Pakistani authorities banned public protests and detained hundreds of lawyers and opposition workers nationwide to prevent them from launching Thursday’s planned ”long march” towards the capital Islamabad to force President Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate a former Supreme Court judge.

Many went into hiding according to these reports, vowing to press on with the cross-country motor convoy that will set off from cities in Baluchistan and Sind and then Puinjab on Friday before culminating outside the parliament building in the capital.

And many others turned to the Internet, using blogs and Twitter to report on detentions, swapping pictures and information about security deployments and in so doing keeping alive perhaps the gravest threat to Zardari’s one-year-old administration.

Here some of the tweets or short messages on the popular Twitter site :

“One sp (superintendent of police)  in Gujranwala refuses to arrest people. Government removes him from his post,” wrote one.

Another wrote : “All fast food & other companies warned by Govt to NOT provide food to LongMarch participants and rest houses warned not to rent rooms.” Another wrote about police raiding the house of a political worker in Rawalpindi who died eight years ago.

Not everyone was rooting for the long marchers though in a country battling multiple security challenges as well as an economic meltdown. “They want us to stop work and go long marching … Therefore I have decided to work 1 extra hour every day … Say NO to #longmarch.” wrote  another.

You can see all the Twitter updates here. 

With all the wall-to-wall coverage on the Internet and on television, you have to wonder if the Pakistani authorities have bitten off more than they can chew. Pakistanis are recoiling  against the crackdown, according to this BBC story.

And  the Washington Post quoted retired army general Talat Masood as saying  this about Zardari: “If he wants to be a dictator, he is sadly mistaken because the army is not going to be behind him. He is on a suicide mission.”

[Photos of police detaining a protester in Karachi and Nawaz Sharif addressing a rally on March 11]

President Asif Ali Zardari has said that an agreement signed last month to allow Islamic law in the troubled Swat Valley in return for a ceasefire was made with religious clerics, and not the Taliban. The Pakistani state had not negotiated with the Taliban and other extremist elements, and nor will it ever do so, Zardari wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.

But some people are questioning the distinction that Zardari is drawing between the “traditional local clerics” and the Swat Taliban militants who effectively control what was once an idyllic holiday destination. In the light of the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, the first major strike on international sport since the Munich Olympic massacre of 1972, the debate over the deal has acquired a sharper edge as some see it as having emboldened the militants in the first place.

Bill Roggio, writing in the The Weekly Standard blog, says Sufi Mohammad, the cleric who negotiated the ceasefire in Swat with the government of the North West Frontier Province, has been a long-time Taliban supporter  praising them as recently  last month just days before the accord was signed.

He quotes Mohammad as saying in a recent interview that he believed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 was “ideal.”

“From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections,” Mohammad told Deutsche Presse-Agentur just days before the latest agreement was signed. “I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries.”

In 1990s, Mohammed ran an armed campaign to force the introduction of sharia in the region and in 2001 led his supporters to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban against U.S.-led coalition forces as this Reuters story says. He was arrested upon his return and released in 2007 after he said he was giving up violence.

His son-in-law Mullah Fazlullah, the radical anti-government cleric, now runs the armed campaign in Swat where militants have unleashed a reign of terror, killing and beheading politicians, singers, soldiers and opponents. They have banned female education and destroyed nearly 200 girls’ schools.

“President Zardari’s entire premise for negotiations falls apart when you look at who the government is actually negotiating with. And the United States is supposed to be comforted in knowing Pakistan has ceded territory to a man who praises the Taliban and sent thousands of fighters to kill our troops in Afghanistan,” Roggio writes.
 
Pakistan’s Dawn said the Lahore attack was a price the state was paying for giving in to militants and takes issue with the Pakistani authorities for trying to pass it off as a local deal.

“Tuesday’s assault also highlights the folly of negotiating with those bent on destroying our way of life. The peace deal, or capitulation, in Swat has been described by officialdom as a regional solution to a regional problem. This does not wash, it cannot fly. Militancy and terrorism are national problems that are not confined to a specific region.”

 ”The obscurantists must be tackled head-on if we are to entertain any hope of redemption. If the state resorts to negotiating with militants from a position of weakness, what we will get is disaster, across the board.”

And the Taliban won’t be stopped in Swat either, warns author Ahmed Rashid in a piece for the YaleGlobal Online . He writes that from their lair in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) the Taliban have already expanded their influence into the settled areas of North West Frontier Province and virtually laid siege to the capital Peshawar

Rashid says the Swat deal has become an explosive issue within Pakistan, going in some ways to the heart of the struggle. ”Right wing, religious-minded citizens and politicians praise it for bringing peace to Swat, while liberal Pakistanis see it as an unmistakable watershed in the country’s battle against Islamic extremism, giving Al Qaeda and the Taliban a new safe haven.” 

