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.

The most spectacular evidence apparently in support of this claim is the capture last week of the senior most military commander of Taliban forces in Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Only weeks earlier, Pakistan authorities revealed that Hakeemullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistan Taliban, succumbed to injuries from a US drone strike in the tribal areas.

The losses come at a time when the US is spearheading a series of major offensives in the south of Afghanistan, the desolate heartland of the Taliban insurgency that has proved impossible to end in over nine years of conflict.

Already foreign forces claim to have captured the key Taliban stronghold of Marjah. They have also killed at least 17 civilians in two errant missile attacks. The deaths were a “very serious setback” admitted Britain’s senior most soldier, Jock Stirrup.

Policy wonks in Western capitals are hoping that, casualties apart, the string of military successes will force the Taliban to the negotiating table. As former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said in London recently, negotiations must occur from a position of strength.

Notwithstanding such hairy chested pronouncements, it is uncertain whether the Taliban have truly been vanquished.

Although the loss of senior commanders will undoubtedly affect Taliban strategy in the immediate future, similar losses in the past have not affected their overall strength.

When key Taliban commander in Pakistan Nek Mohammad was killed by a US pilotless aircraft in 2004, it eventually paved the way for Beitullah Mehsud his new strategy of increased, high profile suicide bombings throughout Pakistan.

After Beitullah was himself killed by yet another US missile strike, he was replaced by the younger, more abrasive Hakeemullah Mehsud. Hakeemullah was already feared for his virulently sectarian hatred for Shia Muslims – a minority sect of Islam – and strong sympathies for Al Qaeda’s notion of global holy war.

He is believed to have helped in Al Qaeda’s audacious raid on a CIA base in Afghanistan that killed seven American agents.

Incredibly the bombings inside Pakistan, already a virtual daily occurrence under Beitullah, also increased while Hakeemullah was emir of the Pakistan Taliban.

Yet it was only after the bombing on the CIA base in Afghanistan that the US decided to eliminate Hakeemullah.

In an apparent bout of revenge, it also massively increased its controversial pilotless drone missile strikes in the tribal areas, a powerful military asset with the advantage of killing people far from the scrutinising eyes of journalists.

With him gone, the insurgency appears to have lost its last high profile commander.

The overarching aim of these targeted captures and assassinations is to splinter the insurgency in the hope individual soldiers and commanders can be convinced to lay down their arms.

But the clear message in the recent, violent past suggests that rather than weakening the enemy, this strategy increases their resolve, much as Hitler’s London blitz steeled Britons against the Nazis in the darkest days of the Second World War.

The double irony is that whereas before the Taliban was a complex and disparate organisation – its major branch under Mullah Omar is opposed to foreign armies in Afghanistan, whereas Beitullah and Hakeemullah’s ‘Pakistan Taliban’ seek to overthrow the Pakistan Government – the upscale in attacks against it breeds a unity of purpose: survival.

Recently there have been increased attempts to curb the social alienation that enables the Taliban to recruit foot soldiers from remote, poor regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Dubbed the “civilian surge” it is a welcome step. But this civilian surge will take time and significant political will and cannot match the pace and destructiveness of military operations.

Most ominously of all, however, the tactic of eliminating senior insurgents creates opportunities for militant groups with more radical and internationalist agendas like Al Qaeda to step into the breach.

There was a time, just after the US invasion of Afghanistan in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, when Al Qaeda was totally dependent on Taliban refuges in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas for its survival. But with successive Taliban commanders lost and Pakistan Army encroachment into the tribal areas, the Pakistan Taliban have relied more heavily on Al Qaeda to undertake a string of deadly attacks in the major cities of Lahore, Peshawar and Islamabad.

Something similar could occur in Afghanistan.

There is a clear message in all of this. The tit-for-tat nature of the AfPak conflict where Taliban violence is met with overwhelming force – both of which kill and traumatise innocent civilians – continues to spiral out of control.

Escalating the conflict for the sake of immediate results will create long lasting divisions and animosity. All the while the spectre of international terrorism remains at large.

[This article was originally published in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Unleashed website. Url: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2824406.htm]

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.

The dangerous supply routes through Pakistan that this correspondent reported on last year have become a lifeline for international and national forces in Afghanistan. But, as last month’s London conference on Afghanistan’s future demonstrated, Pakistan is set to play a role that extends far beyond mere logistics.

