On the boundary between Pakistan-controlled Peshawar and insurgency-hit regions of the tribal areas, the global fight against the Taliban has turned former neighbours in this once sleepy rural setting into mortal enemies.

On March 9, a powerful human bomb exploded during a funeral procession outside Adezai, a village on the outskirts of Peshawar, capital of Pakistan’s northwest frontier; 37 people were killed, and another 100 injured. The blast was so powerful that many of the victims couldn’t be identified. Sandals, shredded bits of clothing and some human remains were scattered around the blast site like confetti, making it impossible to provide a speedy burial for the victims in keeping with Muslim tradition.

Although no one has claimed responsibility for the blast, there are strong suspicions that the Pakistani Taliban is involved. The target, after all, was the funeral of the wife of a senior anti-Taliban leader from Adezai. Adezai is literally the final settled outpost of Peshawar before the rugged, dusty terrain of Khyber Agency, the ancient gateway to Afghanistan that has played host to a myriad of conquerors from Alexander the Great to US and NATO forces. The famed Khyber Pass snakes across the landscape, and is the single largest supply route for troops in Afghanistan, including over 130,000 international troops.

Once a quiet little hamlet, Adezai now looks more like a medieval fortress, a veritable Alamo looking out on a sparse wilderness leading to tribal and semi-autonomous regions where control fluctuates between Pakistan and the Taliban. Dusty roads are lined with mud brick buildings, with only the occasional oasis of green fields dotting the landscape, surrounded by greyish-blue skies.

Entering this part of Pakistan requires discreet travel in the company of locals, a point made abundantly clear by the damaged buildings that line the road leading into Adezai. Two homes we passed on the edge of the village were blown up by the Taliban the previous night. Only a few months earlier, the village’s only girls’ school was destroyed by a suspected remote-controlled bomb.

As we enter the centre of the village, the powerful whirl of an Army helicopter blares out from above as it heads off on an anti-Taliban operation on the border with Afghanistan. Surrounding us are imposing mud walls that have clearly been peppered with machine gun fire.

A posse of local men, all armed to the teeth, are waiting to greet us. ‘I think that our village is a battlefield,’ says Irshad a tall, handsome young man with more than a passing resemblance to Errol Flynn. He says he left his job as a driver for a luxury hotel in Dubai to defend his home from the almost nightly raids that have seen scores kidnapped or killed. This is a rural society and most of those living here are farmers. But over the past three years, they’ve formed a militia, or lashkar, to defend Adezai against rival tribes in neighbouring Khyber tribal agency and Dera Dum Khel, which are aligned with the Taliban.

I ask what would happen if one of the residents of the village travelled to a neighbouring area, just ten minutes away by car. ‘They’ll kill us, it’s very simple,’ Irshad says. And if the men of Adezai capture one of their enemies? ‘We will kill them because they are our enemies, and the enemies of our country,’ he adds.

Local rivalries aside, it’s no exaggeration to say losing Adezai would result in an uptick in terrorism in Peshawar and the rest of Pakistan. ‘We feel we’ve saved Peshawar, because we are on the frontline,’ village chief Dilawar Khan says confidently as we survey the region from a tower looking out over the horizon. But he also tells me that Adezai receives little support from the Army or government authorities, and he has threatened to disband the lashkar if increased support – mostly money, fuel and ammunition – isn’t forthcoming.

This may have something to do with the fact that Adezai is aligned with the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid. Once the favoured political party of then-President Pervez Musharraf, the PML-Q is now in opposition, and Khan claims rival villages aligned with the Taliban are also getting support from local legislators. A smartly dressed, clean shaven man in his mid-forties, Dilawar answers my questions in between constant phone calls that are dispatched almost as quickly on a Bluetooth headset that seems surgically attached to his ear.

‘The Taliban fire rockets at us from those hills,’ he says, pointing out two mound-like hills that divide the farmlands of Adezai from the dusty plains of the tribal areas beyond. ‘If the village falls,’ an elder adds, ‘the Taliban would be free to infiltrate into urban Peshawar.’

