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.

It was all very George Bush. The world must “stay the course” in Afghanistan and Pakistan because it is the centre of the greatest threat to international security in the post-cold war world, namely Islamist terrorism. US-led forces in Afghanistan must “saturate” insurgency-hit regions “with strength”. He added that the region must not be abandoned as had occurred after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan 21 years ago because it would remain a breeding ground for terrorism. The clear message was that Pakistan is a garrison state whose forces must be subsidised well into the future.

Almost no one would disagree with this thesis, or at least the idea that regions devastated by wars and foreign interference ought not to be left to their own devices once the dust settles. But the deafening silence over Musharraf’s personal responsibility for the devastation remains. What is especially troubling is the way that his still-fresh tenure – after all, he resigned as president of Pakistan less than two years ago – has already been swept into the history books.

That history refuses to lay dormant.

Gordon Brown’s government has been rocked by the Binyam Mohamed torture scandal. We now know that Mohamed was tortured in Pakistan. In fact, Musharraf’s Pakistan was a key conduit through which thousands were kidnapped and tortured, often under intense pressure from Britain and the US. Did the general collude in this? Did he facilitate the disappearance of thousands of his own citizens too? These important questions remain unanswered, thanks in part to Whitehall’s equivocal stance over Mohamed’s torture.

Much like Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry, Musharraf defended his record as commander-in-chief. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of his rule was his perceived double game of appeasing the Taliban by, among other things, signing ceasefires with them in the tribal areas while talking tough on the White House lawn. Now, he countered, the reconciliation approach is exactly what is being attempted in Afghanistan. In contrast, he rationalised inaction against non-Taliban militancy in the Punjab on the basis that it was a delicate matter that would take time to solve.

Neither response was particularly convincing, but the fact that he fought for his reputation nevertheless spoke volumes.

Musharraf has frequently if indirectly hinted at making a comeback to Pakistani politics, but only if the “people of Pakistan” want him – a familiar euphemism for drumming up support through back channels. Musharraf remains popular in many quarters of Pakistan society, as demonstrated by an online fan page replete with hagiographic comments and over 130,000 members. Musharraf proponents point to his international standing. No living Pakistani is as internationally recognisable as the former army chief, just as no serving head of state has brought with them as much pre-existing controversy as the incumbent, president Asif Ali Zardari.

With Pakistan facing fresh crises almost every week – the latest being anongoing dispute between an empowered judiciary and the government of president Zardari – now is as good a time as ever for Musharraf to stake his credentials with Pakistani and international audiences.

Like former prime minister Benazir Bhutto before him, Musharraf is an eloquent and confident speaker. That might explain why he remains a frequent guest in the lecture circuit. But, also like Bhutto, there is a profound gap between rhetoric and reality. All of our politicians decry the appalling poverty in Pakistan, yet none have taken significant steps to end the corruption and inequality that fuels it. Musharraf’s Pakistan was showered with billions of pounds that were almost totally unaccounted for. Many wonder why so little – even less than a trickle – was spent on the schools, infrastructure and hospitals he now claims are vital to vicariously defeating extremism in Pakistan.

There is renewed hope that will change with the Obama administration’s package of non-military funding – $7.5bn over five years – which has significant strings attached to it. In Pakistan too there are subtle signs that things may be changing.

Musharraf’s successor as army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, has gone to great lengths to avoid the media. Although impossible to predict, army insiders say he has no interest in formal politics and is looking forward to retirement later this year. The contrast with Musharraf could not be clearer. Perhaps the army has learned from his mistakes.

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 January 2010 15.10 GMT

With his chequered past and unlikely rise to the top, it is understandable that Asif Ali Zardari has faced constant calls to resign ever since becoming president of Pakistan two years ago. The central focus of the grievances has been Pakistan’s supreme court where a raft of charges have been submitted against Zardari and most of the senior leaders of the ruling Pakistan Peoples party by a motley mix of political parties, private citizens, and the court itself.

But in the glasshouse that is Pakistani politics the risk is that perceptions of judicial independence will be shattered by all the stone throwing. To understand the fracas it is necessary to consider recent history. After public pressure forced the Zardari government to reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, there was widespread celebration that at last Pakistan had found one institution that was above the cronyism that has plagued political life here.

Tables turn quickly in Pakistan. So it is perhaps no surprise that almost immediately the reconstituted supreme court began hearing challenges against members of the Zardari government. That included a petition by the chief justice himself against the National Reconciliation Ordinance, an amnesty granted by former President Pervez Musharraf after the United States pushed him to welcome Zardari and his wife, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, back into Pakistani politics.

