Pakistan: Now or Never?

Fake degrees stir fear of ‘mini mid-term polls’ in Pakistan

Pakistani education authorities are verifying university degrees of members of parliament amid fears that scores of them could be disqualified for holding “fake degrees”, leading to “mini mid-term elections” less than three years after general elections were held in the country.

Large scale by-elections could trigger political uncertainty in the country which is presently confronted with growing threat of Islamist militancy and is struggling to bolster a weak economy.

Pakistan’s increasingly assertive Supreme Court last week ordered election authorities to take action against legislators who were found guilty of forging their education degrees to contest general elections in February 2008.

Under a law introduced by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf,  a member of parliament must be a university graduate. The move was seen as an attempt by Musharraf, who resigned after the defeat of his allies in elections, to keep his rivals out of politics, many of whom were not university graduates.

The government of President Asif Ali Zardari, who replaced Musharraf, later struck down the law but the parliamentarians elected in 2008 when the law was in place could find their wins challenged in court. Already, by-elections for about a dozen national seats and four provincial seats have been held recently after the degrees of some office-holders were found to be fake.

Several newspapers quoted a former senior official of the election commission as saying that about 140 members of national and provincial assemblies are holding fake degrees.

The Supreme Court’s decision triggered a heated debate in the country with many people calling for stern action against those found guilty of forgery.

Pakistan’s historical narrative and its education system

Manan Ahmed at Chapati Mystery has a great post linking Faisal Shahzad, the failed Times Square bomber,  Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani woman convicted and jailed in the United States, and Mohammad bin Qasim, who first brought Islam to South Asia by conquering Sind in the 8th century.

The common thread is the historical narrative Pakistan has created for itself; and Shahzad’s own explicit reference to bin Qasim in a 2006 email to friends  published last month.  

“17 year old Mohammad bin Qasam attacked the Sub-continent Pak-o-Hind and defeated infidel ruler Raja Dahir because there came to him news of a Muslim women who was raped!!! and today our beloved Prophet (Katimun Nabieen Mohammad al-Ameen) PBUH has been disrespected and disgraced in the whole world and we just sit and watch with shame and sorrow and most of us don’t even care,” reads the email published by the New York Times.

According to Manan Ahmed, this view of bin Qasim – that he invaded then Hindu-ruled Sind in defence of a Muslim woman – has found itself a symbolic torchbearer in Aafia Siddiqui, a Muslim woman seen as unfairly convicted by American “infidels”.  Not only had she been taken up as a rallying cry by religious parties and not only had politicians pledged to fight her case, her sister, Fauzia, had been quoted as saying “we are waiting for a Muhammad bin Qasim to come and rescue Aafiya.”

“This particular brand of national machismo projected onto a woman’s body is neither new nor unique, yet it is a potent mixture in the oppressive, patriarchal Pakistani middle class. The mullahs can safely rage about the nation’s daughter, and the street urchins can eagerly vow to invade Manhattan,” he writes.

“Yet, until we dismantle the whole edifice underpinning this construction, there is little one can do to fight the narrative. Aafiya Siddiqui may well have caught the nation’s attention without the literary linkage to Pakistan’s originary past – her story is fabulous enough. But it is that very link which sustains it now, gives it immediate historical resonance and, most importantly, predicts the future – an armed struggle to free Aafiya. Such is the power of historical memory, such is the reach of state-sanctioned hegemonic accounts. And this is exactly why we need new histories of Pakistan.”

There’s more.  In an earlier post, Manan Ahmed assesses how Pakistan’s own view of bin Qasim changed after the loss of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in 1971, which deprived it of its original justification as a homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent. To make up for the defeat, and find a reason to bind its different ethnic groups together, it stressed its much older Islamic heritage.

Pakistan’s policy on Afghanistan: finding the devil in the detail

In the increasingly frenetic debate about what to do about Afghanistan, Antonio Giustozzi has a must-read report on prospects for negotiating with the Taliban. In particular, he offers a rare window into Pakistan’s often opaque policy towards Afghanistan by providing the context within which Pakistan might be able to bring the Taliban into a political settlement .

