Mustafa Qadri

Not yet, says Mustafa Qadri. But it’s the Kashmir issue, not terrorism or Afghanistan, that’s still the biggest bar to a breakthrough. 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, [...]

[Read more →]

With the Indian and Pakistani governments at loggerheads, informal relationships may be the subcontinent’s key to peace

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.

[Read more →]

FOR well on three decades, Pakistan’s military establishment has been sympathetic to Islamist militancy, causing many to doubt its bona fides in the war against the Taliban, now in its ninth year.

But recent developments in this war suggest that military planners have finally realised the risks of this most dangerous of relationships. Army chief Ashfaq Kayani recently noted that a Taliban society at home and in Afghanistan was not in Pakistan’s interests. In the past, Pakistan supported the Taliban in Afghanistan and its own tribal areas in a quest to achieve “strategic depth” against rival India. Now, Kayani concedes, a stable and friendly Afghanistan is sufficient strategic depth for Pakistan.

[Read more →]

General Ashfaq Kayani is no Musharraf and under his leadership the military is showing welcome signs of a break with the past

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.

[Read more →]

Today I was interviewed by Phillip Adams on Radio National Australia about Pakistan’s changing relationship with the Taliban. You can listen and download the interview here.

[Read more →]

With the recent capture of three high profile Taliban commanders, is Pakistan’s relationship to the insurgency changing, asks Mustafa Qadri

In what appears to be a major shift in the war against the Taliban, a joint raid by Pakistani and American security forces has captured the insurgents’ most senior military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the Pakistani port city of Karachi.

[Read more →]

With the capture or murder of senior leaders and with massive US-led operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it appears the Taliban’s days are numbered.

The most spectacular evidence apparently in support of this claim is the capture last week of the senior most military commander of Taliban forces in Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Only weeks earlier, Pakistan authorities revealed that Hakeemullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistan Taliban, succumbed to injuries from a US drone strike in the tribal areas.

[Read more →]

As US-led forces engage in a major offensive in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, commentators in Pakistan are still taking stock of the London conference and what it could mean for the role their country plays in their neighbour’s stability. Mustafa Qadri reports that many believe the road to such stability and security will inevitably run through Pakistan–and to the Taliban.

[Read more →]

Faced with terrorism, a flagging economy and a raft of potential lawsuits, how long can Pakistan’s president survive?

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.

[Read more →]

Barack Obama’s surge in Afghanistan worries Pakistan – when the US leaves, it will still have to deal with the Taliban

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 December 2009 16:00 GMT

There is more to President Obama’s policy shift in central Asia than more boots in Afghanistan. For Pakistan it represents an escalation of US drone strikes in the tribal areas and continued pressure on its army to immediately engage the Taliban and al-Qaida despite the practical complexities of the task.

The fundamental problem for Pakistan is that Obama’s acceleration of the war against the Taliban has been calculated largely on the basis of domestic US political demands and not those of the region, let alone Pakistan. Already under intense pressure at home from the financial crisis and the unpopularity of the US presence in Afghanistan, Obama must deliver some semblance of victory before he bids for a second term as commander-in-chief in 2012.

[Read more →]

Amid daily suicide attacks, the Pakistan Army is closing in on Taliban strongholds — and this time they seem to have the support of the Pakistani people, reports Mustafa Qadri from Islamabad

Pakistan’s once sleepy capital Islamabad has been transformed into something of a fortress, with checkpoints, cement barriers and police dotting the tree-lined streets. There is no doubt about it: Pakistan is at war, and the signs are everywhere. As of last week, the police alone say they have prevented 67 individuals from carrying out suicide attacks, most recently in a dramatic confrontation at a barricade in Islamabad.

[Read more →]

The Diplomat’s Pakistan correspondent, Mustafa Qadri, meets refugees from the conflict in Pakistan’s Swat Valley and finds anger, trepidation and hope as they return home after this summer’s counter-Taliban military offensive.

Travelling along the road leading to the Swat valley is a memorable experience. As the narrow dual carriageway snakes around impossibly steep mountain ranges, the breathtaking vista of snow-capped peaks come into view as they loom over an emerald green valley pierced by the Swat River. It looks too perfect to be natural.