Last December the Chaudhry supreme court ruled the NRO was unconstitutional, opening the floodgates for the current cases. Although attention has focused on charges against Zardari, the irony is that many of those bringing them have a history of intimidating the courts, disavowing them for being un-Islamic or have themselves faced charges ranging from corruption to murder at some point in their career.

What makes the current drama intriguing is the way that age-old double standard has become enmeshed with new political twists. Historically incapable of reining in the powerful, the courts have always been a favoured forum for otherwise disparate opposition groups to occasionally forget their mutual disdain in order to channel their common enmity towards whoever happens to be in government. The difference now is that, for the first time, the powerful are fearful of Pakistan’s highest court. That exposes it to the risk of being swept along with the political zeitgeist.

As the country continues to struggle with terrorism and a flagging economy, Asif Zardari, long considered uncritically obedient to diktats from Washington, has become emblematic of a government that most Pakistanis find easy to hate and impossible to love. Known derisively as “Mr 10%” for his alleged embezzlement of government revenues while his wife was prime minister in the 1990s, the president has faced several lawsuits in Pakistan, Britain, France and Switzerland over the last 15 years. Although most of them were dropped after the NRO, the supreme court’s ruling that it was unconstitutional has breathed new life into Pakistan’s courts and at least two cases in Switzerland and France.

Like any politician, Zardari will do everything in his power to cling to the presidency. In a departure from what has hitherto been an aloof tenure, he has begun a countrywide speaking tour aimed at rousing public confidence. But, ironically, there is a good chance he will agree to curtail his legal and de facto powers as president. Already he has transferred the authority to launch Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to the prime minister, a largely symbolic gesture given the army’s control of military affairs.

Yet Zardari still retains the power to appoint the chief of army staff, the most powerful post in the country, and dismiss the National Assembly. With General Ashfaq Kayani‘s term as army chief set to expire this year and parliament the only institution with the lawful power to revoke his presidential immunities, Zardari retains key bargaining chips should his situation deteriorate.

As president, Zardari enjoys constitutional immunity from criminal prosecution. But some legal experts argue that it does not preclude civil suits. Some, invoking nebulous provisions of the constitution inserted by the Islamist dictator Zia ul-Haq in 1985, have called for his removal on the grounds of poor character. Whatever the result of these arguments, it is clear that Zardari will be exposed to a toxic cocktail of civil and criminal charges the moment he leaves office.

Do not be surprised, then, if Zardari flees the country once his presidency ends, or if the Obama administration demands that he be left unmolested as a private citizen – much as the Bush administration protected former president Pervez Musharraf from prosecution when he resigned in August 2008. How does the supreme court fit into this? No one really knows. With the ball firmly in the court, however, it remains to be seen if the judges will pursue the military, mullahs and other politicians with the same vigour as they are pursuing Asif Zardari.

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.

Although ostensibly centred on current President Asif Ali Zardari’s immunity from a raft of court cases, the dispute has engulfed many of the most senior members of government.

It all boils down to a national reconciliation ordinance drawn up by Musharraf in November 2007 when he was still president. As his popularity and legitimacy plummeted, the Bush administration pushed for a power sharing arrangement between the general and one of his great rivals, the slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto who was living in exile between Dubai and London at the time. But a raft of court cases against Bhutto, her husband Asif Zardari, and many of their cohorts precluded an easy return to Pakistan to contest national elections. The NRO effectively gave them the immunity they desperately need to return to politics.

Following victory in national elections last year, the Pakistan People’s party, under Asif Zardari’s stewardship following Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007, formed a coalition government with a number of other parties and pressed for the NRO to be passed as law. But parliament and the supreme court conspired to scupper those plans, leaving the controversial amnesty to expire last Saturday, 28 November.

As far as we know, 8,041 individuals were given immunity under the NRO. They include Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan’s influential ambassador to the United States, and Rehman Malik, a key Zardari lieutenant and spearhead of the civilian administration’s push against extremists. Pakistan’s high commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, is also on the NRO list. So is the Britain-based head of the Muttahida Quami Movement, Altaf Hussain who, along with two of his deputies, faces more charges than any other individual on the list.

The charges against the thousands on the list, alleging everything from corruption, abuse of authority and even murder, make for harrowing reading. And although the government claims it will not protect anyone from the court’s findings, there can be no doubt that many of the charges are politically motivated. Virtually every prominent politician in Pakistan has faced or is facing a court case lodged by their foes.

But in among the mudslinging and the uncertainty it has created, the move to refer the NRO to the courts is a powerful, if indirect endorsement for the rule of law and parliamentary democracy. The government, faced with a hostile mix of political opponents and opportunists, says it will abide by any court rulings against those on the NRO.