Giustozzi presents a far more nuanced picture than the one commonly assumed, describing significant overlaps between various militant groups - the Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP),  the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Muhammad Omar,  the Haqqani network and the Hizb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, with only the latter seen as an independent entity.  (These overlaps are crucial to establishing whether Afghan insurgents could be weakened through a policy of “divide and rule” or whether any negotiations on a settlement would need to involve the Taliban movement, and its leadership, as a whole.) 

“The different networks that comprise the Taliban have somewhat different ideological leanings and allegiances, with some groups being more radical than others, or closer to the Pakistani armed forces and intelligence services, or again closer to trans-national jihadist networks such as al Qaeda,” he says.  While the Haqqani network had close ties with the Pakistan Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, “this closeness is not appreciated by most other Taliban networks, who are either hostile to the Pakistani authorities … or at the very least are unwilling to be controlled by the Pakistanis.

“In turn, the Haqqani network in particular has been trying to contain the antagonistic attitude of some of the more radical Pakistani Taliban leaders such as Baitullah Mehsud (who was killed last year) and his successors toward the Pakistani armed forces; Mullah Omar himself has made efforts to rein them in, although not as proactively.”

But it would be wrong, Giustozzi argues, to assume these different ideological leanings suggested the Taliban movement was fragmented; rather among the different militant groups, only the Hizb-e-Islami could be described as organisationally distinguished. And while there had been some tension between the Haqqani group and Mullah Omar, there was no formal split. Nor indeed was there any evidence that an expansion of operations by the Haqqani group in Afghanistan had created tensions with fighters loyal to Mullah Omar. “This is clearly not the reaction one would expect if the Haqqani network was seen by the Taliban leadership in Quetta as a separate, competing organisation.”

The Haqqani network is believed to be based in North Waziristan, a stronghold of the TTP, or Pakistani Taliban. Unlike the TTP, blamed for a string of bomb attacks inside Pakistan, the Haqqani network has focused exclusively on fighting in Afghanistan.  Pakistan has resisted U.S. pressure to launch a military operation against militants in North Waziristan, saying it must first consolidate gains made elsewhere in its tribal areas. According to some media reports, including this one in Dawn newspaper, it has also offered to help broker a rapprochement between the Haqqani group and the government in Kabul.  The implication of Giustozzi’s assessment, however, would suggest the Haqqani group would follow Mullah Omar’s lead in any negotiations, or at the very least move in tandem.

Giustozzi also highlights the ambivalence towards Pakistan of the Afghan Taliban.  ”The Taliban relationship with Pakistan also is difficult to define with precision, despite being undeniable. The Pakistani army clearly sees the Taliban as a useful tool for its geopolitical ambitions in Afghanistan, but among the Taliban, the Pakistani patron is far from being popular. Apart from Haqqani and his network (always the closest to the Pakistanis), the other networks more tolerate Pakistani influence than appreciate it.”

In the drama of the runaway general, don’t forget Pakistan

On a visit to Pakistan in April, two comments stayed in my mind, encapsulating the Pakistani view of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.  One was from a political analyst in Islamabad, which stood out for the unusualness of the imagery.  “Obama,” she said, “has tried to put his feet in both boats.”  The other was from a senior serving officer, who appeared to be giving a personal opinion rather than reading from the script prepared for more official briefings.  “The Pashtun areas (of Afghanistan) are slipping out of the hands of ISAF and NATO, and everybody knows it,” he said.

The Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley McChrystal - the drama aside of firing a top commander in wartime - is remarkable in the extent to which it plays up a similar assessment of the war in Afghanistan.

“Even those who support McChrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it’s going to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm,” it says. “It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win,” it quotes Major General Bill Mayville, chief of operations for McChrystal, as saying. “This is going to end in an argument.”

In that context, McChrystal’s departure, and the very public washing of dirty linen over the conduct of the war, is unlikely to change the working assumptions Pakistan has about Afghanistan, and in consequence its policy decisions.  And given that Pakistan (nuclear-armed, population 170 million, base for al Qaeda and many other militant groups) is a bigger strategic nightmare for the United States than Afghanistan if it goes wrong, those policy decisions may well count for far more than the fate of a single general.

