for victims of the blasphemy laws or advocates for their reform to be murdered.

It is arguable that even more dangerous are those like Mumtaz Qadri, Taseer’s murderer, who act out of a genuine belief that, armed just with God’s command, any citizen has the right to commit murder based on rumour and slander.

On Monday, Pakistan’s prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani reiterated his government’s refusal to amend the blasphemy laws, noting proudly that it was his predecessor Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who “introduced this law in Pakistan”. True, Gilani’s government is besieged and in no position to pick a losing battle. But if more Pakistanis do not wage a war for sanity all of us will lose.

[This article originally appeared in the Guardian on February 3, 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/03/pakistan-blasphemy-laws-taliban]

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws make it a crime to defile the Quran or to defame Prophet Mohammad, punishable by life imprisonment and death respectively. But the laws have been roundly criticised by civil rights groups as appropriate safeguards against misuse as they have become notorious for being used to settle petty private disputes.

Religious minorities have been especially vulnerable to the blasphemy laws with around half of all charges being brought against them — even though a mere 3 per cent of Pakistan’s population of Pakistan is non-Muslim.

Hundreds of blasphemy cases have been brought against minorities in Pakistan in the last 26 years. One of those was against Asia Bibi, a poor farm worker from rural Punjab sentenced to death for apparently defaming the Prophet after some Muslim co-workers refused to drink water with her because she is Christian. Asia’s case came to prominence globally when it was highlighted by the international media.

In Pakistan Salmaan Taseer was the most senior political figure to publicly appeal for Asia Bibi to be released and for the blasphemy law to be reformed. Taseer received almost daily death threats from religious zealots for his stand, but few could have predicted that one of his security guards would gun him down at close range. Mumtaz Qadri, Taseer’s murderer, freely admits to killing the late governor because of his criticism of the blasphemy law.

Most disturbing of all, it appears Qadri told other members of Taseer’s security detail about his plan, and they allowed him to shoot Taseer 27 times before dropping his weapon and surrendering.

Normally fractured Islamist groups have found common cause in supporting the murder of Taseer, the liberal governor of Punjab who was critical of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws — and their support is echoed by the Taliban. This unusual coalition has helped silence the already restricted debate on the blasphemy laws in Pakistan.

The murder of a high profile politician by a member of his own security detail has shaken the country in several significant ways.

Nothing has been more ominous than the way it has united Pakistan’s generally fractious Islamic groups. Although religious groups have consistently supported the blasphemy laws in their current form, in recent years rival Muslim sects have been in increasingly violent conflict with each other, conflict what has been punctuated by the murder of leading Wahabi and Sufi clerics whose deaths are blamed by both camps on each other’s followers. It is therefore notable that these otherwise warring groups united to endorse the murder of Taseer.

Their support for the blasphemy laws is shared by the Taliban. This confirms and indeed demonstrates an alarming nexus between the Taliban insurgency Pakistan is fighting along the border with Afghanistan and mainstream religious opinion in urban centres like Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar.

As Bilawal Zardari Bhutto, co-Chair of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and son of Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, railed against the murderer of in London after the murder, members of the Pakistan Taliban insurgency sent out an ominous warning.

“We appreciate Mumtaz Qadri’s efforts in killing the blasphemer Taseer. The Taliban are also after other secular politicians and no one will be left, they will be killed the way Taseer was killed,” said Mullah Noor Alam, a middle-ranking Taliban commander currently in North Waziristan when he spoke exclusively to New Matilda. Alam said those were his personal views as well as those of the insurgency.

Such views are not isolated to the Taliban. A week after Taseer’s murder on 4 January, tens of thousands gathered in Karachi to support Mumtaz Qadri and similar rallies occurred in most major cities including one in Lahore this week that garnered 40,000 people. Alam’s comments were echoed by many who attended the Karachi rally. “Whoever blasphemes will face the same fate as Salmaan Taseer,” poor labourer Abdul Rehman told New Matilda.

Facebook fanpages and other websites proliferated in the wake of Taseer’s murder, extolling the virtue of Qadri as a “ghazi” or warrior of Islam and defender of the Prophet. Although most of the Facebook sites have been taken down, a frenzy of apparent celebration has continued to sweep through Pakistan, including in Qadri’s hometown and Army headquarters Rawalpindi. The celebration is fed by conservative TVcommentators and a well organised religious lobby that can arrange public gatherings on short notice.