A revitalised supreme court headed by Iftikhar Chaudhry, the fiercely independent chief justice who survived first Musharraf and then Zardari’s attempt to remove him, is expected to rule on the legality of the NRO in the not too distant future. He has already set a supreme court bench to commence hearings against those named in the NRO from Monday 7 December.

What the court eventually determines will also likely determine the fate of the present government.

So long as he remains head of state, President Zardari will retain immunity from any prosecution. Desperate to remain in office, however, he has already ceded control of the country’s nuclear arsenal to the prime minister. It is expected that he will also concede the powers to dismiss the national assembly and appoint military chiefs. That would be a welcome move as the prime minister is more answerable to the parliament than the president.

Current prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has undoubtedly been the biggest winner in this saga. Although installed by Zardari to be a pliant prime minister, he has increasingly drifted away from his orbit. It is well known that he has courted the Sharif brothers, former prime minister Nawaz and Punjab chief minister Shahbaz, who control the largest opposition party and dominate politics in the most populous province of Punjab. If key members of the PPP-led government falls due to the NRO , Gilani, who was a member of Sharif’s party until falling out of favour in the 1990s, could form government with them. To his distinct advantage, Gilani was not on the NRO list because the courts have already cleared him of corruption charges.

The political wrangling certainly reduces Pakistan’s capacity to deal effectively with the three largest crises plaguing the nation: the ongoing war with the Pakistan Taliban, the inability to match energy supplies with demand, and a weak, highly inflationary economy.

With so many Pakistanis sceptical of a democratic process that historically has failed to deliver, however, now is the best opportunity to showcase the merits of Pakistan’s fragile secular institutions.

]]> http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/the-other-battle-for-pakistan/feed/ 0 http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/long-journey-back-to-heaven-mustafa-qadri/ http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/long-journey-back-to-heaven-mustafa-qadri/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:24:01 +0000 mustafa http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/?p=578

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

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

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

But these mountains can be treacherous too, something I realise after I dare to glance down at the unfenced road where the rusting wreckage of cars and trucks litter the foot of the mountains. Still, given this breathtaking backdrop and its history, it is hard to imagine that this once tranquil alpine resort could become the site for a savage battle for Pakistan’s soul.

‘We had everything, flowers, forests, factories… But everything has been devastated–our businesses, our communities… we [lost] everything because of the Taliban and the Army,’ says Purmanri, a small business owner from Mingora, the region’s largest city.

With the Soviet withdrawal, Sufi returned to his native Swat where he vigorously lobbied for the enactment of an Islamic legal system that would only a few years later reach global notoriety under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In July 2007, local militias claiming to fight in the name of the Taliban initiated a string of bombings, taking local police and paramilitaries completely by surprise. In the chaos and confusion they quickly installed a parallel government demanding taxes from civilians and the prohibition of music shops and other practices such as folk poetry and ‘un-Islamic’ dance.

This was not the first time that ultra conservative Islam had been aggressively imposed on the region. In 1989, as Russian tanks began rolling out of Afghanistan, disillusioned religious hardliner Sufi Mohammad Khan left the Jamiat-e-Islami political party, Pakistan’s largest mainstream religious political party, to establish Tehreek-e-Nifaaz-e-Shariat-Mohammadi or Movement for the Promotion of Islamic Law. Sufi had spent the late 1980s fighting and recruiting young men for the anti-Communist mujahedeen in what was one of the dirtiest of Cold War conflicts.

Five years later, in 1994, TSNM activists blocked the main highway linking the entire Malakand Division of northwest Pakistan (which includes Swat) from the rest of the country. Government authorities, wary of the destabilising effects of continued violence on what was then a major source of tourism in Pakistan, acquiesced to Sufi’s demands.

This rapid acquiescence was an early indicator for Pakistani Islamists that when pressure was placed on the state, the state would give in to their demands. In truth, the Pakistan state itself was largely to blame for this dangerous blowback, after the Army under military dictator Gen. Zia ul Haq spent the previous decade developing a militant infrastructure in the tribal frontier that borders Afghanistan.

A veteran politician from Swat, speaking anonymously out of fear of retribution, told me that Sufi had always maintained close links with Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. As they shifted their focus away from Afghanistan and towards Kashmir, the Inter Services Intelligence, the Pakistan Army’s clandestine operations agency, sought to maintain the same recruitment infrastructure that had proved so devastatingly effective against the Soviets.

That relationship appeared to change after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. Dramatically transformed from pariah state to key ally in the new War on Terror, Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf ordered TSNM to be banned and Sufi imprisoned after he led a group of 10,000 men into Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban against pro-US forces in Afghanistan.

Yet in the intervening years, Sufi’s son-in-law, Fazlullah, continued where his father’s fiery sermons had left off. When in 2004 Fazlullah began incendiary clandestine radio broadcasts decrying Pakistan’s support for the US occupation of Afghanistan and threatening women and music shop owners with violence, authorities looked the other way.

