Pakistan’s patchy fight against Islamist violence sows confusion
At the rehabilitation center for former militants in Pakistan’s Swat valley, the psychiatrist speaks for the young man sitting opposite him in silence. “It was terrible. He was unable to escape. The fear is so strong. Still the fear is so strong.” Hundreds of miles away in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, a retired army officer recalls another young man who attacked him while he prayed – his “absolutely expressionless face” as he crouched down robot-like to reload his gun.
Both youths had been sucked into an increasingly fierce campaign of gun and bomb attacks by Islamist militants on military and civilian targets across Pakistan. But there the similarity stops.
One is now being “de-radicalized” in the rehabilitation center in Swat, the northern region which only two years ago was overrun by the Pakistani Taliban and has since been cleared after a massive military operation. He will be taught that Islam does not permit violence against the state and that suicide bombing is “haram” or forbidden.
The other had attacked the minority Ahmadi sect, declared non-Muslim by the state and subject to frequent attacks in Punjab, where many of them live. Though he was arrested after being overpowered by the retired army officer, survivors said many of their neighbors celebrated his act of violence with the distribution of sweets.
The different responses to the two are symptomatic of Pakistan’s compartmentalized approach on counter-terrorism and counter-extremism. In some parts of the country – like Swat – violent Islamists are crushed and their beliefs confronted. In others – like Punjab, the heartland province far more important to the stability of Pakistan than the more talked-about tribal areas bordering Afghanistan – they are tolerated while their ideology of religious extremism flourishes.
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Family, Taliban scare off actresses in Afghan film industry
A young bride silently sobs on the floor watching her mentally disturbed husband gorge on chicken, rub his greasy hands through his hair and scream at her for more, just another chapter in the couple’s violent life together. Film director Saba Sahar anxiously watches the scene by the cameraman, squatting in blue jeans and wearing a bright pink headscarf. “Cut!” she calls.
The first Afghan female in her profession, Sahar, 36, has become a household name after acting and directing for more than half her life. She is adored by Afghan women. Like other Afghan directors, Sahar says finding actresses is her top challenge in an ultra-conservative Muslim country where many view acting as un-Islamic and inappropriate for women.
“Some Afghans think cinema is a bad place for girls,” said 19-year-old Deba Barekzai, who plays the young bride in Sahar’s 15-part TV series. “Working in cinema has caused me lots of problems and difficulties.”
Afghan-Canadian director Nelofer Pariza said family pressure stopped several of her actresses from showing up on set when filming 2009′s “An Act of Dishonour”, a real-life story about an honour killing. “It was really sad. Fear would actually stop them from coming to work,” Pariza told the audience last month following the film’s first public screening in Afghanistan.
Further complicating their challenges are the threats the film industry receives from a resurgent Taliban, who banned television and women from most work before their austere rule was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces a decade ago. Amid escalating violence across Afghanistan in the tenth year of fighting in the NATO-led war, fear of the Taliban is ever present across many sectors of society.
Read the full story by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Sayed Hassib here.
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Q+A: Women’s rights in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban
Women have won hard-fought rights in Afghanistan since the austere rule of the Taliban was ended by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001. But gains made in areas such as education, work and even dress code look shaky as the government plans peace talks that include negotiating with the Taliban.
Reuters Kabul has produced a Q+A to accompany the feature How will Afghan women fare in Taliban reconciliation? by Amie Ferris-Rotman. Click here to read it in full.
Below are the headings for the questions and answers about women’s rights in Afghanistan today.
HOW BAD WAS IT FOR WOMEN UNDER TALIBAN RULE?
Rights groups and Western governments described the situation as one of the worst that the world had encountered for women at that time.
HAVE WOMEN’S RIGHTS REALLY IMPROVED IN AFGHANISTAN?
Yes. With the fall of the Taliban, women regained many of the basic rights that had been denied them.
How will Afghan women fare if Kabul and the Taliban reconcile?
The gaggles of giggling schoolgirls in their black uniforms and flowing white hijabs seen across Afghanistan’s cities have become symbolic of how far women’s rights have come since the austere rule of the Taliban was toppled a decade ago. While women have gained back basic rights in education, voting and work, considered un-Islamic by the Taliban, their plight remains severe and future uncertain as Afghan leaders seek to negotiate with the Taliban as part of their peace talks.
The United States and NATO, who have been fighting Taliban insurgents for 10 years in an increasingly unpopular war, have repeatedly stressed that any peace talks must abide by Afghanistan’s constitution, which says the two sexes are equal. But President Hamid Karzai’s reticence on the matter, constant opposition by the Taliban, and setbacks even at the government level cast a shadow on the prospects of equality for the 15 million women who make up about half the population.
“I am not optimistic at all,” said Suraya Parlika, 66, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and member of the upper house of the Afghan parliament. “We do not know the agenda of the talks and this worries all women in Afghanistan.”
“Women are at risk of losing everything they have regained,” she told Reuters in her office at the All Afghan Women’s Union, the country’s most prominent women’s rights group that she set up 20 years ago.
