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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mustafa Qadri is a Pakistan-based journalist.

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

By Mustafa Qadri

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Mustafa Qadri

Last Updated: Nov 23, 2010

Over the weekend the leaders of Nato unanimously agreed to start withdrawing from Afghanistan by 2014. Timed so as not to clash with the expected re-election bid of the US president Barack Obama in 2012, the announcement comes at a moment when the US-led war against al Qa’eda and the Taliban is being escalated, not scaled down. The agreement on Afghanistan arrives as the US is placing pressure on Pakistan to expand the war to the restive, large province of Balochistan. Both decisions reflects a dangerous over-reliance on heavy-handed military solutions to regional problems that are largely political in nature.

It is difficult to conceive now, but in 2002, following the US invasion of Afghanistan the previous year, the Taliban were largely defeated and al Qa’eda bereft of its ability to stage attacks from Afghan soil. As the US commenced its bombardment of Afghanistan, the Taliban expressed a willingness to hand Osama bin Laden over to the coalition forces, on the condition that the superpower provide them evidence of his culpability in the attacks on September 11, 2001 and that his extradition be to a neutral country and not the US.

The offer was rejected in October 2001, as was an earlier suggestion, mooted by the Taliban and sympathetic religious groups in neighbouring Pakistan, to try bin Laden before a domestic or international tribunal.

We have no way of knowing now whether those offers were genuine or even practical. But we know the results of the last eight years. US-led and Afghan forces meander through an increasingly violent and destabilising war that has killed thousands of Afghans and foreign nationals. The costs of conflict are clear.

Most ominous of all, the strategy of targeting insurgent commanders – often with unmanned drone strikes – has created space for younger, more radical leaders who are more ideologically inclined towards al Qa’eda’s world view than the Taliban’s more limited focus on Afghanistan.

The decision has also increased support for the Taliban in the region, although such sentiments are not without reservations. “If the Taliban succeed, it will mean Pakistan will go backwards,” said Sohail Janvi, a business man who lives in the semi-tribal city of Kohat in Pakistan, a few hours’ drive from the Afghan border. “But,” he adds, “the government gives us nothing [and] we do not want Americans here,” referring to the US drone strikes that have killed scores of civilians in the past four years in Afghanistan and also near the border with Pakistan.

People living close to Taliban-held parts of Pakistan’s Orakzai tribal agency say that they often hear drones whirling overhead like giant, distant flies. The drones do instill fear but whether or not they are particularly good at dividing terrorists from civilians is an open question. The panic caused by the drones has also done much to support well-worn and crudely simplistic conceptions of the United States as a cruel empire bent on subjugating the Muslim world.

The Obama administration has escalated the drone strikes in its first two years, undertaking nearly four times as many attacks in that time than occurred in all eight years of the Bush presidency.

The Taliban are indeed repressive fanatics who marginalise women and have provided sanctuary to al Qa’eda. But escalating the US-led war in Afghanistan and Pakistan has transformed the Taliban into a Pashtun freedom force in a way that no rebel leader could have done on his own.

“Yes, they are freedom fighters because they are fighting against what they call foreign occupation of Afghanistan,” says Daud Khattak, a journalist based in Peshawar. “The Taliban don’t fight for political gain or money but want freedom from American slavery,” explained a resident of Dir, a mountainous Pashtun region bordering the tribal areas.

So long as the West’s presence in Afghanistan is primarily defined by military force, its relationship to ordinary Afghans will be based primarily on violence. By their very nature, armies must intimidate and coerce the population into accepting their authority. The coalition’s most important local allies in the three provinces of Afghanistan hardest hit by the insurgency are warlords who are widely believed to have grown rich and powerful by keeping civilians in fear and capitalising on the drug trade.

But Afghan warlords are notoriously fickle, switching sides as the fortunes of war change. A number of key Islamist warlord allies of the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, for example, are ideologically identical to the Taliban but chose to throw their lot with the US-backed Afghan leader as a matter of expediency.