In July 2007, emboldened by the state’s inaction, Fazlullah launched a surprise offensive against police and security forces throughout Malakand, setting up a parallel administration that taxed non-Muslims, closed down music shops and forbade women from attending schools and colleges. It took the Pakistan Army until October to finally send troops into what became a bloody town-to-town battle during which military operations and a string of audacious suicide bombings claimed hundreds of lives. Although the Army regained several key areas, the overall stalemate and public hostility towards the operations compelled top generals to sue for peace with Fazlullah’s Taliban.

But the peace proved short lived as the Taliban insurgency, now spreading to the neighbouring Bajaur tribal area, a key transit point bordering Afghanistan, continued to expand across the Swat valley. Under a mix of international and domestic pressure, the Army commenced a second, much larger operation in July 2008. Backed by jets, helicopter gunships and counterinsurgency training, primarily from the United States, the Army managed to retake many of the largest towns.

But the war was taking an increasingly devastating toll on civilians. Desperate for an end to hostilities, many called for a detailed peace agreement in the hope that the Taliban and its TSNM allies would cease hostilities if their key demand, the application of Sharia Law, was accepted across Malakand. With the Army engaged in an unpopular war, the government—facing immense political pressure due to rising inflation and nationwide energy shortfalls—finally caved.

Although the Swat valley is often described as a settled part of Pakistan, it has more in common with the tribal areas that abut the border with Afghanistan than the urban centres of Punjab and Sindh. Most Swatis are Pashtun, the dominant ethnic group of Pakistan’s tribal areas. Although the laws of Pakistan are meant to apply in Swat (unlike in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas that include South Waziristan, headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud), the judiciary and civil administration was considered corrupt and inefficient.

That history is a living, breathing legacy that connects past disenfranchisement with today’s poverty, ignorance and desperation, ills that gave the Taliban and TSNM a casus belli for confronting the state. They promised stability in exchange for their version of Islam.

For many locals, the peace deal’s announcement was hugely welcome. In the streets of the Malakand region, villagers distributed sweets, a common expression of joy usually reserved for celebrations at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. As a sign that the peace deal represented a victory for the Islamists, Sufi Mohammad led members of the TSNM on a march through Mingora, the largest city in the Swat valley. Most of those marching—an estimated 15,000—wore black turbans, the signature dress item of the Taliban.

But dark clouds of repression quickly formed over Swat. ‘We’ve lost the battle against the militants. We’ve seen day by day how the government and army have [been] weakened, how they have finally been reduced to talk and to deal…’ one local woman told Shuja Nawaz from the Atlantic Council. ‘Someone said to me the other day, “Don’t complain, because the one you complain to will be your enemy,”’ she added.

‘[The government of] Pakistan has betrayed us,’ says a middle ranking commander of the Swat Taliban with the nom de guerre Mullah Noor Alam. We are speaking at a secret meeting conducted at a remote Swat village in the dead of the night. ‘Ultimately, we want Sharia over all of Pakistan. But, first of all, here in Swat,’ he says determinedly. ‘Once Islam has been established in Pakistan, you will see there will no longer be any strife.’

But strife has become synonymous with the Taliban. As the Army stepped into Swat again in late April under intense pressure to remove the Taliban, the mutilated corpses of captured soldiers and others like dancers and music shop owners considered apostate littered the streets of Mingora. ‘In all of our Pashtun history, we never saw such barbarism,’ says Abdur Raheem Mundokhel from the Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party. ‘We have a history [of] people being killed in blood feuds, but still they would give honour even to their enemies.’

The government has responded with its own brand of ruthlessness. Taliban fighters are not the only ones targeted. Family members, even those who played no part in the conflict, and others forced by circumstance to support the insurgents, have been killed. Key Taliban commanders who surrendered to authorities have only days later been found dead, with officials claiming they had never been in their custody in the first place. Corpses have been discovered floating down the rivers while others dangle from electricity poles with notes warning of dire consequences for the Taliban and its supporters. Some villagers claim that state security forces have even warned them against giving a Muslim burial to fallen Taliban fighters (in Islam the dead are supposed to be buried immediately). Others say that family members have been kidnapped by security forces and threatened with death if their militant relatives, currently in hiding, do not turn themselves over to the authorities.

And the army has been accused of arresting tribal Pashtuns not linked to the militancy simply because they belong to clans associated with the Taliban. They also stand accused of a widespread and systematic campaign of murder and intimidation of those perceived to be sympathetic to the Taliban. According to eyewitnesses and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the Army and state paramilitaries have carried out reprisal killings on a mass scale.