These sudden developments suggest that the battle against religious extremism in Pakistan is beyond the scope of military planners — whether in Rawalpindi or in international capitals.  Qadri openly admitted to killing Taseer but although he has already been brought before the federal Anti-Terrorism Court his trial has yet to commence. Pakistan’s judiciary has an opportunity to challenge self-proclaimed defenders of the faith from continuing down the spiral toward lawlessness by taking the law into their own hands.

But if anything Pakistan’s senior courts have shown a sympathy towards the Islamists, as several high profile recent developments demonstrate.

In November the Lahore High Court took the unprecedented and apparently unconstitutional step of barring Pakistan President Zardari from pardoning Asia Bibi until it hears an appeal against a sentence.That does not appear likely for some time given passions surrounding her case and the genuine fear that someone might try to kill her if she appears before the court.

During hearings into a recent constitutional amendment last year, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry of Pakistan’s Supreme Court said Islam and not the elected parliament was the highest authority in the land. Another judge on that bench wondered whether Pakistan could afford “afford to follow western parliaments which have decided in favour of gay marriages.” Both statements played to the strong Islamist sentiment here that liberal forces and greater secularity are a threat to Pakistan’s Islamic identity, a key argument of those who supported the murder of Taseer.

Along with the PPP’s Bilawal Zardari Bhutto, individual members of the Urdu-speaking community’s Muttahida Quami Movement and the ethnic Pashtun Awami National Party, the other major secular political parties in the country, have quietly condemned Taseer’s murder. But none of these parties have officially affirmed their support for reforming the blasphemy laws at the centre of the crisis.
The PPP-led federal government has gone even further to say it will defend the current laws from any reforms.

Civil society groups inside Pakistan have championed the cause with a slew of anti-blasphemy law rallies, websites and court petitions allowing the voices of moderate Pakistanis to be heard. These rallies were dwarfed by those organised in support of Mumtaz Qadri. Given the danger of openly opposing Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws these days — and how few political supporters there are for blasphemy law reform aside from former Information Minister Sherry Rehman and Bilawal Zardari Bhutto — such displays are a brave show of force. Some civil society groups even lodged complaints with police and the Supreme Court against local preachers for inciting the murder of Asia Bibi and Sherry Rehman. Still, the courts have an unreliable record in prosecuting those who commit acts of violence in the name of Islam.

And alone among mainstream Pakistani religious leaders, Javed Ahmed Ghamadi has called for the blasphemy laws to be repealed, arguing that they have no basis in Islamic law. But Ghamadi has lived in Malaysia since last year, when police discovered a plot to assassinate him. Such is the stifling environment in Pakistan now that even reasoned debate can have deadly consequences — and the implications of this local blasphemy debate in the wider region remain to be seen.

It also suggests that the battle against militant Islamists must be fought with ideas, not just guns.

On the face of it the assassination of Salman Taseer, former Governor of Punjab province and a liberal lynchpin of the civilian government, was merely an act of crazed fanaticism. According to assassin Mumtaz Qadri, a member of the elite police force tasked with protecting dignitaries, he acted in response to Taseer’s vocal support for a poor Christian woman who had been sentenced to death under a flimsy claim of insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Yet to understand this latest episode of politically motivated violence in Pakistan, one has to dig deeper than the usual suspects. Yes, a form of Islam that will countenance no criticism and sees violence as an appropriate form of dissent is growing in Pakistan. Nor is this violent form of political Islam limited to the Taliban insurgency being fought by the Pakistan Army and our Diggers in Afghanistan. In each of Pakistan’s four provinces there exist local militant outfits whose overall aim is to create a repressive, Islamic state and battle perceived enemies like India, the US or the Pakistan state itself.

But more significant than all these factors is the fact that although on paper Pakistan’s institutions reflect the liberal principles of modern statehood – like parliamentary democracy and a secular judiciary – corruption, inequality and decades of Army patronage of Islamist groups have left many sceptical of the virtues of these principles.

Like any country, Pakistan has entrenched disparities between rich and poor. But the disparity here is extreme and goes beyond mere economics to social and cultural divisions where people generally accept their status in the society. While the many poor in Pakistan have difficult lives locked in menial servitude to the powerful, ritualistic Islam is one of the few outlets for joy, grief, pride and disgust. This sense of ‘public’ Islam transcends class barriers, so the powerful are expected to abide and respect certain cultural norms deemed to be Islamic, even if these displays can be superficial public expressions that do not reflect private habits or beliefs. Even now, for example, most of the senior generals in the Army, the most powerful institution in the country, are known to privately imbibe while continuing to support Islamist groups.