At the conference, world leaders effectively agreed to begin preparations for an eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan, with responsibility for the country’s governance and security to be handed back to the Afghan authorities over a five-year period starting next year. This in itself would be a major step. But the story that grabbed many of the headlines was one of the ideas being floated to help achieve this security–engaging in dialogue with ‘moderate’ Taliban.

Calls to reach out to these less ideologically-driven members of the insurgency are still understandably sensitive. But a look at the challenges in creating a stable Afghanistan gives some indication as to why such measures are apparently being considered.

At the heart of the US-led drive for stability is its surge of 30,000 troops and an ambitious plan to increase Afghan National Army troops from present levels of about 86,000 to 170,000, and to bolster its police force over the next two years. But meeting these targets will be a formidable challenge. Like the Afghan police forces, the ANA has a high attrition rate, with the US Defence Department noting one in four recruits quit the army last year. Another problem with the army is that few recruits come from the Pashtun heartlands of the south and east where the Taliban are based.

If coalition countries, which are under intense domestic public pressure to withdraw their forces, are going to address this challenge including through holding talks with the Taliban, it makes sense to turn to Pakistan. After all, the country has historical links to key Taliban commanders stretching back to the 1980s and the period after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, when it sought a reliable client regime in Kabul.

Indeed, according to veteran journalist Saleem Shahzad, Pakistan’s army has already approached some commanders in the pro-Afghan Taliban resistance with bases in the lawless tribal areas nominally within Pakistan’s borders. Based on interviews with members of the insurgency, Shahzad claims that Pakistani officials sought assurances that, in the event of a US withdrawal, Pakistan is viewed as a friendly Muslim nation.

‘The key is to return to the traditional tribal setup,’ says North West Frontier Province Gov. Owais Ghani, a veteran Pakistani Pashtun politician who says that gaining the trust of tribal groups is essential. He adds that doing so will mean negotiating a ceasefire with key players such as powerful veteran warlord Gulbadin Hekmatyar. ‘He was paid a big price for protecting Osama, so there’s no reason why he can’t be bought back,’ Ghani says.

Gen. Tariq Khan, current head of the Frontier Corp, a key paramilitary outfit that has been spearheading Pakistan’s counterinsurgency efforts in the tribal areas, concurs that many of those fighting US-led forces have no particular ideological affinity with al-Qaeda, and he says he believes the insurgency is in fact a direct response to the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan.

He also believes that it is inevitable that the Taliban will play some role in Kabul’s political future. ‘(The Afghan Taliban) will keep fighting until they find a way back into power,’ he says.

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar has publicly ruled out negotiations with US-led forces until all foreign troops leave Afghanistan, a demand he has made ever since US forces invaded in late 2001. However, with the US building a massive new embassy in Kabul and an extensive network of military bases, it is questionable whether they do in fact intend to ever leave the country entirely.

But either way, there’s anecdotal evidence to suggest that Mullah Omar is actually more flexible than his rhetoric indicates.

According to Sultan Amir Tarar, the retired Pakistan military spy chief considered Omar’s mentor when the Taliban was patronised by Pakistan in the 1990s, he is ready to talk. Since last year, media reports have suggested that Omar has indicated the possibility of a renegotiation of the national constitution with other Afghan leaders (the Taliban considers the current one illegitimate owing to Western involvement in its drafting). Another demand is the integration of ethnic Pashtun Taliban forces into the Tajik-dominated Afghan National Army. But most significant of all was Omar’s statement last November during the Muslim holy festival of Eid, that a future Taliban government would not pose a threat to neighbouring countries, a clear suggestion that al-Qaeda would no longer be welcome.

For Pakistan, this has made disarming the Afghan Taliban within its borders even less appealing than it already was. For a start, Pakistani security forces have had to rely heavily on pro-Afghan Taliban commanders in North and South Waziristan to capture the main sanctuaries of the Pakistani Taliban. Unlike its Afghan cousin, the Pakistan Taliban movement has sought to overthrow the Pakistan state, an existential threat to Pakistan that has meant current operations have been aimed at eliminating this branch. Even so, the Army, which is co-ordinating operations (although much of it has been undertaken by the paramilitary Frontier Corp) has chosen not to expand the fighting into neighbouring tribal areas such as North Waziristan and other areas of the South, arguing any such a move would be highly destabilising. According to senior spokesperson Gen. Athar Abbas, Pakistan is looking to consolidate its gains in those two regions rather than open new fronts, because security forces are already ‘overstretched.’

