Mustafa Qadri

Amid Pakistan’s general lawlessness, is it any wonder that cricketers have lost their way? Mustafa Qadri, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 August 2010 10.00 BST In Pakistan, cricket is a matter of special pride. Cricketers have for decades been ambassadors for a more positive image of the country and a source of hope and enjoyment for those [...]

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Mustafa Qadri August 22, 2010 GLOBAL solidarity with Pakistan and the soft power of humanitarian assistance can help deliver regional and global stability more effectively than any troop surge or drone strike. As the monsoon rains continue to pelt over Pakistan this weekend, however, the US has continued its controversial drone strikes on suspected militants [...]

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Mustafa Qadri Last Updated: August 16. 2010 9:00PM UAE / August 16. 2010 5:00PM GMT When the UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon described flood-ravaged Pakistan as the worst natural disaster he had ever seen, he was not merely describing the extent of the devastation. He was also underlining the extent to which the outside world [...]

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FEW will not have been moved by images of flood-ravaged Pakistan. Now in their second week, the floods are believed to have affected one-third of Pakistan’s land and just over one-tenth of the entire population. In a nation of more than 170 million, that is an astonishing number. According to the UN, the Pakistan floods [...]

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SECURITY | SOUTH ASIA | PAKISTAN August 9, 2010By Mustafa Qadri The WikiLeaks files won’t destroy ties between the two. The US decision to withdraw from Afghanistan has made sure of that. At first glance it appeared that the smoking gun had finally been found. That was certainly the initial impression when, on July 25, Internet whistleblower site [...]

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Zardari’s decision to visit Europe as Pakistan is ravaged by floods reflects the elite’s flagrant indifference to human suffering Mustafa Qadri, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 August 2010 10.00 BST Contempt for human life is at the heart of Pakistan’s miseries. Although the relationship between rich and poor is complex and far from monolithically asymmetrical, fundamental inequalities make [...]

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Cameron’s comments stoke a dangerous perception in Pakistan that its efforts in the war against the Taliban have been ignored Mustafa Qadri, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 July 2010 18.15 BST News of Cameron’s visit may have been sidelined by Pakistan’s worst-ever air disaster. Yet his speech in Bangalore, India, has fast become infamous here. It isn’t [...]

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China has been Pakistan’s firmest ally for 60 years – and it is to Beijing that Islamabad looks to counterbalance the influence of western largesse

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

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

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Pakistan must reverse its policy of sitting idle as Islamists blur the line between legitimate civil society and militancy

Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 July 2010 16.04 BST

After last night’s bombings in Lahore, an ancient sanctuary, which for centuries was a place for prayer and meditation, has been rudely introduced to Pakistan’s very modern conflict. Nothing short of a shift in national culture will rescue the soul of Pakistan’s Islamic traditions.

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Violence and uncertainty in Pakistan are driving increasing numbers of people to seek solace in superstition and prayer

Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 June 2010 07.59 BST

More and more Pakistanis are looking to prayer for protection in these troubled times. In the absence of credible, secular options, the fatalism this generates is a mixed blessing.

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ALTHOUGH the war in Afghanistan has come to prominence over the past decade, the neighbouring conflict in Kashmir has almost totally dropped off the radar. Despite the omission, Kashmir has more to do with the battle against the Taliban than most would suspect.

According to one report, failed New York bomber Faisal Shahzad was trained by Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Pakistan-based militant group blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, to fight in Kashmir before deciding to target the US instead. The veracity of that claim is unknown. But it is clear that events in Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably linked to Indian-controlled Kashmir.

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Pakistanis must challenge the routine prejudice that condemns an ancient transgender community to violence and ridicule

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 May 2010 18.30 BST

A great challenge for Pakistan has been crafting a sense of shared identity. But with much of the ensuing identity politics spiralling into sectarian and communal violence in recent decades, it isn’t surprising that minorities here face the worst forms of neglect and persecution.

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Misguided individuals such as Faisal Shahzad have obscured our rich heritage and reduced Pakistan to a ‘terror central’ stereotype

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 May 2010 19.00 BST

The well-worn maxim that all publicity is good publicity does not immediately spring to mind in Pakistan. But given the country’s frontline position in the fight against global terrorism, the involvement of yet another Pakistani in a plot to bomb a major international city will be a boon for everyone in favour of continued war in the “AfPak” region. For the rest of us, the alleged attempt by Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad to bomb New York’s Times Square has been a disaster.

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Ethnic and religious identity politics must not be allowed to sabotage Pakistan’s continued survival

Mustafa Qadri
The Guardian, Monday 26 April 2010 12:09 BST

Many an observer has written Pakistan’s obituary. Whether or not it was ever a good idea, Pakistan has managed to survive the past six decades. Although ethnic and religious identity politics has routinely threatened its dismemberment, there remains no credible option but to make Pakistan work.

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CONSTITUTIONAL changes dilute presidential powers but leave minorities in the cold.

Democratic politics is often unpredictable. In Pakistan, it tends to be a rollercoaster, regardless of whether an elected government is in power. Despite these tendencies, not to mention a universally loathed President, unabated war against the Taliban, a stagnant economy and severe energy shortages, a broad coalition of Pakistani politicians has, to rephrase Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, just made the “impossible” possible.

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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, [...]

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The former president has hinted at a return to Pakistani politics. Worryingly, it could be more than just a pipe dream.

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 February 2010 18.30 GMT

At no point do world leaders look more diminished than after leaving office, and Pakistan’s former president and military dictator Pervez Musharraf is no exception. So when he addressed a London audience this week, it was perhaps ironic that much of what he said was a reminder that little has changed in the way the west relates to the “AfPak” region.

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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.

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Antagonism between Sunni and Shia Muslims is entrenched, and there is little the state can do to quell the violence

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co. uk, Thursday 11 February 2010 18.00 GMT

Ordinary Pakistanis have fallen victim to a civil war largely orchestrated by forces well beyond their control. As the recent bombings targeting Shia Muslims in Karachi proves, the violence facing the country is more complex than extremists versus moderates. But how to unravel all the twists in this violent story?

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Negotiating with the Taliban is too little, too late – western allies need to fix the socioeconomic mess started long before 9/11

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 February 2010 08.00 GMT

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

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Getting out of Afghanistan won’t be cheap. Mustafa Qadri takes a look at the West’s new hope for a solution to its Afghanistan problem

After much anticipation, Western leaders have finally put some meat on their previously bare-bones proposals for stabilising Afghanistan over the next few years. The short story is that President Obama is sticking to the plan he outlined in his speech at West Point last year, whereby he intends to hand responsibility for the country’s governance and security back to the Afghan authorities over a five-year period starting from 2011.

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Already ravaged by high inflation, massive energy shortages and political turmoil, Pakistan has been shocked by bombings in most of its major cities, writes Mustafa Qadri

Pakistan is enduring the most brutal spate of political violence since the Punjab-dominated Army was implicated in mass slaughter in 1971. Despite military victories in large swathes of the tribal areas that are home to the Taliban, Pakistan’s major cities have been rocked by an escalating series of violent events that, according to one estimate, have claimed 544 lives in a little under three months.

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Journalism is a dangerous profession in Pakistan. But a vibrant, relatively free press still exists in this volatile country

For as long as anyone cares to remember, journalism has been a dangerous profession in Pakistan. Although of late much of the attention has focused on the risks to foreign journalists, the situation for local reporters is equally, if not more, parlous.

First consider that virtually all the on-the-ground news you read from Pakistan, especially from conflict zones, has been gathered by a local reporter under considerable personal risk. That is certainly the case for journalists working in the northwest frontier where the Taliban are most active. “I [do some] work for Voice of America,” one veteran reporter, who requested anonymity, told me in the safety of a hotel room in Islamabad. “Even now, I do not tell [the Taliban he interviews] that. It would mean certain death.”

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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.

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Now that an amnesty providing immunity to thousands has expired, Pakistan’s supreme court has the chance to showcase its merits

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

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

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A troop surge AND a withdrawal by July 2011? Despite the fuss, Obama’s Afghanistan speech marks very little in the way of new policy, writes Mustafa Qadri

“Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency.” Those were President Obama’s confident words as he announced a major US troop surge into Afghanistan earlier this week.

The US may have entered Afghanistan to clean out what was believed to be the key haven for the international terrorist network known as al Qaeda. But in the intervening eight years, America’s main opponents in the deserts and towns of Afghanistan have been the young men of rural Kandahar, Uruzgan, Helmand and so many other areas fighting not for global jihad but for independence from foreign interference. There are key differences between the war in Afghanistan and that in Vietnam — but a lack of a broad-based popular insurgency is not one of them.

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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.

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Leading Pakistani humanist and anti-nuclear scientist Pervez Hoodbhoy gives Mustafa Qadri his take on the current crises facing his country

For three decades Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of Physics at Qaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, has been promoting science and humanism in Pakistan. His was one of the earliest voices to sound the alarm on the perils of developing nuclear weapons, and on the danger posed by the country’s deepening religious intolerance — issues that have gone on to damage the country’s reputation. His respected scientific work has been published widely, but in 2001 when the Pakistani Government wanted to present him with a national award, Hoodbhoy refused it, saying that Pakistan’s misuse of such awards had eroded their own credibility. Recently I spoke to Professor Hoodbhoy about science, Islam and the challenges facing Pakistan.