That may sound outlandish, and perhaps the threat is exaggerated, but Adezai lays an easy 30-minute drive outside Peshawar. Although this year and last have both been relatively quiet in Pakistan’s frontier capital, it’s still surrounded by regions gripped by insurgency. According to police officials, the threat of suicide and remote-controlled bombs is an everyday concern in Peshawar, even during the cold season when hostilities traditionally ease off. Scores have died in Peshawar this winter in the sporadic attacks.

Here in Adezai, meanwhile, the security situation means that all the able-bodied men in the village must take turns patrolling the perimeter in the darkest, coldest hours of the night. Compounding the danger is the fact that their enemies are no strangers to them.

‘Yes, we know quite a few Taliban,’ says Hafiz Sajid Raza, a young Islamic scholar with a flowing henna-red beard and piercing blue eyes. Once a renowned local athlete, he’s one of Adezai’s best fighters. ‘Some of the Taliban came from our village, and I know most of the militants from neighbouring villages because I was involved in local elections and in sporting tournaments from before the fighting,’ he says. Some, like the feared Taliban commander Qari Ayub, used to teach in the local school.

‘People used to be very scared of the Taliban, that’s why they joined them,’ Hafiz Raza explains. I ask if he’s ever killed a Taliban. Yes, he answers casually, ‘the man who killed my father in Karachi, he was Taliban. After killing my father he called to tell me. He said “you must be very sad now because he’s dead.”’

In retaliation, Hafiz Raza and a few others from Adezai tracked down the brother of his father’s killer, who he says was also involved with the Taliban, to the neighbouring region of Bora. ‘I rang him (his father’s killer) to say I had captured his brother,’ he says. ‘I told him that if you are so brave and don’t fear death, come and rescue him.’

But the Taliban didn’t come to rescue their compatriot, so the men of Adezai shot him in the head. ‘We aren’t cruel, we didn’t mistreat or torture him, it was a quick death,’ Hafiz Raza tells me.

According to Pashtun tradition, a family must avenge the murder of their kin, a deadly obligation that has made it impossible for people here to escape the cycle of violence that sees endless skirmishes during the winter heat up along with the temperature into full blown warfare every summer. Judging from yesterday’s devastating suicide bombing targeting the people of Adezai, that could mean this will be a particularly bloody year.

Although Adezai technically isn’t part of the tribal areas, the ethnic Pashtuns here still adhere to the Pakhtunwali, an ancient tribal code that has governed relations within and between different tribes for centuries. The sudden US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and the influx of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters into Pakistan’s tribal areas that followed it, may have disrupted much of the traditional Pashtun tribal structure. But in many ways, the current conflict is merely the latest in a long line of inter-tribe disputes that have engulfed foreign empires from the British to the Mughals, and now Pakistan.

As the call to prayer rings out at dusk, dark begins to fall on the village. In the hujra, something of a community safe house in the heart of Adezai village, young men gather to play cards and watch Bollywood films as they wait to begin their shift in the night patrols. Eventually, just after midnight, it’s my turn to go on patrol with Irshad, Hafiz Raza and a few other men.

Outside the hujra, a fine mist hovers close to the ground. The almost total silence is broken only by the rhythmic grinding of the gravelly earth under our sandals as we walk in single file, and the occasional piercing sound of distant gunfire. We trudge around the village through narrow streets and alleyways flanked by the mud boundary walls that separate the different family estates of Adezai.

We travel in almost total darkness so as not to give Taliban snipers an easy target, but the black of night presents problems of its own – at least for me, as I struggle to keep up with the lashkar. After each kilometre or so, we reach a clearing. The most exposed parts of Adezai, these areas are guarded all night by men who will later work the adjoining fields. ‘I’ll stand here until 5am,’ says Noor Malik. ‘Every night.’

After traversing the village and spending time with several night patrols, we return to the hujra in the early hours of the morning. The sun is slowly rising and another night draws to a close. Thankfully, this night has passed with few disruptions. But it’s only a matter of time before the fighting begins again. Two days after I left Adezai, the Taliban again bombed the girls’ school. Like the deadly bombing that killed and maimed so many that same month, it’s a reminder that for the people of Adezai, this conflict isn’t some vague, distant war, but an everyday struggle for survival.