Gen Tariq Khan, one of Pakistan’s most experienced field commanders and currently Inspector General of the paramilitary Frontier Corp, which has been heavily involved in counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban, echoes those concerns. In Afghanistan, US-led forces are expected to engage the Taliban in an attempt to force them to the negotiating table. If and when that occurs, Khan argues, it will be difficult for Pakistan to retain the sensitive ceasefires that enable access to strategic regions of the tribal areas and ensure that the Afghan Taliban don’t join the insurgency in Pakistan. ‘Pakistan can’t fight on all fronts [at once],’ Khan says.

Yet such calls have created much consternation among US planners who still have reservations about Pakistan’s resolve to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaeda aligned groups within its borders. The United States has scaled up its missile strikes on suspected militant strikes. In its largest strike to date, drone aircraft fired 19 missiles at a village in North Waziristan in an attempt to kill Sirajuddin Haqqani, operational commander of the powerful pro-Taliban Haqqani network. Once an anti-Soviet mujahedeen on the CIA payroll, Sirajuddin’s father Jalaluddin was a key ally of Pakistan during the 1990s when it was scouting for a proxy to exert influence over Afghanistan.

Retired intelligence officials in Islamabad told The Diplomat that Pakistan has continued to maintain contact with the Haqqanis, but it has only limited influence over them. Shuja Nawaz, author of the seminal text on the Pakistan Army and a long-time military insider, agrees with that assessment. But Western officials remain deeply suspicious of lingering Pakistani links to Haqqani and other members of ‘the big three’ of the Afghan Taliban–Mullah Omar and Gulbaddin Hekmatyar.

This month, US Director of Intelligence Dennis Blair told the US Congress that Pakistan’s conduct of military operations against the Taliban were praiseworthy. But the Obama Administration has continued to pressure Pakistani leaders to widen their efforts to include the senior leadership of the Afghan Taliban, known as the Quetta Shura because it is believed to be based in the capital of the large and remote province of Balochistan.

Last December, Pakistan Defence Minister Ahmad Mukhtar finally admitted that Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura did actually exist after several years of Pakistani officials denying any knowledge of the Afghan Taliban leadership’s whereabouts. Yet Mukhtar’s glib assurance following the admission, when he stated that the Shura had been ‘taken on’ by security forces and no longer posed a threat, gave Washington little confidence that Pakistan was finally, truly cracking down on the leaders of the Afghan insurgency.

Careful Balancing Act

Already fighting a politically sensitive war that makes much of the population feel their government has become ‘a US puppet,’ as several local newspapers describe it, Pakistan’s security establishment feels it must tread a careful line between a belligerent United States and the on-the-ground reality that it can’t exert its influence over the entire tribal areas through force alone.

The murder by Pakistan Taliban militants this month of eight people, including three US soldiers, three schoolgirls and a Pakistani soldier in the Lower Dir region highlights the continued sensitivity of Pakistan’s special relationship with the superpower. Although the United States had been discreetly giving Pakistani security forces counterinsurgency training under the Bush administration, the deaths of the soldiers represents the first public acknowledgment that US forces have indeed extended the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan. The fact that it was disclosed through an act of terrorism has added further grist to the national rumour mill that sees hidden US hands in the violence and political turmoil gripping the country.

And in Pakistani eyes, at least, India adds a further complication to the mix. Although India has slightly reduced its troop levels in the disputed Kashmir region and spoken of a willingness to recommence dialogue with Pakistan, observers in Islamabad have been alarmed by its growing influence in Afghanistan.

In addition, intelligence officials are convinced that India has been involved in the spate of terrorism that has rocked most of Pakistan’s major cities and is co-ordinating these efforts through a string of secret bases along the border in Afghanistan. Regardless of the veracity of such claims, it is common knowledge the Afghan Government has developed close links with India, particularly in trade and development, closer ties reflected in a recent poll that found that 71 percent of Afghans surveyed felt India was playing the most favourable role in their country.

This wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by Pakistan’s leadership. In a series of public briefings, the usually media shy Chief of the Pakistan Army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, reiterated that India remained Pakistan’s primary ‘concern’ at least until the dispute over Kashmir was resolved.