In murdering Taseer, Munawar Qadri delivered the message that even the privileged are accountable before God. That they must be punished by death for blasphemy, and not one of the more immediate ills that have mired Pakistan in poverty, nepotism and violence, however, reflects the troubling reality that many have lost hope in improving the nation. Instead of trying to alleviate ills of this world, many of our citizens have chosen to focus on the profane, like violently protesting alleged acts of blasphemy.

Only a handful of people have publically decried Taseer’s assassination and most major political parties have responded in measured tones. Some, like the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif and most mainstream Muslim groups did not even send high representatives to Taseer’s funeral.

Pakistan’s religious lobby has been quick to describe Qadri as a religious hero, fighting to protect Islam against a wealthy, pro-Western businessman whose support for a poor Christian was in fact a cover for continued foreign attempts to undermine the state and Islam. Remarkably, Pakistan already has laws that criminalise incitement to kill, yet no one has been prosecuted despite several public statements by hardline religious figures to kill or punish Taseer for criticising the blasphemy law even weeks before he was murdered.

Of course, this has not occurred in vacuum, nor is it an organic development. Our Islamic heritage comes from the Sufi tradition whose most venerated saints preached in favour of love and compassion. But that tradition has been under assault ever since Pakistan’s pro-US Islamist dictator General Zia ul-Haq went on an aggressive drive to ‘Islamize’ the country in the 1980s in the hope of ensconcing himself in power. Understanding this development in Pakistan’s history is critical because the enforcement of rigid forms of Islam has always had political underpinnings.

Blasphemy laws were first introduced to the subcontinent by the British in the 19^th century to divide the burgeoning independence movement along religious lines. General Zia took blasphemy to an entirely different level with vague offences against Prophet Muhammad and desecration of the Quran that have especially targeted religious minorities, the most vulnerable members of Pakistan society.

Liberal and progressive forces have fought hard to combat the institutionalised intolerance, but they have never constituted a major political force in a country dominated by the Army and feudal and business elites that have little interest in a more equitable and tolerant society. Sadly the vast majority of Pakistanis who live a modern lifestyle have largely done so quietly for fear of confronting the very forces that claimed Salman Taseer’s life.

Despite this, on paper Pakistan retains a robust constitution that enshrines key human rights protections, secular courts and parliamentary democracy. What is lacking is political and popular will to enforce laws that protect Pakistanis from politically-motivated violence in the name of Islam. Enforcing these laws will deal an infinitely more powerful blow to the violent intolerance than any drone strike or troop surge.

[This article first appeared in ABC Unleashed on January 14, 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43012.html]

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 December 2010 15.00 GMT

While the country reels from flood devastation, an increasing gap between rich and poor, and a ceaseless energy recession, Pakistan’s religious lobby has lined up to attack a straw woman. Yet again a powerful political lobby has decided to focus on an issue that will not solve the nation’s most pressing problems.

It all began when last year Muslim women in the village of Ittan Walli refused to take water from mother-of-five Asia Bibi because she was Christian. According to one of the women, Bibi reacted with disgust and, it is claimed, made disparaging remarks about the prophet Muhammad. Soon the local cleric and police were involved and Asia was behind bars for breaching Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws. She has already spent close to 18 months in one of Pakistan’s hellish prisons.

The blasphemy laws – a set of provisions inserted into Pakistan’s criminal laws under the Islamist dictator General Ziaul Haq – made it a crime punishable by death for anyone charged with defiling the Qur’an or defaming the prophet Muhammad.

The Lahore high court has taken the unprecedented step of barring the president of Pakistan from pardoning Bibi, a step decried as unconstitutional by legal experts. The blasphemy law “turns them [minorities] into second-class citizens, deprived of freedom of expression or belief,” says Human Rights Watch’s Ali Dayan Hasan.

If squeaky wheels do indeed get the grease then Pakistan’s vocal religious lobby have been liberally lathered by successive governments and a pliant media. Along with criticism of the military establishment, honest and critical exposure of religious chauvinism is a dangerous business.

In Peshawar, Maulana Yusuf Qureshi offered a reward of Rs500,000 (£3,600) to anyone who killed Bibi if the government did not execute her, an astonishing incitement against a fellow citizen. That included calling on the Taliban to take matters into their own hands and murder Bibi if the government did not. A lead editorial in Nawa-e-Waqt, one of the biggest Urdu-language newspapers in the country, lauded Qureshi’s rhetoric. If only sharia law applied in Pakistan, the editorial went on to lament, the current debate over reforming the blasphemy law would be entirely moot.

Meanwhile in Mohmand tribal agency, the Taliban claimed responsibility for a massive suicide blast at a meeting of government officials and a local anti-Taliban Lashkar that killed 44.