Before the April offensive, some estimates placed the Taliban as occupying 11% of Pakistan, almost all of which was in the North-West Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas that are presently the focus of military operations being conducted by Pakistan and US forces. Now the main districts of the Swat valley, including Mingora, are firmly under Army control. The government says it hopes to repatriate the displaced over the coming months, emboldened by a raft of aid packages from the United States and other foreign governments, as well as support from international institutions known as the Friends of a Democratic Pakistan.

The task ahead is massive. Many of their communities now lie in ruins. Hundreds of schools and hospitals have been destroyed by Taliban or Army bombardment. It is a trauma that many find too difficult to discuss openly. Some, like young schoolgirl Mannu, use song to express their grief.

My sweet land has caught fire,
Not just from one side but from everywhere.
The fire has engulfed everything,
Our people, our customs, our schools, our markets.
My beautiful land, with its valleys and peaks, its perfumed flowers,
All have lost their lustre.
In every direction there is war.
The people, who laughed, who sang, are now silent.
The once majestic and peaceful River Swat has dried up.
I pray to you God, bring back the paradise, the peaceful Swat I remember.

Emboldened by her recital, Mannu feels comfortable enough to express her thoughts about the situation in Swat. ‘The Taliban say they want sharia, but what kind of sharia is this–killing and looting? It’s just a game to them,’ she says. Mannu has dared to seek an education in a region of Swat where the Taliban openly forbade women from doing so. ‘I’m not afraid of going to school,’ she says defiantly when asked about her studies. Risking physical harm as the Taliban destroyed more than 200 schools, Mannu continued to attend one of the few schools that remained open before eventually fleeing with her family.

‘We’re not afraid because we are doing the right thing,’ says Ziauddin Yousufzai, a school teacher from Swat, when I asked him if he feared for his life when he chose to continue instructing both boys and girls after the Taliban issued death threats against him. ‘Islam tells us that getting an education is compulsory for every girl, wife, for every woman and man. This is the teaching of the holy Prophet. I own Islam as much as it is owned by the Taliban. Why I should I be dictated [to] by the Taliban, why should I follow the Taliban model of Islam? The Holy Koran is my book as well. I have a right to act on it. Allah hasn’t said to me that I must follow the Taliban type of Islam. So that is why it’s very clear and Islam allows me, Islam rather motivates me to give education to my children because education is light and ignorance is darkness. And we must go from darkness into light.’

At an August meeting of high-level diplomats and international agency officials in Islamabad Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari spoke of the need to determine the ‘how and why’ of the Taliban’s encroachment into Malakand. But the real question is whether authorities will manage to confront the Army’s historical support for militancy, or whether the generals themselves have the ability to break links that, after 30 years of patronage, have firmed into strong personal and institutional bonds.

‘I don’t think this is the Taliban [fighting Pakistan forces in Swat],’ a young Army officer tells me in Rawalpindi. He says that colleagues who served as military advisers to Mullah Omar’s Taliban government in Afghanistan before September 2001 praised the Islamists for their austere and honest lifestyles. ‘They [the Taliban] couldn’t be behind the attacks.’

Yet the region remains home to many young men who either fight or have fought with the Taliban and other jihadi organisations in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Some, like 25-year-old Farooq (not his real name) refuse to take part in the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan. ‘This is my country, I have fought for it [in Kashmir], I won’t murder my own people,’ he says. Now a member of the Tableeghi Jamaat, a Muslim preaching movement that while ostensibly non-violent maintains close links with militant organisations, he has married and turned to a simple life of prayer, meditation and working the family farm. ‘I became ill while fighting [in Kashmir]. After my platoon was martyred by the Indians I managed to escape,’ he recalls. ‘My parents were in total shock when I returned. I hadn’t seen them for months… After that, they forbade me from returning to the jihad.’

This is a reflection of the Army and government’s speedy reconstruction of infrastructure such as roads and electricity grids that were heavily damaged during the past two years of fighting. ‘The military has done a wonderful job this time,’ remarks Suhail from Mingora, the largest city in Swat. ‘I’m sure [the Army] will be able to clear the rest of Swat as they did in Mingora.

Government authorities have been quick to repair roads, electricity grids and other civil infrastructure, even in places that were raging fronts in this brutal conflict only days earlier. The risks of continued violence are also high, but over 100,000 families have already returned and many of those interviewed were upbeat about the future.

‘When I was living in Mardan as IDP, I was so frustrated that I could never imagine my beautiful valley would return to normal,’ says university graduate Abdullah, who recently returned to his town of Saidu Sharif. ‘I can hear the music coming through the waves of the cool breeze of Swat valley at home. Everything seems to be fine…[there is] no food shortage, [and] markets have reopened, roads are safe again too. We feel secure now.’