Prominent TV journalist Talat Hussain says Kayani’s stance is not just posturing. ‘You have to understand, India has increased its clout in Afghanistan… [Pakistan] still faces a hostile army in Kashmir [and] much of the insurgency in the tribal areas has been removed,’ Hussain told The Diplomat. ‘If America leaves Afghanistan [other foreign powers] will fill the power vacuum.’

For Pakistani planners, that means supporting whatever power will minimise Indian influence over Afghanistan. ‘We want strategic depth in Afghanistan,’ Kayani said. ‘But we don’t want to control it.’

Yet in truth, Pakistan lacks the capacity to control Afghanistan, even if it wanted to. Like everyone else, its leaders are still taking this battle one day at a time.

[This article originally appeared in The Diplomat magazine. Url: http://www.the-diplomat.com/001f1281_r.aspx?artid=393]

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

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

Where once the bombings were primarily concentrated in or near the tribal areas, such as the cities of Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan, these recent bomb blasts and shootings have hit several of the largest cities in the country.

The bombings of the two biggest cities of the Punjab, the most populous and influential of Pakistan’s provinces — Lahore in May and Multan earlier this month — are a sign of this shift. The carnage in Multan was followed by an attack on a mosque in a heavily fortified part of Rawalpindi where many Army personnel traditionally gather for Friday prayers. This last attack left 40 dead, including a major-general and 16 children of senior military officers.

This was the second major attack on Rawalpindi, the city which houses the headquarters of Pakistan’s Army, in as many months. In October, militants attempted to breach Army headquarters, leading to a 22-hour siege and hostage crisis that badly humiliated the country’s senior generals.

The Taliban hail from the remote and poorly developed tribal areas along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, and not from the big cities. This makes claims that they are responsible for these recent bombings all the more destabilising for Pakistan — but it also has many here querying whether the Taliban actually is responsible for the well coordinated attacks.

Pakistan’s media, religious groups and government authorities rarely use the term “Taliban” when discussing the current violence. That is because in Pakistan the Taliban are still associated with the anti-US resistance in neighbouring Afghanistan. There is also a widespread perception that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that existed before the US-led invasion of 2001 was, although perhaps theologically primitive, an honest political broker that provided the troubled central Asian nation with an unprecedented level of stability and promoted the virtues of Islam.

For observers in the West this may sound absurd. But a little over two decades ago, Islamist militants waging what they considered a holy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan were called “freedom fighters” by then US President Ronald Reagan, (not to mention by Rambo).

For many in Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban inherited the mantle of freedom fighters from the conflict in the 1980s. While the Pakistan security establishment has retained informal links with Afghan Taliban commanders and their allies after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, for their part, the Afghan Taliban has largely avoided the anti-Pakistan insurgency.

Noting this distinction, retired civil and military officials contacted by newmatilda.com say they are sceptical about Taliban involvement in the bombings inside Pakistan. They blame foreign governments, particularly India, the United States and Israel for the current violence.

According to Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik, the senior civilian bureaucrat charged with counterterrorism activities, India is responsible for much of the terrorism.

This claim was echoed by intelligence officials interviewed by newmatilda.com in the national capital of Islamabad and Peshawar, the largest and strategically important city on Pakistan’s northwest frontier. Mufti Zubair Usmani from the Jamia Darul Uloom, in Karachi, the largest mainstream religious seminary in the country, says the Pakistan Taliban “is an instrument of RAW [the Research and Analysis Wing of the Indian Prime Minister’s Office, one of India’s top spy agencies] … Whoever is doing things in Pakistan is doing it to defeat Pakistan [which] happens to be in a strategic location [and] an atomic power. Because of this, the violence will continue.”

Provincial and federal intelligence officials interviewed by newmatilda.com privately deliver remarkably similar conclusions, citing secret intelligence from the interrogation of captured Taliban operatives and other sources that suggest Indian and Afghan government involvement.

Adding intrigue to this already confusing situation, the Pakistan Taliban tends to deny responsibility for some of the bombings, especially those that kill high numbers of civilians. They have even blamed the private military contractor Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, and Pakistan’s own intelligence agencies for the most devastating attacks while taking responsibility for those that target the military.

Both the Army and the Taliban claim to fight in the name of Islam  so blaming foreigners and avoiding the more sobering and likely reality that Muslim Pakistanis are killing one another helps both sides rally popular support.

It’s little help in this volatile environment for the US to be openly speaking of escalating its highly destabilising drone war inside Pakistan. Last week, at least 15 people were killed by an American drone assault on a suspected military compound on the border with Afghanistan.

