The actual results of the election in Iran is no longer the point in the struggle between the opposition and the government, owing to the behavior of the government. The response of the government has been [a] to deny any need for a serious recount [instead it offers to recount only a few of the precincts, and even then selectively], [b] to bully the public into submission, and [c] to claim that the whole affair was created by outsiders. Total denial.
Repressive regimes flaunt their lunacy. To make sure the Iranian government embarrassed its own claims to legitimacy it publicly dismantled all semblance of concern for its own citizenry by the way it treated the family of Neda Soltan. Neda's offense was to allow herself to be murdered by Iran's paramilitary Basij in front of the cameras of her friends -- and so to become the world-renown emblem of Iranian repression. The family was then forced to suffer further owing to Neda's "offense". Here is The Guardian's report on how the Iranian government treated Neda's family:
Neda Soltan's family 'forced out of home' by Iranian authorities
> The family were banned from mourning and funeral services were cancelled. "The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of Neda Agha Soltan out of their Tehran home after shocking images of her death were circulated around the world."
> In accordance with Persian tradition, the family had put up a mourning announcement and attached a black banner to the building. But the police took them down, refusing to allow the family to show any signs of mourning. The next day they were ordered to move out.
> Since then, neighbors have received suspicious calls warning them not to discuss her death with anyone and not to make any protest.
> A neighbor said her own family had not slept for days because of the oppressive presence of the Basij militia, were were "in the area harassing people since Soltan's death." "We are trembling," another neighbor said. "We are still afraid. We haven't had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can't imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn't let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda's family were not even given a quiet moment to grieve."
> Another man said "Neda's family was forced to be alone, otherwise the whole of Iran would gather here," he said. "The government is terrible, they are even accusing pro-Mousavi people of killing Neda and have just written in their websites that Neda is a Basiji (government militia) martyr. That's ridiculous – if that's true why don't they let her family hold any funeral or ceremonies? Since the election, you are not able to trust one word from the government."
> A shop keeper who knew her said, "She was a kind, innocent girl. She treated me well and I appreciated her behaviour. I was surprised when I found out that she was killed by the riot police. ... She has been sacrificed for the government's vote-rigging in the presidential election."
> The police did not hand the body back to her family. They buried it without the family knowing it.
> The government now accuses protesters of being the killers of Soltan, describing her as a martyr of the Basij militia.
> Also, a pro-government newspaper has blamed the recently expelled BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, of hiring "thugs" to shoot her so he could make a documentary film.
[Click on the title for a link to the whole article.]
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Interview with Atlantic Community
Natalie Catherine Chwalisz of the Atlantic Community website asked me for comments on the relationship between the European Union and the situation in Pakistan. Some of what I said was published there. I include here the whole of their questions and my responses to them.
But there is more to reflect on here. As you know, all of those involved in the 9/11/01 attack on New York and the Pentagon were radicalized in Europe: whatever were the conditions for developing their hostility they developed it in European contexts. At the same time, since at least the mid-1970s Pakistan has been a critical incubating place for insurgent groups. That Osama Bin Laden has been able to hide there for some years can be no accident; there must be Pakistanis in high places who know something about that. Moreover, Pakistan has been nourishing several radical Islamist groups in order to have recruits for their unending struggle with India over Kashmir. In that context OBL may be regarded as a useful asset to some elements of the Pakistan military. They have claimed that the Taliban are an Afghan group, but the main localities from which they have operated ever since late 2001 have been in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The folly of Pakistan’s policy of tolerating OBL and certain Taliban groups, one that could be fatal, is now only too obvious, as the “Pakistani Taliban” have turned against their handlers.
Much has been said about the danger of nuclear warheads falling into the hands of insurgents. How likely that is I would not know, but the possibility of a growing insurgency committed to creating a new political force in the world – a new “caliphate” – is not remote. The success of an insurgency in Pakistan/ Afghanistan could inspire a new generation of young people in the wider region of the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, places from which most of the insurgents come. And the numbers of such people are potentially large, for the median age of most of these countries is around 20. These young people are now developing a sense of where the world is going and of what they want to do with their lives. And the course of affairs in Pakistan/Afghanistan will influence what they see, what they can imagine, and what they decide to commit their lives to. That most of them are poorly educated and thus unprepared for employment in the emerging world will become a problem, as they are unlikely to escape the appeal of the more conspiratorial rumors of the times and the more radical solutions being proposed by the extreme elements of their world. Such social conditions in a society only a couple of hours by plane from Europe such induce the EU to invest heavily in measures to counter the influence of such extreme movements.
It is important that the Americans and Europeans work to help develop these two countries, but this seems to me a delicate issue. The Pakistanis and Afghans can be offended by arrogance and condescension. In fact, both countries need large infusions of help in education. But in order for that assistance to be effective the leaders themselves have to be able to embrace it without feeling humiliated. That is, they have to “own” the educational and institutional development project themselves. This is a major problem in Pakistan, as the elite of Pakistan have managed public affairs in their own interest from the beginning. Pakistan is still a “feudal” society, a social condition that provides room for, even encourages, radical insurgent movements.
One useful function of the leadership of the EU would be to help the leadership of Pakistan to recognize the need to give more opportunity to the less privileged. This includes persuading them to commit to educating the lower classes. It also includes entering into serious dialogue with Baluch nationalists who are seeking a stronger voice in public affairs and a degree of local autonomy.
For all of this to be possible, the leadership of the EU might enlist the help of the Chinese, whose support is critical to the Pakistanis. And if at all possible, they should seek to bring some resolution to the Kashmir crisis. Until that issue is resolved the two most powerful countries in South Asia, both nuclear-armed, will be effectively at war.
It is worth noting that the EU is currently more highly regarded than the United States, a condition that the EU could effectively use. Some possibilities for the EU to consider in helping raise the level of education as well as change the perceptions of young Pakistanis about “Western” society: develop a king of “peace corps” from Europe; send professional advisors and trainers for the professional and trade workers in the country.
1. How does Pakistan's political instability impact EU security concerns?The obvious first answer is that the world is now so intimately connected that any serious crisis anywhere can affect much of the rest of the world -- and Pakistan is in crisis. But in the case of Pakistan there are many specific issues. The most obvious one is that for many years Pakistan has been a sanctuary for insurgent groups whose agendas include reducing (and reshaping) Europe as well as the United States (the more prominent target for the time being). But the status of the EU in the eyes of the insurgents in Pakistan/Afghanistan is no different than the US. They see both as the source of dangerous influences and if they have the ability they will attack them.
But there is more to reflect on here. As you know, all of those involved in the 9/11/01 attack on New York and the Pentagon were radicalized in Europe: whatever were the conditions for developing their hostility they developed it in European contexts. At the same time, since at least the mid-1970s Pakistan has been a critical incubating place for insurgent groups. That Osama Bin Laden has been able to hide there for some years can be no accident; there must be Pakistanis in high places who know something about that. Moreover, Pakistan has been nourishing several radical Islamist groups in order to have recruits for their unending struggle with India over Kashmir. In that context OBL may be regarded as a useful asset to some elements of the Pakistan military. They have claimed that the Taliban are an Afghan group, but the main localities from which they have operated ever since late 2001 have been in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The folly of Pakistan’s policy of tolerating OBL and certain Taliban groups, one that could be fatal, is now only too obvious, as the “Pakistani Taliban” have turned against their handlers.
Much has been said about the danger of nuclear warheads falling into the hands of insurgents. How likely that is I would not know, but the possibility of a growing insurgency committed to creating a new political force in the world – a new “caliphate” – is not remote. The success of an insurgency in Pakistan/ Afghanistan could inspire a new generation of young people in the wider region of the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, places from which most of the insurgents come. And the numbers of such people are potentially large, for the median age of most of these countries is around 20. These young people are now developing a sense of where the world is going and of what they want to do with their lives. And the course of affairs in Pakistan/Afghanistan will influence what they see, what they can imagine, and what they decide to commit their lives to. That most of them are poorly educated and thus unprepared for employment in the emerging world will become a problem, as they are unlikely to escape the appeal of the more conspiratorial rumors of the times and the more radical solutions being proposed by the extreme elements of their world. Such social conditions in a society only a couple of hours by plane from Europe such induce the EU to invest heavily in measures to counter the influence of such extreme movements.
2. What should be the guiding principles of Europe's foreign policy in the region?Again, the answer seems transparent: Europe [and the US] must be prepared to invest in the wellbeing of the great population clusters of the world, especially those that are disadvantaged. This means encouraging infrastructural development for those populations that are now underprivileged, many of whom are becoming aware, through modern communication devices, of what the more advanced parts of the world are like – a condition that will foster resentment against the “West” if effective means are not developed by which these populations can develop. The good news is that that awareness should induce many of them to welcome efforts to equip them for living and working in the modern world.
The most obvious way that the EU can help is in education and institutional development – in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan, as you cannot now consider the issues in either country without considering the implications for the other. The EU is well positioned to provide such help.
3. How could/should the EU's policy vis-à-vis Pakistan complement US policy in the region? Are there avenues insufficiently or not at all pursued by the US, where the EU can set itself apart and provide additional value? Can the EU's expertise in institution building and cooperation on economic reform (as was developed in the EU's
Neighborhood Policy) be applied to Pakistan?
It is important that the Americans and Europeans work to help develop these two countries, but this seems to me a delicate issue. The Pakistanis and Afghans can be offended by arrogance and condescension. In fact, both countries need large infusions of help in education. But in order for that assistance to be effective the leaders themselves have to be able to embrace it without feeling humiliated. That is, they have to “own” the educational and institutional development project themselves. This is a major problem in Pakistan, as the elite of Pakistan have managed public affairs in their own interest from the beginning. Pakistan is still a “feudal” society, a social condition that provides room for, even encourages, radical insurgent movements.
One useful function of the leadership of the EU would be to help the leadership of Pakistan to recognize the need to give more opportunity to the less privileged. This includes persuading them to commit to educating the lower classes. It also includes entering into serious dialogue with Baluch nationalists who are seeking a stronger voice in public affairs and a degree of local autonomy.
For all of this to be possible, the leadership of the EU might enlist the help of the Chinese, whose support is critical to the Pakistanis. And if at all possible, they should seek to bring some resolution to the Kashmir crisis. Until that issue is resolved the two most powerful countries in South Asia, both nuclear-armed, will be effectively at war.
It is worth noting that the EU is currently more highly regarded than the United States, a condition that the EU could effectively use. Some possibilities for the EU to consider in helping raise the level of education as well as change the perceptions of young Pakistanis about “Western” society: develop a king of “peace corps” from Europe; send professional advisors and trainers for the professional and trade workers in the country.
Monday, June 22, 2009
1953: What American’s don’t know and Iranians can’t forget.
Most Americans are proud of their “free press” and their history of great humanitarian achievements, but they are surprisingly ignorant of their own history – at least of the sordid activities of their government, some of them successfully veiled from their own “free press.” As a result, like every other people the Americans have a selective memory of the past. Currently there seems to be a return to stories of World War II, which is recalled as the last “good war” in which Americans participated. What we forget – or in fact, for most Americans, we never knew ‒ are some of the unseemly ventures of our government in other countries. One of those unseemly ventures was what the CIA did in 1953 in Iran: they overturned a duly elected government led by a very popular Prime Minister, Muhammed Mussadegh, by paying goons to create an appearance of public disorder so that Muhammad Reza Shah could be installed as an American client.
In fact, most of us had no idea; the act only became known many years later – at least to Americans; the Iranians came to know it very quickly, and were soon deeply resentful of it. [The tale is well told in Stephen Kinzer’s book, All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.] This affair has loomed in the Iranian public imagination ever since. It was a major factor in the massive revolt against the Shah in 1978 that eventually brought Khomeini to power. The Iranian people supposed that the Americans were behind the abuses – beatings, executions, intimidations, especially by the secret service agency known as SAVAK ‒ that became increasingly common in the 1970s. And the supposition was right, for indeed the Americans had trained SAVAK and funded the Iranian military that kept the Shah in power.
That memory, the sense that America messes with Iran’s internal affairs, is still alive. This is the reason why the Obama administration dares not take sides in the current struggle in Iran, for merely by expressing support for the opposition it will delegitimize it, turn it into ‒ again ‒ a seeming attempt of the American government to overturn a “duly elected” administration. Or at least “duly elected” as the Iranian administration wants everyone to believe but that many now doubt, judging from the demonstrations of outrage in at least the Iranian cities. And now the country’s highest electoral authority, the Guardian Council, admits that the "votes collected in 50 cities surpass the number of people eligible to cast ballots in those areas." [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2009/06/iran-independent-study-indicates-irregularities-in-election-results.html].
The government would like nothing better than to pin the opposition on American meddling. And accordingly the opposition most urgently desires to avoid any evidence of contamination by American support.
So the dance by all sides – Khameinei and the Iranian administration, the Mousavi-led opposition, the Americans, even the Europeans ‒ has been carefully calibrated in terms of that grotesque unseemly event of the past. As always, the past poisons the present, in this case a past that most Americans never knew and virtually all Iranians will never forget.
In fact, most of us had no idea; the act only became known many years later – at least to Americans; the Iranians came to know it very quickly, and were soon deeply resentful of it. [The tale is well told in Stephen Kinzer’s book, All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.] This affair has loomed in the Iranian public imagination ever since. It was a major factor in the massive revolt against the Shah in 1978 that eventually brought Khomeini to power. The Iranian people supposed that the Americans were behind the abuses – beatings, executions, intimidations, especially by the secret service agency known as SAVAK ‒ that became increasingly common in the 1970s. And the supposition was right, for indeed the Americans had trained SAVAK and funded the Iranian military that kept the Shah in power.
That memory, the sense that America messes with Iran’s internal affairs, is still alive. This is the reason why the Obama administration dares not take sides in the current struggle in Iran, for merely by expressing support for the opposition it will delegitimize it, turn it into ‒ again ‒ a seeming attempt of the American government to overturn a “duly elected” administration. Or at least “duly elected” as the Iranian administration wants everyone to believe but that many now doubt, judging from the demonstrations of outrage in at least the Iranian cities. And now the country’s highest electoral authority, the Guardian Council, admits that the "votes collected in 50 cities surpass the number of people eligible to cast ballots in those areas." [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2009/06/iran-independent-study-indicates-irregularities-in-election-results.html].
The government would like nothing better than to pin the opposition on American meddling. And accordingly the opposition most urgently desires to avoid any evidence of contamination by American support.
So the dance by all sides – Khameinei and the Iranian administration, the Mousavi-led opposition, the Americans, even the Europeans ‒ has been carefully calibrated in terms of that grotesque unseemly event of the past. As always, the past poisons the present, in this case a past that most Americans never knew and virtually all Iranians will never forget.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Private news on the Iranian regime's butchery of its own people
My colleague at Washington University in St Louis, Fatemeh Keshavarz, sends out periodical notes on the situation in Iran: WINDOW_ON_IRAN@ARTSCI.WUSTL.EDU. Her latest post, as of this morning, reveals how desperate the situation there is. On it a medical student describes "chaos" in the emergency room in the hospital where he works. Many people were brought in with wounds. Nine died. "Employees were crying till dawn". "The government moved dead bodies on backs of trucks before we were even able to get their names or other information. What can you even say to the people who don't even respect the dead. No one was allowed to speak to the wounded."
Fatemeh says that many people believe the bizarre suicide bombing at the tomb of Khomeini was staged by the government to discredit the opposition. "An unconfirmed report said the bombing was reported on the National TV minutes before it actually happened."
Contact Fatemeh to see her whole report. [I believe she wants her reports to be distributed, so would be glad to have your name on her mailing list. There is soon to be a blog also.]
Fatemeh says that many people believe the bizarre suicide bombing at the tomb of Khomeini was staged by the government to discredit the opposition. "An unconfirmed report said the bombing was reported on the National TV minutes before it actually happened."
Contact Fatemeh to see her whole report. [I believe she wants her reports to be distributed, so would be glad to have your name on her mailing list. There is soon to be a blog also.]
Friday, June 19, 2009
An interview with Trend
The situation in Iran now seems beyond repair. I here reproduce an interchange I had with Tatyana Konyayeva, a Correspondent with TREND News Agency in Baku, only becuase so far it doesn't seem to be unduly out of date.
Q: Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur, the chairman of the Votes Security Organization founded by presidential candidate Mir Hosseyn Musavi, stated that there is a need to establish the Justice Search Committee in order to conduct fair and transparent elections. How do you think, such a committee will affect the transparency of the future elections?
A: I know nothing about the committee so nothing I could say would reveal anything significant. The one impression I have, as you also must have, is that the Iranian administration wants the legitimacy of having won an election without actually having allowed a true election to take place. The administration's behavior reveals that they cannot bear to have the public reject them openly, so they are using violent means to contain the obvious outrage that permeates the society. They want to seem legitimate in "democratic" terms without being willing to subject themselves to an open electoral process. So I presume they would manipulate whatever agency was assigned to oversee the process. Through a private source I know that the announcement of the winner of the election was made before the vote counters had finished counting the votes in at least one place [from one of the vote counters].
>
Q: The Guardian Council announced the re-count of the ballots at some polling stations. In your opinion, whether the re-count of the ballots will guarantee the transparency of the elections, or nevertheless, the new presidential elections should be arranged?
A: What I said above reveals my opinion: this administration has been generally losing its legitimacy over time. Certain elements in the population are evidently in support of Ahmadenijad. But behind the whole system is a religious pretense that has undermined the general respect of the population for authentic religious faith. The religious "experts" in power have become excessively rich under this system and their abuses now resemble those of the super-rich westernized class allied with the shah in the 1970s, against which the Islamic revolution took place. They pretend to be good Muslims and to allow authentic belief but in fact they brutalize those who reject their faith and want to convert to another faith [for example, Christianity]. As you know, they even try to control ayatullahs who criticize them.
Modern Iran has a history of long periods of stability punctuated by massive public uprisings [early 1900s; 1970s], and if this regime does not relent it will eventually have to deal with a huge public explosion like that of 1978-1979. What should be very disconcerting to many of the mullahs is that among those who are now outraged are some of their own children and grandchildren.
Q: Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur, the chairman of the Votes Security Organization founded by presidential candidate Mir Hosseyn Musavi, stated that there is a need to establish the Justice Search Committee in order to conduct fair and transparent elections. How do you think, such a committee will affect the transparency of the future elections?