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by Mustafa Qadri

29 October 2009

Karachi, Pakistan – Access to justice is a major concern in Pakistan. Pakistan was ranked 134 in the world, lower than Rwanda and Libya, in the 2008 annual Corruption Perception Index released by Transparency International. In fact, one reason some communities in the North West Frontier Province cautiously welcomed the Taliban was the promise of a more efficient, less corrupt justice system.

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As Pakistan’s new campaign in Waziristan gears up, Mustafa Qadri examines the cost of the war for the increasingly dislocated civilian population

There was a time not so long ago when the violence emanating from Pakistan had a mythical quality. In no region of this troubled country has the hyperbole of terrorism been so thoroughly lathered than South Waziristan, the tribal agency bordering Afghanistan where, since last weekend, Pakistan’s army has been waging a massive campaign against the Taliban’s most robust stronghold.

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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.

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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.

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The proposed truth and reconciliation commission is a fine idea. But a lack of historical distance will make it politically thorny

Grievance is at the heart of Pakistani politics. Almost all of the elites that dominate political life here have faced the deprivations – poverty, harassment, imprisonment or exile – experienced by the ordinary citizen at some point in their lives. When at the height of their strength, the powerful always invoke the myriad injustices that plague the common citizen to rally popular support.

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Few people take more risks than the locals who help foreign correspondents in conflict zones, writes Mustafa Qadri. So why don’t the Western media give credit to their fixers?

Investigative journalism can be a dangerous profession because, by its very nature, it seeks to uncover the lies and scandals that someone, somewhere, is trying to suppress. As work descriptions go, few civilians face as many life-threatening situations as those who aid foreign investigative reporters in conflict zones.

Generally known in the profession as “fixers” — but very often respected local journalists in their own right — these brave reporters are asked to arrange anything and everything required by a foreign media outlet: from interviews with hostile governments and militants in hiding, to transportation and accommodation. They risk their lives not only by working in dangerous situations but by virtue of fact that, being citizens of developing nations, the western media outlets that employ them generally place little value on their lives.

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The greatest militant threat facing India comes not from the Islamists who attacked Mumbai but Naxalite Maoist rebels

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 September 2009 09.00 BST

Last November’s fedayeen-style attacks on Mumbai may have reminded the world that India was not immune to terrorism. But few outside the subcontinent are aware that the greatest source of militancy in this diverse country comes not from Islamists but Maoists.

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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.

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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.

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The knives are out when dictators fall from power, but the politics of retribution is rarely clean or cathartic

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 August 2009 17,00 BST

The tables turn quickly in politics, but for dictators the shift from all-powerful to powerless can be rather sudden. Over a period of 12 months, the last Shah of Iran went from feared dictator to refugee who struggled to find asylum in three different continents (including the US, his one-time staunchest supporter).

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By Mustafa Qadri Mustafa Qadri is our Middle East and South Asia correspondent and has been based in Pakistan for two years. In this slideshow, he talks about some of the people he has met in his travels Over the past two years Mustafa Qadri has travelled widely throughout Pakistan. In this time he has [...]

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This month Pakistan celebrates Independence Day. In 1947 Pakistan became the first post-colonial nation in the world but the journey has not been easy. This week Pakistani police arrested 13 militants suspected of plotting to bomb targets in the Punjab. After 62 years as an independent nation, challenges ranging from extremism to energy shortages mean [...]

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Mustafa Qadri

Last Updated: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:24:00 +1000

People in a Pakistani frontier region threatened by the Taliban are trying to preserve a culture rich in poetry and dance from religious extremism.

The culture of the ethnic Pashtun peoples often delights in worldly pleasures – like sex and alcohol – considered un-Islamic by religious conservatives.

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Much of Afghanistan’s Pashtun-dominated south and east has been tense during for the recent presidential elections, but just over the border in Pakistan, outside Peshawar, the battle rages for cultural control of the community. The Taliban are trying to outlaw traditional poetry and dance, which they consider un-Islamic.

Presenter:Mustafa Qadri
Speaker: Fazal Maula, Peshawar-based non-government organisation

QADRI: Following my travels through northwestern Pakistan where millions fled the war against the Taliban, I met members of an anti-Taliban lashkar or army in the tribal district of Badaber. To describe Badaber as an outpost would be something of an understatement. Both the Taliban and government security forces have wrestled for control of this vitally strategic tribal region. Fazal Maula from a local non-government organisation explains.

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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.

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As Pakistan celebrates Independence Day, Mustafa Qadri looks at the country’s unstable beginnings, troubled history and the miracle of its continued existence

“The religious bigot considers me an infidel
And the infidel deems me to be a Muslim!”

With these immortal words, Pakistan’s national poet Mohammad Iqbal captured the eternal quandary that is Pakistan.

The nation created for the subcontinent’s Muslims has always struggle to define itself — is it meant to be an Islamic state or a state for Indian Muslims?

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In recent years. there have been increasing attempts to reform Pakistan’s much-maligned religious schools, known as madrassas. At a conference in Islamabad, WPR contributor Mustafa Qadri spoke to religious scholars and teachers about their attempts to broaden the pedagogical scope of Pakistan’s seminaries. The program, funded by the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, based [...]

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Pakistan has seen rapid change and frequent conflict in its 62 years. Its resilience is a testament to its people

· Mustafa Qadri

· guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 August 2009 19:00 BST

Karachi’s Saddar Town is the frenetic heart of Pakistan’s commercial capital. A retail hub where anything and everything from cameras to salwar kameez can be purchased, it was once the economic gateway into the northern reaches of British India. That legacy is still visible in Saddar’s fading colonial terraces, but the intricate wooden shutters are mostly gone and the Victorian entrances have been converted into street stalls. Today most are too busy trying to survive to notice the heritage.

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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.

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The United States is playing a dangerous game of roulette with India and Pakistan, writes Mustafa Qadri

When it comes to US policy in South Asia, it’s a case of do as we say, not as we do. Consider, to begin with, the rhetoric.

The Obama White House has gone to great lengths to demand that Pakistan end its support for militants targeting India. It wants the Pakistan Army to end its “obsession” with India-inspired oblivion by moving its large reserves from the Indian border to engage the Taliban and al Qaeda on the eastern frontier. Most of Pakistan’s active armed forces are located on the tense border with India where they are more than matched by the much larger Indian military.

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Updated August 6, 2009 11:42:34

To many foreign observers, Pakistan is the global centre of extremist Islam, and its madrassas – or religious seminaries – are where the violence starts. However, this kind of scaremongering hides a more complex reality.

Presenter: Mustafa Qadri in Pakistan
Speaker: Professor Qibla Ayaz, Peshawar University; Abdul Ghani, organiser of education conference in Islamabad; Azi Hussain, International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy in Washington DC

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QADRI: There are believed to be 2 million madrassa students in several thousand seminaries throughout Pakistan. But exact figures are hard to verify because most operate independent of government supervision. Although madrassas have ominous connotations in the West…

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Many of the world’s most dangerous Islamic extremists have learnt their approach in Madrassas, or religious schools, that offer a restricted curriculum that fails to reflect the modern world. In Pakistan madrassas also have a reputation for breeding extremists: but a plan to reform them is in motion, writes Mustafa Qadri.

“One cannot deny the very real role played by madrassas in fomenting extremism in Pakistan. I have met several members of the Taliban and a Lashkar-e-Tayaba operative. All had either been recruited or taught at madrasssas.”

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Ordinary Pakistanis still suffer from energy shortages – and are unlikely to benefit from their country’s rich natural resources

· Mustafa Qadri
· guardian.co.uk, Sunday 2 August 2009 17:00 BST

Few things are as oppressive in Pakistan as the summer heat. In colonial times, the British would shift their garrison headquarters from Rawalpindi to the cool peaks of Murree, just north of present day Islamabad. Today, the elite are more likely to skip the country entirely or barricade themselves in the air-conditioned comfort of their cars and homes.

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Frequently demonised in the West as hotbeds of terrorism, Pakistan’s religious seminaries are actually a vital institution, not the evil dens they are made out to be, writes Mustafa Qadri

According to many security analysts and world leaders, Pakistan is the global centre of extremist Islam. Much of that reputation has been built upon the country’s madaris, or religious seminaries (also sometimes referred to as madrassas), which have been described as jihadi factories spreading terrorism internationally.

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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…

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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

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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.

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Fixing Pakistan’s madrasas

Pakistan’s madrasas have a bad reputation. But is it justified, and will a new programme of reform improve standards?

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Pakistan madrasas: ‘We focus on how to live together and respect diversity’

Mustafa Qadri reports on a programme to reform madrasa curriculums in Pakistan

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Displaced Pakistanis speak out

by Mustafa Qadri

16 July 2009

Karachi, Pakistan – Pakistan is in the middle of its largest operation against the Taliban in the troubled Swat Valley and adjacent areas.

