Pakistan: Now or Never?
Perspectives on Pakistan
Pakistan’s water worries
Buried within Foreign Policy’s latest Failed States Index (Pakistan is in 10th place, though its overall score at 104.1 compared to 103.8 in 2008 suggests a far slower rate of decline than might have been expected given its troubles over the past year) is a short article worth reading about its looming water crisis.
“The country’s troubles today pale compared with what it might face 25 years from now. When it comes to the stability of one of the world’s most volatile regions, it’s the fate of the Himalayan glaciers that should be keeping us awake at night,” says author Stephan Faris. “In the mountainous area of Kashmir along and around Pakistan’s contested border with India lies what might become the epicentre of the problem.”
The subject is not new. I’ve discussed it on this blog here, here and here.
But there’s still no real sign of it getting the attention it deserves, despite its obvious potential not only to stoke tensions between India and Pakistan, but also to create water and food shortages and flash floods.
Some years back, I saw first hand the power of flooding in Himalayan rivers while driving from Srinagar to Leh — the same strategic road Pakistan tried to close with shelling in the Kargil war. Shortly before we arrived in Leh the entire road bridge — a proper heavy concrete road bridge — had been swept away, closing the road. Not even the might of the Indian army, which had scaled the mountains above Kargil in part to defend that road, could get it open again.
(Photos: On the Srinagar to Leh road, summer, 2006)
What was the message behind the bombing in Pakistani Kashmir?
The suicide bomb attack on the Pakistan Army in Pakistani Kashmir on Friday was not only unprecedented; it also raised questions about the state of militancy in Pakistan.
At its simplest level, the first suicide bombing in Pakistan’s side of Kashmir was seen as a reaction by the Pakistani Taliban to Pakistan’s military campaign against them in South Waziristan. “The militants are hurting and they are reacting. And this is a reaction to the successful operations we’ve had in Waziristan and we’ve had in the Malakand division,” Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told Reuters.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, while a government official described the bomber as a Taliban militant from Waziristan.
What is puzzling, however, is the decision to target Pakistani Kashmir. While there are historical links between Pakistan’s frontier tribesmen and Kashmir dating back to partition, as discussed by Indian strategic analyst B. Raman in this article, the region has until now been the preserve of Punjab-based militant groups focused on fighting India in Indian Kashmir. The biggest of these, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), has avoided staging attacks on Pakistani targets, and of all the militant groups operating in Pakistan, it would be expected to be critical of attacks on the military.
Why, therefore, would the Pakistani Taliban attack the Pakistan Army on the LeTs home turf? And why would Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud risk alienating the LeT — blamed for last November’s attacks on Mumbai — by sending one of his men to launch the first suicide bombing in Pakistani Kashmir and then openly claiming credit for it? An accident of the mayhem spreading in Pakistan, a sign of greater cooperation between the two groups, or a deliberate message from him to the LeT?
There has been speculation in the past among security analysts about how far the Pakistan Army and its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency have been using contacts in the LeT — which the ISI once nurtured to fight Indian rule in Kashmir — to seek information to use against the Pakistani Taliban and its al Qaeda allies. That speculation dates back to the arrest of senior al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah in an LeT safe house in Faisalbad in 2002.
But in the murky world of Pakistani militancy, nobody has ever been able to work out exactly how the different groups fit together, and in particular on the extent to which they shift between cooperation on a shared agenda and competition between their many different objectives – from Afghanistan to Kashmir to global jihad to targetting the Pakistani state itself.
Elections in India have been rigged in the past, and are rigged today. Remove the 500K occupation army, and hold elections under international observers, then we can get some credible results.