Pakistan’s federal minister for minorities and the governor of Punjab have both been threatened with death for calling for Bibi’s death sentence to be commuted. Former information minister Sherry Rehman has also received death threats for introducing a private members bill calling for the blasphemy laws to be amended to reduce its misuse.

The clear link between the terrorism that has rocked Pakistan and the blasphemy-related incitement to violence cannot have been lost on the Nawa-e-Waqt editors, Qureshi or others. Like the popular mantra that the terrorism is the work of India and other foreign actors and not home grown, the kill Bibi campaign reflects the simple fact that our most powerful religious leaders have no answers relevant to the crises faced by Pakistan.

At a time when WikiLeaks has disclosed the abject hypocrisy of one of the key apologists for the Taliban and Islamist excesses in our country – who despite publicly blaming the US for all the problems faced by Pakistan privately lobbyied to be made prime minister “for a price” – it is worth remembering that the Islamist lobby represents the worst kind of opportunism.

Even Sufi-religious orders such as Sunni Tehreek, often touted as a more liberal antidote to the Taliban and its Wahabi supporters in Pakistan, have called for Bibi to be killed and the existing blasphemy law to remain in force.

Scholars who genuinely practice the theological precepts of ijtihed, or independent reasoning, a vital ingredient for challenging the present chauvinism, are thin on the ground. One of their most important members, Dr Umar Farooq, was murdered by the Taliban because of his involvement in an impressive army programme to deradicalise young men trained to be suicide bombers.

Even the architect of the blasphemy laws under which Bibi has been sentenced has admitted they are too draconian and liable to abuse. Others have argued that at least, for the first time, some Pakistanis are able to openly talk about amending or repealing the blasphemy laws. And true we are not a nation of intolerant Muslims. But if the majority of us remain silent as the dangerous winds of intolerance spread through our villages and mosques, what exactly does it mean to be tolerant?

[This article first appeared in The Guardian on December 9, 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/09/religious-lobby-pakistan-asia-bibi]

Updated November 29, 2010 11:20:11

Two months ago Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema was abducted in Islamabad by Pakistan’s military intelligence.

Uma Cheema was held for six hours and he says, tortured and then dumped on the outskirts of the capital. His abduction came after he was warned to stop writing stories against the government. Umar Cheema’s abduction is not unique in Pakistan where journalists routinely risk their lives reporting on the country’s volatile politics and security. The Pakistani Government has launched two investigations into the abduction but Umar Cheema says he doubts there’ll be any headway.

Presenter: Mustafa Qadri
Speakers: Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema

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Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 November 2010 12.00 GMT

South Asia’s media landscape is rich, diverse and contradictory. Yet the risks to independent journalism are real, and show no signs of abating.

It would be an understatement to say this has been a difficult year for journalists in the subcontinent. In Pakistan at least a dozen media professionals have died in terrorist attacks throughout the country. At least one journalist, Vijay Pratap Singh, has died in India as a result of similar violence.

Equally deadly has been the fate of the few journalists in Sri Lanka brave enough to challenge the government’s narrative of a clean and effective war against the erstwhile Tamil Tigers. Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was critical of the Rajapaksa government, was shot dead after numerous run-ins with authorities over his reportage.

At its core, all these instances go to one of the great paradoxes of the subcontinent. Namely, the fact that while life is often harsh and difficult, there are also tremendous freedoms and privileges for those lucky and smart enough to avoid certain red lines.

The mechanics and specifics of those red lines may vary from country to country, but in all of them one common ingredient is exposing the failings of the national security establishment. After the author and activist Arundhati Roy criticised Indian oppression in Jammu and Kashmir, stating that the restive region has never been an integral part of India, she was threatened with prosecution for sedition.

Journalists have been heavily restricted from independently reporting India’s continued crackdown on Kashmiri independence protests. Only a limited number of local journalists were issued curfew passes at the height of the crackdown in July and August, and a BBC Urdu service reporter was beaten by police as he tried to collect his curfew pass.

For journalists in Pakistan, the consequences can be even more dire. This month journalist and activist Abdul Hameed Hayatan was found dead after going missing in the province of Balochistan in October. His death has been widely blamed on Pakistan’s security forces – like so many others in the province, where a conflict involving the state and several different insurgent groups has been characterised by targeted killings, abductions and extrajudicial killings.

More journalists have been killed, kidnapped or attacked in conflict-ridden Balochistan and the Pashtun tribal areas than in any other part of Pakistan. Elements of the Pakistan Taliban network and other insurgent groups have been blamed for most of these deaths.