Although a small first wave of refugees has begun to return as part of the government’s efforts, up to 2.5 million people are believed to have fled the once quiet, scenic mountain ranges. At a camp in Risalpur, 50 miles south of some of the fiercest battle zones, I spoke with some of the displaced.

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The report by the Sindh Chapter of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan on politically motivated murders in Karachi should worry every citizen, for it constitutes an indictment of the country’s politicians and gives a fair indication of the kind of violence-prone society we have become.

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US President Obama recently spoke to Dawn News in Washington. It’s something of a coup for Pakistani journalism given that such opportunities are few and far between. Still it’s a fairly sycophantic thing and hence quite disappointing. For instance, there are no hard questions on the around 800 Pakistanis killed by US drone strikes in [...]

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Interviews with Pakistan’s “disappeared persons” for Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender Magazine – June/July/August edition 2009.

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Lost Victims Of War

Mustafa Qadri

As Pakistan announces it has cleared 90 per cent of the country’s north west of Taliban militants, Mustafa Qadri visits the refugee camps sheltering civilians who have been forced from their homes by conflict.

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Late last year I interviewed “Mullah Noor Allam”, a middle ranking Taliban commander from the Swat valley. The interview was published in Australia’s Canberra Times newspaper on 17 January 2009. You can view the story…

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The Karachi king

After a bloody conflict in Karachi, much-feared political boss Altaf Hussain fled to London, but he is no less powerful in Pakistan

o Mustafa Qadri
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 July 2009 18.00 BST
o Article history

With his healthy plume of gravity-defying hair and chunky tinted glasses, Altaf Hussain is as colourful in appearance as his reputation suggests. Perhaps no other Pakistani politician has as big a list of enemies as the one-time cabbie and university student who transformed himself into one of the most feared political bosses in the country. That he has directed his Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) party from the distant shores of the UK since 1994 speaks volumes for his enduring influence in the treacherous political life of Pakistan.

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Bigger Than Bin Laden Beitullah Mehsud, the man analysts describe as more dangerous than Osama bin Laden, continues to evade death in Pakistan, writes Mustafa Qadri Ever since he was labelled more dangerous than Osama bin laden, Beitullah Mehsud has been the single greatest target of US drone attacks. Remarkably, he has evaded death on [...]

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Pakistan’s divided Taliban

Despite internal divisions and a bloody army crackdown, the Pakistani Taliban are a long way from being defeated

o Mustafa Qadri
o guardian.co.uk, Friday 26 June 2009 16.00 BST
o Article history

Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban warlord from Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal agency, often described as Emir Baitullah, is widely seen as the movement’s leader in the country. For at least the past two years, Pakistani authorities have sought to attribute most of the terrorism that occurs in this troubled nation to him. According to the North West Frontier Province governor Owais Ahmed Ghani, Baitullah is “the root cause of all the evil”.

Perhaps that is why he was targeted in what was probably the latest and deadliest US drone attack in Pakistan. While the strike failed to kill Mehsud, it did leave the charred remains of anywhere between 40 and 100 people scattered amid the wreckage of a South Waziristan mosque. This has become a dirty war, and neither insurgents nor counterinsurgents have hesitated to attack places of worship.

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Homeless in the mountains of Pakistan

19 Jun 2009 12:39:00 GMT

Written by: Mustafa Qadri

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author’s alone.

The Pakistan Army is in the middle of its largest ever operations against Taliban forces in the troubled region bordering Afghanistan. Up to 2.5 million are believed to have fled the once quiet, scenic mountain ranges. At a camp in Risalpur, 50 miles south of some of the fiercest battle zones in the Swat valley, I talked to schoolgirl Mannu.

Among the bare dwellings of Risalpur’s industrial area, buildings donated to the displaced by local businessmen that have been transformed into miniature cities, I met eleven-year-old Mannu, a fearless young student unfazed by the traumas that have, for the time being at least, destroyed her ancient village community.

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Mustafa Qadri: Stuck between India and the Taliban The idea that Pakistan is inherently dangerous is a mantra used by those who ignore history and avoid the complicated reality According to Kapil Komireddi in these very pages, the demise of Pakistan is “inevitable” because it has since foundation been a source of division and extremism. [...]

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Mumbai bombing suspect’s release raises many concerns

Mustafa Qadri 10-Jun-2009

Has South Asia really only brought us grief, Madhav? I don’t think that’s entirely fair, though I admit I’ve increasingly found myself asking that very same question while travelling through the southern mega city of Karachi last week.

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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.

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Don’t write the Taliban off just yet

Although the Taliban is on the back foot in Pakistan, the war is far from over and thousands of civilians have been left homeless

o Mustafa Qadri
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 June 2009 09.30 BST

The Taliban have suffered their heaviest defeat in Pakistan since first erupting into open insurgency in 2003. Before May, the loose network of warlords that have invoked the Taliban franchise here have expanded into large swaths of Pakistan’s Pakhtun tribal areas. Prior to current events, some estimates placed the Taliban in 11% of Pakistan, almost all of that being in the North-West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas that are presently the centre of military operations by Pakistan and the US.

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The Taliban Has No Plan B

By Mustafa Qadri

The Taliban is stepping up its violent attacks but ordinary Pakistanis have had enough and the organisation is losing popular support, reports Mustafa Qadri from near the Swat valley…

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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.

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Time to end the insecurity and fear

Mustafa Qadri 28-May-2009

If you speak to most Pakistanis – even the rank and file of the army, as I sometimes do – the answer, Madhav, would be: yes, Pakistanis are ready for more open trade links with India. This shouldn’t be surprising. According to an International Republican Institute poll released a few weeks ago, the priority for most Pakistanis is the economy.

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The human cost of war on the Taliban

Pakistan’s operations against militants have won praise from Washington but displaced thousands of innocent people

o Mustafa Qadri
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 May 2009 14.03 BST

The latest chapter in Pakistan’s war with the Taliban has been a humanitarian disaster for ordinary villagers from Malakand Agency, the region in Pakistan’s lower Himalayas where the battle is now being fought.

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Critics say that in a country where up to 40% of its 160 million population live on less than $1 a day or less, Pakistan’s ruling elite wants to keep its perks and privileges at all costs. They say the country’s rulers have no hesitation in slashing development expenditure, eliminating subsidies, going cap in hand [...]

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Thousands Displaced by War in Pakistan

By Mustafa Qadri and Tahir Ali
Displaced villager

“We are ready to leave [Katcha Ghauri] to make room for our brothers from Swat,” says Kushdhil, who was displaced from Bajaur Agency, to the west of the current fighting. Photo: Mustafa Qadri

Last week a number of quiet mountain villages became part of the deadly frontline in Pakistan’s battle with Islamic militancy, report Mustafa Qadri and Tahir Ali…

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My latest article for NewMatilda.com is on ethnic tensions in Pakistan’s great port city of Karachi:

Shadowy Forces In Karachi

The recent gun battles across Karachi demonstrate that there’s a lot more to Pakistan’s problems than dealing with the Taliban, writes Mustafa Qadri

There were a number of Kodak moments for the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan in Washington last week. But back in their respective countries, the world’s media were transfixed by images of civilians suffering from the unending war with the Taliban. In Afghanistan the images were of the horrific bombardment of civilians in the southern province of Farah. And next door in Pakistan, there is little doubt that army operations against the Taliban along the foothills of the Himalayas are having a devastating impact on tribal societies.

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Pakistan’s displaced voice fear and anger

13 May 2009 17:10:00 GMT

Written by: Mustafa Qadri

A veteran of the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan rues the misfortune of being homeless in his own country.

Mustafa Qadri in Peshawar and Tahir Ali in Rangmala talk to civilians displaced by a Pakistani army offensive against Taliban militants in the Swat valley that has uprooted hundreds of thousands…

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The following report for The Guardian, published today, looks at the recent meetings between the Presidents of the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan in Washington D.C. and the risks to civilians caught up in the war with the Taliban:

‘Collateral damage’ in AfPak hurts the US too

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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It appears the Pentagon is opposed to too much oversight of civilian aid to Pakistan, including a provision in a proposed bill that would prevent aid in the event of a military coup: After promising last month that U.S. aid to Pakistan would no longer be a “blank check,” the Obama administration is attempting to [...]

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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.

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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.

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My analysis of the Obama Administration’s new AfPak policy for the Common Grounds News Service was published today:

Obama’s new “AfPak” strategy – the view from Pakistan
by Mustafa Qadri

30 April 2009

Karachi, Pakistan – People with a hammer only see nails. This well-worn maxim aptly describes the United States’ relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past several decades. As early as 1954, the United States identified the country as a bulwark against regional encroachment by the Soviet Union when Pakistan received its first substantial tranche of American military and economic aid.

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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’.

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Not everybody is in a position to write a column, but may have a profound experience or perspective to share. In this feature we seek out such people and report back so the Unleashed audience can absorb and discuss unique, fascinating or moving stories.

In our latest instalment of “Unleashed Voices” Mustafa Qadri meets a boy from Pakistan who has trained to become a Taliban suicide bomber.