Anyways Indians got very excited over a one-off attack in Azad Kashmir.
from FaithWorld:
“Sufi card” very hard to play against Pakistani Taliban
One theory about how to deal with militant Islamism calls for promoting Sufism, the mystical school of Islam known for its tolerance, as a potent antidote to more radical readings of the faith. Promoted for several years now by U.S.-based think tanks such as Rand and the Heritage Institute, a Sufi-based approach arguably enjoys an advantage over other more politically or economically based strategies because it offers a faith-based answer that comes from within Islam itself. After trying so many other options for dealing with the Taliban militants now openly challenging it, the Pakistani government now seems ready to try this theory out. Just at the time when it's suffered a stinging set-back in practice...
Earlier this month, on June 7 to be exact, Islamabad announced the creation of a Sufi Advisory Council (SAC) to try to enlist spirituality against suicide bombers. In theory at least, this approach could have wide support. Exact numbers are unclear, but Pakistan is almost completely Muslim, about three-quarters of its Muslims are Sunnis and maybe two-thirds of them are Barelvis. This South Asian school of Islam, heavily influenced by traditional Sufi mysticism, is notable for its colourful shrines to saints whose very existence is anathema to more orthodox forms of Islam. Among those are the minority of Pakistani Sunnis, the Deobandis, who are followers of a stricter revivalist movement founded in 19th-century India whose militant branch led to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. Many Deobandis think Pakistan's Shi'ite minority is not truly Muslim.
The late President General Zia-ul Haq was a Deobandi. With massive support from the United States, Saudi Arabia and other countries, he favoured Afghan guerrilla groups influenced by the Deobandis and Saudi Arabia's Wahhabis in the 1980s war against the Soviet Union.
As the Swat Valley crisis came to a military showdown, Barelvi leaders who had stood quietly on the sidelines for years began to organise anti-Taliban rallies to stand up for their peaceful view of Islam and support the government's military drive against the Taliban. "What these militants were doing was un-Islamic. Beheading innocent people and kidnapping are in no way condoned in Islam," Sahibzada Fazal Karim, a leader of the moderate Islamist party Jamiat-e-ulema-e-Pakistan who organised some rallies, told Reuters in early May.
Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi, a senior Barelvi leader in Lahore, told our Islamabad correspondent Zeeshan Haider at the time that mainstream Muslim leaders like himself could no longer stay silent in the face of the Taliban threat. "They want people to fight one another, that's why we have kept silent and endured their oppression," he said. "We don't want civil war ... But God forbid, if the government fails to stop them, then we will confront them ourselves."
Apart from his anti-Taliban campaigning, Naeemi was very much a traditional Barelvi mufti. He was a leading figure in Sunni groups advocating sharia enforcement, ran a madrassa in Lahore and sat on boards govering Barelvi madrassas, according to his obituary in the Pakistani daily The News. He lost a government post and was briefly arrested after protesting against Pakistani logistical support for the U.S. "war on terror" and was arrested again for protesting against the Danish cartoons of Prophet Mohammad. These views might not be called moderate positions in world Islam, but they were quite traditional and middle-of-the-road on the Pakistani religious spectrum.
On June 12, five days after Islamabad announced the formation of its Sufi council, a teenage Taliban suicide bomber walked into Naeemi's office in the Lahore madrassa and blew himself up, killing the mufti. The message was unmistakable -- Pakistan's Barelvis may have local Islamic tradition and popular support on their side, but the trump card in this fight right now is violence, not Sufism. The Taliban challenge is an armed insurrection powerful enough to intimidate the tolerant Sufis into submission.
Rohit, you write: “Sufism may be termed as a cult faith with limited followers and it never had and never will have any lasting impact on society as a whole.” This is simply wrong. Just look at Islam in the subcontinent, where it has had a strong impact on popular faith. These strategists wouldn’t be thinking of playing the “Sufi card” if there weren’t a popular base for such views.
Pakistan’s military operation in Waziristan
In a world used to watching war played out on television, and more recently to following protests in Iran via Twitter and YouTube, the Pakistan Army’s impending military offensive in South Waziristan on the Afghan border is probably not getting the attention it deserves — not least but because the operation is shrouded in secrecy.