Our house and shop both are safe, and we are really happy returning home after several months in the IDP camps.’

‘We’ll never forget what happened to us,’ he adds, ‘but we are really happy that the Taliban have been punished.’

His is a sentiment shared by many here. ‘Listening to the morning assembly of kids in the just opened schools is amazing. I’m really feeling excited…we are regaining our paradise,’ a gleeful Mohammad Rome from the town of Spalbandai exclaims, remembering times, under Taliban rule, when many schools were destroyed and coeducation and girls schools were strictly forbidden.

Citizens have even started thronging to their District Police Department hoping to be recruited as community police officers, something that was unthinkable even last April when the Taliban would warn policemen against going to work on pain of death.

‘Fear of Taliban is diminishing with each passing day,’ says community elder Hazer Gul from Salampur.

But returning the Swat valley to its former pristine self is a massive task that will take years of planning and funding. While the Pakistan Government has already paid Rs25,000 ($US300) each to 125,000 displaced families, the United States a further $US415 million in humanitarian aid for the displaced, and Britain $US36 million, the United Nations estimates that the cost of completely rehabilitating these former war zones will cost billions.

On paper, total aid pledged to Pakistan thus far appears impressive. Pakistan has secured over $US5 billion in pledges from the Friends of Democratic Pakistan group that includes the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and the United Nations, as well as $US7.5 billion over the next five years from the United States and a further $US11.7 billion from the International Monetary Fund. But Pakistan government bureaucrats familiar with the aid packages privately express doubts that all of the pledges will be met, and there is scepticism about Pakistan’s capacity to administer the necessary funding and services.

Ordinary village and townsfolk also remain wary of Pakistan’s formal democratic process. Wealthy and influential locals, including politicians, quickly fled once the fighting erupted, leaving them exposed to the Taliban’s excesses. They remain fearful of returning to their communities even now that the Army appears to have vanquished the Taliban.

And the threat of a return to violence is ever present. Although the army has physically reclaimed most of the Swat valley and either killed or captured senior insurgent leaders, many remain at large while huge pockets of remote mountainous terrain make a possible future return a real threat. There is also sporadic terrorism, like the suicide bombing of an army convoy in a busy market place in early October that claimed 27 lives.

According to residents throughout Malakand, including the Buner district, which remains the closest the Taliban has ever come to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, and Dir on the cusp of the Afghan border, the Taliban have recommenced their clandestine radio broadcasts after a two-month hiatus, and started to distribute propaganda audio and video tapes recording their claimed victories against the Pakistan Army and international forces in Afghanistan. Adding to the drama is the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Swat Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah. Although reportedly cornered by security forces in a remote mountain range in September there has been no word about his capture.

Yet despite this grim picture there are glimmers of hope. One positive development is the formation of Aman Tehreek, or Peace Movement, a grassroots network established by teachers, trading bodies and ordinary citizens with the express objective of seeking a peaceful and sustainable resolution to the current conflict. Peace groups have proliferated in several towns recently liberated in the tribal areas, often with the aim of brokering ceasefire agreements between security forces and local pro-Taliban fighters or to assist communities in the rehabilitation process. Like these other groups, Aman Tehreek’s immediate concern is trying to facilitate humanitarian assistance and rehabilitation for the war-torn communities of the North West Frontier Province. But what makes it unique is its longer-term objective of seeking to prevent future radicalisation. It hopes to achieve this by promoting education, development, and traditional Pashtun culture—like music, dance and poetry—long suppressed by militant Islamism.

‘There’s a social, moral and political breakdown of Pakistani society,’ said Raza Rabbani, a Pakistan Peoples Party senator in the federal parliament, at a recent Aman Tehreek gathering in Islamabad. Ziauddin Yousufzai, the local school teacher, is also a member and coordinator of Aman Tehreek. Education, he notes, is the key to preventing future extremism. He should know. Working at one of the last schools to defy Taliban edicts and teach girls in Swat, he has witnessed how low levels of literacy, poor employment prospects and the marginalisation of women have been wellsprings of opportunity for extremists.

Still, Aman Tehreek and other grassroots initiatives to rebuild local communities perhaps explain why people like Mohammad Yahya, something of an elder statesman and former mayor of a town in the Swat valley, can remain optimistic. ‘This is our homeland. It is like heaven to us.’

Source Url: http://www.the-diplomat.com/featnwft0908.aspx

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.

The Taliban may have proved incapable of meeting those demands, but filling the justice gap is central to improving stability in this strategic South Asian nation. And it is more than a matter of improving the courts.