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In my hometown in Punjab, a businessman friend was inspired by the news from Swat. “If two hundred Taliban take over our town, then we can all start making our own decisions. Who needs this corrupt system anyway?” My friend is a typical middle-class conservative Pakistani, and people in cities across the country share his [...]

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My latest column for The Guardian, on support for the Taliban in some of Pakistan’s tribal areas, was published today:

Why they love the Taliban

Rampant corruption, and the Pakistani government’s failure to provide, is driving people into the arms of the militants

* Mustafa Qadri
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 April 2009 20.30 BST

It may be difficult to understand, but in many of the tribal areas where Pakistan’s ethnic Pakhtun population live, the Taliban are very popular.

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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.”

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Addressing a gathering at Friday prayers, the JI Amir said those who speak for Shariah and Islam including Maulana Sufi Muhammad deserve appreciation.

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My latest piece for newmatilda.com is based on a recent visit to parts of the Kohat and Dera Adam Khel tribal areas in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province where the Taliban has a strong presence:

Is Al Qaeda About To Conquer Pakistan?

Counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen believes that Pakistan could collapse “within months”. But Mustafa Qadri reports that in the tribal areas, it is actually the Taliban, not al Qaeda, that is gaining traction…

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My assessment of the Obama Administration’s newly announced AfPak policy was published in The Guardian today:

Obama’s charm offensive

Is Barack Obama’s change of strategy – switching focus from Iraq to Afghanistan – a real break with the past?

It was easy to be cynical listening to Barack Obama speak about the “new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan” last Friday. Apart from a vast improvement in elocution, at first glance it was difficult to distinguish his rhetoric from that of his predecessor, George Bush.

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The following article was published in NewMatilda.com today:

Getting to Know Your Insurgents

Much of Pakistan is still trying to understand the mentality of the Taliban fighters who are mounting a worsening campaign of killings across the country, writes Mustafa Qadri

There were plenty of glimpses into the mindset of the Pakistan’s Taliban insurgents last week. On Tuesday a gang of heavily armed men dressed in police uniforms stormed a police training school in Lahore killing at least 12 and injuring close to another 100.

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My latest column for The Guardian, on the Taliban and the psychology of fear, was published today:

Taliban preys on Pakistani fears

The Taliban’s extreme version of Islam is the logical conclusion of the region’s violent past and feeds on insecurity

Pakistanis have been offered a frightening glimpse into the true character of the Taliban over the past weeks. Last Monday, 30 March, a group of heavily armed men in police uniforms stormed a police academy killing 11 and injuring close to another 100. Those traumatised police cadets that survived painted a grisly picture of bloodstained walls and body parts. The leader of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the umbrella network of pro-Taliban groups in the country, Baitullah Masud claimed responsibility for the attack.

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Mr Sharif, a possible future prime minister, was sharply critical of US policy in Pakistan saying former US president George W. Bush had helped promote terrorism by backing military ruler General Pervez Musharraf. He said Mr Bush was against Pakistan’s return to democracy and deaf to advice. Interesting to see how his views are now [...]

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Pakistan could get $2.8 billion in military aid from the US in addition to the proposed $7.5 billion civilian aid package spread over five years, a defence official has been quoted as saying.

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My analysis of NATO’s supply conundrum in Afghanistan was published on the Foreign Policy in Focus website today:

NATO’s Frayed Supply Line

Mustafa Qadri | April 1, 2009

There was much fanfare as President Barack Obama announced the eagerly anticipated “AfPak” policy review, what the White House terms is “a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Many have argued, however, that the new AfPak policy is very much a continuation of the old policy with a few tactical grafts from the occupation of Iraq.

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Here is my analysis of the Obama Administration’s new ‘AfPak’ policy for newmatilda.com:

Not All Terrorists Are The Same

Obama’s new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan is much more nuanced than Bush’s “war on terror”, writes Mustafa Qadri. As a starting point, it recognises that al Qaeda and the Taliban are distinct groups

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My latest column for The Guardian is on the quandaries of supplying NATO forces in Afghanistan:

NATO’s soft underbelly

Nato operations in Afghanistan depend on a precarious international supply system – and the Taliban have realised it

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There’s nothing new in Barack Obama’s foreign policy – but the way it is knitted together offers hope… See also TIME magazine’s appraisal: Did George Bush leave one of his old speeches in the Resolute Desk? As President Obama unveiled his Afghanistan-Pakistan policy Friday, it was hard to miss the echoes of his predecessor’s “surge” [...]

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Sindh High Court has summoned Pervez Musharraf and top lawyers from his regime to answer a treason charge.

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This is how the Taliban deals with its opponents: At least 10 people have been killed in a suicide bombing in north-western Pakistan, local officials say.

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If you ever wonder how a group as harsh as the Taliban is capable of getting support from ordinary Pashtuns consider the Pakistan Government’s near total indifference to their suffering in internally displaced person camps: …during three separate trips to Bajaur, we clearly saw the only way they could fight an entrenched Taliban was with [...]

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My latest report from Pakistan, a reflection on the nation on the 69th anniversary of the Lahore Resolution of 1940, was published in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s ‘Unleashed’ website today:

Ordinary People Power

Mustafa Qadri

Monday was Republic Day in Pakistan, the 69th anniversary of the moment when, under the Lahore Resolution, the idea of Pakistan was formally adopted by the subcontinent’s Muslim leadership. Seven years later, on August 14, 1947, the idea would turn into the reality of an independent state.

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An advocate on Tuesday filed a petition with the Supreme Court charging former president Pervez Musharraf with ‘high treason’ and seeking his trial under Article 6 of the Constitution.

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Now, as the Obama administration completes its review of strategy toward the region this week, his sudden ascent has raised an urgent question: Can Mr. Sharif, 59, a populist politician close to Islamic parties, be a reliable partner? Or will he use his popular support to blunt the military’s already fitful campaign against the insurgency [...]

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“Maulvi Sahib! What is Pakistan?” After careful thought he replied: “It’s a place in India where they make razors.”

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Five days of gunbattles between the Indian army and separatist militants in Indian-administered Kashmir have left at least 25 dead — eight Indian army troopers, including one officer, and 17 militants, the Indian military said Tuesday.

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A threefold increase in civilian aid would come on top of more than $10 billion in mostly military assistance since 2001. In addition to the aid, the administration will seek similar contributions from other nations, the officials said, describing the conclusions of a strategy review on condition of anonymity because it has not been made [...]

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First, Sufi Muhammad, the TNSM leader who negotiated the deal on behalf of the Taliban, warned all lawyers and courts in Swat to pack up and leave as the shariat courts with qazis approved by the Taliban leadership will start functioning soon. Now, the Taliban have asked all NGOs in Swat to leave as well. [...]

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My latest piece on the situation in Pakistan for The Guardian was published today:

Rough Justice in Swat

The growing influence of the Taliban in the North-West Frontier Province is a direct threat to Pakistan’s fragile democracy…

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Registrar Office of Supreme Court of Pakistan has raised the objections on all the four review petitions filed by Federation early on Thursday against court’s verdict in Sharif brothers’ eligibility case. According to the SC registrar, the petitions miss necessary documents, including surety bonds, court fees, paper books and copy of the court’s earlier verdict [...]

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My analysis of the grassroots democracy movement that led to the reinstatement of Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry as Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court was published in the Los Angeles Times today:

Pakistan’s clear message to the West

It’s not all fanaticism and violence. A grass-roots democratic movement is making strides.

By Mustafa Qadri

March 21, 2009

Writing From Islamabad, Pakistan — Politics is never dull in Pakistan. This week, it was inspirational too.

On Monday, I watched people flock to the home of Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. A tense standoff between the government and a coalition of opposition groups over Chaudhry’s reinstatement as chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court had finally been resolved. After two years of government-enforced “retirement,” Chaudhry would return to the bench…

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Pakistan’s prime minister said in an interview he would seek to tip the balance of power back toward parliament and away from embattled President Asif Ali Zardari, a move that could help restore democratic checks and balances in the turbulent nation and possibly help bring the opposition into the ruling coalition.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Pakistani leaders that some US lawmakers “may not feel inclined” to support aid to Islamabad if political chaos continues, a top US official said on Monday. But the official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said Clinton presented the issue as a reality rather than a threat in [...]

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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 [...]

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Pakistan’s prime minister said in an interview he would seek to tip the balance of power back toward parliament and away from embattled President Asif Ali Zardari, a move that could help restore democratic checks and balances in the turbulent nation and possibly help bring the opposition into the ruling coalition.

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My analysis of the reinstatment of Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry as Pakistan’s Chief Justice was published in Crikey.com.au today:

Democracy revitalised by Pakistan’s Chief Justice

By demonstrating the importance of functioning and accountable institutions, Pakistan’s lawyers may well have paved the road upon which the long road from its present hell may be charted, writes Mustafa Qadri.

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President Obama and his national security advisers are considering expanding the American covert war in Pakistan far beyond the unruly tribal areas to strike at a different center of Taliban power in Baluchistan, where top Taliban leaders are orchestrating attacks into southern Afghanistan.