Yet the offensive has the potential to be a turning point in the battle against the Taliban which began with the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Many Taliban and their al Qaeda allies fled Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas after the U.S. invasion – the CIA said this month it believed Osama bin Laden was still hiding in Pakistan. The offensive in South Waziristan, designed to target Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, would if successful deprive the Taliban and al Qaeda of what has been until now one of their safest boltholes.
Before the army launches a full-scale offensive, the United States appears to be stepping up missile strikes by unmanned aircraft to weaken the Pakistani Taliban – an attack on Tuesday by a U.S. drone killed about 70 militants. The attack, on a funeral for one of six militants killed in a similar strike earlier in the day, would appear to indicate increasing coordination between the United States and Pakistan, although Pakistan publicly condemns the drone operations. When the army does go in, it is likely to face intense fighting against Mehsud and his thousands of well-armed followers, who have had years to prepare defences.
The killing on Tuesday of Mehsud rival Qari Zainuddin has also encouraged speculation that the military is working hard on time-honoured tactics of divide and rule, by trying to find tribal leaders who will turn against Mehsud (the blog Changing up Pakistan has produced an excellent round-up of media reports on Zainuddin’s death).
If Pakistan’s military intelligence is indeed looking for allies, Zainuddin’s death might deter potential candidates - Mehsud has a reputation for being both clever and ruthless, and well capable of planning many steps ahead of the offensive he has long known is coming. Anyone who doubts the Taliban and al Qaeda’s capacity to plan ahead should remember that Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud was killed two days before 9/11 in what many analysts now see as a pre-emptive strike to undercut domestic support for U.S. retaliation for the attacks on New York and Washington. So be prepared for the unexpected.
But beyond the reports of drone attacks, the news of Zainuddin’s death, and the refugees streaming out of Waziristan, it is hard to know exactly what is going on there.
“The truth is though little is known about what exactly is going on in South Waziristan Agency, who is fighting whom and why, and what is likely to happen in the days and weeks ahead,” Dawn newspaper says in an editorial. “What is clear so far is that the security forces are squeezing Baitullah Mehsud’s strongholds by cutting off the three main routes that lead to them and pounding targets from the air.”
@ Rajeev and Sony and comments for Matt
Today, we live in the world that cannot deny the reality. Pakistan’s dilemma is that being a small country it has been colonized and used for different tasks. Such as defeating soviets fighting Taliban etc. The fact is this is the most suffering and humble country that tends to sacrifice it’s interests because of other big nations. Indians have Pak-phobia, everyone knows well. All Indian hates Pakistan, media creates hypes on any news impacting negatively on Pakistan, instead, in Pakistan, this is not the case. people hate India, If they do, because since the birth of Pakistan India did not accepted it’s existence. look at the Kashmir, look at 1965 unprovoked war, don’t forget 1971, where they succeeded to divide it into two. they did not stopped there, when they were able to make a nuke the first thing they did using harsh language for Pakistan. they thought they have done what they want to get rid of Pakistan. After Pakistan shown that they also possess a deterrent, Indians backed down and began talking about living in piece. they should have leaned it long ago.
Now, with all stupidities / mistakes Pakistan managed to survive by the Grace of God, as they keep their ultimate interests beyond their selfishness. No wonder politicians and some generals have been in bad practices but the nation always stood firm all the time.
The terrorist ( we call them now ) were mujahedeen called by US when they were fighting Soviets because they were doing their jobs that US were not able to do. Seemingly Pakistani ISI and Army got enough experience after soviets and tried their own tactics in Kashmir to get it out of India’s hands.
When US saw Soviets breakup they just left without realizing that the men they call mujahedeen is a fierce force that can dismantle or weaken any establishment, Pakistan took the charge and tried to make this force in their favor, called Taliban, (this is for Sunny). So the creation was not only because Pakistan wanted it , it was because US left with unfinished business, that created a whole lot of mess in the region and war lords and factions start fighting with each other. US start calling them terrorist who it used to call Mujahedeen few years back.
So, blaming Pakistan is easy but only those who wants to accept the reality, its difficult.