A: I know nothing about the committee so nothing I could say would reveal anything significant. The one impression I have, as you also must have, is that the Iranian administration wants the legitimacy of having won an election without actually having allowed a true election to take place. The administration's behavior reveals that they cannot bear to have the public reject them openly, so they are using violent means to contain the obvious outrage that permeates the society. They want to seem legitimate in "democratic" terms without being willing to subject themselves to an open electoral process. So I presume they would manipulate whatever agency was assigned to oversee the process. Through a private source I know that the announcement of the winner of the election was made before the vote counters had finished counting the votes in at least one place [from one of the vote counters].
>
Q: The Guardian Council announced the re-count of the ballots at some polling stations. In your opinion, whether the re-count of the ballots will guarantee the transparency of the elections, or nevertheless, the new presidential elections should be arranged?
A: What I said above reveals my opinion: this administration has been generally losing its legitimacy over time. Certain elements in the population are evidently in support of Ahmadenijad. But behind the whole system is a religious pretense that has undermined the general respect of the population for authentic religious faith. The religious "experts" in power have become excessively rich under this system and their abuses now resemble those of the super-rich westernized class allied with the shah in the 1970s, against which the Islamic revolution took place. They pretend to be good Muslims and to allow authentic belief but in fact they brutalize those who reject their faith and want to convert to another faith [for example, Christianity]. As you know, they even try to control ayatullahs who criticize them.
Modern Iran has a history of long periods of stability punctuated by massive public uprisings [early 1900s; 1970s], and if this regime does not relent it will eventually have to deal with a huge public explosion like that of 1978-1979. What should be very disconcerting to many of the mullahs is that among those who are now outraged are some of their own children and grandchildren.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Zahid Hussain of Dawn unveils more of the contrary behavior of the Pakistani army
Zahid Hussain's report in Dawn is so revealing that I want to point it out to anyone who is interested. No wonder Pakistan has so many problems: One day the army hosts the Taliban and celebrates their victory in a new area. The next day they are at war with them and put a price on their heads. Again, the Pakistani people deserve better. As we know, recent news is that in exasperation some local people in the tribal areas have formed their own fighting group [laskars] to drive the Taliban out, and we now hear the army is now willing to help them. Good news. RLC
Dawn May 31, 2009
"From much sought after to ‘most wanted’"
By Zahid Hussain
Accompanied by dozens of well armed Taliban fighters, Muslim Khan, Sirajuddin, Mahmmod Khan and some others (who are said to be responsible for killings of hundreds of soldiers and civilians) were being hosted by the former commissioner of Malakand, Syed Mohammad Javed.
The only person conspicuous by his absence was Maulana Fazlullah, the man with a head money of Rs50 million. ‘He is in Kabal for some important work,’ I was told by one of his lieutenants. [In Kabul?]
It was April 12 and the commissioner had just returned from Buner where he had apparently brokered a truce between the Taliban threatening the district after the Swat peace deal and the local Lashkar who had long resisted the militant onslaught. ...
It seemed that the militant commanders had gathered at the Commissioner House that evening to celebrate the takeover of Buner after consolidating their hold on Swat on the back of the controversial peace accord.
...
[A] man who now has a reward of Rs4 million on his head looked at home in the hospitable setting of the Commissioner House that night. I was taken aback to see top government officials standing there to receive the man who was responsible for ordering the execution of innocent civilians.
Earlier in the day when I went to interview him in Imam Dehri Madressah, he showed me a list of people whose execution orders were to be issued. Among them was a woman whose husband had allegedly served in the US army.
...
Sirajuddin, a former spokesman for Maulana Fazlullah who also has a bounty of Rs4 million for his capture, was huddled in a corner with some of his comrades.
... A former left-wing activist, he received his higher education in Kabul in 1980s during the communist rule in Afghanistan. He planned to join Lumumba University, but had to return home for reasons not known.
His transformation from a hard core socialist to a radical Muslim came in late 1990s when like many young men he fell under the spell of Maulana Fazlullah’s fiery sermons.
...
More shock was in store when later that evening I saw Faqir Mohammed walking in with a large entourage. Escorted by an Uzbek bodyguard he was whisked inside a large hall where a number of commanders squatted on a carpeted floor.
One of the top leaders of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Faqir Mohammed, has been spearheading the bloody war against Pakistani forces in Bajaur tribal region.
Because of his close links with al Qaeda, security agencies considered Faqir Mohammed more dangerous than Baitullah Mehsud. The presence of Pakistan’s most wanted militant leader at the Commissioner House that evening, when the fighting still raged in Bajaur, was intriguing, to say the least.
...
[Click on the title to read more.]
Dawn May 31, 2009
"From much sought after to ‘most wanted’"
By Zahid Hussain
Accompanied by dozens of well armed Taliban fighters, Muslim Khan, Sirajuddin, Mahmmod Khan and some others (who are said to be responsible for killings of hundreds of soldiers and civilians) were being hosted by the former commissioner of Malakand, Syed Mohammad Javed.
The only person conspicuous by his absence was Maulana Fazlullah, the man with a head money of Rs50 million. ‘He is in Kabal for some important work,’ I was told by one of his lieutenants. [In Kabul?]
It was April 12 and the commissioner had just returned from Buner where he had apparently brokered a truce between the Taliban threatening the district after the Swat peace deal and the local Lashkar who had long resisted the militant onslaught. ...
It seemed that the militant commanders had gathered at the Commissioner House that evening to celebrate the takeover of Buner after consolidating their hold on Swat on the back of the controversial peace accord.
...
[A] man who now has a reward of Rs4 million on his head looked at home in the hospitable setting of the Commissioner House that night. I was taken aback to see top government officials standing there to receive the man who was responsible for ordering the execution of innocent civilians.
Earlier in the day when I went to interview him in Imam Dehri Madressah, he showed me a list of people whose execution orders were to be issued. Among them was a woman whose husband had allegedly served in the US army.
...
Sirajuddin, a former spokesman for Maulana Fazlullah who also has a bounty of Rs4 million for his capture, was huddled in a corner with some of his comrades.
... A former left-wing activist, he received his higher education in Kabul in 1980s during the communist rule in Afghanistan. He planned to join Lumumba University, but had to return home for reasons not known.
His transformation from a hard core socialist to a radical Muslim came in late 1990s when like many young men he fell under the spell of Maulana Fazlullah’s fiery sermons.
...
More shock was in store when later that evening I saw Faqir Mohammed walking in with a large entourage. Escorted by an Uzbek bodyguard he was whisked inside a large hall where a number of commanders squatted on a carpeted floor.
One of the top leaders of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Faqir Mohammed, has been spearheading the bloody war against Pakistani forces in Bajaur tribal region.
Because of his close links with al Qaeda, security agencies considered Faqir Mohammed more dangerous than Baitullah Mehsud. The presence of Pakistan’s most wanted militant leader at the Commissioner House that evening, when the fighting still raged in Bajaur, was intriguing, to say the least.
...
[Click on the title to read more.]
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Superior journalism as Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel do it.
Journalism is the profession that is supposed to keep us abreast of what is going on in the world, so its reports become an archive of events and activities as they transpire. But good journalism needs also to be examining the claims of officials, to see how they match with the public record. Good journalism has to be more than, as someone has said, a stenographer; it should be reminding us, the public, of things we tend to forget, matching official statements against events and statements in the past. In fact, the public has a short memory, and some of us have a notably short memory, a problem I have had since …, well, as long as I can remember [!] . So journalists need to help us remember what officials have done and said that bear upon what they are doing and saying in the present.
Officials need to be scrutinized -- what they say about themselves and the world – for how accurately they represent the truth, at least as it can be known, a process that entails matching their public affirmations with the available public record. This professional service is necessary because officials have agendas of their own; they want the public to understand situations as they do, in order to justify their perspectives, their past decisions, and their projects. Politics is a continuing debate about how situations should be defined and so is often, by implication, about the past as well as the present. And because definitions of situations affect the interests of public officials, the public statements of officials can be contorted by their interests. The interested viewpoint of officials and the professional obligation of journalists to examine the statements and activities of officials in the light of the public record places journalists and officials on opposing sides. The interests of one clash with the interests of the other.
So a common device of politicians is to dismiss those to bring up embarrassing details as already biased "on the left" or "on the right."
We have recently heard a speech by former Vice President Dick Cheney that has been available for the scrutiny of journalists. As the speech rehearses policies of the Bush administration, it invites such scrutiny. I wonder how many journalists have examined his speech in light of the public record, to see how faithfully the Vice President represented the past. Certainly a fine example of good journalistic practice was the work of Washington DC McClatchy journalists Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, who went through the Cheney speech and found as many as ten “omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.” [Click on the title for a link to their article.]
I wonder how many other journalists have provided this service to their readers? I don’t remember seeing anything like it elsewhere, except for Frank Rich’s statement in the New York Times today.
Dictators in many countries simply control the news by abusing journalists, intimidating, imprisoning, even assassinating those who stubbornly insist on presenting embarrassing and “inconvenient” truths as they know them. In our country we hope our journalists will avoid censoring themselves. When they become reluctant to point out the failures of leaders we all lose, no matter which side we are on in a specific debate.
We now have a new administration. They will have their own perspective, policies, and projects, like the previous one. Lets hope the journalist profession does a better job with this adminstration than they did with the past.
Officials need to be scrutinized -- what they say about themselves and the world – for how accurately they represent the truth, at least as it can be known, a process that entails matching their public affirmations with the available public record. This professional service is necessary because officials have agendas of their own; they want the public to understand situations as they do, in order to justify their perspectives, their past decisions, and their projects. Politics is a continuing debate about how situations should be defined and so is often, by implication, about the past as well as the present. And because definitions of situations affect the interests of public officials, the public statements of officials can be contorted by their interests. The interested viewpoint of officials and the professional obligation of journalists to examine the statements and activities of officials in the light of the public record places journalists and officials on opposing sides. The interests of one clash with the interests of the other.
So a common device of politicians is to dismiss those to bring up embarrassing details as already biased "on the left" or "on the right."
We have recently heard a speech by former Vice President Dick Cheney that has been available for the scrutiny of journalists. As the speech rehearses policies of the Bush administration, it invites such scrutiny. I wonder how many journalists have examined his speech in light of the public record, to see how faithfully the Vice President represented the past. Certainly a fine example of good journalistic practice was the work of Washington DC McClatchy journalists Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, who went through the Cheney speech and found as many as ten “omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.” [Click on the title for a link to their article.]
I wonder how many other journalists have provided this service to their readers? I don’t remember seeing anything like it elsewhere, except for Frank Rich’s statement in the New York Times today.
Dictators in many countries simply control the news by abusing journalists, intimidating, imprisoning, even assassinating those who stubbornly insist on presenting embarrassing and “inconvenient” truths as they know them. In our country we hope our journalists will avoid censoring themselves. When they become reluctant to point out the failures of leaders we all lose, no matter which side we are on in a specific debate.
We now have a new administration. They will have their own perspective, policies, and projects, like the previous one. Lets hope the journalist profession does a better job with this adminstration than they did with the past.
How to be a great journalist the Nicholas Kristof way
Many of us have admired the reports of Nicholas D. Kristof. He has reported on many of the regions of great suffering among human beings around the world. He has faithfully humanized what it’s like to be a slave, a woman trafficked in the sex trade, children forced into war. What we don’t get to see much is what is entailed in telling the world about the human condition in its most tragic forms. Today’s report, though, reveals some dimensions of what it is like to be a great reporter of human suffering. You will have to read it yourself to see what he says, but there is a subtext in what he says worth putting into words. This is what I surmise from today’s op-ed piece about what one has to do to be a great reporter of the human condition:
• Live out of a back pack.
• Hide your valued possessions on your person at all times.
• Travel in the scrawniest taxis available.
• Watch out for bed bugs.
• Block your hotel room door so intruders cannot sneak in on you when you are sleeping.
• Be prepared to fight pickpockets -- and to lose the fight.
• Be prepared to charm bandits who are equipped kill you on the spot.
• Know how to deal with those who might poison you.
• Watch out for robbers who carry machetes.
• Know how to manage corrupt police and fake police.
• Be prepared for a bus crash when almost everyone is injured.
• If you get malaria, shrug it off.
[Click on the title to see the original article.]
• Live out of a back pack.
• Hide your valued possessions on your person at all times.
• Travel in the scrawniest taxis available.
• Watch out for bed bugs.
• Block your hotel room door so intruders cannot sneak in on you when you are sleeping.
• Be prepared to fight pickpockets -- and to lose the fight.
• Be prepared to charm bandits who are equipped kill you on the spot.
• Know how to deal with those who might poison you.
• Watch out for robbers who carry machetes.
• Know how to manage corrupt police and fake police.
• Be prepared for a bus crash when almost everyone is injured.
• If you get malaria, shrug it off.
[Click on the title to see the original article.]
Friday, May 29, 2009
Complexities in the Iran-Pakistan pipeline deal.
Bruce Pannier [Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty] provides further information on the recently announced pipeline deal between Iran and Pakistan [What Are The Prospects For Iran-Pakistan 'Pipeline Of Peace'?, May 25, 09].
Deals for infrastructural development like this are important because they establish new long term mutual relationships and effectively reduce the cost of, in this case, the transport and accessibility of a good that is vital to the maintenance of a modern society. They indicate practical arrangements that become possible only in certain friendly contexts and that can establish a mutual dependence that in the long run will be costly to disrupt. So we see this announced deal as evidence of a willingness to become mutually more interdependent, thus tightening relations of mutual interest in the Middle East-South Asian region. It’s one more way of making the world smaller and vital goods (gas for Pakistan; money for Iran) more accessible to wider numbers of people.
But in this case, as in most such arrangements, there are serious issues yet to resolve. Here are some details of importance that are mentioned in the article:
• This is a 25-year deal that could export some 150 million cubic meters of gas to Pakistan per day.
• The pipeline would extend 2,100 kilometers from Iran’s South Pars field into Pakistan, starting in the city of Asalouyeh. Even though India is not a part of this deal it is hoped that an agreement could be made for the pipeline to be extended into India, another 600 kilometers.
• One of the main problems is how to fund the project. The Asian Development Bank has shown no interest in supporting this project even though it is willing to back the rival gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan.
• That Iran and Pakistan abut each other in Baluchistan means that the new pipeline will have to pass through an unstable region, as Baluch nationalists who want more autonomy have already disrupted Pakistan’s only local gas pipeline.
• The project could start within the next three or four years and take five years to build.
Deals for infrastructural development like this are important because they establish new long term mutual relationships and effectively reduce the cost of, in this case, the transport and accessibility of a good that is vital to the maintenance of a modern society. They indicate practical arrangements that become possible only in certain friendly contexts and that can establish a mutual dependence that in the long run will be costly to disrupt. So we see this announced deal as evidence of a willingness to become mutually more interdependent, thus tightening relations of mutual interest in the Middle East-South Asian region. It’s one more way of making the world smaller and vital goods (gas for Pakistan; money for Iran) more accessible to wider numbers of people.
But in this case, as in most such arrangements, there are serious issues yet to resolve. Here are some details of importance that are mentioned in the article:
• This is a 25-year deal that could export some 150 million cubic meters of gas to Pakistan per day.
• The pipeline would extend 2,100 kilometers from Iran’s South Pars field into Pakistan, starting in the city of Asalouyeh. Even though India is not a part of this deal it is hoped that an agreement could be made for the pipeline to be extended into India, another 600 kilometers.
• One of the main problems is how to fund the project. The Asian Development Bank has shown no interest in supporting this project even though it is willing to back the rival gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan.
• That Iran and Pakistan abut each other in Baluchistan means that the new pipeline will have to pass through an unstable region, as Baluch nationalists who want more autonomy have already disrupted Pakistan’s only local gas pipeline.
• The project could start within the next three or four years and take five years to build.
Monday, May 25, 2009
A gas deal between Iran and Pakistan
According to AFP Iran and Pakistan have announced that they are about to sign an agreement to export gas to Pakistan. India was once to be part of the deal but they withdrew from talks about the deal last year. The report says, “The 900-kilometre (560-mile) pipeline is being built between Asalooyeh in southern Iran and Iranshahr near the border with Pakistan and will carry the gas from Iran's South Pars field.” It says that only 250 kilometers of pipeline was still to be constructed. The infrastructural mechanisms for integrating south Asia and Central Asia is proceeding apace, with large implications. Pakistan’s need for gas will soon be desperate. It will pass through Baluchistan, making a zone of dissidence that is already vital because of its own gas reserves all the most vitally important to the country of Pakistan.
The shameful record of American health care: Some statistics
To follow the previous statement of a need to abolish the health care insurance industry in the United States I add here some statistics on how poor the current system of health care is for the American people as a whole.
On the quality of health care in the United States: For the society as a whole it is among the worst health care results among the industrial nations.
On the mortality of children under 5, the US has twice as many deaths as Japan, and more than any of the other four countries listed below.
In 2007 the mortality rates were the following: US 8%; Canada 6%; Japan 4%; UK 6%; Germany 4%.
In 2005 [Latest date available] mothers who died in childbirth were the following: US 11 per 100,000; Canada 7; Japan 6; UK 8; Germany 4.
In 2007 infant mortality statistics per 1000 were the following: US 7; Canada 5; Japan 3; UK 5; Germany 4.
Source: Reuters [http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/chart.htm?rt=1&period=0&startdate=2000&enddate=2006&category=standard_of_living.0.life_expectancy_average&countrycode_unsel=&countrycode=214383&countrycode=JP&countrycode=NO&countrycode=GB&countrycode=221882&go=Generate%20Graph]
On the quality of health care in the United States: For the society as a whole it is among the worst health care results among the industrial nations.
On the mortality of children under 5, the US has twice as many deaths as Japan, and more than any of the other four countries listed below.
In 2007 the mortality rates were the following: US 8%; Canada 6%; Japan 4%; UK 6%; Germany 4%.
In 2005 [Latest date available] mothers who died in childbirth were the following: US 11 per 100,000; Canada 7; Japan 6; UK 8; Germany 4.
In 2007 infant mortality statistics per 1000 were the following: US 7; Canada 5; Japan 3; UK 5; Germany 4.
