The documentary is available for streaming and download here.

No individual has influenced the course of US military strategy more over the last 10 years than Osama bin Laden. In an age of increasingly narrow ideologies, Osama has been the standard bearer for international terrorism. Beyond that simple equation, however, lies a complex, contradictory chain of events that over the last decade has seen Australian forces caught in the unending US war in Afghanistan.

In what is probably the most accurate statement on his passing, Afghan officials termed bin Laden’s death a “symbolic victory”. Afghans have suffered more than any others at the hands of Osama bin Laden, but they are well aware that his death will not bring them a better future.

For a time bin Laden’s ability to evade the most powerful and sophisticated military force in human history gave him a superhuman aura. But as the body count rose the ultimate futility of his terrorism has become ever more evident. For in every conflict in which Osama engaged — from Afghanistan and Iraq to Pakistan and Somalia — even other Islamists eventually realised that his al Qaeda lacked any sustainable vision for Muslim majority societies.

There is no question that Osama’s radical politics were a product of autocratic regimes across the Arab world. Some were aligned with the West, others, like Syria, are still official enemies. Most now face unprecedented challenges from grassroots movements that make a mockery of Western notions of moderate and non-moderate Muslim states.

Al Qaeda’s brand of violent, radical politics too has been swept aside by the soft power of popular politics. Last week the Hamas movement signed a peace agreement with the secular Fatah in Egypt. Both were under immense pressure from ordinary Palestinians to reach such a settlement. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has replaced militancy with political negotiations. Inevitably these developments have their uncertainties. But for societies fatigued by oppression and war they are welcome developments.

It is time the West read these important signals. When the former US pro-consul in Iraq Paul Bremer announced the capture of Saddam Hussein before a packed news conference the hall erupted into loud celebrations. This time, the celebrations are relatively muted.

In a week dominated by the spectacle of the Royal Wedding, one cannot help but feel the theatre of bin Laden’s death obscures the moral and tactical questions we need to answer.

Will his murder reduce the terrorism threat or weaken the insurgency our troops are fighting alongside others in Afghanistan and Pakistan? And why has it taken so long to find bin Laden? That last question is especially prescient given that he was found living in a house in Abbottabad, a settled, urban part of Pakistan’s north-west that is home to many serving and retired military personnel, including some of my own distant relatives.

Only hours after bin Laden’s assassination was announced, unknown assailants torched a NATO supply convoy and killed four policemen in the nearby region of Attock.

Mindful of further devastating attacks, Pakistan’s military has been averse to emphasising its role in the joint operation with US forces that led to bin Laden’s death. Militant groups are expected to mount fresh attacks. That includes Tehreek-e-Taliban, the Pakistani branch of the Islamist insurgency that is more closely aligned to Al Qaeda than its Afghan counterparts.

It is easily forgotten now, but the key moment in bin Laden’s war against the West was 1990. In that year Saudi Arabia invited US troops into the desert kingdom to end Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. Bin Laden considered it a sacrilege for American soldiers to be present on the same soil as Mecca, for Muslims the most sacred place on earth. Already disillusioned by the Saudi regime, this was what convinced Osama to engage in high-profile terrorism in the hope of arousing global Muslim animosity towards the US.

The tragic irony is that the international community played a pivotal role in giving Osama international prominence well before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Underwritten by the US and Saudi Arabia and managed by Pakistan’s military, the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s brought bin Laden and other extremists to the fore. The Soviet Union’s eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan and subsequent collapse convinced militant Islamists that their violence could make politics and the global system redundant.

Recent events prove the opposite to be true. Bin Laden is not the only one who was seeking shelter from this conflict. Millions of innocent civilians remain homeless throughout Pakistan, while in neighbouring Afghanistan and in Iraq and many other places the victims of a decade of war continue to suffer.

Liquidating terrorists like Osama bin Laden will not end the terrorism threat. It is grievance and poverty in all its shades — of livelihoods, of opportunities and ideas — that ultimately breeds the conditions in which terrorism is born.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mustafa Qadri is a Pakistan-based journalist.