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Before Gilani could say anything, an uneasy Zardari abruptly told Sherry: “OK, please start talking, as you have five minutes.” To the surprise of both of them, all of a sudden, Sherry Rehman dropped a bombshell and said: “I am resigning from my ministry.” Even before Sherry could explain the reasons behind her dramatic decision, [...]

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The Tehrik-e-Nifaaz Shariat Muhammadi, a militant group, ordered government judges not to show up for work “because we are establishing a true Islamic justice system,” said Amir Izzat Khan, a spokesman. The group is introducing Sharia law in the region as part of a government truce with Taliban fighters.

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Here is my report for NewMatilda.com from the lawn of the Chief Justice’s residence in Islamabad the day of his reinstatement.

Long March ends in triumph

Instead of violent confrontation there was jubilation in Islamabad yesterday as the Government bowed to protestors’ demands and reinstated the sacked Chief Justice. Mustafa Qadri reports

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My report for The Guardian from Islamabad the day of the Chief Justice’s reinstatement has just been published here:

Democracy has been revitalised by Pakistan’s Chief Justice

President Zardari’s decision to reinstate Chief Justice Chaudhry has stabilised the country – and saved his political career

Mustafa Qadri

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The recent upsurge of jihadi violence in Punjab, the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Balochistan’s provincial capital, Quetta, demonstrates the threat extremist Sunni-Deobandi groups pose to the Pakistani citizen and state.

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It is another irony that as football is the game of poor masses in Pakistan, the teams and players are given the lowest priority in terms of security. Bartalan Bisciki, the noted Hungarian football coach, was selected last month by the Pakistan football association to coach the national team, but he refused to take up [...]

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Here’s a list of breaking developments on the lawyers’ Long March to Islamabd (to restore the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry): Allegations of torture of lawyers arrested by Police, from Imran Schah in Islamabad. With the US and UK’s blessing, have Prime Minister Gilani and Army Chief Kayani given President Zardari an ultimatum to [...]

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My report for NewMatilda.com from the start of the lawyers’ Long March in Karachi for NewMatilda.com was published today:

The Long March Begins

Protestors in Pakistan’s lawyers’ movement set out yesterday on their long march to the capital. Mustafa Qadri reports from Karachi on what has become a street-level vote of no-confidence in the Government

From across the country they took to the streets, re-enacting scenes from the darkest days of the Musharraf regime over a year earlier.

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Mustafa Qadri: History Repeats Itself In Pakistan

Guardian: Comment Is Free

By invoking a Raj-era law against public protest, the government demonstrates its inability to handle the country’s real problems…

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The crackdown began late Tuesday night, with the government invoking Section 144 of the 1860 Penal Code, a law from the British colonial era that forbids public gatherings of four or more people.

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Pakistan has arrested hundreds of opposition political activists in an overnight sweep ahead of a planned protest rally, as a looming political showdown presents the most serious challenge yet to the year-old government.

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The Guardian has an excellent photo essay on working conditions in Pakistan for those who make many of the medical instruments used by the UK’s NHS.

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Mustafa Qadri: Long March To Nowhere

As bickering politicians bring paralysis to Pakistan, will Washington give the army its backing?

It seems with each new week a fresh crisis is thrust upon the people of Pakistan. This year, in a little over two months, the nation has faced more traumas than most countries face in a generation. Last month authorities in the north-western Swat valley reached a peace deal with a religious group closely aligned to the Taliban. This week another peace deal was signed directly with the Taliban in the neighbouring Bajaur tribal agency after a series of successful if devastating operations by the Pakistani army.

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Until two or three years ago, Pakistan seemed to be a literary desert in both Urdu and English. Now, quite suddenly, it has produced a cluster of remarkable bright young novelists able to match anything coming out India: in fiction, Nadeem Aslam, Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif and Kamila Shamsie; and in non-fiction, Ahmed Rashid and [...]

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A test of progress will be if refugees in camps in Peshawar begin to head home. Despite the military’s declaration of victory against the Taliban in Bajaur late last month, many say it’s still too unsafe to return. Travelers and residents say the Taliban haven’t been flushed from two of nine districts there.

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A group of 35 Hindus, nearly half of them women, from Pakistan have crossed over to India and asked the government to allow them to settle in the country, Indian media reported Monday.

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Will Pakistan’s Army Chief step into the political fray the country’s civilian leadership is currently embroiled in? That’s the question I ask in my latest piece for newmatilda.com:

A New Dictator For Pakistan?

Speculation is mounting in Islamabad that a military coup is on the cards, writes Mustafa Qadri. And Pakistan’s most powerful ally doesn’t seem to mind…

Pakistan is facing its greatest political crisis since the resignation of Pervez Musharraf as president last year.

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Tuesday’s attack in the Pakistani city of Lahore on a convoy carrying Sri Lankan cricketers was carried out by disgruntled Punjabi militants seeking to extract concessions from the government, Asia Times Online has learned.

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When asked if, during his visit to Islamabad, White House Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke had expressed U.S. concerns about the release of Khan in his meetings with Pakistani leaders, State Department spokesman Robert Wood was at a loss: QUESTION: I’d like to stay on Pakistan for a second. Do you know [...]

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The failures of this government and its inability to defend the country’s interests or its population from drones or terrorist attacks are paving the way for the return of the army to power as a way of avoiding a serious split within its own ranks. All that is awaited is a green light from the [...]

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In an admission that its dependence on the Pakistani military has yielded few results against the Taliban, the United States is now seeking to change its relationship with Pakistan – the world’s sole Muslim nuclear power and home of Al Qaeda’s leadership.

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In January I interviewed a member of Lashkar-e-Toiba, the pro-Pakistan militant group believed to have been involved in the Mumbai attacks, for The Diplomat magazine. The interview has just been published in the latest edition of the magazine and is available online here.

JIHAD: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

02-Mar-2009

Mustafa Qadri investigates the organisations believed by many to have been behind the Mumbai terrorist attacks

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Outlook India has done an interview with Sufi Mohammad which you can read here. Sufi Mohammad is the religious leader who signed a peace deal with the government in Pakistan’s Swat region basically to replace existing, secular laws with the Sharia.

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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.

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Addressing a press conference on Sunday, Sufi Mohammad warned that the TNSM would start setting up protest camps if the Islamic courts were not set up and prisoners not swapped by 15 March… The situation in Swat remains tense and the militants are yet to disarm or end their hold over areas they control.

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Pakistan’s supreme court on Wednesday nullified the election last year of a key opposition leader, sparking a wave of anti-government protests in the populous Punjab province and prompting worries over a new round of political instability.

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The following article appears on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Unleashed website today:

Taming the Taliban

Mustafa Qadri

This month the world reacted with surprise and trepidation at the news that Pakistan had reached a peace agreement with religious groups closely aligned to the Taliban. The accord relates to the mountainous Malakand division of the North Western Frontier Province that borders Afghanistan. It covers the beautiful Swat valley, the onetime alpine honeymoon resort, that, since 2007, has been gripped by a Taliban insurgency.

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My latest article, on the peace deal between a pro-Taliban group and the Pakistan Government in the mountainous tribal area of Malakand was published in NewMatilda.com today: WHAT WILL THIS ‘PEACE’ COST? By Mustafa Qadri Pakistan has agreed to entrench Sharia law in its North-West Frontier Province in exchange for peace, but locals are still [...]

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Muslim Khan, the Taliban spokesman in Swat, said the group claimed responsibility for abducting the administrator. “He is our guest. We have to discuss some issues with him. We will serve him with tea and then free him,” he told Reuters.

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U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that Washington could accept a political agreement between the Afghan government and Taliban rebels along the lines of a truce in neighboring Pakistan.

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“Its not easy being a hijra is this society, but is it our fault that we are like this?

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Pakistan’s constitution already contains provisions protecting against un-Islamic laws. Why then does the country need an agreement with violent extremists to ensure Islamic laws? And who will pronounce on these laws? The militants? And if the army is to remain in a “reactive” mode, as a government minister explained, will they stand by and watch [...]

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With two missile strikes over the past week, the Obama administration has expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, attacking a militant network seeking to topple the Pakistani government.

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Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari has been accused of launching a purge of his late wife Benazir Bhutto’s closest supporters within his ruling Pakistan People’s Party.

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Many Muslims believe that ancient Khorasan – which covers parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – is the promised land from where they will secure the first victory in the end-of-time battle in which the final round, according to their beliefs, will be fought in Bilad-i-Sham (Palestine-Lebanon-Syria).

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Here, published in NewMatilda.com today, is an analysis of the recent Taliban suicide attack on Kabul and the build of US troops in the country.

“It’s Like Fighting Quick Sand”

As Obama commits another 17,000 US troops to the flagging US war effort in Afghanistan, a commando-style attack by the Taliban in Kabul serves as a reminder of the challenges that lie ahead, writes Mustafa Qadri

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The following piece, on the recent peace agreement between the Pakistan Government and Islamic leaders in the northern Malakand district, was posted on the Guardian Comment is Free website today:

Peace or appeasement in Pakistan?