Source: Reuters [http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/chart.htm?rt=1&period=0&startdate=2000&enddate=2006&category=standard_of_living.0.life_expectancy_average&countrycode_unsel=&countrycode=214383&countrycode=JP&countrycode=NO&countrycode=GB&countrycode=221882&go=Generate%20Graph]
Saturday, May 23, 2009
A statement in support of single payer health insurance
I am mailing a letter to the President and to my two senators, Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond. The issue seems critical for the future of the country. RLC
President Barak Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama,
In his May 22 program on PBS Bill Moyers and his guests described how the attempts to develop a useful health care reform bill have been subverted by the health insurance industry. [I append a list of some details from that program.]
I would like to express concern that what appears to be a good solution -- a “single payer” system – is being sidelined in the discussions about health care because of the influence of the insurance industry on the various senators considering health care reform.
Most terrifying in the Moyers report is the sense that what the public most wants is being ignored because of the power of big moneyed interests such as the health insurance industry. I am hearing in various ways, in various contexts, that the democratic process, which we take such pride in – by which elected officials represent the interests of those who elected them – has been subverted by large financial interests. The result has been, of course, an emasculation of the democratic process.
I do understand the problem of the elected official: these days one has to garner huge amounts of money to be elected, which in effect – despite all denials – effectively creates obligations that need somehow to be reciprocated. It is easy to suppose that every elected official is in the pocket of at least some wealthy interests. I am therefore writing to ask you what can be done to free public officials from such dependence on such large financial interests. A way needs to be found to ensure that elected officials will actually represent the interests of those who elected them, without the public interest being hijacked by the wealthiest industries in the country. Nothing reveals more clearly how seriously our government has become dependent on big moneyed interests than the Medicare bill that prohibits competitive bidding for the cost of medication.
I therefore urge you to
(a) help promote a single payer health system bill, following the model of Canada and Taiwan [mentioned in the transcript]; and
(b) pursue legislation that will enable those who run for office to be free from heavy obligations to wealthy donors and powerful corporate interests.
Sincerely,
Robert L. Canfield
Some statements from the Bill Moyers PBS program of May 22, 2009.
• What [is being proposed] is single-payer health care -- a non-profit system that would remove the role of the insurance companies and unify the financing of the health care system under one entity, a government run organization, like Medicare, that would collect all health care fees, and pay out all health care costs.
• [These were] arbitrary decisions [by the insurance companies], which were not about people's health care. They were about profits: How can I get away with the least amount of care offered to this person, so that their premium is going to give me the most profit? That's not the way health care decisions should be made.
• [T]he process [has been] hijacked by the insurance industry.
• The money and the power that's exerted in Washington on them from the health insurance and health industry lobbies is very powerful. It's hard for them to break out of that loop.
• [D]octors have had to spend hours of every day not in patient care but on the phone, hassling with insurance companies, trying to negotiate to get a patient a treatment. It makes it very difficult to deliver the right kind of care.
• If you get sick, you find out just how inadequate that insurance may be. Not only did I have health insurance; I had Aflac disability insurance, and a health care savings account on top of that. So we were like the prime example of responsible people who try and keep ourselves covered. And yet when we got sick, there was no way the deductibles and out-of-pocket maximum exposure [could add up]; [they accumulated] so quickly that we were buried very quickly financially.
• [In] data where we just ask about a national health insurance system, . . . 60 percent of the American public say we've got to have a national health program.
• It's spun out of control. It's going to bury us financially. It's going to mortgage our children, and it kills people. It just is not working.
• So just who has been getting the chance to testify before Congress? . . . The Business Roundtable. The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce. The conservative Heritage Foundation. Representatives of the insurance industry, including Blue Cross Blue Shield - all in favor, more or less, of the status quo.
• The president asked representatives of the health care business to reason together with him at the White House. They came, listened and promised to cut health care costs voluntarily over the next ten years. . . . [But we have heard this before:]
• [Now] the industry is pouring big money into lobbying, more than half a billion dollars last year alone, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. They're also shelling out megabucks for a publicity blitz and ads attacking Obama's public plan or any health care reform that threatens to reduce the profits from sickness and disease.
• [A major problem is] the power of the health insurance industry. Only about one out of 14 people trust the insurance industry as being honest and trustworthy. On the other hand, in Washington, they're in bed with the health insurance industry.
• Half of the bankruptcies [in this country] are medical bankruptcies. And of those medical bankruptcies, three quarters of those people had insurance, at least when they first got sick. But people have insurance that goes away after they actually need it.
• The seats at the table, or the witnesses at the hearing are, in a sense, controlled by the health insurance industry.
• "We don't need a health insurance industry. We can do what most other countries in the world have done. Have the government collect the money and pay the bills and get rid of all these people who are wasting $400 billion a year on excessive administrative costs."
• [We now have] a fragmented health insurance industry. And it thrives on being fragmented. The pharmaceutical companies make much more money with the fragmentation, because there's no price control. The insurance companies make much more money, 'cause they can push away people who aren't going to be profitable. The only people that suffer are the patients.
• And there's big money being made. There are billions being made from the private health insurance industry, from the drug industry, and that gets spread around Washington.
• The biggest recipients of insurance money, of drug money, are the powerful people who chair the committees, who decide what witnesses testify.
• Senator Baucus [who is chair of the Senate hearings] is the third highest recipient of donations from the health insurance and health care industry in general.
• Over the last 30 plus years there have been maybe two and a half, three times more doctors and nurses. Pretty much in proportion with the growth in population. There are 30 times in the insurance industry. These people are not doctors. They're not nurses. They're not pharmacists. They're not providing care. Many of them are being paid to deny care. So, they are fighting with the doctors, with the hospitals to see how few bills can be paid. That's how the insurance industry thrives: by denying care, paying as little out as it can.
• In Canada, back in 1970 or so, they were spending the same percentage of their gross national product as we were on health. They had huge numbers of uninsured people. They had the same insurance companies. Blue Cross Blue Shield. They decided to just get rid of the health insurance industry. . . .
• Canadians [now] have better choice than we do. They spend half as much per person on health care as we do.
• We're really talking about social insurance, like Medicare is social insurance. But doctors and hospitals remaining privately owned.
• Medicare actually takes care of the sickest, most expensive parts of the system. So in a way, they subsidize the private insurers. They take the unprofitable patients off the private insurer's hands.
• Canada has been a very good model. It's been going on for 38 years. Canadians would revolt, literally, if someone said, "We're going to take away your health insurance system."
• [F]or the insurance industry, for people making $225 thousand a day as CEOs of insurance companies, [the single-payer system would be] disruptive for them.
• [S]urveys are showing that most doctors support national health insurance-
• Taiwan [recently] said, “We don't like the fact that 40 percent of our people are uninsured.” They passed, essentially, single-payer plan and within a few years 90-95 percent of the people were covered.
President Barak Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama,
In his May 22 program on PBS Bill Moyers and his guests described how the attempts to develop a useful health care reform bill have been subverted by the health insurance industry. [I append a list of some details from that program.]
I would like to express concern that what appears to be a good solution -- a “single payer” system – is being sidelined in the discussions about health care because of the influence of the insurance industry on the various senators considering health care reform.
Most terrifying in the Moyers report is the sense that what the public most wants is being ignored because of the power of big moneyed interests such as the health insurance industry. I am hearing in various ways, in various contexts, that the democratic process, which we take such pride in – by which elected officials represent the interests of those who elected them – has been subverted by large financial interests. The result has been, of course, an emasculation of the democratic process.
I do understand the problem of the elected official: these days one has to garner huge amounts of money to be elected, which in effect – despite all denials – effectively creates obligations that need somehow to be reciprocated. It is easy to suppose that every elected official is in the pocket of at least some wealthy interests. I am therefore writing to ask you what can be done to free public officials from such dependence on such large financial interests. A way needs to be found to ensure that elected officials will actually represent the interests of those who elected them, without the public interest being hijacked by the wealthiest industries in the country. Nothing reveals more clearly how seriously our government has become dependent on big moneyed interests than the Medicare bill that prohibits competitive bidding for the cost of medication.
I therefore urge you to
(a) help promote a single payer health system bill, following the model of Canada and Taiwan [mentioned in the transcript]; and
(b) pursue legislation that will enable those who run for office to be free from heavy obligations to wealthy donors and powerful corporate interests.
Sincerely,
Robert L. Canfield
Some statements from the Bill Moyers PBS program of May 22, 2009.
• What [is being proposed] is single-payer health care -- a non-profit system that would remove the role of the insurance companies and unify the financing of the health care system under one entity, a government run organization, like Medicare, that would collect all health care fees, and pay out all health care costs.
• [These were] arbitrary decisions [by the insurance companies], which were not about people's health care. They were about profits: How can I get away with the least amount of care offered to this person, so that their premium is going to give me the most profit? That's not the way health care decisions should be made.
• [T]he process [has been] hijacked by the insurance industry.
• The money and the power that's exerted in Washington on them from the health insurance and health industry lobbies is very powerful. It's hard for them to break out of that loop.
• [D]octors have had to spend hours of every day not in patient care but on the phone, hassling with insurance companies, trying to negotiate to get a patient a treatment. It makes it very difficult to deliver the right kind of care.
• If you get sick, you find out just how inadequate that insurance may be. Not only did I have health insurance; I had Aflac disability insurance, and a health care savings account on top of that. So we were like the prime example of responsible people who try and keep ourselves covered. And yet when we got sick, there was no way the deductibles and out-of-pocket maximum exposure [could add up]; [they accumulated] so quickly that we were buried very quickly financially.
• [In] data where we just ask about a national health insurance system, . . . 60 percent of the American public say we've got to have a national health program.
• It's spun out of control. It's going to bury us financially. It's going to mortgage our children, and it kills people. It just is not working.
• So just who has been getting the chance to testify before Congress? . . . The Business Roundtable. The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce. The conservative Heritage Foundation. Representatives of the insurance industry, including Blue Cross Blue Shield - all in favor, more or less, of the status quo.
• The president asked representatives of the health care business to reason together with him at the White House. They came, listened and promised to cut health care costs voluntarily over the next ten years. . . . [But we have heard this before:]
o In the 1970's in response to a proposal by Jimmy Carter “the very industry that only a decade earlier had tried to strangle Medicare in the cradle, seemed uncharacteristically humble and cooperative. "You don't have to make us cut costs," they promised. "We'll do it voluntarily."
o [In the early 1990's,] . . . the health care industry . . . came after the Clinton reforms with one of the most expensive and deceitful public relations and advertising campaigns ever conceived.. . . [And] they said, "We'll cut costs voluntarily."
• [Now] the industry is pouring big money into lobbying, more than half a billion dollars last year alone, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. They're also shelling out megabucks for a publicity blitz and ads attacking Obama's public plan or any health care reform that threatens to reduce the profits from sickness and disease.
• [A major problem is] the power of the health insurance industry. Only about one out of 14 people trust the insurance industry as being honest and trustworthy. On the other hand, in Washington, they're in bed with the health insurance industry.
• Half of the bankruptcies [in this country] are medical bankruptcies. And of those medical bankruptcies, three quarters of those people had insurance, at least when they first got sick. But people have insurance that goes away after they actually need it.
• The seats at the table, or the witnesses at the hearing are, in a sense, controlled by the health insurance industry.
• "We don't need a health insurance industry. We can do what most other countries in the world have done. Have the government collect the money and pay the bills and get rid of all these people who are wasting $400 billion a year on excessive administrative costs."
• [We now have] a fragmented health insurance industry. And it thrives on being fragmented. The pharmaceutical companies make much more money with the fragmentation, because there's no price control. The insurance companies make much more money, 'cause they can push away people who aren't going to be profitable. The only people that suffer are the patients.
• And there's big money being made. There are billions being made from the private health insurance industry, from the drug industry, and that gets spread around Washington.
• The biggest recipients of insurance money, of drug money, are the powerful people who chair the committees, who decide what witnesses testify.
• Senator Baucus [who is chair of the Senate hearings] is the third highest recipient of donations from the health insurance and health care industry in general.
• Over the last 30 plus years there have been maybe two and a half, three times more doctors and nurses. Pretty much in proportion with the growth in population. There are 30 times in the insurance industry. These people are not doctors. They're not nurses. They're not pharmacists. They're not providing care. Many of them are being paid to deny care. So, they are fighting with the doctors, with the hospitals to see how few bills can be paid. That's how the insurance industry thrives: by denying care, paying as little out as it can.
• In Canada, back in 1970 or so, they were spending the same percentage of their gross national product as we were on health. They had huge numbers of uninsured people. They had the same insurance companies. Blue Cross Blue Shield. They decided to just get rid of the health insurance industry. . . .
• Canadians [now] have better choice than we do. They spend half as much per person on health care as we do.
• We're really talking about social insurance, like Medicare is social insurance. But doctors and hospitals remaining privately owned.
• Medicare actually takes care of the sickest, most expensive parts of the system. So in a way, they subsidize the private insurers. They take the unprofitable patients off the private insurer's hands.
• Canada has been a very good model. It's been going on for 38 years. Canadians would revolt, literally, if someone said, "We're going to take away your health insurance system."
• [F]or the insurance industry, for people making $225 thousand a day as CEOs of insurance companies, [the single-payer system would be] disruptive for them.
• [S]urveys are showing that most doctors support national health insurance-
• Taiwan [recently] said, “We don't like the fact that 40 percent of our people are uninsured.” They passed, essentially, single-payer plan and within a few years 90-95 percent of the people were covered.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Tariq Ali exposes incidents of abuse of women in Pakistan
I have just gotten around to looking at my copy of the December issue of the London Review of Books and there I discovered an article by Tariq Ali that should not be buried and forgotten. Tariq Ali is noted for giving us valuable information on affairs in Pakistan; I especiallay appreciate his analysis of the way Pakistan is structured [see his article “The Colour Khaki.” New Left Review, Jan-Feb 2003; http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2429].
In the December 18, 2008, of LRB [article entitled “Diary”] Ali reveals details about the rough treatment of women among some populations. Mostly, he tells us about Pakistan. What he reveals is of course usually carefully hidden; it should be exposed as such practices are cause of shame for any people.
Ali tells us the following about the treatment of women in Pakistan:
• Traditionalists have always considered love to be something that brings shame on families: patriarchs should be the ones to decide who is to be married to whom, often for reasons to do with property.
• A sample survey showed 82 per cent of women in rural Punjab feared violence resulting from their husbands’ displeasure over minor matters; in the most developed urban areas 52 per cent admitted to being beaten by their husbands.
• [O]fficial statistics admit to 1261 honour killings in 2006 and half that number again the following year. The actual figures are probably much higher, since many deaths go unreported. ‘Women are considered the property of the males in their family irrespective of their class, ethnic or religious group, and the owner of the property has the right to decide its fate,’
• Since the police and the judicial system regard murder in the family as a private affair, most cases don’t get to court even if they’re reported.
Here are some specific incidents he describes [in his words]:
• A man dreams his wife has betrayed him. He wakes up and sees her lying next to him. In a fury he kills her. This really happened in Pakistan and the killer escaped punishment.
• In 1999, Hina Jilani was in her office with Samia Sarwar, a mother of two from Peshawar seeking a divorce from her husband, when Sarwar’s mother burst into the room with two armed men in tow and had her daughter shot dead. In 1989 Samia Sarwar had married a first cousin. For six years he beat her and kicked her. But after he threw her downstairs when she was pregnant with their second child, she went back to her parents’ house. The minute she told them she wanted a divorce they threatened to kill her. Yet they were educated and wealthy people.
• One widely reported murder this year was that of Tasleem Solangi, the 17-year-old daughter of a livestock trader in the Khairpur District of Sindh. She wanted to go to university and become a doctor like her uncle, but instead agreed to marry a cousin in order to settle a protracted family dispute over property. Her mother, Zakara Bibi, tried to stop her, but Tasleem was determined. Her father-in-law, Zamir Solangi, came to collect her and swore on the Koran that no harm would befall her. A month after the marriage, Zakara had a message from her daughter: ‘Please forgive me, mother. I was wrong and you were right. I fear they will kill me.’ On 7 March, they did. She was eight months pregnant. The Koran-swearer accused her of infidelity and said the baby was not his son’s. She went into labour, her child was born and instantly thrown to the dogs. She pleaded for mercy, but the dogs were set on her as well and the terrified girl was then shot dead.
• Another case much discussed this year is that of five women in Baluchistan who were buried alive in Baba Kot village, about 250 miles east of Quetta, the Baluch capital. Three of the women were young and wanted to marry men they’d chosen for themselves; two older women were helping them. Three male relatives have been arrested. According to the local police chief, the brother of two of the girls has admitted that he shot three of the women and helped bury them, though they weren’t even dead.
• In the last week of October, my uncle’s granddaughter, Zainab, barely 18 years old, was shot dead by her brothers, Inam and Hamza Ahmed. Zainab apparently had a lover and despite repeated warnings refused to stop seeing him. She was on the phone to him in her grandfather’s house when her brothers pumped seven bullets into her body. . . . I find it deeply shocking that my uncle allowed the young woman’s body to be buried that same day without at least insisting that a First Information Report be lodged at the local police station, let alone demanding an autopsy.
In looking back at this blog I have realized that many of the recent entries here have dug at Pakistan. I have repeatedly made statements or quoted the statements of others that are critical of social practices in Pakistan as well as of the Pakistani leadership. Truth is, these criticisms reveal how deep is my worry about the Pakistani people and their country. In this case, at least, I have quoted from a Pakistani observer, and one who has earned the right to be heard. Note that he has exposed real names, real situations.
[To read the whole article click on my title above.]
In the December 18, 2008, of LRB [article entitled “Diary”] Ali reveals details about the rough treatment of women among some populations. Mostly, he tells us about Pakistan. What he reveals is of course usually carefully hidden; it should be exposed as such practices are cause of shame for any people.
Ali tells us the following about the treatment of women in Pakistan:
• Traditionalists have always considered love to be something that brings shame on families: patriarchs should be the ones to decide who is to be married to whom, often for reasons to do with property.
• A sample survey showed 82 per cent of women in rural Punjab feared violence resulting from their husbands’ displeasure over minor matters; in the most developed urban areas 52 per cent admitted to being beaten by their husbands.