Powerless to control the spiraling violence, it is no wonder that many Pakistanis are convinced that foreigners, and not the Taliban, are the greatest source of instability in their country.

Source URL: http://newmatilda.com/2009/12/22/who-behind-violence-pakistan

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 December 2009 16:00 GMT

There is more to President Obama’s policy shift in central Asia than more boots in Afghanistan. For Pakistan it represents an escalation of US drone strikes in the tribal areas and continued pressure on its army to immediately engage the Taliban and al-Qaida despite the practical complexities of the task.

The fundamental problem for Pakistan is that Obama’s acceleration of the war against the Taliban has been calculated largely on the basis of domestic US political demands and not those of the region, let alone Pakistan. Already under intense pressure at home from the financial crisis and the unpopularity of the US presence in Afghanistan, Obama must deliver some semblance of victory before he bids for a second term as commander-in-chief in 2012.

The strange paradox of US policy for “AfPak”, however, is that the troop surge represents the storm before the calm. No matter what the rhetoric at West Point was, the message from the Obama administration is that the US will leave Afghanistan in the foreseeable future.

According to the veteran journalist Saleem Shahzad, Pakistan’s army has already approached key commanders in the pro-Afghan Taliban resistance to ensure that, in the event of a US withdrawal, Pakistan is viewed as a friendly Muslim nation. Not entirely coincidentally, last month the Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Omar rejected the latest call for peace talks from the president, Hamid Karzai. Well aware that time is on his side, Omar has consistently refused negotiations until all foreign armies have left Afghanistan.

For Pakistan, this makes disarming the Afghan Taliban within its borders even less appealing than it already was. For starters, Pakistan security forces have had to extensively rely on pro-Afghan Taliban commanders in North and South Waziristan to capture the main sanctuaries of the Hakeemullah Mehsud-led Pakistani Taliban.

Unlike its Afghan cousin, the Pakistan Taliban movement seeks to overthrow the Pakistan state. Because it is an existential threat to Pakistan, current operations are aimed at eliminating this branch of the Taliban.

Once the boosted US-led force engages the Taliban and its allies in Afghanistan it will be difficult for Pakistan to retain the sensitive ceasefires that enable access to strategic regions of the tribal areas and ensures that the Afghan Taliban do not join Mehsud’s insurgency in Pakistan. “Pakistan cannot fight on all fronts [at once],” explains Tariq Khan, inspector general of the Frontier Corp, the country’s key paramilitary outfit in the tribal areas.

Pakistan has been confronted with some sobering realities. Many of the Pakistan Taliban’s fighters and key commanders like Mehsud have fled their hideouts and are still at large. The violence has escalated; almost every one of Pakistan’s major cities has been rocked by devastating bombings that have claimed about 500 lives in two months, even though the Afghan Taliban has not been directly involved in the violence.

The terrifying truth is that in the absence of social and political solutions, no amount of police sleuthing or security checkpoints will ever prevent a committed foe with many thousands of young suicide bombers from transforming the suburbs of Pakistan into a warzone. If the Afghan Taliban were to join the fray it would be an even bigger massacre.

Despite this, Washington has continued to press Pakistan to escalate its ground offensives with apparent ignorance or reckless indifference to the consequences for Pakistan.

According to media reports, the CIA has decided to expand drone strikes deeper into the tribal areas and the province of Baluchistan – a larger and more restive and remote region of Pakistan than the tribal areas. Any such expansion will no doubt greatly destabilise Pakistan as the insurgents push deeper into the country to avoid being hit and intense hostility to the drone strikes reaches fever pitch.

When Pakistan recaptured the scenic Swat Valley from the Taliban between May and August, western capitals lauded its resolve to finally defeat extremism. As soon as that and other battles had been waged and won, however, Pakistan was publicly cajoled by Washington, and occasionally London, for not accelerating the war even further. For so many Pakistanis, whether members of the elite or not, it all feels like a giant game that Pakistan can never actually win.

]]> http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/pakistan-is-losing-this-great-game/feed/ 0 http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/the-other-battle-for-pakistan/ http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/articles/the-other-battle-for-pakistan/#comments Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:23:19 +0000 mustafa http://mustafaqadri.net/wp/?p=582 Now that an amnesty providing immunity to thousands has expired, Pakistan’s supreme court has the chance to showcase its merits

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

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

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.

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