The recent deal between religious leaders in tribal Pakistan and the government legitimates the Taliban insurgency…

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U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan have killed more than 50 people in the past three days in what appears to be an escalation of the military campaign in the troubled region along the Afghan border

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Pakistan government officials said they struck a deal on Monday to accept a legal system compatible with Shariah law in the violent Swat region in return for peace.

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The Pakistani government should act immediately to protect hundreds of thousands of people from insurgents in the Swat valley and elsewhere in the country, Amnesty International said today. See also Amnesty’s “Swat deal threatens human rights”.

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A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base in that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counter-terrorism collaboration with the United States.

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Britain appointed its own Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and named Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, currently its Ambassador to Afghanistan, for the post on the day US President Obama’s Special Representative for the two countries arrived in Islamabad. You may recall that Cowper-Coles was the British diplomat who got into a bit of hot water [...]

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Famed for negotiating the 1995 Dayton accord that ended the war in Bosnia, Holbrooke is a relative newcomer to South Asian politics. Before two private visits since 2006, Holbrooke had only traveled to Afghanistan once, as a backpacker in 1971.

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Pakistan advised President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan on Tuesday to reach out to reconcilable elements of the Taliban movement as part of a strategy for peace in the region.

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My latest piece, on the disruptions to NATO supplies through Pakistan, was published at NewMatilda.com today:

THE TALIBAN’S LUCRATIVE LINE IN LOGISTICS

The lifeline to the war in Afghanistan is under threat, writes Mustafa Qadri, as trucking companies are forced to bribe militants to get supplies in to the troubled region…

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At the request of Syria, we entered a phase of working together with Israel and Syria indirectly to get them to talk with each other. We are mediators in that process. This was an example of how much importance we put on peace in the Middle East. We had done this before with Pakistan and [...]

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Police arrested three men Thursday who they alleged carried out a deadly bombing in 2006 in Pakistan on the orders of India’s intelligence agency, a top officer said. Lahore police chief Pervaiz Rathor told reporters the three Pakistanis had also been told to attack mosques as well as the virulently anti-Indian Muslim organization blamed for [...]

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My latest article, on US policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan under President Obama, was published in NewMatilda.com today:

From War on Terror to Plain Old War

Early signs suggest an escalation of the Bush administration’s policies on Afghanistan and Pakistan under the new President, writes Mustafa Qadri

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Nawaz announced that his party would extend full support to the long march of the lawyers’ community on March 9 for restoration of judges, expressing the hope that masses would give enthusiastic response to the event like they had done to the last long march. He, however, said they had not talked to the lawyers’ [...]

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Mr Tarin said the country’s balance of payment position would improve after a loan of $700 million from donors was received by the end of March. He said the country would get $500 million from the World Bank in February and another $200 million from the Asian Development Bank. Pakistan has recently received loan of [...]

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Hundreds of students angrily protested on Tuesday as a government official took over administrative control of an Islamic charity which is linked to the militant group accused by India to be responsible for the Mumbai attacks.

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“I want to caution my Indian friends: Be wary of your wishes, as they might come true,” Saeed said. “Because the diplomatic cornering of Pakistan, by way of sanctions, by way of coercive diplomacy . . . is going to [create] a tremendous reaction in Pakistan. Any government cooperation with the United States will be [...]

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Across much of the North-West Frontier Province—around a fifth of Pakistan—women have now been forced to wear the burqa, music has been silenced, barbershops are forbidden to shave beards, and over 140 girls’ schools have been blown up or burned down. In the provincial capital of Peshawar, a significant proportion of the city’s elite, along [...]

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Remotely piloted Predator drones operated by the Central Intelligence Agency have carried out 28 missile attacks in Fata since last summer, killing at least 132 people. The NYT, quoting Pakistani officials, reported that as many as 100 of them were civilians.

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The South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR) and South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) have jointly decided to take a Peace Mission from Pakistan to New Delhi from 21st to 24th January 2009. The 19-Member Delegation will interact with civil society, media and political leadership of India to stress the need to keep the peace [...]

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Mohammad Saad breaks into sobs and gut-wrenching moans when he details six years’ humiliation, interrogation and ill-treatment under US orders in Egypt, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

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Every night around 8 o’clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan’s most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing — or a beheading.

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Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of President Obama’s commitment to sustained military pressure on the terrorist groups there, even though Pakistanis broadly oppose such unilateral U.S. actions.

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In fact, the Times’ Sanger reports that a top George W Bush administration official expressed his fears to him that “some groups could try to provoke a confrontation between Pakistan and India in the hope that the Pakistani military would transport tactical nuclear weapons closer to the front lines, where they would be more vulnerable [...]

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Hillary Clinton, on her first day as the secretary of state, telephoned President Asif Ali Zardari and told him that the Obama administration was appointing a special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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Recently, the International Monetary Fund approved a 23-month US$7.6 billion bailout program for Pakistan. “American military officials played a crucial role in this approval,” commented the executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), Dr Farrukh Saleem, to Asia Times Online. “The purpose is to keep pace with Pakistan and its armed [...]

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My latest piece on the tension between Islamabad and New Delhi following the Mumbai attacks was published on NewMatilda.com today:

My Nuclear Arsenal Is Bigger Than Yours

India is using the Mumbai attacks to flex its geopolitical muscle, writes Mustafa Qadri, as Pakistan risks further international isolation by denying its role in the violence…

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Al Qaeda leaders no longer feel safe in Afghan-Pakistan border areas, where they face heavy U.S. and Pakistani pressure and their local welcome has worn out, CIA chief Michael Hayden said on Thursday.

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Chaudhry said the people are being denied justice as those who violated the law and the constitution still enjoyed unlimited and unchecked powers.

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In a dark echo of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, violent religious extremists in Pakistan are moving to restrict girls’ education as they seek to impose a draconian version of Islamic law on a beleaguered population.

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Is available here.

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The tragedy spurred Simonsen. She has since helped raise funds to buy an ambulance for the foundation and secured a $20,000 grant from a UN development program. She is also establishing legal aid for women who want to testify against their attackers.

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The government said on Thursday that it had shut down five training camps of the outlawed Jamaatud Dawa and Lashkar-e-Taiba, banned their seven publications and blocked all their websites.

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India plans to break off business, transport and tourist links with Pakistan and isolate it from the rest of the world if it fails to help to investigate the Mumbai terrorist attacks…

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Afghan and Pakistani officers at the center were barred from talking to a reporter during a recent visit. But a glance around the room showed several of them primarily engaged in watching a wrestling match on one of the big TV screens and playing computer solitaire. Their U.S. counterparts, meanwhile, sorted through e-mails from the [...]

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Pakistan’s private Geo television station quoted Gilani as saying Durrani had made unauthorised comments to the media confirming that the lone surviving Mumbai attacker was a Pakistani national.

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The following article, on tensions between India and Pakistan following the November attacks on Mumbai, was published in the Guardian Comment is Free website today:

Are India and Pakistan heading for war?

Pressure is mounting on politicians in both countries to take drastic action in the wake of recent terrorist attacks

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Here are some common assumptions about Pakistan and its citizens that I have come across in the Indian media…

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These groups have given sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda forces that fled Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion. They now fight alongside them against the United States and its allies in Afghanistan. They too consider themselves Pakistani nationalists. In the midst of the crisis triggered by the attacks on Bombay, Baitullah Masud, the leader [...]

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“He said we must take our daughters out of all schools – private or public – by 15 January 2009 at the latest. Failing this, he said the schools will be bombed and violators would face death. He also said they will throw acid into the faces of our daughters if we don’t comply, like [...]

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The problems started after September 11, when the US forced the then-military government of president General Pervez Musharraf to abandon the Taliban. Up to 2001, Afghanistan had virtually been a fifth Pakistani province for which Pakistan arranged day-to-day expenditures. Even the communications network was run by the Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Limited.

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Meanwhile, NATO is looking to protect its supply lines and might have found assistance from Iran, which would reduce its dependence on Pakistan, where supply lines have come under heavy attack.

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Two major events are likely to mark the beginning of 2009 and decide the new rules of war and peace in the region. In Pakistan, the foremost is curtailing the powerful military dominated intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the second is the unveiling of a new strategy in Afghanistan.

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The day after Christmas, the wires buzzed with reports that Pakistan was moving 20,000 troops from its western border with Afghanistan to locations near the eastern border with India.

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At least one top leader of militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or “Army of the Pure,” captured in a raid earlier this month in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, has confessed the group’s involvement in the attack as India and the U.S. have alleged, according to a senior Pakistani security official.

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Afghanistan and Pakistan Take Centre Stage Called ‘the central front’ by Barack Obama, Pakistan and Afghanistan have endured another year of turmoil, writes Mustafa Qadri. My latest piece for The Diplomat magazine is a review of the political and security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan this year. It is available on subscription from their website [...]

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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.

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He went on to say if the government would not ensure the supremacy of the constitution, then there would be no difference between the present government and previous government of Pervez Musharraf.

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During a visit to Islamabad, Interpol chief Ronald Noble said Tuesday that Pakistan has agreed to cooperate with the global police force to find the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack. However, he said that India had not shared information about the gunmen.