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

Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 March 2011 12.52 GMT

The admission by Pervez Musharraf, the former Pakistan president, of British complicity in torture on BBC2′s The Secret War on Terror should not surprise anyone. What is more disheartening is the prospect that authorities remain complicit in torture despite the denials and all that has happened over the past 10 years.

But perhaps that should not be surprising. Over the weekend, senior US state department spokesperson Phillip Crowley was forced to resign for saying the treatment of alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning was“ridiculous… counterproductive and stupid”. His comments came afterManning claimed to be stripped naked and forced to parade in front of his guards and placed on ‘punitive’ suicide watch.

President Obama has backtracked on one of the first promises of his tenure. When he approved the continuation of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp this month, despite an earlier promise to close the controversial facility within a year of coming to office, Obama effectively endorsed the inhumane and degrading treatment of 172 terrorism suspects that must surely be tantamount to torture. In Afghanistan, an even larger detention centre at Bagram airbase, known as the “New Guantánamo”, was touted as an alternative to the Cuban naval base. Now it appears both will be in continuous operation into the foreseeable future.

Bagram and Guantánamo are only two parts of an international network of detention facilities across the globe where western governments can escape the prying checks and balances that ought to be the measure of any civilised society.

Like the earlier claims within elite circles to have been fooled by Tony Blair’s dossier and the invasion of Iraq, assertions by British intelligence authorities that they did not know terrorism suspects would be tortured in Pakistan must be met with extreme scepticism.

Successive prime ministers have been happy to describe Pakistan as the centre of global terrorism, but it has also been a centre for western outsourcing of torture. For years, Amnesty International and several other rights groups have reported on the widespread use of torture at all levels of Pakistan’s law enforcement and security authorities, in neighbouring Afghanistan, and in every one of the countries used as rendition sites by Britain and the US. Officials in Whitehall cannot plead ignorance of this reality.

When British torture victim Binyam Mohammad revealed he was strung upside down and beaten with a strap after being sent to Pakistan by British intelligence, it should have immediately resonated with reports of the treatment of thousands of Pakistanis held in secret detention by their intelligence agencies.

“Never once,” said Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s leader for the first seven years after the September 11 attacks, did British authorities tell him not to torture terrorism suspects. He argues that the silence was tantamount to “tacit approval” of what Pakistan security authorities were doing.

In last night’s programme, former CIA chief Michael Hayden justified the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspects, as one of the “heroic choices” that unearthed a “treasure trove” of information.

One of the oldest devices used to conceal abuse is to clothe them in the language of necessary precaution. The eternal argument in favour of torture in secret detention facilities is that our world is a dangerous place and that extraordinary measures must be taken to maintain our safety.

But torture is an unreliable method for obtaining information on suspected terrorists. Study after study has shown that victims of torture will tell their tormentors whatever they want to hear to end their ordeal. Moreover, victims of torture are often so mentally and physically injuredby the experience that their value as witnesses is irreparably damaged, a key reason for the difficulty in convicting alleged terrorists the world over. Most important of all, torture and other abuse in detention is a moral aberration. Our support or involvement in these practices effectively signals that there is no distinction between us and the enemies we rightly describe as extremists.

Last year MI6′s Sir John Sawers arrogantly proclaimed that torture was not an abstract question “for philosophy courses or searching editorials”, but “real, constant, operational dilemmas”. Ironically, it is proponents of torture who are most liable to drift to abstractions and hypothetical scenarios to justify abuses such as waterboarding that destroy real lives and condemn democratic, plural societies like Britain to the scorn usually reserved for the most repressive regimes. Officials like Sawers use equally esoteric bureaucratic hurdles to maintain plausible deniability over their complicity in torture.

The detainee inquiry set up by David Cameron’s government is a welcome development. But it has regrettably stated that it is not obliged to comply with international and European standards of human rights. Last month Amnesty International and eight other organisations called on the British government to, among other things, ensure that the inquiry has a mechanism to independently decide what evidence should be made public, and powers to compel evidence.

“And this also has been one of the dark places of the Earth,” says Conrad’s protagonist in Heart of Darkness as he travels down the river Thames. And just as we learn in that cautionary tale, a sordid dark trail still links distant torture chambers to the heart of our governments. Unless and until that link is broken, and all individuals guilty of or complicit in torture are brought to justice, we cannot hope to keep our societies truly safe.