Maladministration, a term broadly defined to include a range of government actions considered inappropriate or unlawful, is the core grievance that the nation’s Federal Ombudsman seeks to address. Established in 1983 by the Pakistani government, it remains one of the few ostensibly independent organs of government where citizens can seek redress, free of charge, for a variety of complaints relating to, for example, federally administered education, employment and health services. Since the creation of the first ombudsman office 26 years ago, several others have proliferated at the federal and provincial levels, including in the taxation and banking sectors.

But the challenges remain largely the same across provincial and federal boundaries. One of these challenges is jurisdiction. The Ombudsman has no power to investigate matters of defence or external affairs, or cases being heard by the courts. This is perhaps the greatest weakness in the current system as it effectively limits independent scrutiny of some of the most critical aspects of governance in Pakistan.

Another issue is the extent to which the Ombudsman has the political clout to affect decisions. In the event that the Ombudsman concludes that a government department is errant, he sends recommendations for redress. If they are not implemented, the Ombudsman will file a formal request for review with the President of Pakistan.

Therein lies the problem with the process. If redress is considered politically disadvantageous, the ombudsman is effectively rendered incapable. Making the Federal Ombudsman’s task even more difficult is that the Ombudsman has a four-year term, making him or her vulnerable to the whims of the government of the day.

Last month, the Federal Ombudsman organised a forum in Islamabad on administrative justice and accountability that brought together a diverse group of stakeholders including senior parliamentarians, government officials, academics and civil society representatives. Federal Ombudsman Javed Sadiq Malik reminded all of the representatives that they are working toward the common aim of improving governance by promoting public accountability and upholding the rights of citizens.

Concurrently, the United Nations Development Programme announced in July that it was working with the Federal Ombudsman’s office to strengthen its capacity to respond to public grievances on a $1.6 million project, Strengthening Public Grievance Redress Mechanisms, which will run until the end of next year.

The project will try to strengthen the Ombudsman’s capacity to deal with instances of maladministration, make government’s delivery of education and trade-related administrative services more efficient, while also improving outreach and access to grievance-redress services. Another key requirement identified by the project is ensuring transparency in the exercise of the Ombudsman’s functions, an important and often missing aspect of governance in Pakistan.

Already the project has borne some fruit. Complaints may be lodged online or over a toll-free number, the latter a significant step towards greater access to justice for Pakistan’s largely poor society that has no access to the internet or lawyers.

It is an ambitious project and its facilitation is a daunting task. There is a prevailing sense that the most powerful in Pakistan are above the law, and that the Ombudsman can’t change this. After all, injustice and unaccountable governments have been rife in Pakistan despite the existence of the Ombudsman position for over two decades.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom. According to figures released by the Federal Ombudsman, 21,368 complaints were addressed last year, up from 13,388 addressed in 2007. Complaints have also been resolved increasingly quickly over the last three years: most are settled within a year and 28% within the first 3 months.

The successful end to Pakistani lawyers’ ‘long march’ to restore an independent federal judiciary this year, and the army’s own recent admission via an article posted on its public relations website that military rule has been highly damaging, suggest that now is as good a time as ever for Pakistan’s Ombudsman to get to work.

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* Mustafa Qadri (http://mustafaqadri.net) is a journalist based in Pakistan. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 27 October 2009, www.commongroundnews.org http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=26631&lan=en&sid=1&sp=0&isNew=1

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).

Most out-of-power autocrats look to self-imposed exile to shield themselves from vengeful countrymen desperate to settle scores. Perhaps that is why Pakistan’s Musharraf, former president and army chief, recently bought a central London apartment.

There was a brief period of quiet after Musharraf was pressured to resign as president in August last year. That silence was soon broken, however, as he engaged in a worldwide speaking tour. More recently, the retired army chief made overtures to the main faction of a political party, the Muslim League Qaid branch, favoured under his rule, only to be rejected.

Perhaps even more damning, the army’s top spokesperson, General Athar Abbas, wrote a revealing article on an official website, arguing that Musharraf and other previous military rulers had harmed the army’s image.

Even political foes are now lining up to bring Musharraf down, and, in scenes reminiscent of the backlash against Indira Gandhi following her 1977 electoral defeat in neighbouring India, Pakistan’s courts have become a central front in the drama.

Several different actions have been filed at the courts, ranging from those involving people kidnapped by security agencies under Musharraf’s rule to those challenging his alleged role in the murder of the celebrated Balochi statesmen Akbar Khan Bughti.

Politically motivated court cases are not new in Pakistan. The country’s first democratically elected leader, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged after a court – under pressure from then Army Chief Zia ul Haq – found him guilty of a trumped-up charge of conspiracy to murder a political rival. Practically every prominent politician has had charges against them brought to the bench.

The Musharraf trials are nevertheless unprecedented in this country’s young history of democratic rule – military rulers are rarely brought to trial here. Indeed, no military ruler has ever been brought before the due process of the law.