And from where they can carry out attacks. Which makes the whole deal quite different from the local, limited arrangement that the Pakistani establishment led by Zardari is suggesting it is.

[Reuters pictures of girls in a school that reopened in Swat, a member of Pakistani Islamist delegation and a military helicopter at Lahore cricket ground]

A reader has pointed to an agreement that Pakistan’s Jamaat-i-Islami, the main Islamist political group, signed with the Chinese communist party during its trip to Beijing a few days ago.

The two sides, according to reports in the domestic and foreign media, agreed to collaborate in the fields of justice, development, security and solidarity.

They also promised not to get involved in each other’s internal affairs which according to the report on CBS News was effectively an undertaking that Pakistan’s Islamists will stay away from activities of separatist Muslims in China’s northern Xinjiang region.

While China’s concerns about the Islamist fervour sweeping northwest Pakistan spilling over into Xinjiang have been known before, it does seem a bit unusual for the communist party to strike a deal with a religion-based foreign political party.

Or is this the new reality and which China has been quick to realise?

(more…)

In the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India’s response has been to look to the United States to lean on Pakistan, which it blames for spawning Islamist militancy across the region, rather than launching any military retaliation of its own. So after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s trip to India and Pakistan last week, have the Americans done enough for now?

According to Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, Rice told Pakistan there was “irrefutable evidence” that elements within the country were involved in the Mumbai attacks. And it quotes unnamed sources as saying that behind-the-scenes she “pushed the Pakistani leaders to take care of the perpetrators, otherwise the U.S. will act”.

India’s Business Standard said the Indian government was pleased with the U.S. warning. “This is exactly what India wanted,” the newspaper said.

The Times of India, however, fretted the U.S. action against Pakistan appeared to be “turning tepid”, in public at least. It attributed the U.S. approach to the perceived need to avoid backing the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari into a corner. (India has specifically not accused the Pakistan government of involvement in the Mumbai attacks, pointing instead to militant groups supported by Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.) It also said the United States was wary of destabilising a partner on which it depends crucially as a transit route for supplies to Afghanistan, while also being hobbled by the change of administration in Washington.

So which way is the pendulum swinging — towards firm U.S. action that will allow Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to say he was right to put his faith in American diplomacy, or a lukewarm response that will either force India to act alone or leave its Congress-led government looking on in helpless frustration as it heads into a general election due by next May?

U.S. pressure has succeeded in pulling India and Pakistan back from the brink in the past.  When fighting erupted between the two newly declared nuclear-armed powers in the Kargil war in 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton persuaded then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to pull Pakistani troops back. (Sharif paid a high price. Later in the year he was overthrown by then General Pervez Musharraf, a lesson unlikely to be lost on the current civilian government which is seen as wary of making too many concessions to India for fear of alienating the powerful Pakistan Army.) (more…)

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has urged Pakistan to cooperate “fully and transparently” in investigations into the Mumbai attacks, while U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has pointed a finger at Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant group.

That’s probably the kind of language that would go down well in India, which has been frustrated in the past by what it saw as the United States’ failure to acknowledge the threat from Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant groups, instead preferring to rely on Pakistan as a useful ally in the region while focusing its own energies on defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But what exactly can either the United States or India do if they want to put pressure on Pakistan? India has long complained that Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another Pakistan-based militant group, were nurtured by the Pakistan spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, to stage attacks in both Indian Kashmir and elsewhere in the country. And while Pakistan denies providing more than moral support to Kashmiri groups, it has never cracked down on Lashkar-e-Taiba, based in Punjab and Pakistan-held Kashmir, in the same way that it has begun to tackle militants from al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Lashkar-e-Taiba’s charitable wing, the Jamat-ud-Dawa, earned popular support by working to rescue victims of the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, as discussed in this article by Steve Coll in the New Yorker. And much to India’s irritation, the Jamat-ud-Dawa continues to operate openly in Muridke outside Lahore. (more…)

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has blamed a group with “external linkages” for coordinated attacks which killed more than 100 people in Mumbai. The language was reminiscent of the darker days of India-Pakistan relations when India always saw a Pakistan hand in militant attacks, blaming groups it said were set up by Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to seek revenge for Pakistan’s defeat by India in the 1971 war.

