Mustafa Qadri

With the capture or murder of senior leaders and with massive US-led operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it appears the Taliban’s days are numbered.

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

[Read more →]

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

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

[Read more →]

A snapshot of life in Pakistan’s refugee camps

Updated July 16, 2009 11:48:55

Although the fighting in Pakistan’s Swat valley has ended and some refugees have started to head home, many remain wary of returning.

An estimated 2 million fled the conflict between Pakistani troops and the Taliban, and some ended up at a displaced person camp two hours north of the capital Islamabad.

Presenter: Mustafa Qadri
Speakers: Purmanari, displaced person; Mohammad Yahya, a former town mayor; Ziauddin Yousufzai, School teacher; Mannu, school student

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

The fact is that India knows that war will accomplish nothing. Indeed, it is just what the terrorists want - a cause that would rally all Pakistanis to the flag and provide Pakistan’s army an excuse to abandon the unpopular fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaida in the west for the more familiar terrain of [...]

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

Mr Baheen said the Afghan government was committed to establishing rule of law. However, its efforts were being undermined as “the international community, including some powerful Nato member countries, has their own favourite warlords” who they back against the Karzai government, he charged.

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

Admiral Mullen met Chief of the Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Kayani and Director General ISI Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha in Islamabad and told reporters travelling with him that he made it a point to meet his Pakistani counterpart whenever possible.

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn’t surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).

[Read more →]

Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that between 20,000 and 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 already there.

[Read more →]

The following article, on Israel’s influence in shaping state responses to non-state actor violence, appeared in the University of Western Australia’s New Critic magazine:

What can we learn from Israel?
Issue 9, December 2008 | Mustafa Qadri

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the birth of Israel and the dispossession of Palestine. Arguably the most ubiquitous political saga of the post Second World War world, nothing has been raised at the United Nations more frequently than the Palestine issue and Israel’s conduct in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

The U.S. military will soon launch a pilot program to raise local militias, paid by the Pentagon, in an effort to improve security throughout the country.

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

Reviewing history’s arcs, Ayub seems to have given up on the current generation of Afghan leaders, dismissing them as “thieves, murderers and criminals” whose corruption and inefficiency has allowed the Taliban to survive and prosper. Instead she reserves her sorrow for the next generation. “Young people are not convinced that there is a secure future [...]

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

“It’s a guerrilla war in a built-up area and forest, against a strongly held defence line held by people who are invisible…”

[Read more →]

“Terrorists for sale” The Diplomat magazine Nov/Dec 2008

[Read more →]

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

31 Oct 2008

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

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

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

[Read more →]

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

Do the tribes really need more guns?

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

[Wednesday October 29 2008 21.00 GMT]

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

[Read more →]

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

The Taliban’s war on women’s education

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

[Read more →]

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

Tension in the High Fort

By Mustafa Qadri

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

[Read more →]

Taliban leader Mullah Omar promised at the 11th hour in those fateful days from his hideout in Kandahar via Pakistani intermediaries - that, yes, he would verifiably sequester his movement from al-Qaeda and ask Osama bin Laden to leave Afghan soil, provided the US acceded to his longstanding request to accord recognition to his regime [...]

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

The following interview of Philippe Sands QC regarding his book ‘Torture Team’ appeared in Dawn newspaper (Pakistan) on 12 October 2008.

[Read more →]

The following review of ‘Torture Team’ by Philippe Sands QC appeared in Dawn Newspaper (Pakistan) on 12 October 2008.

[Read more →]

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

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

[Read more →]

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

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

US military strikes blunt Pakistan honour

Mustafa Qadri September 17, 2008

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

[Read more →]

Pakistan’s Anti-Muslim Taliban

Mustafa Qadri | September 15, 2008

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

A military jury’s verdict on Wednesday in the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II — that Yemeni Guantanamo prisoner Salim Hamdan is guilty of material support for terrorism, but not guilty of terrorism itself — was the culmination of two weeks of proceedings that provided some extraordinary insights into the United States’ [...]

[Read more →]

The British trained the Kenyan army in counter-terrorism tactics that are being used with devastating force against its own people.

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]