Yet it isn’t only on the frontlines that journalists face abuse. On the evening of 4 September, the investigative reporter Umar Cheema was kidnapped by what appeared to be a police patrol while driving home in Islamabad. “They stripped me naked and tortured me,” he recalled. Tied upside down, Cheema was badly beaten and had his eyebrows, moustache and hair shaved in a six-hour ordeal after which he was thrown on to a highway some 125 kilometres from his home in Islamabad.

Cheema quickly realised his captors were in fact part of Pakistan’s secretive intelligence agencies. What got him into hot water was not reportage on the army’s atrocities or its involvement in military operations with the US, but its incompetence in prosecuting persons accused of killing army personnel, including the chief suspect in the assassination of General Mushtaq Baig, the most senior army officer killed by militants so far. Cheema also reported on doubts faced by some of the elite army commandos who were to partake in the Islamabad Red Mosque siege of 2007. Two commandos were court-martialed and imprisoned for calling for a political settlement of the siege.

In the past, criticising the civilian government could have deadly consequences. And, to be sure, government-aligned political activists have recently attacked journalists they considered hostile to them. But journalists pay a heavier price for criticising the military establishment.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists no one has been prosecuted for murdering a journalist in Pakistan except in the Daniel Pearl case. Civilian authorities set up a judicial commission to investigate Cheema’s abduction, but it appears to be languishing and there have been no significant investigations of army authorities.

“We are not in the habit of writing [critical things] about the army,” Cheema says, adding that while freedom of expression is very important, restrictions on free expression stifle innovation and creative thinking – the very things Pakistan needs at a time when it is rocked by poverty, insurgency and religious intolerance. People in Pakistan are afraid to criticise the “sacred cows” of the state, he adds, like highlighting the shortcomings of the army or criticising mainstream religious groups for ignoring homegrown militancy.

“All the while,” he says, “the US and Britain continue to push Pakistan to escalate the war against Islamist militancy with no sense of irony. But if we do not support those Pakistanis who honestly seek to keep our military accountable, what hope is there that our war will create a more democratic society in Pakistan?”

[This article was published in The Guardian on Sunday November 28, 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/nov/28/south-asia-independent-journalism-risk]

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]

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 steadily on the rise, and increasing numbers of people suffering from acute diarrhoea, respiratory infections and skin diseases are being reported. Polio among children is also on the increase despite a massive immunization campaign.

Speakers

• HE Fauzia Nasreen - High Commissioner of Pakistan

  
  Her Excellency Ms Fauzia Nasreen has been with the Foreign Service of Pakistan since 1973. Before commencing her post in Australia, Ms Nasreen served as Director-General of the Foreign Services Academy ((2007-09) and was Ambassador to Poland (2002-06) and Ambassador to Nepal (1999-2002). Prior to that she undertook diplomatic assignments in Tehran, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Rome. Ms Nasreen holds a Masters in English Literature and was a Visiting Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University in 1988-89.

• Mustafa Qadri - Freelance Journalist

  
  Mustafa Qadri is based in Pakistan where he writes for international newspapers, journals and web-based news outlets. He is a regular columnist for The Guardian (UK) and correspondent for The Diplomat, Australia’s only dedicated commercial foreign affairs ezine. He can regularly be heard on Radio National and is published in the Los Angeles Times, The Australian, The Age, and The National newspapers. Mustafa’s work can also be read on Reuters AlertNet and World Politics Review and he is a regular Pakistan consultant for Human Rights Watch, School of Oriental & African Studies (London), and Oxford Analytica. He was formerly a lawyer specialising in public international law and worked with Australia’s Attorney-General’s Department before undertaking two years research at University College, London.

• Dr Nadeem Mailk - Development Studies Program Coordinator, The University of Melbourne

  
  Dr Nadeem Malik is a development expert with 20 years of work experience in the field. His major areas of specialization are Third World development, globalization and development, gender and development, governance, civil society and the state, decentralization or local governance, project and program management and monitoring and evaluation of development projects. He is also interested in the anthropology of development and development and social theory, and has published on Pakistani politics, economics and development, and the Pakistani diaspora in Australia. His most recent book is Citizens and Government in Pakistan: the analysis of people’s voices (2009).

  Moderated by Linda Mottram from Radio Australia

PART II

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 Farzana Shaikh. Each speaker given 7 minutes to discuss. Followed by 40-60 minutes of audience questions.

Speakers:

Mustafa Qadri, Journalist, The Guardian, Radio Australia, The Diplomat
Qatrina Hussain, Director, Current Affairs, Express News
Beena Sarwar, Journalist, The News International; India-Pakistan peace activist
Rahimullah Yusufzai, Executive Editor, Peshawar, The News