An attack on India’s parliament in December 2001 triggered a mass mobilisation along the two countries’ borders and brought them close to a fourth war.  That attack was blamed by India on the Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed - hardline Islamist groups with links to al Qaeda.  Both have been associated with the kind of “fedayeen” attacks – in which the attackers, while not necessarily suicide bombers, are willing to fight to the death — seen in Mumbai.

So does the assault on Mumbai spell the death-knell for what had been gradually warming ties between Pakistan and India?

Pakistan has condemned the attack, just as it did when gunmen attacked the Indian parliament in 2001. And the Pakistani context today is quite different from that of 2001. Then a military ruler, former president Pervez Musharraf was in power, whereas Pakistan is now run by a new civilian president, Asif Ali Zardari, who has made clear he wants peace with India over Kashmir.

But Singh’s comments, made in a televised address to the nation, were remarkably strong for the usually mild-mannered prime minister:

“It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country,” he said. “We will take the strongest possible measures to ensure that there is no repetition of such terrorist acts. We are determined to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the safety and security of our citizens.”

The strength of the language may have been fuelled by the scale of the Mumbai attacks, and could refer to either Pakistan or Bangladesh, which has also been accused by India of harbouring militant groups. But it sounded similar in tone to that of Singh’s  predecessor, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who following the 2001 parliament attack warned Pakistan that India’s patience was wearing thin. And they also contrasted with India’s reaction to bombings which killed at least 63 people in the western city of Jaipur earlier this year, when the Indian government notably refrained from pointing a finger at Pakistan.

So was this a deliberate attempt to undermine India-Pakistan relations?  And if so, what will that mean for Pakistan’s fragile civilian democracy? Zardari has staked his reputation on making peace with India to improve trade and help lift Pakistan’s struggling economy.

Much will depend on how Singh, under pressure to show a firm hand ahead of a national election due in India by May 2009, reacts.

(Rueters photo of Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai/Punit Paranjpe)

“There is a little bit of Indian in every Pakistani and a little bit of Pakistani in every Indian and I speak today as a Pakistani, as much as the little Indian in me”- Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari quoting his assassinated wife Benazir Bhutto.

Words spoken straight from the heart, and directly to the millions of families on either side of the border,  mine included, with common customs, language and roots until severed by Partition into two nations, two people unable or unwilling to live at peace with each other ever since.

 Zardari was addressing a conference in New Delhi via videolink where he also unveiled a proposal to commit his smaller nation to a no first use nuclear policy, highlighted in an earlier post on this blog.

But he also spoke about making it easy for people to travel to each country, perhaps with some kind of an electronic card.  Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has also proposed visa free travel between the two countries, an idea so daring given the tortured India-Pakistan relationship in which most of us grew up up thinking the other to be enemy number 1, that it has been quietly allowed to languish.

But what of India ? Is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, one of those whose ancestral home falls on the other side of the border, up to it ? (more…)

One of the most common questions I get asked by Pakistani acquaintances is: “Where is this country going?”

After watching the tumultuous events of the past couple of years, and knowing that 12 months ago the idea of Asif Ali Zardari becoming president figured nowhere on my list of  scenarios, I’ve learned to hedge.

“It will probably get worse before it gets better” always seems like a safe response in Pakistan, as it seldom seems to get better for long.

More imaginative Pakistanis however compiled their vision of the future in 2020 with a mock-up front page of Dawn that’s been circulated through e-mail.
   

The headlines were, of course, humorous, though there is probably an uneasy feeling among many people that perhaps the jokes could come true.
 

Working from the top down:
    Petrol Prices Hiked - 440Rs/Ltr
    President Ashfaq Pervez Kayani has removed his uniform
    President Ashfaq to visit neighbouring country Balochland
    Seminar on the 9th Death anniversary of Sharif Brothers &
Zardari
    Pakistan Rupee hits record low, crosses 178 per dollar
    Geo TV is back after 12 year ban
    Will Osama be captured?
    Pakistan Lost The Series against Hong Kong
    Shoaib completed his 12 year ban
    Imran still not satisfied
    Meera’s 25th Birthday

Okay, well you have to be Pakistani, or Indian, to understand some of those jokes.

But, I think anyone can grasp the biggest fears underlying this naughty piece of black humour, namely; the return of the military, the break-up of the country, the economic decline, the refusal of the war on terrorism to go away, and the national cricket team being as hapless as ever in 12 years time.

Loose talk of a failed state breaking apart has been bouncing around now for almost a decade. But clearly things have got worse.