‘The beauty of Swat is unmatched in the world,’ says Ashraf, a Swati villager and journalist who agreed to take me to the region. When I ask if anyone maintains the near perfectly manicured grasslands and pine forests he laughs and shakes his head. Described in local poetry as heaven on earth, for centuries Swat has been home to saints and soothsayers–first those hailing from Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and in more recent centuries mystical Sufi Islam.

[Read more →]

The US has promised Pakistan $7.5bn of aid over five years – if it agrees to oversight of its most sensitive security issues

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 October 2009 20:00 BST

You would think that the citizens of a developing country promised $7.5bn over five years would be dancing in the streets. Instead, last week’s approval of the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, formerly the Kerry-Lugar bill, by Congress met with widespread howls of condemnation in Pakistan.

[Read more →]

In the Pakistani army’s offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan, the line between victims and villains remains unclear

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 October 2009 16.30 BST

The Pakistan army’s invasion of the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan this week brings few surprises. For years observers in Washington and Brussels have been pressing for an assault on this scale. The army says its aims in Operation Rah-e-Nijat (“Road out of Misery”) are to finally eliminate the main sanctuary for the Taliban and al-Qaida in Pakistan and, according to army chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the foreign and local “elements” that given them succour.

[Read more →]

Suicide attacks have become so common in Pakistan that they often don’t even make the Western press. Mustafa Qadri meets the father of a suicide bomber in the country’s North West Frontier Province

Darra Adam Khel, just south of Peshawar in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, has always been a dangerous transit zone between Afghanistan, Peshawar, and the southern most regions of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Until recently it was also part of the Taliban heartland.

[Read more →]

Last month’s attack on a Pakistani Christian community by a mob of Sunni Muslims is a worrying development in a country that purports to fight extremism, writes Mustafa Qadri

“Make mincemeat of the Christians” blared the mosque loudspeakers.

This was not the Taliban speaking, nor was it in the frontier of Pakistan along the Afghan border. The setting was the Christian Colony of Gojra in rural Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and powerful province.

[Read more →]

Communal stability is at risk as the rollout of Zia ul-Haq’s Islamisation continues unabated

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 August 2009 10:00 BST

In decades past, the town mullahs decried the use of megaphones during the call to prayer. Now they have embraced the technology in Pakistan. In every city the loud blare of the muezzin echoes throughout the streets, although they rarely call out in unison. For centuries Muslims have bickered over prayer times, and much else.

[Read more →]

India was once a bulwark against cold war militarism – but now, under US influence, it is buying weapons at an alarming rate

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk Saturday 8 August 2009 15.00 BST

“We both seek a more secure world for our citizens,” wrote US secretary of state Hillary Clinton on the eve of her recent visit to India last month.

[Read more →]

Bring peace to the troubled frontier

Grassroots attempts to foster peace in Pakistan provide hope for communities torn apart by war with the Taliban

· Mustafa Qadri

· guardian.co.uk, Saturday 25 July 2009 16.00 BST

There has been much soul-searching in Pakistan of late, and with good reason. Although the Army claims to have largely pushed the Taliban out of the Swat Valley, the most developed part of the country yet infiltrated by the insurgents, the war continues in all of its brutality and uncertainty.

Even in Swat it is unclear whether the Taliban are really vanquished. The government may have told the millions made homeless by this conflict that it is safe to return, but the army’s inability to eliminate key Swat Taliban leaders and the existence of huge pockets of remote mountainous terrain incapable of ever being properly secured make the possibility of a Taliban return a real threat…

[Read more →]

A snapshot of life in Pakistan’s refugee camps

Updated July 16, 2009 11:48:55

Although the fighting in Pakistan’s Swat valley has ended and some refugees have started to head home, many remain wary of returning.

An estimated 2 million fled the conflict between Pakistani troops and the Taliban, and some ended up at a displaced person camp two hours north of the capital Islamabad.

Presenter: Mustafa Qadri
Speakers: Purmanari, displaced person; Mohammad Yahya, a former town mayor; Ziauddin Yousufzai, School teacher; Mannu, school student

[Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]

The Battle Has Only Just Begun

Thanks to massive army operations in the Swat valley, Pakistan’s Taliban movement is in retreat for the first time, writes Mustafa Qadri

Ever since Nek Mohammad began the first insurgency from Waziristan in 2003, the loose confederation of warlords known as the Pakistan Taliban Movement have either advanced or obtained de facto government recognition in large parts of Pakistan’s Pakhtun tribal areas. Before the current Pakistan Army operations in the Swat valley, one analyst estimated that the Taliban had a presence in over 10 per cent of the country.