India now wants to become a parallel of China wants piece everywhere, should have learned its lesson long ago.
Now what they are doing in Waziristan and Afghanistan is also exporting terrorism, only if accept. World knows about it and the people who has little knowledge about the facts.
World, India, US should thank Pakistan what it has been doing for them, fighting their wars with it’s soldiers. Cleaning their mess on and off.
Now US should learn lessons how the wars are fought seeing what Pakistan has done in Swat.
Indians should have enough courage to accept the realities and what they have done to Pakistan.
If would wouldn’t have Pak Army and ISI I am afraid they were not able to bring themselves out of the crisis.
Pakistan and India; breaking the logjam
President Barack Obama chose his words carefully when asked in an interview with Dawn earlier this week why the United States has been silent on Kashmir in recent months:
“I don’t think that we’ve been silent on the fact that India is a great friend of the United States and Pakistan is a great friend of the United States, and it always grieves us to see friends fighting. And we can’t dictate to Pakistan or India how they should resolve their differences, but we know that both countries would prosper if those differences are resolved,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
“And I believe that there are opportunities, maybe not starting with Kashmir but starting with other issues, that Pakistan and India can be in a dialogue together and over time to try to reduce tensions and find areas of common interest,” he said. ”And we want to be helpful in that process, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to be the mediators in that process. I think that this is something that the Pakistanis and Indians can take leadership on.”
During his election campaign, Obama said the United States should try to help resolve the Kashmir dispute so that Pakistan could focus on tackling militants on its western border with Afghanistan. “We should probably try to facilitate a better understanding between Pakistan and India and try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that they can stay focused not on India, but on the situation with those militants,” he said in an interview with MSNBC in October 2008, shortly before the presidential election.
I often heard from Pakistanis this notion that Kashmir is the root cause of all problems in South Asia. Apparently if this is solved then South Asia will be heaven on Earth (forgetting of course that South Asia includes far more than India and Pakistan).I always shake my head when I hear this argument. Most Pakistanis of course will conveniently leave out the caveat that when they say the want Kashmir to be ‘solved’ they mean that India should simply hand over all of Jammu and Kashmir (or at minimum at least the Kashmir valley). Somehow, what Pakistanis don’t seem to realize that if India is divisible then so is Pakistan. Surely if Pakistan has such legitimate claims on Indian territory because of some religious ties then Afghanistan’s claims on all the Pashtun areas of Pakistan is just as (if not more) legitimate because of their ethnic ties. As it is the boundary is not recognized by Pashtuns on both sides (just like the Kashmiris and the LOC). Should Kashmir ever be solved to the liking of Pakistanis, then the legitimacy of the Durand line (just as artificial a boundary as the LOC) would automatically be called into question. Afghanistan would then have every right to follow Pakistani precedent and offer ‘moral’ support for their brethren (Pashtun freedom fighters) battling for freedom from the dominion of Islamabad. As the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for…”
from India Insight:
Pakistan’s moment of triumph, and a question for the world
Pakistan's success in the Twenty20 cricket World Cup must rank as one of sports' more timely victories. For a state that is supposed to be at war with itself, failing and in danger of fragmentation there cannot be a sweeter way to hit back.
Younus Khan who led his unfancied team comes from the North West Frontier Province, as does Shahid Afridi whose explosive batting took Pakistan to an eight-wicket win over Sri Lanka, another nation wracked by decades of civil war, but coming out of it.
The NWFP is the frontline of the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda that has so blighted the nation, left it divided, bleeding and saddled with a huge refugee problem. Indeed Khan said the World Cup was a gift to the people of Pakistan.
Cricinfo compared Pakistan's success to a newly-reunified South Africa's victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, saying there had not been a more timely win since then.
Younus also said cricketing nations must resume playing in his troubled, but cricket-mad nation.
"Everybody must come to Pakistan. We need a home test series. How can we attract the youngsters? Players muct come to Pakistan."