Mustafa Qadri is a Pakistan-based journalist.

http://the-diplomat.com/2011/03/18/when-two-tribes-go-to-war/

By Mustafa Qadri

It has been a relatively quiet winter in Peshawar with few bombings. There’s a sense that life is slowly returning to normal. But take a short drive north of the city and the situation is quite different.

The village of Adezai marks the boundary between Peshawar city and the tribal areas and is under constant attack from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or the Pakistan Taliban Movement.

Once a quiet little hamlet, Adezai now looks more like a medieval fortress, a veritable Alamo looking out towards the Khyber Pass and regions under Taliban control. A point not lost on Lashkar member Irshad who takes me up a tower that looks like it could very well be part of a medieval castle.

“I think that our village is a battlefield,” Irshad said. “We are fighting for our village and everyone is trying their best. Inshallah Taliban is finished quickly, because before Taliban was coming from these front two mountains. So we started firing from this gun and from every home. This two, three hundred home, from all home they are firing, they [Taliban] run away from here. They are not doing anything.”

The night before suspected Taliban militants blew up two homes on the outskirts of Adezai. Only a few months earlier the local girls’ school was also blown up.

The situation has forced the men of Adezai, mostly farmers and day labourers, to become soldiers. Irshad and others even left their jobs overseas to defend their homes.

“We are thinking that we have saved Peshawar from destruction because we are in the frontline,” Irshad said. “If you see in Matani, Sarakhoa that is near Peshawar, they have no Taliban. Because of us, because we are in the frontline.

As we talk, the hum of an Army helicopter is heard from above — heading off on an operation against the Taliban in Khyber tribal agency.

Mustafa Qadri: What would happen to you if you went to one of the neighbouring tribal areas?
Irshad: Our neighbouring areas are Taliban.
Mustafa Qadri: What would they do to you?
Irshad: They will kill us. If we go there in Dera Dum Khel they will kill us. It is very simple.
Mustafa Qadri: And if you capture one of them?
Irshad: Yeah we kill them because they are the enemies of Islam, they are enemies of our country, they are enemies of us.
Mustafa Qadri: It is a stark equation – kill or be killed – made ever more stark by the fact that the men of Adezai personally know many of the people who fight with the Taliban, as lashkar member Hafiz Sajid Raza explains.

“Yes we still know quite a few Taliban, some came from our village and those from outside our village I know about 80 percent because I was involved in local elections and in sporting tournaments from before the fighting, volleyball and cricket, you get to know people better,” Hafiz said. “There’s one man called Qari Ayub, he’s also a school teacher. He used to come to our school here frequently when I was a student, and at volleyball tournaments. Now he’s a Taliban commander.”

Mustafa Qadri: Have you ever killed any Taliban?
Hafiz: Yes, the Taliban who killed my father in Karachi. We captured his brother, who is also involved in the Taliban, and we killed him. Just one bullet to the head and he was dead.

In the afternoon, Lashkar members take me to a hilltop used by the Taliban to fire rockets at the village.

Mustafa Qadri: It’s such a beautiful landscape. It’s just green and sand colour. And there’s a bit of a dust, a mist on the horizon. It looks like you’re a few hundred years ago in the past. And only 20 minutes drive away from Peshawar city.
Irshad: This is a point they are coming from this side. We are doing duty every night here. That is a danger point because above this point is another village. They have no control nothing.

Irshad: Mustafa you see this one? It is rocket launcher is fired from our hujra. At night Taliban is coming to this mountain so we firing from our hujra and we targeted this space.
Mustafa Qadri: There’s a big, big hole in the ground!
Irshad: Yes this is big, big hole because this is rocket launcher.
Mustafa Qadri: The call to prayer rings out at dusk and night falls on the village … young men gather in the hujra, something of a community safe house at the heart of Adezai village, waiting for their turn in the night patrols.

Eventually, Irshad, tells me it is time to go.