The dangerous business of fighting for women’s rights in Afghanistan highlights just how precarious their situation is. Parlika said Taliban militants have tried to kill her eight times. In the latest attempt, gunmen tried to shoot her through a window at her home but missed and blew a hole in the wall.
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Women brave social barriers to join Afghan police force
Married off at 12 years old to an abusive husband more than four times her age, Maryam wanted to join Afghanistan’s police force to help others avoid an all-too-familiar plight in a country where women’s voices often go unheard. A mother of three, Maryam is one of the women who make up less than one percent of Afghanistan’s National Police. They wear knee-length olive green skirts over thick trousers with navy hijabs.
The 22-year-old’s eyes light up when she talks about her job, one widely viewed in deeply conservative Muslim Afghan society as off-limits for women. This sentiment is shared by her father, who has stopped speaking to her and moved out of the family home because she works in an office with men who are not relatives.
“I am serving my country, which needs kind, honourable and honest women who are able to solve specifically women’s problems. We need policewomen as well as men,” Maryam, who only gave her first name, told Reuters. “With this job, you get to feel like a human being in this society. I love it,” she added, enthusiastically gesturing her manicured hands in a small room in the heavily barricaded Interior Ministry in Kabul, which has been repeatedly bombed in recent years by Taliban insurgents.
Women number up to 1,000 of Afghanistan’s 126,000 police officers. Afghan officials and the West, who do most of their training, say female police fill much-needed gaps in a society where the two sexes must often be separated.
Even without bin Laden, Pakistan’s Islamist militants strike fear
The death of Osama bin Laden has robbed Islamist militants of their biggest inspiration and al Qaeda itself has dwindled to a few hundred fighters in the region, but Pakistan remains a haven for militants with both ambition and means to strike overseas. Worse, there are signs that groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), nurtured by Pakistan’s spy agency to advance strategic interests in India and Afghanistan, are no longer entirely under the agency’s control.
Even if the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), under intense pressure following the discovery of bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town, sought to roll up the groups, it may not be able to do so without provoking a major backlash. In Lashkar’s case, according to experts, it is not even certain if it is under the control of its own leadership, with many within pushing for greater global jihad. Several others are spinning off into independent operatives which makes it harder for security agencies to track down.
“Lashkar has become international, and no more a Pakistani outfit, per se. It has got its claws sunk in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Arabia, if not in the Maghreb (north Africa) nations. So, Pakistanis may not condone them any longer,” said a U.S.-based South Asia expert with ties to the intelligence community.
“Lashkar’s jihadi appetite cannot be whetted with Kashmir alone. They are now for the Caliphate (theocratic Islamic state) — thanks to the Saudi and other Arabian money. The question is will Pakistan’s tainted security apparatus be able to quell an organization like that? I hope they will, but I doubt it.”
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From what I know, Bin Laden was just an icon. The same thing will go on even if he is not there!
Taliban suicide blasts at Sufi shrine in Pakistan kill 41
Two Taliban suicide bombers caused carnage on Sunday at a Sufi shrine in Dera Ghazi Khan in eastern Pakistan, killing at least 41 people and wounding scores in the latest bloody attack on minority religious groups. Police said some 65 people were wounded. They said the attackers struck during an annual ceremony for the Sufi saint to whom the shrine is dedicated.
“I was just a few yards away from the place where the blast happened,” said witness Faisal Iqbal. “People started running outside the shrine. Women and children were crying and screaming. It was like hell.”
Taliban militants, who follow an austere interpretation of Sunni Islam, condemn other interpretations of Islam as heretical and have launched repeated attacks on the country’s Shi’ite, Sufi and Christian minorities. They claimed responsibility for Sunday’s suicide bombings.
“Our men carried out these attacks and we will carry out more in retaliation for government operations against our people in the northwest,” Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Last October, a bomb blast at a Sufi shrine in another eastern city, Pak Pattan, killed six people. In July, 42 people were killed in a bomb attack in Pakistan’s most important Sufi shrine, in Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province. Many analysts say the attacks are motivated by more than religious hatred, and that militant groups hope by inflaming sectarian tensions they can further destabilise Pakistan and weaken the government’s tenuous grip on the country.
By Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan
I wonder why not a single Pakistani is protesting against abhorrent violence like this.
Factbox on Pakistan’s emerging anti-U.S. Islamist bloc
Pakistan’s religious parties are growing stronger, riding a tide of growing anti-Americanism and outrage over blasphemy cases that has led to the assassination of two government officials. Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer and Minister of Minority Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti were both killed this year for their support for changing Pakistan’s harsh anti-blasphemy law, a move opposed by Pakistan’s religious parties.
These parties in Pakistan are beginning to set aside sectarian differences that have divided them for years to coalesce around an explicitly anti-American agenda, creating a political bloc that could challenge the ruling parties and ultimately weaken Pakistan’s alliance with the United States. See our analysis Pakistan’s Islamist parties challenge weakening government here.