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Addressing a certificate distribution ceremony of National Vocational and Technical Commission (NAVTEC) here on Tuesday, the Prime Minister termed poverty, illiteracy and unemployment the root cause of terrorism and extremism.

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The unmanned drones have carried out over 30 missile attacks in the tribal region over the past three months, killing over 200 people.

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Zeb and Haniya are a living and vivid example of how much more there is to the Pashtun sensibility than the images of gun-toting renegades.

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The following article, a year in review of the countries I’ve covered in 2008, was published in NewMatilda.com today:

Silver Linings in Short Supply

From the Holy Land to South Asia, violence remained a constant in 2008, reports Mustafa Qadri. Will elections in Palestine and Israel – and the inauguration of Obama – promote dialogue or further violence?

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“And if we get to the stage where there is tangible proof, then I assure you that our democracy will take the action laid down in our law, in our constitution”.

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The government is working on a new model of economic development, which envisaged that the tribal people will be made shareholders in various development projects with a view to weaning the unemployed youth away from militancy.

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President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he is leaving to his successor a stronger anti-terrorism partnership with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia forged in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

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A recent Gallup Poll of Pakistanis suggests their government has domestic support for a crackdown on Pakistan-based extremists.

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The following piece, on simmering dispute over Indian-controlled Kashmir, was printed in NewMatilda.com today:

All Road Lead to Kashmir

The Indian Government has done well to paint itself as an innocent victim after the Mumbai attacks. But Lashkar-e-Toiba has its roots in the conflict over Kashmir, writes Mustafa Qadri

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With the rise in religious extremism and growing antagonism among ordinary Muslims against the West–largely a response to U.S. interventionist policies abroad–secular, Western-style feminists in countries such as Pakistan are increasingly seen as U.S. agents and regarded with suspicion and distrust.

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The Charter of the United Nations and provisions of international law, including the right of self-defence, gives us the framework to fulfil these responsibilities.

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The latest Peshawar blast was a sectarian crime but it has ended up killing indiscriminately Muslims of all sects.

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Dozens of containers, possibly holding supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan, burned after militants attacked a Pakistani freight terminal with mortars and grenades early Sunday, according to Pakistani police officials.

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As the international effort to defuse the tension intensified, matters started to clear up and by late Saturday evening calm began to prevail. But sources admit that those 24 hours made many people in Islamabad and Delhi and, perhaps in Washington, quite anxious. Perhaps for this reason, the Americans decided against taking any further chances, [...]

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I was interviewed by Phillip Adams on ABC Radio National tonight on the recent Mumbai attacks, sentiments in Pakistan, and an interview I conducted with a Taliban commander from the Swat valley. You can listen to the interview here.

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has handed an economic lifeline to Pakistan by agreeing to lend the embattled country $7.6 billion (£4.9 billion), but more cash will be needed, perhaps in a matter of weeks, officials said.

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The network of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, which was a major supporter of the ISI in the whole region, especially in Bangladesh, was shattered and fell into the hands of al-Qaeda when Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri, chief of Harkat, a hero of the armed struggle in Kashmir who had spent two years in an Indian jail, was arrested [...]

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India’s foreign ministry has said investigations have shown that all gunmen involved in the Mumbai attacks were Pakistani nationals.

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The following piece, on last weeks attacks in Mumbai which killed over 160 people, was published in NewMatilda.com today:

Militants shatter ‘Brand India’

Mumbai’s attackers were targeting India’s image as an emerging global power as much as they were targeting foreigners, writes Mustafa Qadri

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The following piece, on Pakistan’s deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, was published on ABC Unleashed today:

Lone Chief still waiting for justice

It was cold and windy in New York two Mondays ago when Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the deposed Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, accepted his honorary membership of the New York City Bar Association. It was certainly a departure from the hot, humid pro-democracy rallies where Chaudhry has been demanding an independent judiciary in Pakistan ever since being removed from the bench in November last year.

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The International Monetary Fund approved a $7.6 billion bailout package to help prevent Pakistan from defaulting on its debt.

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The recent ambush took place at the entrance to the pass. U.S. officials say the attackers seized two Humvees and a water truck. Several trucks carrying wheat for the World Food Program were also hijacked.

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CIA director Michael Hayden has warned that every major terrorist threat confronting the world has ties to Pakistan. Of course, the US has had nothing to do with that…

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“For us, the change of America’s president — we don’t have any good faith in him,” said Muslim Khan, a grizzled Taliban spokesman…

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The following piece, on the earthquakes that hit Pakistan two weeks ago, was published in Reuters AlertNet today:

Earthquake adds to Pakistan’s humanitarian woes
14 Nov 2008 13:24:00 GMT
Written by: Mustafa Qadri

It was in the early hours of the morning on Monday 29 October when two earthquakes registering 5.2 and 6.4 on the Richter scale flattened villages in Pishin and the former resort area of Ziarat in Balochistan, a south-western province of Pakistan bordering Iran and Afghanistan.

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ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Shaukat Aziz spent over one billion rupees on 47 foreign visits during 2004-07. He had also falsely claimed after his visit to Saudi Arabia that he had paid the expenses from his own pocket. The Foreign Office revealed this in the National Assembly on Monday.

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The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

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According to Ali, the real threat to Pakistan, and as a consequence to the world, emerges from the appalling economic inequity and the dangerous complicity among Pakistan’s corrupt-to-its-core military, its civilian elite and their American counterparts, which goes way back: the founder of the nation Muhammad Ali Jinnah tried to sell his own house to [...]

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“That means bringing in the neighbouring countries: Iran, India, and the five Central Asian states, and then resolving some of these regional problems — like the disputes between India and Pakistan, between Iran and the Americans, between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

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The following piece, on the Bush Administration’s policy of unilateral strikes on suspected militant hideouts, appears in today’s NewMatilda.com: Not So Covert Operations By Mustafa Qadri In its last days in office, the Bush Administration is hurriedly escalating the so-called war on terrorism, writes Mustafa Qadri The election last week of Barack Obama as President [...]

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The following article, on a peaceful resolution of the war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, was published in today’s NewMatilda.com:

31 Oct 2008

Is It Time to Make Peace With The Taliban?
The once unthinkable is quietly becoming thinkable in Afghanistan, writes Mustafa Qadri

“You are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” declaimed President George Bush in his now infamous speech to Congress following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Now, the US is thinking of talking to the terrorists.

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The following article was published in the Guardian newspaper’s ‘Comment is Free’ website today:

Do the tribes really need more guns?

Arming tribal militias to fight the Taliban in Pakistan doesn’t solve the underlying problem

[Wednesday October 29 2008 21.00 GMT]

It’s back to the future with Pakistan’s latest response to the Taliban insurgency. With endorsement and limited training from the US, and Chinese-manufactured weapons, Pakistan will arm tribal militias, or lashkars, to fight the Taliban.

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The following article, based on my visit to parts of Pakistan’s tribal agencies, was posted on Reuters AlertNet today:

The Taliban’s war on women’s education

For well over a decade the Taliban have been known for their strong opposition to the participation of women in public life. Their rule over most of Afghanistan until 2001 was marked by a complete prohibition on women in the workforce or at educational facilities either as teachers or students….

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My dreams of becoming a doctor have been all but shattered…

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The following piece on Peshawar, Pakistan’s besieged border capital, was published in today’s NewMatilda.com:

Tension in the High Fort

By Mustafa Qadri

Close to Taliban-controlled regions and under pressure from the US, Peshawar’s residents daily negotiate the contradictions of Pakistani life, writes Mustafa Qadri from the North Western Frontier Province…

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Last week, in a special briefing session of a Senate committee, Pakistani Secretary of Defense Kamran Rasool briefed lawmakers on the recent dynamics of Pakistani support for the “war on terror”. Rasool openly admitted that Pakistan does not have any option but to follow US dictates, whatever they may be, because the country would collapse [...]

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LAHORE: A meeting of Muttehadda Ulema Council (MUC) held here Tuesday issued a unanimous decree (fatwa) declaring suicide attacks in Pakistan as haram (unlawful) and Najaez (unjustified).

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“Pakistan, United States: Brink of War?” Foreign Policy in Focus 2 October 2008

“As the United States steps up border raids into Pakistan, troops from both countries have commenced a deadly game of brinksmanship. Although aimed at asserting each other’s military presence along the Pakistan-Afghan border, the skirmishes risk outright hostilities.”

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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 [...]

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“Rural Pakistan’s silent victims” NewMatilda.com 29 September 2008:

“It’s as though someone has poured boiling tea on me…over and over again,” recalls Nazeeran, a woman from the village of Tehsil in south Punjab now fighting for her life at a refuge run by the Acid Survivors Foundation. Earlier this year she was doused in concentrated acid that caused severe burns to her face, shoulders and forearms. The acid continued to burn through her body for 10 hours, the time it took to finally obtain medical care at a hospital.

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“Who would do such thing a thing?” ABC Unleashed 29 September 2008

On Saturday 20 September twin suicide attacks turned a luxury hotel in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad into a desolate, black hulk liable to collapse at any moment. A giant crater, measuring around 20 feet deep and 40 feet across, replaced what once was an entrance lined with cars and fences.