It’s the dead of night right now. It’s about 11 if not 12 a.m. night. This is the time when the Taliban strike. We’ve just left the hujra which is the main meeting place in the village. We’re going to be scoping the entire village. You can see these big walls around. It’s like we’re basically about to patrol the edges of the castle. We’re really on the frontline here.

“You can see that every night people are doing duty from different, different homes,” Irshad said.

While on patrol I ask some of the lashkar members looking out for possible Taliban attacks what their guard duty entails. I ask Hafiz Sajid Raza, whom we met earlier, how often they do these patrols.

Mustafa Qadri: How often do you do this?
Hafiz: Every night, daily, two or three guys do a circuit around the village, check on the patrols. If there’s an emergency, they gather all the young men.
Mustafa Qadri: And how long have you been doing this?
Hafiz: It’s been around three years now, every night we go on patrol until at least 2 in the morning.

Another Lashkar member he is out on patrol until even later.

Lashkar member: Every night I am on duty until five in the morning.
Mustafa Qadri: Why?
Lashkar member: We are fighting against the Taliban to stop their atrocities.

Another night, another night patrol passes. This time thankfully with few disruptions.

But it is only a matter of time before the fighting commences again. Two days after I left Adezai, the Taliban again bombed the girls’ school that had already been damaged by an earlier attack.

A stark reminder that for the people of Adezai, this conflict is not a distant war but an everyday matter of survival.

[This report was first broadcast by Public Radio International (the global network of US National Public Radio) on March 10, 2011.

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,
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 September 2010 13.00 BST

Given all the tensions of recent weeks, it is perhaps no surprise that Pakistan’s rumour mill is filled with talk of yet another military coup. This time, however, the multiple crises may be too much for even the army to chew.

What began in the same way as so many rumours in Pakistan do – with numerous curt, anonymous emails, text messages and iftar dinner conversations – snowballed into something of a storm. It may have been just a bit of extra masala for the evening news, but it appeared that Pakistan was heading for yet another military takeover.

With floods having uprooted around a tenth of the population and devastated Pakistan’s vital agricultural sector, which accounts for around 70% of the country’s exports, it seemed a logical conclusion. So much so that Altaf Hussain, the none-too-shy leader of the Urdu community’s Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) political party, even went so far as to invite the army to declare martial law.

The army didn’t take the bait, although London-based Hussain may have caused a state of emergency of his own with political opponents, eager to capitalise on the gaffe, calling for him to be charged with treason. Consider then the dilemma for the ruling Pakistan Peoples party, the dominant party in a federal coalition government that includes the MQM.

There is no doubt that civilian leaders are struggling with events in the country. Along with the floods there has been an upsurge in bombings targeting Pakistan’s Shia Muslim minority in Lahore, Karachi and Quetta. According to the ruling Awami National party in Khyber Pakhtunkwha province, every one of its sitting MPs has received death threats, while a string of fresh bombings has claimed 30 lives in the tribal areas. The attacks appear to have targeted influential local tribal leaders considered rivals of the Pakistan Taliban insurgency.

In the neighbouring, restive province of Balochistan, itself engulfed byanother insurgency, the government of President Zardari has faced further humiliation. A day after announcing a “Swat-style” military operation in the province outside the Balochistan chief minister’s office on Wednesday, federal interior minister Rehman Malik was forced to back down and promised instead a limited military offensive that would respect “the legitimate demands” of the ethnic Baloch community. Part of the proposal included the devolution of authority for the paramilitary Frontier Corp, widely despised by ethnic Baloch, to the provincial government. But even that was not enough for the Balochistan government, which moved quickly to quash any talk of military operations.

And with good reason. On Thursday, a bombing at the provincial finance minister’s residence claimed three lives, although the minister himself was unharmed. That followed a brazen bombing of a Shia demonstrationin Quetta on Monday that left up to 70 dead.

With such insecurity it seems logical for the army to step in. But with memories of the last military dictator, former President Pervez Musharraf, still fresh in the mind, public sentiment might not look too kindly on a coup.

That is especially so now, given the extreme deprivations faced by those made homeless by the floods. On Wednesday, a group of people camped in Karachi turned into an angry mob decrying the lack of food, water and other humanitarian necessities. Their cries come at a time when it is becoming increasingly apparent that sections of the political and feudal class, who often come from the same families, have been busy helping themselves while not-so-influential citizens continue to wait for assistance.