Groups such as Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) are forming a new coalition of about 18 parties and groups that are anticipating early elections against the governing Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
Here is a factbox on the most important Islamist parties including:
JAMAAT-E-ISLAMI
MILLAT-E-ISLAMI
JAMAAT-UD-DAWA
Pakistan’s Islamist parties challenge weakening government
Pakistan’s disparate Islamist political parties are uniting behind their hatred of the United States, emboldened by a weak government that looks increasingly reluctant to stand up to extremism and a society where radicalism is widely tolerated. The prospect of these parties gaining strength in this nuclear-armed nation is a nightmare for its ally the United States and neighbors including India and Afghanistan, which are already fighting Islamist insurgents based in Pakistan.
But while there is little chance Islamist parties will be able to take power outright, they are becoming more prominent as anti-Americanism grows among ordinary Pakistanis, many of whom also reject attempts to soften a blasphemy law that has claimed the lives of two senior officials this year alone.
“The government is struggling to respond to populist forces at precisely the moment when it aims to improve its position to secure a full term and better position itself for the 2013 elections,” wrote analyst Maria Kuusisto of consultancy Eurasia Group in a research note.
Islamists parties, who traditionally have done poorly at the polls, stand a better chance if elections are held nowadays, analysts said. And if they increase their numbers in parliament, they could force a new government to the right, shake the alliance with the United States, including ending cooperation against the war in Afghanistan, and push the government into concessions with Pakistani Taliban militants. Most of the parties support Afghanistan’s Taliban and they all want to enforce strict sharia law.
“There are strong chances for the revival of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amil (MMA),” said Islamist politician Abdul Wahab Madni on the reformation of a major Islamist bloc from the early 2000s. “And this time, other religious groups would also join.”
Read the full analysis by Chris Allbritton here.
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The use of religion to steer or control public sentiment is not a new tool. In fact, it’s one that is in the top drawer of almost every political leader who has ventured into the public domain or likewise, any military leader who has made such a foray. Mind you, we as a people, have never been adept at defining (or rather defiling) the fine line between religion and state. Just a quick glance at the Objectives Resolution and the Islamic Provisions of the 1973 Constitution would send any rational mind into a tailspin.
Indeed, religious political parties have a long history of blackmailing people for support. For example, the MMA in the 2002 elections asked for people’s votes in the name of the Quran. Now, people are being blackmailed into supporting the killers of the late Mr. Taseer and Mr. Bhatti using the same half-baked ideas that are sold as divine truth. The religious right and its apologists – both in uniform and in the media – work on the lines of the Italian Mafia: “You hit me, we hit you”. Unfortunately, not many politicians and average Pakistanis have the moral courage to stand up to them. They would rather cower behind closed doors.
Grief-stricken Pakistani Christians bury slain cabinet minister
Shouting “death for killers”, thousands of Pakistanis on Friday buried Shahbaz Bhatti, the country’s only Christian government minister who was killed by Pakistani Taliban for challenging a law that stipulates death for insulting Islam. His assassination on Wednesday was the latest sign violent religious conservatism is becoming more mainstream in Pakistan, a trend which could further destabilise the nuclear-armed U.S. ally.
Bhatti, a Catholic, was the second senior official to be assassinated this year for opposing the blasphemy law. Provincial governor Salman Taseer was shot dead in January by one of his bodyguards.
“The message of Shahbaz Bhatti is to purge Pakistan of killers and hatred,” Reverend Father Emmanuel Pervez told thousands of men and women gathered in Bhatti’s village in central Pakistan for mass prayers. “We will not accept oppression … Bhatti’s message is that we should not let Pakistan be defamed.”
In a sign of mourning, black flags fluttered atop houses in Khushpur, Bhatti’s mainly Christian home village, 290 km (180 miles) south of Islamabad. Around 5,000 men, women and children thronged the village cemetery for the burial.
“These terrorists must be hanged publicly to stop them from committing such brutal crimes,” Hina Gill, a member of the Christian Minority Alliance said. “These terrorists are wearing the mask of religion to defame religion.”
“Bhatti, your blood will bring revolution,” some mourners shouted, raising their hands in the air as his body was taken to the burial site in an ambulance.
Not only Christians mourned Bhatti. “Shahbaz Bhatti has tried hard to promote interfaith harmony but those who want to destabilise Pakistan have killed him,” said Badruddin Chaudhry, a Muslim attending the funeral. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani attended a church service for Bhatti in the capital Islamabad on Friday. “All the minorities have lost a great leader,” Gilani said in the church. “I assure you, we will try our utmost to bring the culprits to justice.”
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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Islam is intolerant to criticism and this has been demonstrated time and time again throughout history. It is most evident in the recent past as demonstrated by fatwa’s against the Danish cartoonist who drew your mighty prophet followed by attempts on his life by peace-loving Muslims. The “religion of peace” is responsible for virtually all terrorist attacks of today.
Even the most tolerant countries like Sweden and Denmark are realizing that Islamists will not treat them like in the same inviting and accepting manner that they have been accepted into western society.
Most immigrants are grateful for having the privilege of being accepted into such a society, but the Islamists turn back and join jihadists, donate money to their causes and further the destruction of the very countries that took them in. It is time to stop immigration of Islamists.
Their hypocrisy of peace has been evident for centuries but they still continue to insist that they are peace-loving.