[This article first appeared in The Guardian on March 15, 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011/mar/15/torture-pervez-musharraf-tacit-approval]

By Mustafa Qadri

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mustafa Qadri,
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 March 2011 20:00 GMT

Despite repeated climbdowns by the Pakistan government to appease extremists over the blasphemy laws, the minorities minister’s assassination proves there is no room for compromise. It is time for Pakistan authorities to bring perpetrators of violence to justice.

The federal government was quick to respond to the murder of Shahbaz Bhatti with much stronger criticism of extremism than that which followed Salmaan Taseer’s murder on January 4. President Asif Zardari condemned the “heinous act” and vowed that the government would continue to “stand firm” against extremists. But the Pakistan government has been on the back foot for the past few months: it has largely retreated from any talk of addressing the widely recognised problems with the blasphemy laws; it has failed to “stand firm” against violence from radical groups, and it has, by and large, failed to protect and promote the rule of law.

Sadly, Pakistan’s most powerful institution, the army, remains silent on this issue as it did following Taseer’s assassination, even though it has issued statements on other matters of national interest in the past. The country’s largest opposition political party, the Pakistan Muslim League, has also stayed quiet.

A Pakistan Taliban spokesperson who later claimed responsibility for the murder was not so shy, nor was a note apparently left by the killers alongside Bhatti’s body. Both stated that he was being killed for criticising Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

The most ominous aspect of the Bhatti murder is that he himself was so clearly aware of the risks, but still did not receive sufficient protection. Bhatti, the Catholic son of a former army soldier and schoolteacher, had continued to receive death threats this year.According to one report a month ago, Bhatti’s security detail was far smaller than that accorded to other federal cabinet ministers despite the threats that arguably made him the most targeted government politician after the president and prime minister.

“I met him only last week and he was terrified for his safety,” says Asma Jahangir, former chair of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and currently president of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association. “In fact, he told me to be more careful and not to travel without security.”

The media’s coverage of the murder has been relatively subdued. One channel with links to radical religious groups claimed Bhatti’s murder was an inside job aimed at deflecting attention away from the trial of American intelligence contractor Raymond Davis . Others have ignored the note left by Bhatti’s killers claiming to be acting for Al al-Qaeida in the Punjab and Fidayeen-e-Muhammad, a militant group linked to the Pakistan Taliban. Most of the coverage has focused on Bhatti’s minimal security.

The solution to this malaise is not greater security, although it is vital that people against whom violence is threatened are provided with adequate protection. Neither is burying our collective heads in the toxic sands of conspiracy. At its heart the Bhatti murder, like that of Taseer, is about the abdication of government responsibility in the face of mob and political violence crudely justified as defence of Islam.

Amnesty International has called on the Pakistan government to bring Bhatti’s killers to justice. Such crimes, and a flood of incitements to violence against those calling for honest reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, thrive in the atmosphere of impunity and irresponsibility fostered by the government’s failure to uphold its human rights obligations.

It is a sentiment shared across Pakistan’s civil society.

“The government must take up this task wholeheartedly,” Jahanghir adds, “but I fear it hasn’t got the strength to do that.”

That may be so, but despite the sobering situation there have been signals of an emerging realisation that perpetrators of violence must be held accountable. A group of parliamentarians has issued a resolution condemning the murder of Taseer and promoting the principles of equality, tolerance, pluralism and democracy in Pakistan. Although it did not expressly criticise the blasphemy laws, the resolution mentioned the vital point that authorities must put a stop to the violence justified in the name of religion, which erodes the rule of law and sets the stage for further abuses.

Based on the immediate reaction of Pakistan’s media, particularly its highly influential private television stations, Bhatti’s assassination did not make a major impression on the Pakistani public. That may change in the next few days. But for the Pakistan government, it sure must set off tremendous alarm bells. Now is the time for the government, with the public backing of the army, to take bold steps to defend human rights and the rule of law.

[This article first appeared in The Guardian on March 2, 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/02/shahbaz-bahtti-pakistan-violence.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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