Is the world ready to reconsider? Will India, no stranger to militancy itself, soften up? The 50-over World Cup scheduled for 2011 has been taken away from Pakistan, and is to be played now in only India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The ICC Champions Trophy that it was scheduled to host last year was shifted out, and Australia, New Zealand and England have refused to play there.
For All Cricket lovers in world: I being a pakistani apperciate the achievement of Pakistan cricket team and now i am telling all other fans specially in india that cricket is a game its not war take it in positive sence and enjoy it, if You dont want to play with us ok this is your right, we also not so excited to welcome you. but accept the presence of others in cricketing world expand your mind, thoughts and approach
from India Insight:
India, Pakistan: two steps forward and four backwards?
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has dropped a plan to travel to Egypt next month where he was expected to hold further talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh following their meeting in Russia this week.
Pakistan's foreign office has said Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani will attend the summit of Non-Aligned Nations in the Egyptian city of Sharm El Sheikh although soon after the Singh-Zardari meeting in Yekaterinburg the two sides announced plans for a second meeting in July.
Has something gone wrong?
Newspapers on both sides of the border read more into the change of plans than just a normal swap of duties between the prime minister and the president.
The Dawn linked the cancellation to displeasure over Singh telling Zardari in the full glare of the world's media that Pakistan should not allow its soil to be used for militant attacks on India.
The soft-spoken Singh's rather unexpected remark right at the beginning of the first-to-face encounter with Pakistan's leaders since the Mumbai attacks in November ensured that the meeting was unpleasant from the outset, it said.
Pakistan's The News said New Delhi had handed Zardari a "well staged slight" but Islamabad was setting it aside because at the end of the day the two sides were talking again.
I think the one message that Manmohan Singh got across, withoput ambiguity or doubt, is that the mood in India is different now.
You cannot expect to train thugs and murderers, send them across to create mayhem, claim innocence and expect to get away with it any longer.
“Did India over-reach?” In no way is this a step back. It is a new beginning. The message, for once, is crystal clear – lets talk business or not at all.
When India and Pakistan shake hands
As encounters go between the leaders of India and Pakistan, the meeting in Russia between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Asif Ali Zardari — their first since last November’s Mumbai attacks — was a somewhat stolid affair.
It had none of the unscripted drama of the handshake famously offered by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee when they met at a South Asian summit in Kathmandu in January 2002, while the two countries mobilised for war following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. Musharraf’s gesture made little difference in a military stand-off which continued for another six months.
Nor did it carry the warmth of a summit meeting between Vajpayee and then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore in 1999, which raised high hopes of a breakthrough peace deal between India and Pakistan. Those hopes were dashed months later when the two countries fought a bitter conflict in the mountains above Kargil, on the Line of Control dividing disputed Kashmir.
But for all its absence of drama, or more precisely because of this, did the meeting between Singh and Zardari lay a more solid foundation for what is likely to be a long and difficult process of repairing relations?
The two leaders stopped well short of resuming a formal peace process broken off by India following the Mumbai attacks, and Singh delivered a stern warning to Zardari that Pakistan must not allow militants to operate from its territory. “I am happy to meet you, but my mandate is to tell you that the territory of Pakistan must not be used for terrorism,” he told Zardari at a meeting on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Yekaterinburg, in Russia.
But officials nonetheless held out the prospect of another meeting between Zardari and Singh at a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Egypt in July and said that senior officials would hold further talks to exchange information on terrorism. Semantics aside, that means the two countries are talking again after a deep crisis in relations following the Mumbai attacks, although India has insisted it will not reopen the so-called composite dialogue peace process until Pakistan takes action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group it blames for the assault.
So where do they go from here? Analysts see little hope for now of the two countries being able to pick up where they left off in a peace process which some say had nearly led to a breakthrough on Kashmir.
If any one was wondering what one means by “using terrorism as an instrument of state policy”, Riaz Haq has clarified it for every one.
Jammu Kashmir state will remain an integra part of India. We’ll discuss with those living in the state within the frame work of Indian constituition. There is no need to discuss Kashmir with Punjabi terrorists.