The most damning allegation is that some rich landowners even diverted the water in parts of interior Sindh and Punjab, exacerbating the floods in other regions, especially Balochistan. Be that as it may, the floods have been a monumental obstacle that has crudely and starkly divided Pakistan’s society between the few haves and many have-nots.

“In tough times, the Pakistan army is with you,” is emblazoned on supplies delivered by the army to flood victims. As dedicated humanitarian workers from Pakistan’s military, civil society and international NGOs sift through this human tragedy, the army top brass appears happy to sit back and accrue enormous goodwill for its visible and important role in the humanitarian effort.

Now is perhaps the worst time for any politician to be in government. If the army were to mount a takeover at this juncture it would quickly see the public’s goodwill evaporate. That makes a return to military rule unlikely. But with future events in this country always hard to predict, rumours of a coup are certain to continue.

[This article first appeared in The Guardian on Friday September 10, 2010: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/10/pakistan-military-coup-rumours]

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.

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.

This is one of several signs that the military establishment has changed under his stewardship. His promise not to involve the armed forces in public politics as Pervez Musharraf had in the past was borne out by the army’s refusal to support President Asif Ali Zardari’s failed bid to oust Iftikhar Chaudhry, the independent-minded Chief Justice.

Their counter-insurgency capacity has increased from virtual non-existence in 2004 when a new `Pakistan Taliban’ compelled the state to sign a string of ceasefires in the tribal areas to an effective force that has resulted in the capture of important Taliban strongholds along the tribal frontier with Afghanistan.

The difference to years past when military planners heavily patronised the Taliban, says Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council, “is that Pakistan is now facing the spectre of (terrorism by) Taliban groups at home. The immediate enemy is internal now, not India.” In the past two years, about 5000 civilians and 1700 soldiers have been killed.

After Pakistan was compelled to make enemies of the Taliban in 2001, military operations in the lawless frontier with Afghanistan were initially unpopular. Most viewed them as a war pitting fellow Pakistanis and Muslims against each other at the behest of the US. That all began to change as army-led forces showed the resolve to achieve military victory in the Swat valley and adjacent tribal areas. As ordinary Pakistanis were increasingly targeted in the terrorism and security forces took significant casualties, authorities and the media were successful in branding this as Pakistan’s war.

Continued US pressure, tied more than ever to the delivery of billions in civil and military aid, has also played a role. Since last month, Pakistan’s intelligence agencies have facilitated the capture of about half of the senior Afghan Taliban leadership.

These captures have been praised by Washington. But questions remain. How were these senior leaders captured and why now? And will it attempt to eliminate Islamist militants targeting India and Iran, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jundullah, with the same vigour and intent?

These unanswered questions point to the difficult road ahead. Even now, Pakistan’s security establishment feels it must tread a careful line between a belligerent US and the reality that it can’t exert its influence over the entire tribal areas through force alone.

There is a dark side to the military operations, too. In Swat, government rehabilitation efforts have been admirable but in other areas, such as Bajaur and the Waziristans, they have been poor. Security forces have also been implicated in atrocities including the kidnapping and murder of perceived Taliban sympathisers and indiscriminate bombardments that have killed thousands and displaced millions.

Obsessions over India also remain a problem. Although troop levels in the Kashmir region have slightly decreased and both countries have formally recommenced dialogue, observers in Islamabad remain alarmed by India’s growing influence in Afghanistan. India spent close to $US40bn on its armed forces last year, eight times as much Pakistan.

That imbalance means Pakistan cannot totally divorce itself from the Taliban if it is perceived as the only viable ally against Indian influence in Afghanistan once US-led forces leave. It is unclear how these contradictions will resolve themselves. Military success can only provide immediate stability. Maintaining it will require political leadership.

Mustafa Qadri is a journalist based in Pakistan

[This article appeared in The Australian newspaper on Monday March 8, 2010. Url: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/my-enemys-enemy-no-longer-a-friend/story-e6frg6ux-1225837937177]

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