I was put in mind of this by a couple of articles by New York Times writers that appeared over the weekend.

“Redrawn map makes Pakistan uneasy” by Jane Perlez led off on a particularly extreme conspiracy theory, “based on a map first circulated in a theoretical exercise in some U.S. neo-conservative circles” that the United States has a secret agenda to break up Pakistan.

And “The Pakistan Test” by Nicholas D. Kristof. It’s not about cricket. Kristof reckons Pakistan will be “Barack Obama’s most difficult international test in the next year”. You have to wonder why he’s says “next year”?

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, in an interview with Associated Press of Pakistan over the weekend, also said 2009 was a crucial year for Pakistan.

What’s going to happen?
 

Every December I ask myself what nightmares the coming year could bring. Assassinations and something to do with Osama bin Laden usually make the list. But maybe 2009 will surprise us with something good — a great leap forward in the Indo-Pak peace process, maybe. Maybe not.

There are clearly plenty of scenarios out there that I’ve missed. What can they be? This is not a joke.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari says he would be ready to commit to a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, in what would be a dramatic overturning of Pakistan’s nuclear policy. Pakistan has traditionally seen its nuclear weapons as neutralising Indian superiority in conventional warfare, and refused to follow India’s example of declaring a no first use policy after both countries conducted nuclear tests in 1998.

Zardari was speaking via satellite from Islamabad to a conference organised by the Hindustan Times when he was asked whether he was willing to make an assurance that Pakistan would not be the first to use nuclear weapons.

“Most certainly,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.  “I can assure you that Pakistan will not be the first country ever to use (nuclear weapons). I hope that things never come to a stage where we have to even think about using nuclear weapons (against India). Personally, I have always been against the very concept of nuclear weapons,” he said.

So what is the Pakistan Army going to make of that? It has always seen itself as the ultimate guarantor of Pakistan’s survival, and nuclear weapons are an essential part of the country’s arsenal should its very  existence come under threat.

And will Zardari’s suggestion turn out to come with conditions that would be unacceptable to India? According to the Hindustan Times, “Zardari mooted in the same breath some kind of regional cooperation for a non-nuclear South Asia”.  That does not look likely to find many immediate takers in India, given that its nuclear weapons were developed as much as a defence against China as against Pakistan, and that it has just reached a nuclear deal with the United States effectively giving it recognition as a nuclear-armed state.

Zardari’s late wife, Benazir Bhutto, had championed Pakistan’s nuclear programme, which was started by her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s – India tested its first nuclear device in 1974. Have times changed so much for Pakistan that Zardari is willing to turn his back on this? Or is he just looking for the right words to set the tone for improved ties with India?

(Reuters file photo of Pakistani missile test)

Pakistan has agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a $7.6 billion emergency loan to stave off a balance of payments crisis. 

Shaukat Tarin, economic adviser to the prime minister, said the IMF had endorsed Pakistan’s own strategy to bring about structural adjustments. The agreement is expected to encourage other potential donors, who are gathering in Abu Dhabi on Monday for a “Friends of Pakistan” conference.

The government had long delayed announcing its plans to turn to the IMF for help and President Asif Ali Zardari said in September the country did not want to seek IMF assistance. Tarin said in October that going to the IMF was “Plan C” if other lenders failed to come through.  “If we want to go to the IMF, we can … but only as a backup,” he said.

The times are clearly changing and in the midst of a financial crisis that has swept away some of the world’s most august financial institutions, there is no shame in admitting a need for help.

For that matter, I can remember former IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus declaring confidently at one of the annual IMF meetings I covered in Washington in the mid 1990s that Keynsianism was dead. I challenged him at the time over his certainty, but wish I could ask the same question now that western economies are spending their way out of trouble like there’s no tomorrow.

But what will it mean for Pakistan that its new government, less than a year after elections that ushered in a new civilian democracy, has had to eat its words and turn to the IMF for help?

Does it bring to Pakistan the silver lining that it offered India, which when forced to accept an IMF bailout in the early 1990s began a programme of economic reforms?  As noted in an earlier post,  India as a result began dismantling decades of licence raj and never really looked back. 

And why did Pakistan’s closest allies, including the United States, Saudi Arabia and China, let it down by leaving it to turn to the IMF for help? As discussed in an earlier post, China, with $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, was in a strong position to step in to head off what could turn into a deeply unpopular move.  Traditionally seen by Pakistan as its most reliable friend, China appears to have decided that an IMF programme was the best medicine.

A new beginning? Or another source of instability?