True, McChrystal had a tendency to say in public what others said in private.  His leaked assessment of the Afghan war last year was one of the first official U.S. documents to note that “increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani counter-measures in Afghanistan or India.” But him saying that, and indeed for that matter U.S. Special Representative Richard Holbrooke’s insistence that he will never mention the word “Kashmir”, do not change the underlying dynamic.  The Pakistan Army defines its policies according to its perception of a threat from India – and, to keep the time frame in perspective, has done so since 1947 – and that is not going to change overnight. Many analysts, most recently in this RAND Corporation report, argue that Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency will continue to rely on militant proxies it once cultivated to counter India both in Kashmir and in Afghanistan.  Its willingness to help prod the Afghan Taliban into peace talks is seen as at least partly dependent on a reduction of Indian influence in Afghanistan. So this week’s talks between the foreign secretaries and interior ministers of India and Pakistan in Islamabad could ultimately prove to be a more significant turning point – or more precisely, given these things move so slowly, the glimmer of a turning point in the distance.

McChrystal was also one of the first to play up publicly the possibility of reconciliation with the Taliban, telling the Financial Times in an interview before the London conference on Afghanistan in January that all Afghans could play a role in the future of the country. But that view has now been echoed by Holbrooke, and the suggestion that the United States might have to negotiate a settlement with its enemies is no longer condemned as heresy in the way it once was.

Arguably the sudden departure of British envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Sherard Cowper-Coles this week  will have a bigger impact on the chances of negotiating a settlement. The British tend to punch above their weight in South Asian diplomacy, and Cowper-Coles, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia who was believed to favour talks with the Taliban, was well placed to try to find a way towards a settlement.

India and Pakistan – yet again, past is prologue

Given the row over General Stanley McChrystal’s comments in Rolling Stone magazine, the slow process of repairing relations between India and Pakistan is unlikely to get much attention. But there is some movement there, which is worth watching closely since the relationship between the two plays such a defining role in the attitudes of the Pakistan Army and by extension, in Pakistan’s perceived approach to Afghanistan.

Following up on talks between their prime ministers in April, the foreign secretaries and interior ministers of India and Pakistan meet this week in Islamabad to try to rebuild trust between the two countries and find a way back into more substantive dialogue.

India broke off the formal peace process, the so-called Composite Dialogue, with Pakistan after the November 2008 attack on Mumbai and sporadic efforts since then to resume dialogue have been stuttering at best. 

But since the start of the year, India – which had insisted it would not resume talks until Pakistan acted against the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group blamed for Mumbai – has shown some softening in its position.

Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, the country’s top diplomat, said earlier this month all issues were up for discussion, although she also stressed that Pakistan must take action against militant groups.  In a speech to a conference organised by the Delhi Policy Group she referred to progress made both in the Composite Dialogue and in informal backchannel diplomacy to resolve the Kashmir dispute – comments which were interpreted as an indication of India’s hopes of building on the achievements made before Mumbai.

The backchannel diplomacy in particular established a roadmap for peace in Kashmir under which there would be no exchange of territory between India and Pakistan but both would work to make borders irrelevant - a formula which had at least the potential to end a 60-year standoff over the fate of the divided former kingdom.

According to The Hindu newspaper, India wanted to find out whether Pakistan too was willing to build on the gains made in negotiations before 2008.  It quoted official sources as saying that if the civilian government in Pakistan acknowledged what had been accomplished through the backchannel diplomacy and was ready to take that process forward, this would give big boost to trust building. “We have to see if they are willing to do that,” it quoted one source as saying.

U.S. should look at nuclear deal for Pakistan if militancy tackled-RAND report

The United States should consider offering Pakistan a civilian nuclear deal in return for a real and verifiable commitment to eradicate all militant groups operating from its territory, a new report by the RAND Corporation says.