• [O]fficial statistics admit to 1261 honour killings in 2006 and half that number again the following year. The actual figures are probably much higher, since many deaths go unreported. ‘Women are considered the property of the males in their family irrespective of their class, ethnic or religious group, and the owner of the property has the right to decide its fate,’
• Since the police and the judicial system regard murder in the family as a private affair, most cases don’t get to court even if they’re reported.
Here are some specific incidents he describes [in his words]:
• A man dreams his wife has betrayed him. He wakes up and sees her lying next to him. In a fury he kills her. This really happened in Pakistan and the killer escaped punishment.
• In 1999, Hina Jilani was in her office with Samia Sarwar, a mother of two from Peshawar seeking a divorce from her husband, when Sarwar’s mother burst into the room with two armed men in tow and had her daughter shot dead. In 1989 Samia Sarwar had married a first cousin. For six years he beat her and kicked her. But after he threw her downstairs when she was pregnant with their second child, she went back to her parents’ house. The minute she told them she wanted a divorce they threatened to kill her. Yet they were educated and wealthy people.
• One widely reported murder this year was that of Tasleem Solangi, the 17-year-old daughter of a livestock trader in the Khairpur District of Sindh. She wanted to go to university and become a doctor like her uncle, but instead agreed to marry a cousin in order to settle a protracted family dispute over property. Her mother, Zakara Bibi, tried to stop her, but Tasleem was determined. Her father-in-law, Zamir Solangi, came to collect her and swore on the Koran that no harm would befall her. A month after the marriage, Zakara had a message from her daughter: ‘Please forgive me, mother. I was wrong and you were right. I fear they will kill me.’ On 7 March, they did. She was eight months pregnant. The Koran-swearer accused her of infidelity and said the baby was not his son’s. She went into labour, her child was born and instantly thrown to the dogs. She pleaded for mercy, but the dogs were set on her as well and the terrified girl was then shot dead.
• Another case much discussed this year is that of five women in Baluchistan who were buried alive in Baba Kot village, about 250 miles east of Quetta, the Baluch capital. Three of the women were young and wanted to marry men they’d chosen for themselves; two older women were helping them. Three male relatives have been arrested. According to the local police chief, the brother of two of the girls has admitted that he shot three of the women and helped bury them, though they weren’t even dead.
• In the last week of October, my uncle’s granddaughter, Zainab, barely 18 years old, was shot dead by her brothers, Inam and Hamza Ahmed. Zainab apparently had a lover and despite repeated warnings refused to stop seeing him. She was on the phone to him in her grandfather’s house when her brothers pumped seven bullets into her body. . . . I find it deeply shocking that my uncle allowed the young woman’s body to be buried that same day without at least insisting that a First Information Report be lodged at the local police station, let alone demanding an autopsy.
In looking back at this blog I have realized that many of the recent entries here have dug at Pakistan. I have repeatedly made statements or quoted the statements of others that are critical of social practices in Pakistan as well as of the Pakistani leadership. Truth is, these criticisms reveal how deep is my worry about the Pakistani people and their country. In this case, at least, I have quoted from a Pakistani observer, and one who has earned the right to be heard. Note that he has exposed real names, real situations.
[To read the whole article click on my title above.]
Monday, May 11, 2009
The melting ice sheets of the world: What will it mean in Central Asia?
Joseph Romm tells us that Bolivia’s 18,000 year-old Chacaltaya glacier is gone. Chacaltaya glacier was famous because it has been studied for many years. One reason for the scholarly interest in Chacaltaya has been its location on the equator where the shifts in the axes of the earth have had a different effect from the ice sheets at the poles. It provided information on the history of the earth that some other glaciers did not. Now it's gone. [Click on the title for a link to his article.]
This is not to lament the loss of a famous glacier so much as to use the occasion to reflect on what it could mean if the glaciers of the Himalayas would similarly disappear. Joseph Romm reminds us that the waters that run off in spring provide the surface flows that enable the irrigation of crops; millions of people live on water that originates as glacial runoff. The runoff of the winter snows on the mountains, which replenish the glacial ice, also supply the aquifers that supply wells and sometimes rise to the surface further downstream.
So when he tells us that there is already massive loss of glacier ice in the Himalayas comparable to the loss of glaciation in South America Romm is sounding a warning about the eventual risks for populations who depend on the water flows from the great ice-covered mountains of Inner Asia -- altogether a substantial portion of the world's populations. Romm quotes a report by Swiss geologists who say that as many as half a billion people are at risk.
An eventual problem that could further complicate affairs in an already complicated social world.
This is not to lament the loss of a famous glacier so much as to use the occasion to reflect on what it could mean if the glaciers of the Himalayas would similarly disappear. Joseph Romm reminds us that the waters that run off in spring provide the surface flows that enable the irrigation of crops; millions of people live on water that originates as glacial runoff. The runoff of the winter snows on the mountains, which replenish the glacial ice, also supply the aquifers that supply wells and sometimes rise to the surface further downstream.
So when he tells us that there is already massive loss of glacier ice in the Himalayas comparable to the loss of glaciation in South America Romm is sounding a warning about the eventual risks for populations who depend on the water flows from the great ice-covered mountains of Inner Asia -- altogether a substantial portion of the world's populations. Romm quotes a report by Swiss geologists who say that as many as half a billion people are at risk.
An eventual problem that could further complicate affairs in an already complicated social world.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Brother of Afghanistan's President threatens a reporter for enquiring into drug connections
Several sources on the drug industry in Afghanistan have accused the brother of Hamed Karzai, President of Afghanistan, of being a major figure in the illicit drug industry in southern Afghanistan where more than 90% of all the opium in the world is produced. Tom Lasseter of the McClatchy newspapers went looking into the question and directly confronted Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of Kandahar's provincial council. The reaction was to threaten him.
Lasseter got out and can now tell the story, but I wonder about his assistants. One of the people who had informed on Ahmad Wali Karzi had subsequently been killed; perhaps there was no connection but one wonders . . . . In any case, if Lasseter was threatened, then the Afghans who work with him, who cannot leave, are still threatened.
The search for the truth is a more risky game than most us think about. But it turns out that in the modern world the truth is precious, for [to quote again from the wisdom of the ancients] "men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil; they would not come into the light lest their deeds be exposed." Afghanistan's drug industry has to be one of the most critical elements of the insurgency problem in the region, and discovering and revealing how it operates will be a perilous venture. [Click on the title for the original article.]
Karzai grabbed my hand and used it to give me a bit of a push into the next room. He followed me, and his voice rose until it was a scream of curse words and threats.
I managed to record just one full sentence: "Get the (expletive) out before I kick your (expletive)."
I won't describe the rest, because it involves the Afghans I was working with, none of whom wants to risk revenge in a country where feuds often end in blood.
Lasseter got out and can now tell the story, but I wonder about his assistants. One of the people who had informed on Ahmad Wali Karzi had subsequently been killed; perhaps there was no connection but one wonders . . . . In any case, if Lasseter was threatened, then the Afghans who work with him, who cannot leave, are still threatened.
The search for the truth is a more risky game than most us think about. But it turns out that in the modern world the truth is precious, for [to quote again from the wisdom of the ancients] "men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil; they would not come into the light lest their deeds be exposed." Afghanistan's drug industry has to be one of the most critical elements of the insurgency problem in the region, and discovering and revealing how it operates will be a perilous venture. [Click on the title for the original article.]
Friday, May 08, 2009
Vivid fears of an American invasion in Pakistan
From this side of the world the behavior of the Pakistanis seems bizarre. On the one hand they would never want to live under a regime like the Taliban while on the other hand they cultivate the Taliban. Graham Usher has explained that the military are still fighting a war with India and they see Afghanistan as in the pocket of India and therefore don’t mind if the Taliban attack Afghanistan. That’s one reason. Anatol Lieven has given us another [(London) Times, May 5, 09, "Mistrust of the West is stronger in Pakistan than fear of the Taleban"]: the Pakistanis believe the Americans want to dominate the Muslim world, indeed are so bent on taking over the Muslim world that they would murder thousands of their own people in order to have an excuse to blame Muslims and invade. Here is what Lievan tells us:
Here are some other things worth noting about Pakistanis, according to Lievan:
• What will be tolerated is Taleban strength in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. As I discovered during a visit to the region last September, the level of support for them there is such that crushing them completely would take a huge campaign of repression.
• The jihad of the Afghan Taleban against the US “occupation” of Afghanistan enjoys overwhelming public approval in northern Pakistan,
• The Pakistani judicial system is such a corrupt, slow, impenetrable shambles that the Taleban's programme of Sharia enjoys a great deal of public support, at least in the Pashtun areas that I have visited.
• The security Establishment is determined to prevent Afghanistan becoming an ally of India, and continues to shelter parts of the Afghan Taleban as a long-term “strategic asset” against this threat.
Even so, he reassures us that
The whole situation underlines how vulnerable we all are to information flows around us. In an earlier post I quoted from a Pakistani blogger who seems to believe that the Taliban are a creation of the CIA in order to provide an excuse for Americans to invade Pakistan. It sounds so haywire from here that we are all likely to discount it as a single crank. But we are all caught up in currents of opinion larger than we are. It is just easier to see it in others.
We all live within fields of lies, piled upon one another, so that it becomes difficult to sort out the truth from the misunderstandings and even the deliberate lies -- like that promoted by the Pakistani military virtually on 9/11/01 that the Americans had done it to themselves in order to promote their imperial interests. Such a story works in Pakistan because the South Asians are vividly aware of how long they have been dominated by outside powers. From here it just sounds bizarre. But we have only to remember that the Bush administration persuaded the American people that Saddam Hussain had been involved in the attack on 9/11/01. We create the myths we live by -- sometimes very costly myths, as those that justified a 'preemptive' attack on Iraq. As far as I know, our only hope is to seek the most authentic and reliable sources available in order to understand as we best can what is going on around us.
“to judge by my meetings with hundreds of Pakistanis from all walks of life over the past nine months, . . . the vast majority of people believe that the 9/11 attacks were not an act of terrorism by al-Qaeda, but a plot by the Bush Administration or Israel to provide an excuse to invade Afghanistan and dominate the Muslim world.”And he adds: “most of the Pakistani population genuinely believe it, even here in Sindh where I have been travelling for the past week; and the people who believe it include the communities from which the army's soldiers, NCOs and junior officers are drawn.” [Click on the title above for a link to the source.]
Here are some other things worth noting about Pakistanis, according to Lievan:
• What will be tolerated is Taleban strength in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. As I discovered during a visit to the region last September, the level of support for them there is such that crushing them completely would take a huge campaign of repression.
• The jihad of the Afghan Taleban against the US “occupation” of Afghanistan enjoys overwhelming public approval in northern Pakistan,
• The Pakistani judicial system is such a corrupt, slow, impenetrable shambles that the Taleban's programme of Sharia enjoys a great deal of public support, at least in the Pashtun areas that I have visited.
• The security Establishment is determined to prevent Afghanistan becoming an ally of India, and continues to shelter parts of the Afghan Taleban as a long-term “strategic asset” against this threat.
Even so, he reassures us that
There is no possibility at present of the Taleban seizing Islamabad and bringing down the state. In Punjab . . . [there is] as yet, nothing like the insurgency occurring among the Pashtun tribes. In the interior of Sindh, support for the Taleban is virtually non-existent.
The whole situation underlines how vulnerable we all are to information flows around us. In an earlier post I quoted from a Pakistani blogger who seems to believe that the Taliban are a creation of the CIA in order to provide an excuse for Americans to invade Pakistan. It sounds so haywire from here that we are all likely to discount it as a single crank. But we are all caught up in currents of opinion larger than we are. It is just easier to see it in others.
We all live within fields of lies, piled upon one another, so that it becomes difficult to sort out the truth from the misunderstandings and even the deliberate lies -- like that promoted by the Pakistani military virtually on 9/11/01 that the Americans had done it to themselves in order to promote their imperial interests. Such a story works in Pakistan because the South Asians are vividly aware of how long they have been dominated by outside powers. From here it just sounds bizarre. But we have only to remember that the Bush administration persuaded the American people that Saddam Hussain had been involved in the attack on 9/11/01. We create the myths we live by -- sometimes very costly myths, as those that justified a 'preemptive' attack on Iraq. As far as I know, our only hope is to seek the most authentic and reliable sources available in order to understand as we best can what is going on around us.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Another warning from Ahmed Rashid
As Ahmed Rashid says in his Op-ed piece in the Washington Post, May 5, 09, he has been sounding alarms about the advance of militant Islamists in Central and South Asia for many years. The difference now is how shrill his warnings have become. He sees disaster almost already here.
My problem is that it is hard to refute him. We are seeing various groups, each with its own distinctive quarrel with the Pakistani administration, gathering together under the umbrella of the Taliban against the government. What was once a Pushtun/Pathan movement ["Taliban"] has attracted the support non-Pushtuns -- Baluchis, Punjabi, Sindhis. Several kinds of militant groups now seem to agree that “the government is the problem” and in the name of "Islam" they seem to be working together. Obviously, if they succeed in bringing down the whole administrative edifice – which Rashid seems to fear is about to happen – they will soon fall out among themselves for their complaints are different. The scenarios that come to mind, all of them, seem truly terrifying, especially for the Pakistani people who deserve better but have been cursed by failures of leadership.
Anyway, here are some quotes from Rashid’s most recent appeal for American help.
• Pakistanis are beset by a galloping Taliban insurgency in the north that is based not just among Pashtuns, as in Afghanistan, but that has extensive links to al-Qaeda and jihadist groups in Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan. That means the Taliban offensive in northern Pakistan has the potential to become a nationwide movement within a few months.
• The army's recent counteroffensive against the Taliban was prompted in part by U.S. pressure and, more significant, by a dramatic shift in public opinion toward opposing the Taliban. Many people are beginning to see the country threatened by a bloody internal revolution.
• Every government official I have met says that the country is bankrupt and that there is no money to fight the insurgency, let alone deal with the refugees [from Swat, possibly as many as a million].
• But the extensive conditions [being established by congress for giving aid] -- as varied as improving relations with India, fighting the Afghan Taliban and allowing the U.S. interrogation of Pakistani nuclear scientists -- are too much for any Pakistani government to accept and survive politically.
• Pakistan is deteriorating. Congress should pass the emergency funds quickly and, at minimum, offer the first year of the $1.5 billion without conditions to foster stability between the two sides at this critical juncture and ensure that the powerful right wing here has no excuse to once again decry U.S. aid as politically motivated.
My problem is that it is hard to refute him. We are seeing various groups, each with its own distinctive quarrel with the Pakistani administration, gathering together under the umbrella of the Taliban against the government. What was once a Pushtun/Pathan movement ["Taliban"] has attracted the support non-Pushtuns -- Baluchis, Punjabi, Sindhis. Several kinds of militant groups now seem to agree that “the government is the problem” and in the name of "Islam" they seem to be working together. Obviously, if they succeed in bringing down the whole administrative edifice – which Rashid seems to fear is about to happen – they will soon fall out among themselves for their complaints are different. The scenarios that come to mind, all of them, seem truly terrifying, especially for the Pakistani people who deserve better but have been cursed by failures of leadership.
Anyway, here are some quotes from Rashid’s most recent appeal for American help.
• Pakistanis are beset by a galloping Taliban insurgency in the north that is based not just among Pashtuns, as in Afghanistan, but that has extensive links to al-Qaeda and jihadist groups in Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan. That means the Taliban offensive in northern Pakistan has the potential to become a nationwide movement within a few months.
• The army's recent counteroffensive against the Taliban was prompted in part by U.S. pressure and, more significant, by a dramatic shift in public opinion toward opposing the Taliban. Many people are beginning to see the country threatened by a bloody internal revolution.
• Every government official I have met says that the country is bankrupt and that there is no money to fight the insurgency, let alone deal with the refugees [from Swat, possibly as many as a million].
• But the extensive conditions [being established by congress for giving aid] -- as varied as improving relations with India, fighting the Afghan Taliban and allowing the U.S. interrogation of Pakistani nuclear scientists -- are too much for any Pakistani government to accept and survive politically.
• Pakistan is deteriorating. Congress should pass the emergency funds quickly and, at minimum, offer the first year of the $1.5 billion without conditions to foster stability between the two sides at this critical juncture and ensure that the powerful right wing here has no excuse to once again decry U.S. aid as politically motivated.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Some different views of reality: Euro-American vs Pakistani
The reports on what is going on in Pakistan come from very different points of view. Compare what we see in today’s papers in US sources versus what one Pakistani observer sees. I collect here some quotations from articles in today's papers and then note what I found in one Pakistani blog, chosen only because I recently came to know it. It cannot be representative of all Pakistanis, or of all middle class Pakistanis even though this web site seems clearly to be a product of some young Pakistanis. So I cannot present it as representative of Pakistanis in general. But there seems to be a great deal of uncertainty, even confusion, among Pakistanis about what is going on in Swat and in the tribal territories, and this comment on Swat by this blogger reveals how confused one can be, and thus how mistaken one might be about what is taking place only a few miles away from the capital city. Anyway, for what it's worth I juxtapose these several newspaper reports with this blogger's perception of what is going on.
The New York Times [JANE PERLEZ And PIR ZUBAIR SHAH, “Porous Border With Pakistan Could Hinder U.S. Troops” May 5, 09]
• [A Taliban source] described a Taliban strategy that relied on free movement over the border and in and around Pakistan, ready recruitment of Pakistani men and sustained cooperation of sympathetic Afghan villagers.
• The Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella group of many brands of jihadist fighters backed by Al Qaeda, are spearheading wars on both sides of the border in what for them is a seamless conflict.
• "There are so many people working with the Afghans and the Americans who are on their payroll, but they inform us, sell us [the Taliban] weapons.”
• The drone attacks simply prompted Taliban fighters to spend more time in Afghanistan, or to move deeper into Pakistan, straddling both theaters of a widening conflict.
• [The Taliban have] a long-haul strategy to destabilize and take over a nuclear-armed Pakistan.
• The tactician says he embeds his men in what he described as friendly Afghan villages, where they will spend the next four to six months with the residents, who provide the weapons and succor for the missions against American and NATO soldiers.
• His guerrillas, in their late teens to mid-20s, are handpicked for their endurance and commitment, he said. Some, like him, were trained by the Pakistani government as proxy fighters against India in Kashmir and have now joined the Qaeda and Taliban cause.