By contrast, the Taliban say that they fight for freedom from western influence. Its core membership still considers Mullah Omar its leader and, over the last nine years, has not wavered from calling for foreign troops to withdraw. Rahimullah Yusufzai, the first journalist to interview Omar when the Taliban first emerged from Kandahar in 1994, says that talk of negotiating with the Taliban is premature. “They are confident, [and] in no mood to talk. Even if it takes another decade, they would wait for foreign troops to withdraw before taking negotiations seriously,” Mr Yusufzai says.

In the face of this reality, America’s ability to change Afghanistan is dramatically limited. Now is the time for US-led forces to shift responsibility for securing Afghanistan to regional powers like China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and even Russia, who are are better situated to assist the troubled country. Even this is far from a simple or foolproof option. But local and regional actors are better suited to forge a peace through political means because they have the most to lose from instability in Afghanistan.

With their troops already in the country, the US and its ISAF allies could then help mediate a power arrangement underwritten by regional powers. But as the US-led forces continue their current escalation, it is not at all clear that they will be in a position to withdraw even in 2014.

Mustafa Qadri is an Australian journalist based in Pakistan

[This article appeared in The National newspaper on Tuesday November 23, 2010: http://www.thenational.ae/the-national-conversation/comment/natos-tactics-and-timetable-strengthen-afghan-radicals?pageCount=0]

video available here

As winter approaches, 2 million hectares of crops have been lost and the damage and destruction of 2 million homes has left 7 million people without shelter. Disease is now setting in creating even more despair in Pakistan. Malaria is steadily on the rise, and increasing numbers of people suffering from acute diarrhoea, respiratory infections and skin diseases are being reported. Polio among children is also on the increase despite a massive immunization campaign.

Speakers

• HE Fauzia Nasreen - High Commissioner of Pakistan

  
  Her Excellency Ms Fauzia Nasreen has been with the Foreign Service of Pakistan since 1973. Before commencing her post in Australia, Ms Nasreen served as Director-General of the Foreign Services Academy ((2007-09) and was Ambassador to Poland (2002-06) and Ambassador to Nepal (1999-2002). Prior to that she undertook diplomatic assignments in Tehran, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Rome. Ms Nasreen holds a Masters in English Literature and was a Visiting Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University in 1988-89.

• Mustafa Qadri - Freelance Journalist

  
  Mustafa Qadri is based in Pakistan where he writes for international newspapers, journals and web-based news outlets. He is a regular columnist for The Guardian (UK) and correspondent for The Diplomat, Australia’s only dedicated commercial foreign affairs ezine. He can regularly be heard on Radio National and is published in the Los Angeles Times, The Australian, The Age, and The National newspapers. Mustafa’s work can also be read on Reuters AlertNet and World Politics Review and he is a regular Pakistan consultant for Human Rights Watch, School of Oriental & African Studies (London), and Oxford Analytica. He was formerly a lawyer specialising in public international law and worked with Australia’s Attorney-General’s Department before undertaking two years research at University College, London.

• Dr Nadeem Mailk - Development Studies Program Coordinator, The University of Melbourne

  
  Dr Nadeem Malik is a development expert with 20 years of work experience in the field. His major areas of specialization are Third World development, globalization and development, gender and development, governance, civil society and the state, decentralization or local governance, project and program management and monitoring and evaluation of development projects. He is also interested in the anthropology of development and development and social theory, and has published on Pakistani politics, economics and development, and the Pakistani diaspora in Australia. His most recent book is Citizens and Government in Pakistan: the analysis of people’s voices (2009).

  Moderated by Linda Mottram from Radio Australia

PART II

Pakistan has faced a myriad of crises over the last decade. No one has had a better perspective on them than its journalists. Join Chatham as we meet experienced journalists from Pakistan talk about the country they know and report on every day. 30 minutes of panel discussion introduced by Mustafa Qadri and chaired by Farzana Shaikh. Each speaker given 7 minutes to discuss. Followed by 40-60 minutes of audience questions.

Speakers:

Mustafa Qadri, Journalist, The Guardian, Radio Australia, The Diplomat
Qatrina Hussain, Director, Current Affairs, Express News
Beena Sarwar, Journalist, The News International; India-Pakistan peace activist
Rahimullah Yusufzai, Executive Editor, Peshawar, The News

Mustafa Qadri

August 22, 2010