But the current battle is broader than Musharraf or the legacy of military rule he represents. Among the petitions filed with the courts are several that seek to annul the National Reconciliation Ordinance under which the former president allowed exiled political leaders like Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan to contest elections eventually held in February 2008. Bhutto was killed two months before those elections, but the NRO enabled her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, to eventually become the country’s president.

In seeking to dismantle his legacy current political players are also looking to undermine incumbent politicians, particularly President Asif Ali Zardari.

The NRO washed away the stain of previous corruption charges that had disqualified Zardari and several of his stalwarts from high office. Zardari alone was cleared of five outstanding corruption charges a mere month after his party won the February 2008 elections. Removal of NRO protection would almost certainly reopen these dirty cans of worms bringing government business to a total halt.

Although the supreme court – Pakistan’s highest judiciary – has avoided ruling on the NRO cases, late last month it ruled a state of emergency imposed by Musharraf in November 2007 illegal. According to Athar Minallah, a senior member of the lawyers’ movement that challenged the former president’s clamp-down, the ruling demonstrates that “Pakistan is on its path towards rule of law”.

Detractors say the case unduly politicises the judiciary which – given it includes no fewer than 14 judges, including the chief justice, dismissed by Musharraf under the state of emergency – cannot promise neutrality.

To its credit, however, the supreme court has avoided the issue of charging Musharraf with treason, saying it is a matter for parliament to decide. For its part, the government says it won’t endorse cases against Musharraf, although Attorney-General Sardar Latif Khosa spiced things up by saying it would support his prosecution if unanimously sought by parliament.

Such tribulations are common to many countries going through the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet infamously received lifetime amnesty from charges of torture and other crimes until eventually being brought to trial shortly before his death. In contrast, many Argentinean generals guilty of atrocities during their country’s “Dirty War” during the 1970s and 80s were eventually prosecuted.

The Obama administration is currently wrestling with the decision whether to investigate US interrogators for alleged torture of suspected terrorists, although the prospect of high level officials such as former vice president, Dick Cheney, secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, or Bush himself being charged remains unlikely.

The chances of Pervez Musharraf being indicted are probably more likely, but remain slim. Regardless, the current court dramas demonstrate the increasing influence of the judiciary, and especially the supreme court, in Pakistan’s political landscape.

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.

In the markets and shops of Saddar Town, where almost anything imaginable can be found, the dusty facades of British-era townhouses are seen fading into history. Much like Pakistan since partition, the buildings have become increasingly dilapidated and neglected and, with them, so too much of our rich history.

‘There is no justice here’ is the most common phrase I hear in Pakistan, and I’ve been to every corner of this diverse, beautiful and sometimes brutal country. Indeed, much of the popular support for recently reinstated Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was a direct consequence of the incredible inequity faced by ordinary citizens.

Spare a thought, then, for the Lahore High Court which, last Tuesday, ordered the release of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, a religious leader placed under house arrest over alleged links to last November’s murderous Mumbai attacks. ‘His release has disturbed us all,’ said US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, an understandable and widely held sentiment.

The court released Saeed on the grounds that government lawyers had not provided sufficient evidence to warrant his arrest. He has been released by the courts on similar grounds on at least two prior occasions, a record that has led the Indian government to conclude that Pakistani authorities are not doing their best to investigate Saeed.

The release order could not have come at a worse time for India-Pakistan relations. Already soured by events at Mumbai, it came a day after India’s minister for external affairs publicly advocated a thaw in the icy relations between the two countries, and a week after Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington spoke of the need to put the issue of mutual nuclear disarmament back on the table.

There are good reasons to presume Hafiz Mohammad Saeed’s involvement, at least vicariously, in the Mumbai attacks. He may not have helped organise the audacious assault that killed 173 people in one of the great cities of the subcontinent. But his stewardship of the anti-Indian Lashkar-e-Tayaba has for years been loud and active. Dossiers given to Pakistani officials by their Indian counterparts also shed considerable light on Lashkar’s involvement in Mumbai, as has tenacious investigative journalism, much of it by our own reporters.

But in a democracy, people deserve their day in court. If an individual is to be found guilty and sentenced to prison, their crimes must be established beyond a reasonable doubt, based on the evidence. The irony of this latest drama is that the Lahore High Court’s decision to order Saeed’s release proves its independence while, at the same time, exposing the executive’s incompetence.

Speaking of court cases, there has been intense scrutiny of the trial of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from Mumbai. How have the Indian courts been dealing with highly politicised cases like Kasab’s, Madhav?

(Article originally published at: http://www.the-diplomat.com/article.aspx?aeid=14389)

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

“The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective.”