• There was respect for the scale of Al Qaeda’s ambitions. “They have a global agenda, they have a big design,” he said. The Taliban goal was more narrow. “Capturing Afghanistan is not an Al Qaeda mission,” he said. “It’s a Taliban mission. We will be content in capturing Afghanistan and throwing the Americans out.”
Washington Post [Pamela Constable, “The Taliban Tightens Hold In Pakistan's Swat Region”]
• Yet even as the Taliban continued its rampage and rejected the government's latest concession to its demands -- the appointment of Islamic-law judges in Swat -- Pakistan's military leaders clung to hopes for a nonviolent solution, saying that security forces were "still exercising restraint to honor the peace agreement."
• Behind this strained hope for a peaceful solution lie an array of factors -- competing military priorities, reluctance to fight fellow Muslims, lack of strong executive leadership and some internal sympathy for the insurgents -- that analysts say have long prevented the Pakistani army from making a full-fledged assault on violent Islamist groups.
• analysts said it is doubtful the army has the stomach for a sustained fight against Taliban forces if the peace accord does collapse.
• "The militants have resolve, determination, focus and ideology. On the other side, I don't see any of those," said Aftab Khan Sherpao, a former interior minister and a member of Parliament who comes from northwest Pakistan. "The army understands the threat from the militants, but they are more permanently worried about India. They are waiting for civilian leadership and direction, and there isn't any.”
• Analysts said that in the past several weeks, the growing defiance and ambitions of the Taliban -- whose forces reached within 60 miles of this capital city when they seized Buner -- have frightened the country and begun to shake its leaders out of their complacency.
• "The occupation of Buner did raise alarm bells, and a shift in thinking has started to take place. But I'm not sure it can be sustained," said Talat Masood, a retired general and defense analyst. "People are still confused about whether this is our war or America's war, and nobody in the government is getting out and explaining to them why we should fight it. Nobody has the guts to say that cutting off people's heads is un-Islamic. People don't seem to realize how dangerous Talibanization is for Pakistan. It would destroy us."
• Despite the Taliban's record of rapaciousness, it is hard for the Pakistani military establishment, trained to view Hindu-dominated India as its mortal enemy and inculcated with an Islamist mind-set during the military dictatorship of the 1980s, to accept Muslim insurgents as adversaries. Soldiers home on leave have been taunted for fighting their own people; desertions are rising.
• But now that Pakistan is under democratic rule, analysts said, the army has no desire to be seen as making policy and is determined to seek civilian cover for its actions.
• "The government is trying its best to give time and space to the other side to allow the reconciliation process to reach its logical conclusion," Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the military's spokesman,…
The Guardian [Declan Walsh, “Pakistan urges evacuation of Taliban-controlled Swat valley town”]
• Public opinion shifted two weeks ago after a senior pro-Taliban cleric who helped negotiate the pact, Sufi Muhammad, declared that democracy and the superior courts were "infidel" concepts.
• Swat residents now face a grim choice between Taliban gun rule and a bloody army operation. Yusufzai said Swat residents initially backed the introduction of sharia law but had grown disillusioned with the cleric Muhammad.
• "There is a view that the Taliban have another agenda. They want power. This is the talk of the town," he said.
In an effort to identify what people are thinking in Pakistan I went to the blog, Pakistani Spectator, to see what they were thinking about. And on that site we have an observer saying that the radical Islamist group that has taken over Swat, Tehrik-e Taliban [Taliban Movement], is really a front for the CIA. Here are a few quotes from A Khokar • May 4th, 2009.
• The recent smart move of Pak government in Malakand division to re-establish Nizam e adil [“The Righteous Order” or "The moral order"] has, although [it has] taken the air out of Tehrik e Taliban’s balloon and it seems that the calculated game of CIA for which this copycat TTP was hired on a high bids to subdue nuclear-armed Pakistan; at the face of it, their entire scheme is seen [to have] gone awry.
• Pak Armed forces have also moved in with full blast to cleanse the areas and make it free of anti Pakistan Elements. But the usual rhetoric of vulnerability of [a] weakened Pakistan Government and its nuclear arsenal at the hands of so called Taliban has exceptionally been heightened. The entire US Administration including President Barrack Obama is singing a same anti Pakistan chorus and they look at Pakistan, as it is breathing its last.
• To give a full Talibanish flavour to TTP [Tahrik-e Taliban Pakistan], reportedly the dissident of central Asia; Uzbek, Tajick even Chechnian and some Arabs are recruited on very good wages. The subversive activities by suicidal actions, bomb blasts, kidnapping of high profile personalities and large scale disruptions to cripple the normal government functioning are on its full scale and Pakistan is seen sufficiently bruised.
• TTP is a highly sophisticated tool in the hands of US lead NATO forces. It is exceptionally well armed on ground, well fed and has very well trained operatives. Seemingly CIA is satisfied with the ground works done by TTP inside Pakistan and its necessary preparation as a prelude to the planned final occupation of yet another sovereign country after Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Use of Nizam e adil card by Pak government, in troubled Malakand division has in a way weakened the stance of anti Pakistan elements but CIA is bound to spring up another cat out of their bag; the long awaited card of—moving in and striking an amoral power monger and self-anointed savoir of the world; —the old friend Osama bin Laden is there. By hook or crook an enclave for TTP is about to be secured in troubled PATA and Osama and his cohort of Al-Qaeda are likely to declare it the Islamic Emirates of Taliban; thus to enable the US lead forces; (a well sought pretext) to launch an invasion—- inside Pakistan.
The New York Times [JANE PERLEZ And PIR ZUBAIR SHAH, “Porous Border With Pakistan Could Hinder U.S. Troops” May 5, 09]
• [A Taliban source] described a Taliban strategy that relied on free movement over the border and in and around Pakistan, ready recruitment of Pakistani men and sustained cooperation of sympathetic Afghan villagers.
• The Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella group of many brands of jihadist fighters backed by Al Qaeda, are spearheading wars on both sides of the border in what for them is a seamless conflict.
• "There are so many people working with the Afghans and the Americans who are on their payroll, but they inform us, sell us [the Taliban] weapons.”
• The drone attacks simply prompted Taliban fighters to spend more time in Afghanistan, or to move deeper into Pakistan, straddling both theaters of a widening conflict.
• [The Taliban have] a long-haul strategy to destabilize and take over a nuclear-armed Pakistan.
• The tactician says he embeds his men in what he described as friendly Afghan villages, where they will spend the next four to six months with the residents, who provide the weapons and succor for the missions against American and NATO soldiers.
• His guerrillas, in their late teens to mid-20s, are handpicked for their endurance and commitment, he said. Some, like him, were trained by the Pakistani government as proxy fighters against India in Kashmir and have now joined the Qaeda and Taliban cause.
• There was respect for the scale of Al Qaeda’s ambitions. “They have a global agenda, they have a big design,” he said. The Taliban goal was more narrow. “Capturing Afghanistan is not an Al Qaeda mission,” he said. “It’s a Taliban mission. We will be content in capturing Afghanistan and throwing the Americans out.”
Washington Post [Pamela Constable, “The Taliban Tightens Hold In Pakistan's Swat Region”]
• Yet even as the Taliban continued its rampage and rejected the government's latest concession to its demands -- the appointment of Islamic-law judges in Swat -- Pakistan's military leaders clung to hopes for a nonviolent solution, saying that security forces were "still exercising restraint to honor the peace agreement."
• Behind this strained hope for a peaceful solution lie an array of factors -- competing military priorities, reluctance to fight fellow Muslims, lack of strong executive leadership and some internal sympathy for the insurgents -- that analysts say have long prevented the Pakistani army from making a full-fledged assault on violent Islamist groups.
• analysts said it is doubtful the army has the stomach for a sustained fight against Taliban forces if the peace accord does collapse.
• "The militants have resolve, determination, focus and ideology. On the other side, I don't see any of those," said Aftab Khan Sherpao, a former interior minister and a member of Parliament who comes from northwest Pakistan. "The army understands the threat from the militants, but they are more permanently worried about India. They are waiting for civilian leadership and direction, and there isn't any.”
• Analysts said that in the past several weeks, the growing defiance and ambitions of the Taliban -- whose forces reached within 60 miles of this capital city when they seized Buner -- have frightened the country and begun to shake its leaders out of their complacency.
• "The occupation of Buner did raise alarm bells, and a shift in thinking has started to take place. But I'm not sure it can be sustained," said Talat Masood, a retired general and defense analyst. "People are still confused about whether this is our war or America's war, and nobody in the government is getting out and explaining to them why we should fight it. Nobody has the guts to say that cutting off people's heads is un-Islamic. People don't seem to realize how dangerous Talibanization is for Pakistan. It would destroy us."
• Despite the Taliban's record of rapaciousness, it is hard for the Pakistani military establishment, trained to view Hindu-dominated India as its mortal enemy and inculcated with an Islamist mind-set during the military dictatorship of the 1980s, to accept Muslim insurgents as adversaries. Soldiers home on leave have been taunted for fighting their own people; desertions are rising.
• But now that Pakistan is under democratic rule, analysts said, the army has no desire to be seen as making policy and is determined to seek civilian cover for its actions.
• "The government is trying its best to give time and space to the other side to allow the reconciliation process to reach its logical conclusion," Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the military's spokesman,…
The Guardian [Declan Walsh, “Pakistan urges evacuation of Taliban-controlled Swat valley town”]
• Public opinion shifted two weeks ago after a senior pro-Taliban cleric who helped negotiate the pact, Sufi Muhammad, declared that democracy and the superior courts were "infidel" concepts.
• Swat residents now face a grim choice between Taliban gun rule and a bloody army operation. Yusufzai said Swat residents initially backed the introduction of sharia law but had grown disillusioned with the cleric Muhammad.
• "There is a view that the Taliban have another agenda. They want power. This is the talk of the town," he said.
In an effort to identify what people are thinking in Pakistan I went to the blog, Pakistani Spectator, to see what they were thinking about. And on that site we have an observer saying that the radical Islamist group that has taken over Swat, Tehrik-e Taliban [Taliban Movement], is really a front for the CIA. Here are a few quotes from A Khokar • May 4th, 2009.
• The recent smart move of Pak government in Malakand division to re-establish Nizam e adil [“The Righteous Order” or "The moral order"] has, although [it has] taken the air out of Tehrik e Taliban’s balloon and it seems that the calculated game of CIA for which this copycat TTP was hired on a high bids to subdue nuclear-armed Pakistan; at the face of it, their entire scheme is seen [to have] gone awry.
• Pak Armed forces have also moved in with full blast to cleanse the areas and make it free of anti Pakistan Elements. But the usual rhetoric of vulnerability of [a] weakened Pakistan Government and its nuclear arsenal at the hands of so called Taliban has exceptionally been heightened. The entire US Administration including President Barrack Obama is singing a same anti Pakistan chorus and they look at Pakistan, as it is breathing its last.
• To give a full Talibanish flavour to TTP [Tahrik-e Taliban Pakistan], reportedly the dissident of central Asia; Uzbek, Tajick even Chechnian and some Arabs are recruited on very good wages. The subversive activities by suicidal actions, bomb blasts, kidnapping of high profile personalities and large scale disruptions to cripple the normal government functioning are on its full scale and Pakistan is seen sufficiently bruised.
• TTP is a highly sophisticated tool in the hands of US lead NATO forces. It is exceptionally well armed on ground, well fed and has very well trained operatives. Seemingly CIA is satisfied with the ground works done by TTP inside Pakistan and its necessary preparation as a prelude to the planned final occupation of yet another sovereign country after Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Use of Nizam e adil card by Pak government, in troubled Malakand division has in a way weakened the stance of anti Pakistan elements but CIA is bound to spring up another cat out of their bag; the long awaited card of—moving in and striking an amoral power monger and self-anointed savoir of the world; —the old friend Osama bin Laden is there. By hook or crook an enclave for TTP is about to be secured in troubled PATA and Osama and his cohort of Al-Qaeda are likely to declare it the Islamic Emirates of Taliban; thus to enable the US lead forces; (a well sought pretext) to launch an invasion—- inside Pakistan.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Pakistan: Conflicting views of a deteriorating situation.
The news from Pakistan gets more worrisome by the day. Not only because the situation is obviously deteriorating but because the legitimating explanations for the situation there are so different, depending on which side of the information flow you are on. Today’s New York Times has two articles on the situation, one yesterday, all revealing how dangerous is the long term trend. Compare those with an article by Iqbal Jafar in Dawn today.
The NYTimes article by Sabrina Tavernise [“Pakistan’s Islamic Schools Fill Void, but Fuel Militancy”], for instance, describes the conditions under which the madrasas of Pakistan have grown in number. The government and the wealthy class have no interest in funding a viable educational system for the country, madrasas are a source of income for those whose only training has been in the memorization of the Koran, and anyway education beyond learning to recite the Koran is not prized among the poor. The trend in Pakistan seems to be toward the continuance if not the expansion of Islamic schools. Such schools are not necessarily radical or Islamist but some of them can be an early stage in the radicalization of some young people. [For this article go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/world/asia/04schools.html?ref=todayspaper]
Consider how different is the view presented in Dawn today, “The roots of fanaticism,” by Iqbal Jafar. His point is that the advance of other religious groups into “Muslim lands” is the cause of the advance of Islamic insurgency. His concluding sentence captures it all: “Hence, so long as Muslim lands remain under the occupation of others [Jews, Christians, Hindus], militants will be seen as freedom fighters and liberals as collaborators of the West. The West should not, therefore, expect to eliminate the militants while it remains in possession of Muslim lands. . . . As for the liberals, they will be lucky if they merely cease to be relevant.” [For this article go to: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/14-the-roots-of-fanaticism-zj-11]
The NYTimes article by Sabrina Tavernise [“Pakistan’s Islamic Schools Fill Void, but Fuel Militancy”], for instance, describes the conditions under which the madrasas of Pakistan have grown in number. The government and the wealthy class have no interest in funding a viable educational system for the country, madrasas are a source of income for those whose only training has been in the memorization of the Koran, and anyway education beyond learning to recite the Koran is not prized among the poor. The trend in Pakistan seems to be toward the continuance if not the expansion of Islamic schools. Such schools are not necessarily radical or Islamist but some of them can be an early stage in the radicalization of some young people. [For this article go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/world/asia/04schools.html?ref=todayspaper]
Consider how different is the view presented in Dawn today, “The roots of fanaticism,” by Iqbal Jafar. His point is that the advance of other religious groups into “Muslim lands” is the cause of the advance of Islamic insurgency. His concluding sentence captures it all: “Hence, so long as Muslim lands remain under the occupation of others [Jews, Christians, Hindus], militants will be seen as freedom fighters and liberals as collaborators of the West. The West should not, therefore, expect to eliminate the militants while it remains in possession of Muslim lands. . . . As for the liberals, they will be lucky if they merely cease to be relevant.” [For this article go to: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/14-the-roots-of-fanaticism-zj-11]
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Pakistan's half-hearted move against the Taliban
The Christian Science Monitor has a fine article on the various responses to the recent Pakistani attack on the Taliban in Dir district. I find it most interesting what Dawn has to say, not only because its statement is right on, but also because it is a Pakistani voice:
This is precisely the point: The military doesn’t want the Taliban to disappear, only to behave; they are still useful for the various fronts against India, in Afghanistan and in Kashmir. So, we can scarcely be encouraged that the general problem with the Taliban is being dealt with.
[Click on the title above for a link to the original article.]
Welcome as it is, the operation in Dir may also strengthen the impression that the military cracks down hard only when its own are attacked. Taliban violence against civilians is largely ignored for some reason. The army chief said the other day that the military would drive back the Taliban if they made any further inroads. Why just 'drive back'? These people are merciless and have no qualms about indulging in savagery.
This is precisely the point: The military doesn’t want the Taliban to disappear, only to behave; they are still useful for the various fronts against India, in Afghanistan and in Kashmir. So, we can scarcely be encouraged that the general problem with the Taliban is being dealt with.
[Click on the title above for a link to the original article.]
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Graham Usher's insight into the real reason the Pakistani army tolerates the Taliban -- or at least some of them
The most valuable publication on the Taliban situation in Pakistan in a long time is an article by Graham Usher that appeared in the London Review of Books (April 2009). He explains that the real reason the army behaves the way it does in Pakistan -- and despite appearances the army is the actual ruler of Pakistan -- is that the Pakistani army has been 'at war' with India since 1948, that is, since the inception of the country and thus of the army itself. This is why the Pakistani army treats some Taliban as enemies [those that are active against Pakistan] and some of them as friends [those that want to attack Afghanistan]. This is because Afghanistan, in the army's mind, is allied with India. For that reason much of what Karzai does is considered to reflect India's interests and so cannot be taken at face value.
From the army's viewpoint there are good Taliban and bad Taliban. Baitullah Mehsud is an enemy because he is responsible for suicide attacks inside Pakistan against the army. And he is believed to have recruited hundreds of Afghan fighters who are "agents" from the Indian intelligence services -- that is, of the real enemy, India, not Bin Laden.
Jalaluddin Haqqani, on the other hand, is a friend of Pakistan. He directs the "central front" against Afghanistan from bases in North and South Waziristan. Also, Mullah Muhammad Omar, head of the original Taliban, is a friend operating from his bases in Quetta. "They are our friends, not our enemies" says a member of Pakistan's Intelligence Services.
So, if they attack NATO forces or American forces in Afghanistan they are friends of the Pakistani army. If they attack the army or other installations inside Pakistan they are "enemies."
Such is the logic of an army created and shaped by generations of war with its neighbor. What would have to happen for them to realize they have another enemy? What would have to happen for them to see India as a benign neighbor and not an enemy?
From the army's viewpoint there are good Taliban and bad Taliban. Baitullah Mehsud is an enemy because he is responsible for suicide attacks inside Pakistan against the army. And he is believed to have recruited hundreds of Afghan fighters who are "agents" from the Indian intelligence services -- that is, of the real enemy, India, not Bin Laden.
Jalaluddin Haqqani, on the other hand, is a friend of Pakistan. He directs the "central front" against Afghanistan from bases in North and South Waziristan. Also, Mullah Muhammad Omar, head of the original Taliban, is a friend operating from his bases in Quetta. "They are our friends, not our enemies" says a member of Pakistan's Intelligence Services.
So, if they attack NATO forces or American forces in Afghanistan they are friends of the Pakistani army. If they attack the army or other installations inside Pakistan they are "enemies."