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The English-language press is obssessed with the Obama-McCain presidential race. So much so that they’ve almost entirely failed to report on their policies. It was interesting to note in the first debate between the two candidates that McCain was actually less hawkish than Obama on US policy towards Pakistan: “If the United States has Al [...]

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Militants battling security forces in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan have forced families to give up sons to fight alongside Islamist extremists, a Pakistani military official said.

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“They have to talk to Mullah Omar, certainly – not maybe, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani group,” Mr Ghani told The Daily Telegraph in an interview in Peshawar.

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At that point, Zardari entered and the conversation turned decidedly flirtatious. He told her she was “even more gorgeous” than he thought.

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“Beyond violence in Pakistan” NewMatilda.com 22 September 2008

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Time for (another) shameless self-promotion. Sanjeev Miglani at the Reuters Blog mentioned my article here. Quite apart from that, I do enjoy Sanjeev’s reporting which is particularly surprising given it comes from a corporate news outlet. Interesting to see the diversification of news content now that the internet, and blogs, have displaced newspapers as the [...]

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The Real News Network has an excellent series of mini-documentaries on the US/Pakistan war against the Taliban along the border with Afghanistan. You can check them out here.

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What is really required in the region is an American/NATO exit strategy from Afghanistan, which should entail a regional solution involving Pakistan, Iran, India, and Russia. These four states could guarantee a national government and massive social reconstruction in that country. No matter what, NATO and the Americans have failed abysmally.

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US military strikes blunt Pakistan honour

Mustafa Qadri September 17, 2008

Early on the morning of Wednesday, 3 September, just before people were waking for the first of their daily prayers, a squad of US and Afghan commandos attacked the small village of Angoor Adda in South Waziristan, Pakistan.

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Pakistan’s Anti-Muslim Taliban

Mustafa Qadri | September 15, 2008

Tehreek-e-Taliban, the umbrella organization for Pakistan’s multiple Taliban movements, seeks to spread its strict Deobandi interpretation of Islam to all of Pakistan. “They don’t just want to control FATA [the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where they are based], but want to control the entire country,” says Ayesha Jalal, one of the foremost historians of Pakistan who recently wrote a book on the history of jihad in South Asia. The Taliban claims it fights in the name of Islam.

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France warned Tuesday that missile strikes by suspected U.S. drones in Pakistani tribal areas were undermining international efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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“Next despot?” NewMatilda.com 8 September 2008
(Musharraf may be gone, but the people of Pakistan don’t expect vast improvements under their new President. Asif Ali Zardari likes power and he isn’t afraid to use it writes Mustafa Qadri.)

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At least 15 people, including women and children, were killed by US special forces Wednesday during a raid on a border village in a Pakistani tribal region, local residents and security officials said.

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“Are Pakistani women not human beings? Or are they not considered citizens, deserving equal protection under the constitution and law?”

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Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the murdered former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has purged almost all of his wife’s top advisers from her party, including her political secretary and closest friend, who cradled her as she died.

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“The Taliban’s War Against Muslims” NewMatilda.com 1 September 2008
(The Taliban claims to be a Muslim movement but most of its victims are Muslims, writes Mustafa Qadri from Islamabad)

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I’ve been a runner for over a decade now. Owing to my physiology I find middle distance, from 5kms to 15kms but no more, to be my optimal range. Nevertheless, even when I’m running, stretching and exercising regularly, the first ten minutes is always an intense struggle. My lungs gasp and legs tense up. My [...]

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I haven’t had many opportunities to write recently due to the lack of internet access. It has shown just how dependent I am on the technology. In my defence, without internet, small scale writers such as I would not be able to contribute very much. The cost of constant phone calls and transport, which I [...]

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“Musharraf’s end: new beginning?” Foreign Policy in Focus, 22 August 2008
(On Pervez Musharraf’s resignation as President of Pakistan)

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“End of the Musharraf era in Pakistan” Guardian – Comment is Free, 19 August 2008
(On Pervez Musharraf’s resignation as President of Pakistan)

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“A bloodless end” NewMatilda.com 19 August 2008
(On Pervez Musharraf’s resignation as President of Pakistan)

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The United States made it known on Sunday that it was not considering any proposal to grant political asylum to President Pervez Musharraf.

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Just noticed this energetic video clip on youtube of a Pakistani woman voicing her discontent towards President Musharraf. Quite amusing.

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Pakistan is an incredibly divided society. Most of those divisions relate to class. Even within a class there are several different subclasses. Here’s one example. The neighbour’s servant, who’s a top bloke, came over today to give me some yummy desert. I offered him most of the food in my fridge because I’m leaving for [...]

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The US and British diplomats are covertly seeking a graceful exit for the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, reports say.

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Today I did a preliminary trip to Hyderabad, the next biggest city in the province of Sindh after Karachi. The purpose of the visit was to speak to a representative from the local branch of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. The major issue covered by the HRCP in Hyderabad is the abuse and enslavement [...]

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The White House has said that President George W. Bush believes only Pakistanis should decide who they want to lead their country, sending a clear signal that he will not rescue President Pervez Musharraf from an impeachment move.

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What remained to be worked out were guarantees for Mr. Musharraf’s physical safety if he stayed in Pakistan, or where he would go into exile. Among the places that Mr. Musharraf is said to favor if he goes abroad are Dubai, Turkey, the United Kingdom or the United States, though his strong preference is to [...]

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I had my first-ever Pakistani beer yesterday. Okay, I lie. I had my first four. The first was after lunch with a local newspaper editor. We went to a bottle shop near to where I live. You couldn’t tell from the outside however, because the place was largely boarded up. You drive up in your [...]

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Benazir Bhutto’s widower is accusing President Musharraf of siphoning off millions from aid intended to support war on terror.

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Sorry for not posting more travel diary entries of late. Or perhaps that’s a good thing? I’ve been a little flat out putting some stories together. The decision to impeach Musharraf didn’t help either… in terms of my workload. I’m still way behind on some non-Pakistan stories including one which is oh, just around 2 [...]

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“Will Musharraf finally fall?” NewMatilda.com 11 August 2008
(On the increasing speculation on Pervez Musharraf’s future as Pakistan President)

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Mr. Zardari has made it known that he would like to be president, according to Pakistani and Western officials. As leader of the majority party, he could seek the nomination for president. The appointment of the president is decided by a vote of the national legislature and the provincial assemblies.

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“A tale of two impeachments” Guardian – Comment is Free 8 August 2008
(A comparison of the impeachment proceedings against Pakistan’s President Musharraf and US President George Bush)

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ISLAMABAD – The elders of the legal fraternity are displeased with the ruling coalition for placing the demand of restoration of deposed judges on the back-burner and linking the same with the impeachment of President Pervez Musharraf.

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I just got interviewed by Geo TV on the impeachment of Musharraf. They asked what I thought will happen from here. I said no one really knows but Musharraf won’t budge easily. A lot depends upon what the Army and the US does. No doubt Musharraf is counting his allies as we speak. More importantly, [...]

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President Pervez Musharraf will have to face impeachment under Article 47 of the Constitution if he fails to take vote of confidence from the assemblies immediately. This was announced by Co-chairman PPP, Asif Ali Zardari at a joint press conference with PML(N) Chief, Nawaz Sharif, here at Zardari House on Thursday. The announcement came after [...]

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Dad left yesterday evening and the apartment has been noticeably quiet ever since. I’ll miss the old fella’s company. It was good to have him around for three weeks, even if he had five pet subjects he mentioned frequently every day. In other news, the taxi driver who threw our money back at us returned [...]

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It was an eventual day yesterday largely for uneventful reasons. The highlight was when the taxi driver we were using for three hours between nine and twelve at night asked for an exorbitant fee. When we paid him the usual amount we pay taxi drivers he literally threw the money back at us. After a [...]

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By destroying girls’ schools in Swat and Quetta.

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WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan.

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“A long wait for justice” NewMatilda.com 4 August 2008
(On the state of Pakistan’s lawyers’ movement)

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Pakistanis hoped for a fresh start after a decade of Pervez Musharraf’s military rule. But a host of political, economic and security problems is already threatening the democratic era with a return of the past, says Ian Talbot.

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Today I had some yummy pancakes with a cousin and his family. It was good to have a chilled out late Sunday chat and a big feed. There was another bloke there, around my dad’s age or possibly older. He was an interesting character. Quite knowledgeable and it seems he’s had a lot of life [...]

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Statement by His Excellency Hamid Karzai President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan At the 15th Summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Colombo, Sri Lanka 02 August 2008 Please Check Against Delivery Your Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Excellencies Heads of State and Government, Distinguished Delegates, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you, [...]

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Today and yesterday I visited Karachi’s Hindu community at two different ‘mandirs’ or temples. One was in the Lighthouse district of the city. From the main road you would be forgiven for not knowing it exists because it is surrounded by markets. The only entrance to the tempe is through a small alleyway covered by [...]

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In a demonstration of growing U.S. frustration, the CIA’s deputy director flew to Islamabad this month to warn Pakistani officials that they need to do more to address dangerous ties between the country’s spy agency and resurgent Al Qaeda-linked militants, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

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