If this is not satisfacotry to you and if you threaten you will sponsor more terrorism. We have bad news for you. We’ll make you pay for it..You are already paying a dear price.
On a side note did you address the “root cause of terror” in Swat valley? LOL!!
Today’s issue of Daily Times has an editorial on South Punjab turning into next Swat valley. Try addressing the root causes of terror in South Punjab.
Stirring the hornet’s nest in northwest Pakistan
It was Lord Curzon, Britain’s turn of the century Viceroy of India, who said it would need a brave man to subjugate Pakistan’s rebellious Waziristan region and he was not up to it.
“No patchwork scheme—and all our present recent schemes…are mere patchwork—will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steamroller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine,” he said in remarks that have oft been repeated each time anyone has attempted to bring the region under control.
Is Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari up to it? Pakistan’s military has been ordered to carry out an offensive against Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and his fighters believed to be in the South Waziristan region, according to the provincial governor.
Pakistani wants to build on the momentum of its operation in the Swat Valley, but is it taking on more than it can by going into Waziristan? Nicholas Schmidle, writing in the Washington Post, says it is completely unrealistic to believe that the Pakistan army could continue fighting Taliban remnants in Swat, be heavily deployed on the eastern frontier with India ,and dedicate enough troops to resemble the steam-roller that Lord Curzon spoke of.
Eric Margolis, in a piece written a while ago, was more blunt, warning of the risk to Pakistan from such a course of action, which he said was clearly under U.S. pressure. “The real danger is in the U.S. acting like an enraged mastodon, trampling Pakistan under foot, and forcing Islamabad’s military to make war on its own people. Pakistan could end up like U.S.- occupied Iraq, split into three parts and helpless.”
The Waziristans are the poorest of Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and home to its most recalcitrant tribes as this piece notes.
Imaran Khan says “How do you justify using heavy artillery, helicopter gunships and F-16 fighter-jets in civilian areas? Who in the world does this?”
You are absolutely right Mr. Khan, but there are other things as well that the rest of the world does not do; No one begs for money from the rest of the world for the problems in their own home, but Pakistani (current) leaders are just hungry for collecting as much money as they can, no matter what means they have to use including selling or killing their own people.
More churning in South Asia : India bolsters defences on China border
Power play in South Asia is always a delicate dance and anything that happens between India and China will likely play itself out across the region, not the least in Pakistan, Beijing’s all weather friend.
And things are starting to move on the India-China front. We carried a report this weekabout India’s plan to increase troop levels and build more airstrips in the remote state of Arunachal Pradesh, a territory disputed by China. New Delhi planned to deploy two army divisions, the report quoted Arunachal governor J.J. Singh as saying.
Other reports in the Indian media said the air force was beefing up its base in Tejpur in the northeast with Su-30 fighter planes, the newest in its armoury. The HIndustan Times said it was part of a decision to move advanced assets close to the Chinese border. The IAF base in Tejpur which is in the state of Assam is within striking distance of the border with China in Arunachal Pradesh.
Arunachal evokes especially painful memories for India – for this is where the Chinese advanced deep inside, inflicting heavy casualties on poorly-equipped Indian soldiers in the 1962 war. The Chinese retreated but have refused to recognise Arunachal as part of India, and that along with other disputed stretches of their 3,000 km border has remained at the heart of more than four decades of distrust.
Indeed the renewed Indian defence deployment comes days after the air force chief said China posed a bigger and more potent threat than Pakistan.
Indians are too obsessed with Pakistan to worry about China, that is why the bulk of the Indian military is deployed against Pakistan.
I hope the JF-17′s that are being inducted into PAF have this mission in mind, of one day busting the water-stoppage dams that India is building in Indian Occupied Kashmir.Water is Pakistan’s right but many Indians are so blind with hatred, and so enraged by their powerlessness against Pakistan, that they might very well one day stop the flow of water to Pakistan.