Such is the logic of an army created and shaped by generations of war with its neighbor. What would have to happen for them to realize they have another enemy? What would have to happen for them to see India as a benign neighbor and not an enemy?
Recent reports on the Taliban situation in Pakistan
Some details on the Taliban situation in Pakistan, from recent publications:
Hedieh Mirahmadi in the Huffiington Post [“Picking and Choosing Enemies in Afghanistan,” 4/22/09]
• Richard Holbrook has reached out to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. [Not good news, and in any case a no-win policy anyway; Hekmatyar cannot be trusted.]
• Islamist fighters in Pakistan [where in Pakistan?] have exhumed the corpses of Muslim holy figures and hung their bodies in the city square. These are revered religious figures of Pashtun culture and such blasphemy is correctly attributed to the "Taliban," which is a catchall term for the jihadi fighters. There has also been a rash of killings of traditional Sunni tribal leaders in the area - with reports of up to 120 people murdered - because they won't cede to radical Islamist demands for control of their communities. [This represents a Wahhabi point of view rather than a traditional Afghan or Pakistani view. People in the region commonly venerate the burial places of famous Sufis, as well as even relics of Muhammad; Mullah Muhammad Omar once made good use of Muhammad’s cloak to legitimate his authority. The point is, this move reflects the influence of Arab Wahhabis.]
Ahmed Rashid on BBC [“Disarray on Pakistan Taleban threat” 4/22/09]
• Even though most Pakistanis agree that the Pakistani Taleban and their extremist allies now pose the biggest threat to the Pakistani state since its creation, both the army and the government appear to be in denial of reality and the facts.
• Even though the agreement ignores the constitution by setting up a new legal system in the valley, which is not genuine Islamic law but the Taleban's brutal interpretation of it, Mr Gilani reiterated on 18 April that ''whatever we have done is in accordance with the constitution and there is no need to worry".
• In fact, the majority of Pakistanis are desperately worried, asking how the state could concede [to the Taliban] so quickly.
• The Swat Taleban have invited Osama Bin Laden to settle in Swat.
• On 20 April, Sufi Muhammad, a radical leader who the government and the army have termed as ''a moderate" and whose son in law Fazlullah is the leader of the Swat Taleban, said that democracy, the legal system of the country and civil society should be disbanded as they were all ''systems of infidels".
• The Taleban have now infiltrated western and southern Punjab province with the help of Punjabi extremist groups, the second largest city of Lahore and the southern port city of Karachi. [The significant issue here is the addition of “Punjabi extremists”: where did they come from, and what is their agenda?]
• The army has declined all international and local pressure to curb the spread of the Taleban.
• The Taliban are moving north to take over the Karakoram Highway that links Pakistan to China. [A very strategic place to hold.]
• The army's rationale for doing nothing appears deeply irrational to many Pakistanis. It still insists that India remains the major threat, so 80% of its forces are still aligned on the Indian border
• The army insists that the Americans will soon leave Afghanistan and that Pakistan must be ready with a response to help install a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul.
• Meanwhile two of Pakistan's closest allies, China and Saudi Arabia, have strongly indicated to the government that its continuing tolerance of the Taleban and al-Qaeda on its soil is endangering the national security of these two countries.
• The Pakistani Taleban, even while continuing their penetration of central Pakistan, are also mobilizing fresh recruits from all over the country to go help their Afghan Taleban brothers resist the newly arriving Western troops.
Hedieh Mirahmadi in the Huffiington Post [“Picking and Choosing Enemies in Afghanistan,” 4/22/09]
• Richard Holbrook has reached out to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. [Not good news, and in any case a no-win policy anyway; Hekmatyar cannot be trusted.]
• Islamist fighters in Pakistan [where in Pakistan?] have exhumed the corpses of Muslim holy figures and hung their bodies in the city square. These are revered religious figures of Pashtun culture and such blasphemy is correctly attributed to the "Taliban," which is a catchall term for the jihadi fighters. There has also been a rash of killings of traditional Sunni tribal leaders in the area - with reports of up to 120 people murdered - because they won't cede to radical Islamist demands for control of their communities. [This represents a Wahhabi point of view rather than a traditional Afghan or Pakistani view. People in the region commonly venerate the burial places of famous Sufis, as well as even relics of Muhammad; Mullah Muhammad Omar once made good use of Muhammad’s cloak to legitimate his authority. The point is, this move reflects the influence of Arab Wahhabis.]
Ahmed Rashid on BBC [“Disarray on Pakistan Taleban threat” 4/22/09]
• Even though most Pakistanis agree that the Pakistani Taleban and their extremist allies now pose the biggest threat to the Pakistani state since its creation, both the army and the government appear to be in denial of reality and the facts.
• Even though the agreement ignores the constitution by setting up a new legal system in the valley, which is not genuine Islamic law but the Taleban's brutal interpretation of it, Mr Gilani reiterated on 18 April that ''whatever we have done is in accordance with the constitution and there is no need to worry".
• In fact, the majority of Pakistanis are desperately worried, asking how the state could concede [to the Taliban] so quickly.
• The Swat Taleban have invited Osama Bin Laden to settle in Swat.
• On 20 April, Sufi Muhammad, a radical leader who the government and the army have termed as ''a moderate" and whose son in law Fazlullah is the leader of the Swat Taleban, said that democracy, the legal system of the country and civil society should be disbanded as they were all ''systems of infidels".
• The Taleban have now infiltrated western and southern Punjab province with the help of Punjabi extremist groups, the second largest city of Lahore and the southern port city of Karachi. [The significant issue here is the addition of “Punjabi extremists”: where did they come from, and what is their agenda?]
• The army has declined all international and local pressure to curb the spread of the Taleban.
• The Taliban are moving north to take over the Karakoram Highway that links Pakistan to China. [A very strategic place to hold.]
• The army's rationale for doing nothing appears deeply irrational to many Pakistanis. It still insists that India remains the major threat, so 80% of its forces are still aligned on the Indian border
• The army insists that the Americans will soon leave Afghanistan and that Pakistan must be ready with a response to help install a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul.
• Meanwhile two of Pakistan's closest allies, China and Saudi Arabia, have strongly indicated to the government that its continuing tolerance of the Taleban and al-Qaeda on its soil is endangering the national security of these two countries.
• The Pakistani Taleban, even while continuing their penetration of central Pakistan, are also mobilizing fresh recruits from all over the country to go help their Afghan Taleban brothers resist the newly arriving Western troops.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
My interview with the Pakistani Spectator
I have been asked by the Pakistani Spectator to notify my readers of my on-line interview with them. It can be found at:
http://www.pakspectator.com/interview-with-blogger-robert-l-canfield/
Pakistani Spectator seems to be a new blog aimed at reaching a wide audience, not only of Pakistanis but also of interested people around the world. The organizers of this blog are interesting to me and I hope to others outside of Pakistan because they represent a very different perspective on the world than often appears in the news about Pakistan. One role of journalism is to draw attention to important events and developments but the result of that can be an undue emphasis on the more horrific events, the extreme viewpoints, the most unseemly elements in a country. I will follow this website because it seems to represent the middle class elements of Pakistan, elements who are sometimes shut out of the news by the importance given to dramatic events and extreme actions taken in the country. I suspect the creators of this website/blog are young and therefore represent a group with high aspirations for their country. They also represent a large proportion of the population, as Pakistan is a very young country, the median age being something less than 21. I wish them success in this ambitious endeavor.
And thanks for the attention given to me and my views. [Click on the title for a link to their home page.]
http://www.pakspectator.com/interview-with-blogger-robert-l-canfield/
Pakistani Spectator seems to be a new blog aimed at reaching a wide audience, not only of Pakistanis but also of interested people around the world. The organizers of this blog are interesting to me and I hope to others outside of Pakistan because they represent a very different perspective on the world than often appears in the news about Pakistan. One role of journalism is to draw attention to important events and developments but the result of that can be an undue emphasis on the more horrific events, the extreme viewpoints, the most unseemly elements in a country. I will follow this website because it seems to represent the middle class elements of Pakistan, elements who are sometimes shut out of the news by the importance given to dramatic events and extreme actions taken in the country. I suspect the creators of this website/blog are young and therefore represent a group with high aspirations for their country. They also represent a large proportion of the population, as Pakistan is a very young country, the median age being something less than 21. I wish them success in this ambitious endeavor.
And thanks for the attention given to me and my views. [Click on the title for a link to their home page.]
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Thanks for the comments
I want to thank all those who have made comments on the earlier blogs. That there has been that much interest in what I wrote has been a complete surprise.
I do understand the comments of those who object to my characterizations of some of the people mentioned in the blog, and I apologize if I have offended anyone.
What readers of this blog can't know is that Rita and I have a particular and personal admiration for Susan Boyle's achievement, as we have a son whose life-experience has been much like hers. And he happens to be almost the same age. So we read into what she did much that is intensely personal. Being our son's parents has had a profound effect on our lives. I would in no way want to demean anyone in my attempts to express how and why Susan Boyle's achievement touched us so deeply.
Again, thanks for reading it.
I do understand the comments of those who object to my characterizations of some of the people mentioned in the blog, and I apologize if I have offended anyone.
What readers of this blog can't know is that Rita and I have a particular and personal admiration for Susan Boyle's achievement, as we have a son whose life-experience has been much like hers. And he happens to be almost the same age. So we read into what she did much that is intensely personal. Being our son's parents has had a profound effect on our lives. I would in no way want to demean anyone in my attempts to express how and why Susan Boyle's achievement touched us so deeply.
Again, thanks for reading it.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Susan Boyle, icon of the private imagination
As I mentioned yesterday, attempts to formulate why and how Susan Boyle's performance captures the imagination will continue. The question reaches fundamental issues of our understanding of ourselves, our experience as human beings. What makes anthropology fun and deeply rewarding is the sense that we are in some sense probing the essential qualities of humanity -- whatever that is, whatever we mean by it. So the struggle of so many to explain why they cry, why they keep coming back to the same event, to watch the same performance, over and over again, displays the sense of mystery deeply embedded within us. These special bursts of public discussion about such a person, such an event, an icon created in a single episode, reveal what resides within us: a continuous rumination over who we are; we are ever seeking to grasp ourselves. What is this peculiar creature, the human being? Creative, inventive, generous, and also cruel, intolerant, self-serving, bitter. All this I can only surmise -- for knowing no one else I have to extrapolate from my own private world. I presume that everyone else like me carries on this internal struggle to understand, manipulating the tools of imagining that are available, the kinds of things we always use to think with: words, gestures, objects. The anthropological task, I take it, is to monitor whatever extrinsic evidences of that internal calque we can find in others. These overt forms are the devices through which the anthropologist gains access to personal mysteries, private experiences -- elements of the human condition that are usually inaccessible. But when, as in the reactions to Susan Boyle, intense personal feelings burst forth in tears that astonish, we discover dimensions of the human moral sensibility that most of us are unprepared to find in ourselves. That makes Susan Boyle a special event as well as a special human being.
COLETTE DOUGLAS HOME, in The Herald, “The beauty that matters is always on the inside,” has the finest formulation on the reasons why Susan Boyle is a cultural phenomenon. Click on the title above for a link to the full statement, but here I reproduce a few statements that well capture some of the reasons that Susan Boyle has become an icon of the moral sensibility of so many.
“[O]nly the pretty are expected to achieve. Not only do you have to be physically appealing to deserve fame; it seems you now have to be good-looking to merit everyday common respect. If, like Susan (and like millions more), you are plump, middle-aged and too poor or too unworldly to follow fashion or have a good hairdresser, you are a non-person. . . .
But then ridicule is nothing new in Susan Boyle's life. She is a veteran of abuse. She was starved of oxygen at birth and has learning difficulties as a result. At school she was slow and had frizzy hair. She was bullied, mostly verbally. . . .
She didn't have boyfriends, is a stranger to romance and has never been kissed. . . . . Singing was her life-raft.
She lived with her parents in a four-bedroom council house and, when her father died a decade ago, she cared for her mother and sang in the church choir. . . . and being a carer isn't a glamorous life, as the hundreds of thousands who do that most valuable of jobs will testify. . . .
But [her frumpiness] is often evidence of a life lived selflessly; of a person so focused on the needs of another that they have lost sight of themselves.
. . . Susan Boyle's mother encouraged her to sing. She wanted her to enter Britain's Got Talent. But the shy Susan hasn't been able to sing at all since her mother's death two years ago. She wasn't sure how her voice would emerge after so long a silence. Happily, it survived its rest.
. . . . Susan is a reminder that it's time we all looked a little deeper. She has lived an obscure but important life. She has been a companionable and caring daughter. It's people like her who are the unseen glue in society; the ones who day in and day out put themselves last. . . .
Susan has been forgiven her looks and been given respect because of her talent. She should always have received it because of the calibre of her character.
COLETTE DOUGLAS HOME, in The Herald, “The beauty that matters is always on the inside,” has the finest formulation on the reasons why Susan Boyle is a cultural phenomenon. Click on the title above for a link to the full statement, but here I reproduce a few statements that well capture some of the reasons that Susan Boyle has become an icon of the moral sensibility of so many.
“[O]nly the pretty are expected to achieve. Not only do you have to be physically appealing to deserve fame; it seems you now have to be good-looking to merit everyday common respect. If, like Susan (and like millions more), you are plump, middle-aged and too poor or too unworldly to follow fashion or have a good hairdresser, you are a non-person. . . .
But then ridicule is nothing new in Susan Boyle's life. She is a veteran of abuse. She was starved of oxygen at birth and has learning difficulties as a result. At school she was slow and had frizzy hair. She was bullied, mostly verbally. . . .
She didn't have boyfriends, is a stranger to romance and has never been kissed. . . . . Singing was her life-raft.
She lived with her parents in a four-bedroom council house and, when her father died a decade ago, she cared for her mother and sang in the church choir. . . . and being a carer isn't a glamorous life, as the hundreds of thousands who do that most valuable of jobs will testify. . . .
But [her frumpiness] is often evidence of a life lived selflessly; of a person so focused on the needs of another that they have lost sight of themselves.
. . . Susan Boyle's mother encouraged her to sing. She wanted her to enter Britain's Got Talent. But the shy Susan hasn't been able to sing at all since her mother's death two years ago. She wasn't sure how her voice would emerge after so long a silence. Happily, it survived its rest.
. . . . Susan is a reminder that it's time we all looked a little deeper. She has lived an obscure but important life. She has been a companionable and caring daughter. It's people like her who are the unseen glue in society; the ones who day in and day out put themselves last. . . .
Susan has been forgiven her looks and been given respect because of her talent. She should always have received it because of the calibre of her character.
Susan Boyle and the power of the moral imagination
Every once in a while great cultural moment happens. Iconic displays of the human imagination seem always to be unpredictable. But when they happen they reveal something about ourselves to ourselves. The Elian Gonzales affair was such a moment. Simply by arriving on the shores of Florida, alone, his mother and others lost at sea as they desperately fled Cuba in a fragile sea craft, Elian provided nothing more than his own presence into which people from many persuasions could invest their opinions about the Cuban question. A child who had essentially nothing to do with it other than his own person, became the focus of an intense public furor. [See Marshall Sahlins, Apologies to Thucydides]
Such a moment has just happened again, only this time it is a little different. A few days ago a 47 year old woman appeared on a talent show in Britain. Someone described her as fumpy. She wore her best dress, something worn earlier to a nephew’s wedding. She had fixed her hair herself. And she came on stage to sing. The hosts and the audience were kind enough, but pervading the whole scenario was a palpable doubt, even condescension, about this woman. She was a pathetic figure, vulnerable. This was an aggressive audience, expressive; they were ready to drive a performer off the stage. The hosts, the talent judges, were clearly dubious. One of the judges asked this woman her name and where she was from. She was Susan Boyle from a small town -- well, a collection of villages, she said. Then he asked what her ambition was. She wanted to be singer. Who would she like to be like?, he asked. Like Elaine Paige. It was easy to regard this woman as tragically unaware of her own limitations, with aspirations that surpassed her ability. And she was now on stage, on TV. Before a huge audience. Here was a disaster in the making. This would be difficult to watch.
She chose to sing Fantine’s song, “I dreamed a dream” from Les Miserables, when Fantine was left alone, unemployed and destitute.
Her first note changed everything. The audience was electrified. As she sang they began to cheer. One of the judges, Amanda Holden [whom I earlier called "a gorgeous blond"; decide for yourself -- certainly not "frumpy" like the woman on stage], folded her hands and held them up to her face, as if hoping desperately, praying, for this woman not to stumble. Everyone seemed to be rooting for her. Some people wept. This is what she sang:
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came
And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
When she was finished the judges were ecstatic. One of them said that at first everyone had been laughing at her but no one was laughing now. Amanda Holden said it was a wonderful moment for her because she knew that everyone there had been against Susan. Susan Boyle was showered with praise.
That was on April 11. On April 15, 2009, when you google “Susan Boyle singer” it gives you 132,000 sites. The clip of her performance, seven minutes, has been watched over 3 ½ million times.
Here is an event that so embodied something profoundly, even personally, gripping for thousands of people that the seven minute clip on UTube is being watched over and over again, by the same people. Susan Boyle’s moment on stage objectifies something buried in the psyche, something in the human moral imagination. The discussion of how and what that could be will be going on for weeks.
Here is one instance:
On popwatch [http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/04/susan-boyle-why.html] Lisa Schwarzbaum writes that she is still crying. She plays the YouTube clip over and over again. And she asks herself what every anthropologist should ask: why are you listening again and again? And why are you crying? She proposes an answer, at least for herself: “In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging -- the right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts -- the unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms. Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace. She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective . . .”
Buried within the human psyche are feelings, yearnings, anxieties too deep for words, usually. Only sometimes do we see it in ourselves. Always it is something outside ourselves that touches us, somehow, where we feel most deeply. At such moments we remember that we are humans -- not mere living creatures, but human beings, profoundly and deeply shaped by a moral sensibility so powerful that it breaks through our inhibitions; it can burst out, explode into public view, to our own astonishment. And sometimes that objective form -- a person, an event, an object, a song -- embodies deeply felt sensibilities for a lot of us at once, so that we discover how much we share in our private worlds, worlds otherwise inaccessible to anyone one else. It becomes a social event, so we can all rejoice, and weep, together.