[Read more →]

Isolating the Taliban

Violence in Pakistan can only be tackled if the state listens to devastated communities and recognises the Taliban threat

Mustafa Qadri

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 May 2009 18.30 BST

It was really only a matter of time before we would see this. A day after a bomb ripped through central Lahore, three explosions rocked Peshawar – two at the famous storytellers’ market, and another near the city’s railway station, destroying significant amounts of property, lives and livelihoods. It is too early to know what motivated these latest attacks in Peshawar. Like so much of the North-West Frontier Province, however, Peshawar businesses, particularly book music shops and women’s clothing stores, have been heavily hit, often after being told to shut for being unIslamic.

[Read more →]

A 10,000-strong dedicated army unit reportedly guards the nuclear weapons sites, which are dispersed throughout secure parts of Pakistan. And although political instability has plagued the country for decades, the military has been its steely backbone.

[Read more →]

Pakistan is not an ally or an enemy—it’s not coherent enough to be either. There is a free judiciary and a free press, but the there’s no civilian control of the army, especially the intelligence services, which have been backing the bad guys.

[Read more →]

My latest report for The Guardian is on the Pakistan army’s inability to defend Pakistan:

Pakistan’s army: as inept as it is corrupt

The answer to why Pakistan’s mighty army seems impotent against Taliban insurgents is that it is more mafia than military

Mustafa Qadri

No institution dominates Pakistan like its army. The armed forces account for 20% of Pakistan’s national budget, totalling $5bn last year according to official statistics. But the actual figure, already staggering for a country with high levels of illiteracy and malnutrition, is likely to be much higher. The army has been practically unaccountable since the very foundation of the country – last year’s figures were the first it has publicly released since 1965.

[Read more →]

My column for newmatilda.com this week is on the inherent failings of the Pakistan Army that make fighting the Taliban more difficult:

Is Pakistan’s Army a paper tiger?

They’ve huffed and they’ve puffed but they can’t blow the Taliban down. Why not, asks Mustafa Qadri

The Army is the most powerful force in Pakistan. So why how has a rural insurgency armed with basic weapons managed to overrun so much of the country? That is the question that Pakistanis, as well as many in the international community, are now asking.

[Read more →]

The Pakistan Army intensified its operation Tuesday against militants in the Lower Dir district in the country’s northwest. The operation, which began on Sunday, has already claimed the lives of 50 militants and 13 security forces. In response, the Pakistani Taliban have suspended their talks with the government.

[Read more →]

We’re now seeing a subtle, yet seismic, shift in the War on Terror narrative in Western capitals. The host of a recent CNN discussion on ‘Islamism’ tried to distinguish al-Qaeda from the Taliban, basically arguing that as rigidly conservative and chauvinist as the Taliban are, they are not, like al-Qaeda, interested in open conflict with non-Muslim societies and instead want to establish a ‘true Islamic state’.

[Read more →]

Just back from a visit to Pakistan, Sen. John Kerry says the Obama administration’s plan for that volatile country, rolled out last month with great fanfare, “is not a real strategy.”

[Read more →]

Kudos to Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani for honouring his repeated pledge, unlike his four predecessors, to keep the Army out of politics despite having been persuaded by a section of the establishment to pack up the present political dispensation and take over the reins of power at the time [...]

[Read more →]

Maj Gen Tariq Khan, the commander of military operations in five of Pakistan’s seven tribal agencies, said his paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) had driven extremists out of Bajaur, where Pakistani forces have waged a six-month long campaign.

[Read more →]

Admiral Mullen met Chief of the Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Kayani and Director General ISI Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha in Islamabad and told reporters travelling with him that he made it a point to meet his Pakistani counterpart whenever possible.

[Read more →]

“It’s a guerrilla war in a built-up area and forest, against a strongly held defence line held by people who are invisible…”

[Read more →]

The following piece, based on my extensive investigations, interviews and visits to a number of tribal regions in the North Western Frontier Province of Pakistan was published on Reuters’ AlertNet website today: Civilians suffer as Pakistan army targets Taliban 01 Oct 2008 15:55:00 GMT Written by: Mustafa Qadri Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for [...]

[Read more →]