The report, by Seth Jones and Christine Fair, echoes a criticism often levelled at Pakistan that it is only willing to tackle those militant organisations which threaten it directly, while retaining links with groups like the Afghan Taliban and the Lashkar-e-Taiba which can be used to expand its influence in Afghanistan or against India.  It argues that Washington needs to find a new mix of incentives and sanctions to convince Pakistan to abandon the use of militant groups as a foreign policy tool. 

Its suggestion that Washington – which has already agreed a civilian nuclear deal with India – consider using the offer of a nuclear agreement with Pakistan as an incentive comes as China pursues its own plans to help Islamabad’s civilian nuclear sector. 

“A key objective of U.S. policy must be to alter Pakistan’s strategic calculus and end its support to militant groups. Pakistan is unlikely to abandon militancy as a tool of foreign policy without a serious effort to alter its cost-benefit calculus. This requires the United States to clarify what its goals are, develop an international consensus on most (if not all) of these goals, and issue a clear demand to Pakistan regarding these objectives,” it says.

The report says that while Pakistan faces many difficulties in tackling militant groups on its border with Afghanistan or it its heartland Punjab province, ”Pakistan’s challenges are due as much to political will as to deficiencies in capability”.

Pakistan says it cannot tackle all militant groups at once and has complained about U.S. pressure to “do more” when its army is already taking heavy casualties fighting the Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP) or Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

The report, however, is unsparing in its assessment of what it sees as Pakistan’s different attitude to different militant groups.

from India Insight:

Killing of civilians fuels Kashmir anger

Just days ago, scenic Kashmir, torn by two decades of war, was near normal.

Thousands of tourists were flocking to the region and honeymooners were once again gliding in shikaras, small Kashmiri boats, across the mirror-calm Dal Lake.

The disputed Himalayan region has seen a significant drop in violence between Muslim rebels and security forces.

But now the Valley is again under siege in the backdrop of rising public anger.

A curfew has been imposed in the summer capital, Srinagar, to prevent violent anti-India demonstrations following the death of a teenager blamed on government forces.

Police and soldiers armed with assault rifles have blocked off lanes with razor wire and iron barricades to prevent protests after scores were hurt in pitched street battles.

Earlier, the killing of three villagers in an alleged fake gun battle by soldiers sparked off fresh anger in Kashmir prompting a pledge by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to improve human rights in Kashmir.

New report accuses Pakistan’s ISI of backing Afghan insurgents

According to a new report published by the London School of Economics, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency not only funds and trains Taliban fighters in Afghanistan but is officially represented on the movement’s leadership council, giving it significant influence over operations.

The ISI has long been accused of backing the Taliban – an accusation Pakistan denies, saying this would make no sense when it is already fighting a bloody campaign against Islamist militants at home. But the report is worth reading for its wealth of detail on the perceptions held by Taliban commanders interviewed in the field. You can see the Reuters story on the report here and the full document (pdf) here.

The report, based on interviews with Taliban commanders, former senior Taliban ministers and Western and Afghan security officials, says research strongly suggested support for the Taliban was the “official policy” of the ISI. ”Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude,” it says.  Interviews with Taliban commanders ”suggest that Pakistan continues to give extensive support to the insurgency in terms of funding, munitions and supplies.”

“These accounts were corroborated by former Taliban ministers, a Western analyst and a senior U.N. official based in Kabul, who said the Taliban largely depend on funding from the ISI and groups in Gulf countries,” the report, which was dismissed by Pakistani officials as spurious and unfounded, says.

Almost all of the Taliban commanders interviewed in the report believed the ISI was represented on the Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s supreme leadership council which Washington says is based in Pakistan. “Interviews strongly suggest that the ISI has representatives on the (Quetta) Shura, either as participants or observers, and the agency is thus involved at the highest level of the movement.”

“Pakistan’s apparent involvement in a double-game of this scale could have major geopolitical implications and could even provoke US counter-measures. However, the powerful role of the ISI, and parts of the Pakistani military, suggests that progress against the Afghan insurgency, or towards political engagement, requires their support. The only sure way to secure such cooperation is to address the fundamental causes of Pakistan’s insecurity, especially its latent and enduring conflict with India,” it says.