Such a moment has just happened again, only this time it is a little different. A few days ago a 47 year old woman appeared on a talent show in Britain. Someone described her as fumpy. She wore her best dress, something worn earlier to a nephew’s wedding. She had fixed her hair herself. And she came on stage to sing. The hosts and the audience were kind enough, but pervading the whole scenario was a palpable doubt, even condescension, about this woman. She was a pathetic figure, vulnerable. This was an aggressive audience, expressive; they were ready to drive a performer off the stage. The hosts, the talent judges, were clearly dubious. One of the judges asked this woman her name and where she was from. She was Susan Boyle from a small town -- well, a collection of villages, she said. Then he asked what her ambition was. She wanted to be singer. Who would she like to be like?, he asked. Like Elaine Paige. It was easy to regard this woman as tragically unaware of her own limitations, with aspirations that surpassed her ability. And she was now on stage, on TV. Before a huge audience. Here was a disaster in the making. This would be difficult to watch.
She chose to sing Fantine’s song, “I dreamed a dream” from Les Miserables, when Fantine was left alone, unemployed and destitute.
Her first note changed everything. The audience was electrified. As she sang they began to cheer. One of the judges, Amanda Holden [whom I earlier called "a gorgeous blond"; decide for yourself -- certainly not "frumpy" like the woman on stage], folded her hands and held them up to her face, as if hoping desperately, praying, for this woman not to stumble. Everyone seemed to be rooting for her. Some people wept. This is what she sang:
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame
He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came
And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
When she was finished the judges were ecstatic. One of them said that at first everyone had been laughing at her but no one was laughing now. Amanda Holden said it was a wonderful moment for her because she knew that everyone there had been against Susan. Susan Boyle was showered with praise.
That was on April 11. On April 15, 2009, when you google “Susan Boyle singer” it gives you 132,000 sites. The clip of her performance, seven minutes, has been watched over 3 ½ million times.
Here is an event that so embodied something profoundly, even personally, gripping for thousands of people that the seven minute clip on UTube is being watched over and over again, by the same people. Susan Boyle’s moment on stage objectifies something buried in the psyche, something in the human moral imagination. The discussion of how and what that could be will be going on for weeks.
Here is one instance:
On popwatch [http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/04/susan-boyle-why.html] Lisa Schwarzbaum writes that she is still crying. She plays the YouTube clip over and over again. And she asks herself what every anthropologist should ask: why are you listening again and again? And why are you crying? She proposes an answer, at least for herself: “In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging -- the right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts -- the unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms. Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace. She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective . . .”
Buried within the human psyche are feelings, yearnings, anxieties too deep for words, usually. Only sometimes do we see it in ourselves. Always it is something outside ourselves that touches us, somehow, where we feel most deeply. At such moments we remember that we are humans -- not mere living creatures, but human beings, profoundly and deeply shaped by a moral sensibility so powerful that it breaks through our inhibitions; it can burst out, explode into public view, to our own astonishment. And sometimes that objective form -- a person, an event, an object, a song -- embodies deeply felt sensibilities for a lot of us at once, so that we discover how much we share in our private worlds, worlds otherwise inaccessible to anyone one else. It becomes a social event, so we can all rejoice, and weep, together.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Stratfor's assessment of affairs in Pakistan: dangerous
I neglected to post Stratfor’s assessment of the situation in Pakistan as of the 13th. Any way you cut it, the decisions being made in Pakistan have ominous implications, not only for Pakistan but for the region and the rest of the world. Pakistan’s location on the other side of the globe can mislead those of us in the western world. In this world – when trillions of dollars are sloshing around the world in a day, and news reaches almost any location at the speed of light, and millions of dollars worth of fuel and other material goods are nourishing growing numbers of people around the world every day – in such a world no one can presume that the dominance of criminality in one country has little significance for the rest. What’s going on in Pakistan is serious.
From: Stratfor, April 13, 2009 12:38:55 PM PDT
Pakistan: A Peace Deal Becomes Law
April 13, 2009 | 1936 GMT
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on April 13 signed the Nizam-i- Adl (System of Justice) Regulation into law. Earlier in the day, Parliament overwhelmingly approved the regulation, which stems from a Feb. 17 agreement between the provincial government of the North- West Frontier Province and the jihadist movement in the Swat region that calls for a shariah-based legal system to be implemented in the area in exchange for an end to the insurgency. Islamabad had been hesitant to approve the deal between Peshawar and the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM) ? the jihadist group based in the greater Swat region ? saying the central government wanted the TNSM militia to lay down its weapons before Islamabad endorsed the deal.
The Nizam-i-Adl Regulation becoming law without the militants laying down their arms is thus far the most significant example of the Pakistani state?s retreat in the face of a powerful jihadist insurgency. It underscores the extent to which the state has been weakened and the degree of incoherence within both the state and society regarding the jihadist threat and how to combat it. The expectation is that the deal will bring an end to the militancy in the greater Swat area, and that Talibanization can be confined to that region.
However, the TNSM has no intention of limiting its sphere of influence to the Swat region. Therefore, this development will only boost the confidence of the Taliban and their transnational allies in Pakistan and beyond. The Swat area effectively will become an emirate from which a wider Talibanization campaign can be launched. In many ways, this has already begun, with the Swat-based insurgents projecting power into adjoining districts such as Buner.
Not only will Pakistan see greater domestic turmoil as a result of the passage of this law, but the new regulation will further aggravate tensions between Islamabad and Washington, complicating Western efforts to combat the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. The United States may even move to expand its unilateral airstrikes and covert operations deeper into Pakistani territory.
© Copyright 2009 Stratfor. All rights reserved.
From: Stratfor, April 13, 2009 12:38:55 PM PDT
Pakistan: A Peace Deal Becomes Law
April 13, 2009 | 1936 GMT
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on April 13 signed the Nizam-i- Adl (System of Justice) Regulation into law. Earlier in the day, Parliament overwhelmingly approved the regulation, which stems from a Feb. 17 agreement between the provincial government of the North- West Frontier Province and the jihadist movement in the Swat region that calls for a shariah-based legal system to be implemented in the area in exchange for an end to the insurgency. Islamabad had been hesitant to approve the deal between Peshawar and the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM) ? the jihadist group based in the greater Swat region ? saying the central government wanted the TNSM militia to lay down its weapons before Islamabad endorsed the deal.
The Nizam-i-Adl Regulation becoming law without the militants laying down their arms is thus far the most significant example of the Pakistani state?s retreat in the face of a powerful jihadist insurgency. It underscores the extent to which the state has been weakened and the degree of incoherence within both the state and society regarding the jihadist threat and how to combat it. The expectation is that the deal will bring an end to the militancy in the greater Swat area, and that Talibanization can be confined to that region.
However, the TNSM has no intention of limiting its sphere of influence to the Swat region. Therefore, this development will only boost the confidence of the Taliban and their transnational allies in Pakistan and beyond. The Swat area effectively will become an emirate from which a wider Talibanization campaign can be launched. In many ways, this has already begun, with the Swat-based insurgents projecting power into adjoining districts such as Buner.
Not only will Pakistan see greater domestic turmoil as a result of the passage of this law, but the new regulation will further aggravate tensions between Islamabad and Washington, complicating Western efforts to combat the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. The United States may even move to expand its unilateral airstrikes and covert operations deeper into Pakistani territory.
© Copyright 2009 Stratfor. All rights reserved.
Pakistan's further slide into the abyss
For years I have been saying that it couldn't get worse than this -- and it gets worse. The situation in Pakistan is going from bad to worse. What is most astounding is the inability of the Pakistani leadership to deal with the rising power of the Taliban and other like-minded Sunni radical groups essentially cultivated by the government. Now the government capitulates and wants to call it a victory. I collect here some interesting statements on the rapid descent of this proud country. I grieve and pray for God to save them.
Here is what Bill Roggio [The Long War Journal] has to say:
"Pakistan signs sharia bill into law"
By Bill RoggioApril 13, 2009 4:31 PM
The Pakistani government has approved the controversial bill that will allow for the implementation of sharia, or Islamic law, into a large region of northwestern Pakistan.
President Asif Ali Zardari signed the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation into law today after a majority of the Pakistani Parliament passed the bill. The regulation allows for the establishment of sharia courts in the Malakand Division, an administrative region that encompasses more than one-third of the Northwest Frontier Province and includes the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, Chitral, and Kohistan.
The sharia law was referred to the Pakistani government after the government negotiated an agreement known as the Malakand Accord with the Taliban in Swat. The agreement calls for the withdrawal of the Pakistani Army from Swat, the release all Taliban prisoners, the withdrawal of any criminal cases against Taliban leaders and fighters, and the imposition of sharia. The government agreed to the terms of the Malakand Accord after the military suffered its third defeat against the Swat Taliban in two years.
The Taliban had threatened to renew the violence in Swat if the sharia law was not signed by President Zardari. Amir Izzat, a spokesman for the pro-Taliban Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammed [TNSM or the Movement for the Enforcement of Mohammed's Law] threatened to declare any member of parliament as a non-Muslim if they voted against the law. Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the TNSM, which serves as a front for the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan, walked out on the peace agreement after bashing Zardari for not signing the sharia regulation into law.
President Zardari had said he refused to sign the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation into law until the security in Swat was restored. As recently as April 9, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, said President Zardari would not sign the regulation into law.
"The president of Pakistan has not signed the agreement and not approved the agreement yet because he’s waiting for the TNSM to fulfill its end of the bargain, which was, essentially, to make sure that the Taliban — whose leader happens to be his son-in-law — they do not continue to use force," Haqqani told a forum in Washington, according to The Washington Independent. "Since that has not happened, the agreement has not been enforced."
But the Taliban have repeatedly violated the ceasefire in Swat. Taliban forces have attacked military convoys and captured soldiers and government officials. Most recently, on April 11, a Taliban force wounded three security personnel after ambushing a convoy in Swat. Meanwhile, the Swat Taliban have advanced on neighboring Buner and are now in full control of the district, which is just 60 miles from the capital of Islamabad.
The Malakand Accord and the subsequent signing of the sharia law have emboldened the Taliban and the multitude of Islamist groups in Pakistan. Islamist political parties are now calling for the imposition of sharia throughout the country.
Here is a comment on this entry by one of the bloggers:
Posted by Micah at April 14, 2009 1:35 AM ET:
Interesting, but the media and everyone for the most part seems to miss the fact that Taliban completely took over Buner province sunday afternoon and the media was turned the other way after they assumed the incident ended 24 hours earlier upon their saturday afternoon withdraw. India Times and a couple Pakistan publications seem to be the only ones who caught the news.
Obviously President Zardari signed this bill as a reaction to the Buner take-over on Sunday, which may be the fastest consolidation of power so far in the battle for the north-west; AND THE MEDIA MISSED IT!!! Below is my blog, most of which is news straight from my contacts in Buner:
I have just got news from my friends in Buner district (that area i stayed in with the Pashtos that neighbors Swat). Friday afternoon, as stated in the media, Taliban crossed the mountains into the district through the same pass we took from Swat. Only about 100 entered to setup a meeting; a very small number. They agreed to pullout of Buner and leave Saturday afternoon after a Jirga meeting was held. The media was very updated on this, and reported the Taliban's pullout of Buner on Saturday. However, the media seems to have overlooked what happened the next day and forgot about the whole ordeal assuming it was over. Well it didn't end. Twenty four hours later, the Taliban, with large swaths of fighters, returned and may have consolidated the fastest spread of their power in this whole war...
Yesterday, around noon, thousands of Talibs poured into Buner district a day after they stated their official departure. In a period of around 5 hours, Taliban took the entire provincial province. There was no resistance at all, Pakistani police and military were ordered not to interfere or cause any tension. The Pir Baba shrine has been shut down (as that is considered a site of idolization according to the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islam). The Taliban control 100% percent of the district. According to my friend in Pir Baba, the Taliban are everywhere, they are burning televisions, shutting down DVD shops, and now are beginning youth-recruiting campaigns. My friend is very worried, as he works for a local school in Pir Baba with an IT institute. The school is locked and no one is going to it. Women's classes stopped about 6 months ago when there were fears that Taliban were beginning to look into the prospects of expanding into Buner district.
So, this is HUGE news, and its not in the news at all, unfortunately. The media turned its eye away when they assumed it was all over on Saturday afternoon when the few Talibs left Buner. Well, Taliban are in complete control of it now and its another world than when I was there last June. They are everywhere, at guard posts replacing what was before police check points, are driving around on pickup trucks with loudspeakers announcing the implementation of Shariah courts as well as asking the youth to join.
Another strange change is that Buneris have been absolutely against the Taliban for years, for the trouble they caused in Swat. However, since there is no war in Buner and the Taliban took it over without any fighting or harm to the local population, strangely enough, the Taliban are getting public support and actually gaining more popularity than would have been expected (not making this up. My friend is telling me this first-hand, and he is against the Taliban who pose a potentially direct threat to his employment in the IT center at his school in Pir Baba, if it is to be discovered). One of the reasons for this change of mind amongst the public in Buner is because of the Pakistan government's lack of development in Buner (it is a very poor district that never obtained the same development as Swat did, thanks to its tourist industry Swat has benefited from through most of its existence until two years ago. Buner, being part of the lower Swat valley (not the provincial district itself though) has always sort of been looked at as the "poor man's Swat valley.")
I still can't believe this is happening. I wonder how many days it will take the media to discover this, and I wonder why something as big as this has not been reported in the media. Maybe because this is a HUGE embarrassment for the Pakistani government and they are trying to figure out what to do with the situation before throwing the spotlight on it? I have no idea. Supposedly the Taliban are talking of Islamabad being the next stop (they certainly are about 100km closer than they were 2 days ago), but this could just be exaggerated euphoria considering their pride has probably swelled from this latest take-over of Buner district (afterall, they still have not yet taken Peshawar).
However, if it is true that Taliban is changing its public-image and is obtaining acceptance in Buner, it will become a major recruiting grounds for Taliban, as Buner district never obtained the same amount of educational and economic development as Swat or even Mardan district, and the Taliban's seeding of madrasa's will have a huge effect in their recruiting mission, as these madrasas teach the much desirable applicable sciences and literacy teachings, in addition to Islamic studies (Deobandi) and small-arms weapon training. I suggest USAID's project in Peshawar immediately start throwing a development plan together in the much ignored Buner district, or Taliban will be filling in this missing gap VERY fast. In fact, it may already be too late.
If you want my theory, i think the 100 or so Taliban that were sent into the countryside of Buner on Friday were just an experiment to see how Buneris would react to their presence. There was a slight skirmish, but nothing major. When the Jirga meeting was held, it was another test to see how they would be reacted to politically among the elders of the Jirga, so when they agreed to pull out Saturday, they really just went back to Swat district to report their impressions and general consensus. When the Taliban determined they faced very minuscule resistance from police and Buneri civilians, they saw this as the green light to send in thousands of fighters 24 hours later on Sunday afternoon, knowing all too well they could take the province without any risk of retaliation against them.
In a mere few hours hours, Buner district was consolidated by Taliban. It took a massive two+ years for this same Taliban movement, lead by Mulauna Fazlullah, to consolidate it's power over Swat province. Amazing. What I find even more astonishing is the sheer level of lowness in the Pakistan military's morale. Technically, the Swat-truce is not official yet, because President Zardari has refrained from signing it (mostly because of the controversy and America's reaction if he does). It goes to show both sides desire the truce and are recognizing it despite the fact that it officially not active at all, and the moderate broker of the truce, Sufi Mohammad, pulled out of the deal one week ago after frustration of the government's delay to make it official. It is astonishing that both sides are still abiding by the truce and not using its "unnofficial" status as a legitimate reason to resume the fighting against one another.
Since both sides are recognizing the truce, despite the fact that its non-existent without Zardari's signature, Taliban is most likely in direct violation it's agreements (officially or unofficially) in that they are running an actively armed militia in the streets of Buner's public life; while shots were not fired in obtaining their hold on the district, they still took power with the show of force as an active militant group. Therefore, the military has the full right to intervene with armed force and still recognize the agreements stated in abiding by this truce. The fact that they have not, and Taliban have just taken over Buner district as if its a freebie, goes to show the military is finished, has no desire to fight, and the Taliban still have the drive to continue the armed struggle with high-morale, if the military were to react in such a way. A further embarrassment and a clear admission of the Pakistani military that they have failed and surrendered to the Taliban's will. The truce, which both sides recognize, provided the Taliban with their main desire to implement Shariah, but failed to disarm the Taliban as an armed movement in the public sphere, which was the main terms the Pakistani military demanded as the trade off for the truce to go into effect.
In reality, since the military did not intervene in reaction to their demands failing to be met by the the deal brokered by Sufi Mohammad, the only benefit the military gained was the relaxation of not having to go to the front lines any longer to fight another battle; if they cared about the current violation in Buner and the Taliban's greater grasp on power, the military would have done exactly that: reacted with force. Instead, in a mere few hours, the Taliban did in Buner what took them over two years to do in Swat. Which district is next, and will the military refrain from trying to repel it in any way?
Pathetic. If the military reacted to the small contingent of Talibs who were sent into Buner on Friday, the Taliban may not have been so quick to just send huge fleets into Buner 48 hours later. As far as the deal of the truce is concerned, Taliban got everything they wanted without compromising anything. The military obtained nothing for the Pakistani government; they just don't have the drive to fight anymore.
Posted by Micah at April 14, 2009 1:38 AM ET:
Oh, and when I say "yesterday", I am actually referring to Sunday since I wrote this original blog on a monday.
The media seems to have turned its back away from the incident after Saturday afternoon (April 11) when the small contingent of Talibs departed Swat, and totally missed what happened Sunday (APril 12).
. . .
Oh and about Zardari, once again i wrote it before he signed the bill, and I don't have time to edit right now.
Anyways, it seems the Taliban sent more fighters in Saturday, agreed to depart, but sent in swaths more on Sunday and took power Sunday. According to my contacts. On Saturday, the Pir Baba shrine actually was not occupied by the Taliban (it was closed as a security measure by police), but was occupied by Taliban only as recently as Sunday, as well as their presence in the center of Hazrat Pir Baba.
Here is what the New York Times has to say:
April 14, 2009
Allied Militants Threaten Pakistan’s Populous Heart
By SABRINA TAVERNISE, RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ERIC SCHMITT
This article was reported by Sabrina Tavernise, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Eric Schmitt and written by Ms. Tavernise.