As discussed many times on this blog, most recently here, Pakistan is unlikely to act decisively against the Afghan Taliban without reassurances of a scaling back of India’s presence in Afghanistan.  It may have some ability to convince Afghan Taliban leaders to join peace talks by leaning on those who are based in Pakistan, or whose families live there, as and when it judges the timing is right.

Pakistan’s Ahmadi killings and the conscience of a nation

The fierce debate about the nature of Pakistani society triggered by the killing of more than 80 Ahmadis in two mosques in Lahore last month continues to run and run.

Much of the discussion is about why the government had failed to stop the religious right from preaching hatred against the Ahmadis, who are considered non-Muslims in Pakistan because they revere their 19th century founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, breaching – according to Pakistani law – a requirement that Muslims accept the finality of the Prophet Mohammad.

While authorities had been willing to shut down Facebook over a competition to draw the Prophet, it had not dared take action to remove banners preaching hatred against the Ahamdis, fearing a backlash from the religious right, Dawn newspaper complained in an editorial.

In a chronicle of deaths foretold, Professor C.M. Naim tracks the earlier killing of an Ahmadi, a retired teacher, in January in the town of Ferozewal. In an article in India’s Outlook magazine (h/t Chapati Mystery) he notes that not only did the police fail to take adequate action against the man’s killers, but also that the media paid very little attention, barring one persistent reporter. He also reproduces a picture of a huge billboard in Ferozewal preaching hatred against the Ahmadis.

“Judging from the image, the sign must have dominated the roundabout where it was set up to exhort the 97.21 percent of Ferozewala’s population against the unfortunate 0.25. It had stayed up for weeks. Thousands, including any number of men with power and authority, saw it but chose to do nothing. Finally a retired schoolteacher victimized by the sign and fearing worse approached the police for relief. A few days later, he ended up dead,” he writes.

He adds: “The following too went unnoticed:

• On January 14, an Ahmadi mosque built in1982 near Rabwah was taken away from them by court orders and handed to anti-Ahmadis, “in order to pre-empt extreme law and order disturbances”.
• On January 28, a court at Vehari, Punjab, sentenced three Ahmadis to imprisonment and fines on trumped up charges of preaching their religion to “simple Muslims”.
• On February 3, an Ahmadi was similarly killed at Shehdadpur, Sindh.
• On April 1, three Ahmadi traders were ambushed and killed near Faisalabad.

Taliban talks and the lobster quadrille

All of us do thought association in different ways depending on history, culture and education. But for me personally the latest round of discussion about talking to the Taliban has me thinking about Lewis Carroll’s “The Lobster Quadrille” (with one word changed):

“Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the talks?  Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the talks?”

This weekend, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke came the nearest I’ve seen from someone from the State Department to saying that Washington might eventually have to engage with the Taliban leadership to end the war in Afghanistan.  

Asked in an interview with Reuters whether U.S. support for “reaching out” to the Taliban extended even to top leaders, such as supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, Holbrooke said: ”Let me be clear on one thing, everybody understands that this war will not end in a clear-cut military victory. It’s not going to end on the deck of a battleship like World War Two, or Dayton, Ohio, like the Bosnian war.”

“It’s going to have some different ending from that, some form of political settlements are necessary … you can’t have a settlement with al Qaeda, you can’t talk to them, you can’t negotiate with them, it’s out of the question. But it is possible to talk to Taliban leaders.”

Until now, the U.S. military has talked about the need for reconciliation with the Taliban leadership, albeit from a position of strength, while Defense Secretary Robert Gates had said the Taliban were part of the political fabric of Afghan society. The London conference on Afghanistan in January was dominated by the idea that talks with the Taliban might be the best way out of a military stalemate in a war now into its ninth year.

The conventional wisdom, however, rightly or wrongly, was that the State Department was more sceptical about talking to the Taliban than the Pentagon or the U.S. Army. That is why Holbrooke’s words strike me as rather interesting.