DERA GHAZI KHAN, Pakistan — Taliban insurgents are teaming up with local militant groups to make inroads in Punjab, the province that is home to more than half of Pakistanis, reinvigorating an alliance that Pakistani and American authorities say poses a serious risk to the stability of the country.
The deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, they said.
Now police officials, local residents and analysts warn that if the government does not take decisive action, these dusty, impoverished fringes of Punjab could be the next areas facing the insurgency. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials also said they viewed the developments with alarm.
“I don’t think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue,” said a senior police official in Punjab, who declined to be idenfitied because he was discussing threats to the state. “If you want to destabilize Pakistan, you have to destabilize Punjab.”
As American drone attacks disrupt strongholds of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, the insurgents are striking deeper into Pakistan — both in retaliation and in search of new havens.
Telltale signs of creeping militancy abound in a belt of towns and villages near here that a reporter visited last week. Militants have gained strength considerably in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan, which is a gateway both to Taliban-controlled areas and the heart of Punjab, the police and local residents say. Many were terrified.
Some villages, just north of here, are so deeply infiltrated by militants that they are already considered no-go zones by their neighbors.
In at least five towns in southern and western Punjab, including the midsize hub of Multan, barber shops, music stores and Internet cafes offensive to the militants’ strict interpretation of Islam have received threats. Traditional ceremonies that include drumming and dancing have been halted in some areas. Hard-line ideologues have addressed large crowds to push their idea of Islamic revolution. Sectarian attacks, dormant here since the 1990s, have erupted once again.
“It’s going from bad to worse,” said a senior police official in Dera Ghazi Khan. “They are now more active. These are the facts.”
American officials agreed. Bruce Riedel, who led the Obama administration’s recently completed strategy review of Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the Taliban now had “extensive links into the Punjab.”
“You are seeing more of a coalescence of these militant groups,” said Mr. Riedel, a former C.I.A. official. “Connections that have always existed are becoming tighter and more public than they have in the past.”
The Punjabi militant groups have had links with the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribesmen, since the 1980s. Some of the Punjabi groups are veterans of Pakistan’s state-sponsored insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. Others made targets of Shiites.
Under pressure from the United States, former President Pervez Musharraf cut back state support for the Punjabi groups. They either went underground or migrated to the tribal areas, where they deepened their ties with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
At least 20 militants killed in American strikes in the tribal areas since last summer were Punjabi, according to people from the tribal areas and Pakistani officials. One Pakistani security official estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent of militants in the tribal regions could be Punjabi.
The alliance is based on more than shared ideology. “These are tactical alliances,” said a senior American counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss intelligence matters. The Pashtun Taliban and Arab militants, who are part of Al Qaeda, have money, sanctuary, training sites and suicide bombers. The Punjabi militants can provide logistical help in Punjabi cities, like Lahore, including handling bombers and target reconnaissance.
The cooperation between the groups intensified greatly after the government’s siege of Islamic hard-liners at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, in mid-2007, Pakistani and American security officials say. The siege has since become a rallying cry.
One such joint operation, an American security official said, was the Marriott bombing in Islamabad in September, which killed more than 50 people.
As this cooperation intensifies, places like Dera Ghazi Khan are particularly vulnerable. This frontier town is home to a combustible mix of worries: poverty, a growing phalanx of hard-line religious schools and a uranium processing plant that is a part of Pakistan’s nuclear program.
It is also strategically situated at the intersection of two main roads. One is a main artery into Pakistan’s heartland, in southern Punjab. The other connects Baluchistan Province in the west to the North-West Frontier Province, both Taliban strongholds.
“We are being cornered in a blind alley,” said Mohammed Ali, a local landlord. “We can’t breathe easily.”
Attacks intended to intimidate and sow sectarian strife are more common. The police point to a suicide bombing in Dera Ghazi Khan on Feb. 5. Two local Punjabis, with the help of Taliban backers, orchestrated the attack, which killed 29 people at a Shiite ceremony, the local police said.
The authorities arrested two men as masterminds on April 6: Qari Muhammad Ismail Gul, the leader of a local madrasa; and Ghulam Mustafa Kaisrani, a jihadi who posed as a salesman for a medical company.
They belonged to a banned Punjabi group called Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, but were tied through phone calls to two deputies of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, the police said.
“The phone numbers they call are in Waziristan,” said a police official, referring to the Taliban base in the tribal areas. “They are working together hand in glove.” One of the men had gone for training in Waziristan last summer, the police said. The operations are well-supported. Mr. Kaisrani had several bank transfers worth about $11 million from his Pakistani account, the authorities said.
Local crimes, including at least two recent bank robberies in Dera Ghazi Khan, were also traced to networks of Islamic militants, officials said.
“The money that’s coming in is huge,” said Zulfiqar Hameed, head of investigations for the Lahore Police Department. “When you go back through the chain of the transaction, you invariably find it’s been done for money.”
After the suicide attack here, the police confiscated a 20-minute inspirational video, titled “Revenge,” for the Red Mosque, which gave testimonials from suicide bombers in different cities and post-attack images.
Umme Hassan, the wife of a fiery preacher who was killed during the Red Mosque siege, now frequently travels to south Punjab, to rally the faithful. She has made 12 visits in the past several months before cheering crowds and showing emotional clips of the attack, said a Punjabi official who has been monitoring her visits.
“She claimed that they would bring Islamic revolution in three months,” said Umar Draz, who attended a rally in Muzzafargarh.
The situation in south and west Punjab is still far from that in the Swat Valley, a part of North-West Frontier Province that is now fully under Taliban control after the military agreed to a truce in February. But there are strong parallels.
The Taliban here exploit many of the same weaknesses that have allowed them to expand in other areas: an absent or intimidated police force; a lack of attention from national and provincial leaders; a population steadily cowed by threats, or won over by hard-line mullahs who usurp authority by playing on government neglect and poverty.
In Shadan Lund, a village just north of here, militants are openly demanding Islamic law, or Shariah, said Jan Sher, whose brother is a teacher there. “The situation is sharply going toward Swat,” Mr. Sher said. He and others said the single biggest obstacle to stopping the advance of militancy was the attitudes of Pakistanis themselves, whose fury at the United States has led to blind support for everyone who goes against it.
Shabaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, said he was painfully aware of the problems of insurgent infiltration and was taking steps to restore people’s faith in government, including plans for new schools and hospitals. “Hearts and minds must be won,” he said in an interview Monday. “If this struggle fails, this country has no future.”
But people complain that landowners and local politicians have done nothing to stop the advance and, in some cases, even assist the militants by giving money to some of the religious schools.
“The government is useless,” said Mr. Ali, the local landlord. “They live happy, secure lives in Lahore. Their children study abroad. They only come here to contest elections.”
The police are left alone to stop the advance. But in Punjab, as in much of the rest of Pakistan, they are spread unevenly, with little presence in rural areas. Out of 160,000 police officers in Punjab, fewer than 60,000 are posted in rural areas, leaving frontier stations in districts virtually unprotected, police officials said.
Locals feel helpless. When a 15-year-old boy vanished from a madrasa in a village near here recently — his classmates said to go on jihad — his uncle could not afford to go look for him, let alone confront the powerful men who run the madrasa.
“We are simple people,” the man said. “What can we do?”
Sabrina Tavernise reported from Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan; Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Peshawar, Pakistan; and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington, Waqar Gillani from Dera Ghazi Khan, and Pir Zubair Shah from Peshawar.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Here is what Bill Roggio [The Long War Journal] has to say:
"Pakistan signs sharia bill into law"
By Bill RoggioApril 13, 2009 4:31 PM
The Pakistani government has approved the controversial bill that will allow for the implementation of sharia, or Islamic law, into a large region of northwestern Pakistan.
President Asif Ali Zardari signed the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation into law today after a majority of the Pakistani Parliament passed the bill. The regulation allows for the establishment of sharia courts in the Malakand Division, an administrative region that encompasses more than one-third of the Northwest Frontier Province and includes the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, Chitral, and Kohistan.
The sharia law was referred to the Pakistani government after the government negotiated an agreement known as the Malakand Accord with the Taliban in Swat. The agreement calls for the withdrawal of the Pakistani Army from Swat, the release all Taliban prisoners, the withdrawal of any criminal cases against Taliban leaders and fighters, and the imposition of sharia. The government agreed to the terms of the Malakand Accord after the military suffered its third defeat against the Swat Taliban in two years.
The Taliban had threatened to renew the violence in Swat if the sharia law was not signed by President Zardari. Amir Izzat, a spokesman for the pro-Taliban Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammed [TNSM or the Movement for the Enforcement of Mohammed's Law] threatened to declare any member of parliament as a non-Muslim if they voted against the law. Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the TNSM, which serves as a front for the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan, walked out on the peace agreement after bashing Zardari for not signing the sharia regulation into law.
President Zardari had said he refused to sign the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation into law until the security in Swat was restored. As recently as April 9, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, said President Zardari would not sign the regulation into law.
"The president of Pakistan has not signed the agreement and not approved the agreement yet because he’s waiting for the TNSM to fulfill its end of the bargain, which was, essentially, to make sure that the Taliban — whose leader happens to be his son-in-law — they do not continue to use force," Haqqani told a forum in Washington, according to The Washington Independent. "Since that has not happened, the agreement has not been enforced."
But the Taliban have repeatedly violated the ceasefire in Swat. Taliban forces have attacked military convoys and captured soldiers and government officials. Most recently, on April 11, a Taliban force wounded three security personnel after ambushing a convoy in Swat. Meanwhile, the Swat Taliban have advanced on neighboring Buner and are now in full control of the district, which is just 60 miles from the capital of Islamabad.
The Malakand Accord and the subsequent signing of the sharia law have emboldened the Taliban and the multitude of Islamist groups in Pakistan. Islamist political parties are now calling for the imposition of sharia throughout the country.
Here is a comment on this entry by one of the bloggers:
Posted by Micah at April 14, 2009 1:35 AM ET:
Interesting, but the media and everyone for the most part seems to miss the fact that Taliban completely took over Buner province sunday afternoon and the media was turned the other way after they assumed the incident ended 24 hours earlier upon their saturday afternoon withdraw. India Times and a couple Pakistan publications seem to be the only ones who caught the news.
Obviously President Zardari signed this bill as a reaction to the Buner take-over on Sunday, which may be the fastest consolidation of power so far in the battle for the north-west; AND THE MEDIA MISSED IT!!! Below is my blog, most of which is news straight from my contacts in Buner:
I have just got news from my friends in Buner district (that area i stayed in with the Pashtos that neighbors Swat). Friday afternoon, as stated in the media, Taliban crossed the mountains into the district through the same pass we took from Swat. Only about 100 entered to setup a meeting; a very small number. They agreed to pullout of Buner and leave Saturday afternoon after a Jirga meeting was held. The media was very updated on this, and reported the Taliban's pullout of Buner on Saturday. However, the media seems to have overlooked what happened the next day and forgot about the whole ordeal assuming it was over. Well it didn't end. Twenty four hours later, the Taliban, with large swaths of fighters, returned and may have consolidated the fastest spread of their power in this whole war...
Yesterday, around noon, thousands of Talibs poured into Buner district a day after they stated their official departure. In a period of around 5 hours, Taliban took the entire provincial province. There was no resistance at all, Pakistani police and military were ordered not to interfere or cause any tension. The Pir Baba shrine has been shut down (as that is considered a site of idolization according to the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islam). The Taliban control 100% percent of the district. According to my friend in Pir Baba, the Taliban are everywhere, they are burning televisions, shutting down DVD shops, and now are beginning youth-recruiting campaigns. My friend is very worried, as he works for a local school in Pir Baba with an IT institute. The school is locked and no one is going to it. Women's classes stopped about 6 months ago when there were fears that Taliban were beginning to look into the prospects of expanding into Buner district.
So, this is HUGE news, and its not in the news at all, unfortunately. The media turned its eye away when they assumed it was all over on Saturday afternoon when the few Talibs left Buner. Well, Taliban are in complete control of it now and its another world than when I was there last June. They are everywhere, at guard posts replacing what was before police check points, are driving around on pickup trucks with loudspeakers announcing the implementation of Shariah courts as well as asking the youth to join.
Another strange change is that Buneris have been absolutely against the Taliban for years, for the trouble they caused in Swat. However, since there is no war in Buner and the Taliban took it over without any fighting or harm to the local population, strangely enough, the Taliban are getting public support and actually gaining more popularity than would have been expected (not making this up. My friend is telling me this first-hand, and he is against the Taliban who pose a potentially direct threat to his employment in the IT center at his school in Pir Baba, if it is to be discovered). One of the reasons for this change of mind amongst the public in Buner is because of the Pakistan government's lack of development in Buner (it is a very poor district that never obtained the same development as Swat did, thanks to its tourist industry Swat has benefited from through most of its existence until two years ago. Buner, being part of the lower Swat valley (not the provincial district itself though) has always sort of been looked at as the "poor man's Swat valley.")
I still can't believe this is happening. I wonder how many days it will take the media to discover this, and I wonder why something as big as this has not been reported in the media. Maybe because this is a HUGE embarrassment for the Pakistani government and they are trying to figure out what to do with the situation before throwing the spotlight on it? I have no idea. Supposedly the Taliban are talking of Islamabad being the next stop (they certainly are about 100km closer than they were 2 days ago), but this could just be exaggerated euphoria considering their pride has probably swelled from this latest take-over of Buner district (afterall, they still have not yet taken Peshawar).
However, if it is true that Taliban is changing its public-image and is obtaining acceptance in Buner, it will become a major recruiting grounds for Taliban, as Buner district never obtained the same amount of educational and economic development as Swat or even Mardan district, and the Taliban's seeding of madrasa's will have a huge effect in their recruiting mission, as these madrasas teach the much desirable applicable sciences and literacy teachings, in addition to Islamic studies (Deobandi) and small-arms weapon training. I suggest USAID's project in Peshawar immediately start throwing a development plan together in the much ignored Buner district, or Taliban will be filling in this missing gap VERY fast. In fact, it may already be too late.
If you want my theory, i think the 100 or so Taliban that were sent into the countryside of Buner on Friday were just an experiment to see how Buneris would react to their presence. There was a slight skirmish, but nothing major. When the Jirga meeting was held, it was another test to see how they would be reacted to politically among the elders of the Jirga, so when they agreed to pull out Saturday, they really just went back to Swat district to report their impressions and general consensus. When the Taliban determined they faced very minuscule resistance from police and Buneri civilians, they saw this as the green light to send in thousands of fighters 24 hours later on Sunday afternoon, knowing all too well they could take the province without any risk of retaliation against them.
In a mere few hours hours, Buner district was consolidated by Taliban. It took a massive two+ years for this same Taliban movement, lead by Mulauna Fazlullah, to consolidate it's power over Swat province. Amazing. What I find even more astonishing is the sheer level of lowness in the Pakistan military's morale. Technically, the Swat-truce is not official yet, because President Zardari has refrained from signing it (mostly because of the controversy and America's reaction if he does). It goes to show both sides desire the truce and are recognizing it despite the fact that it officially not active at all, and the moderate broker of the truce, Sufi Mohammad, pulled out of the deal one week ago after frustration of the government's delay to make it official. It is astonishing that both sides are still abiding by the truce and not using its "unnofficial" status as a legitimate reason to resume the fighting against one another.
Since both sides are recognizing the truce, despite the fact that its non-existent without Zardari's signature, Taliban is most likely in direct violation it's agreements (officially or unofficially) in that they are running an actively armed militia in the streets of Buner's public life; while shots were not fired in obtaining their hold on the district, they still took power with the show of force as an active militant group. Therefore, the military has the full right to intervene with armed force and still recognize the agreements stated in abiding by this truce. The fact that they have not, and Taliban have just taken over Buner district as if its a freebie, goes to show the military is finished, has no desire to fight, and the Taliban still have the drive to continue the armed struggle with high-morale, if the military were to react in such a way. A further embarrassment and a clear admission of the Pakistani military that they have failed and surrendered to the Taliban's will. The truce, which both sides recognize, provided the Taliban with their main desire to implement Shariah, but failed to disarm the Taliban as an armed movement in the public sphere, which was the main terms the Pakistani military demanded as the trade off for the truce to go into effect.
In reality, since the military did not intervene in reaction to their demands failing to be met by the the deal brokered by Sufi Mohammad, the only benefit the military gained was the relaxation of not having to go to the front lines any longer to fight another battle; if they cared about the current violation in Buner and the Taliban's greater grasp on power, the military would have done exactly that: reacted with force. Instead, in a mere few hours, the Taliban did in Buner what took them over two years to do in Swat. Which district is next, and will the military refrain from trying to repel it in any way?
Pathetic. If the military reacted to the small contingent of Talibs who were sent into Buner on Friday, the Taliban may not have been so quick to just send huge fleets into Buner 48 hours later. As far as the deal of the truce is concerned, Taliban got everything they wanted without compromising anything. The military obtained nothing for the Pakistani government; they just don't have the drive to fight anymore.
Posted by Micah at April 14, 2009 1:38 AM ET:
Oh, and when I say "yesterday", I am actually referring to Sunday since I wrote this original blog on a monday.
The media seems to have turned its back away from the incident after Saturday afternoon (April 11) when the small contingent of Talibs departed Swat, and totally missed what happened Sunday (APril 12).
. . .
Oh and about Zardari, once again i wrote it before he signed the bill, and I don't have time to edit right now.
Anyways, it seems the Taliban sent more fighters in Saturday, agreed to depart, but sent in swaths more on Sunday and took power Sunday. According to my contacts. On Saturday, the Pir Baba shrine actually was not occupied by the Taliban (it was closed as a security measure by police), but was occupied by Taliban only as recently as Sunday, as well as their presence in the center of Hazrat Pir Baba.
Here is what the New York Times has to say:
April 14, 2009
Allied Militants Threaten Pakistan’s Populous Heart
By SABRINA TAVERNISE, RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ERIC SCHMITT
This article was reported by Sabrina Tavernise, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Eric Schmitt and written by Ms. Tavernise.
DERA GHAZI KHAN, Pakistan — Taliban insurgents are teaming up with local militant groups to make inroads in Punjab, the province that is home to more than half of Pakistanis, reinvigorating an alliance that Pakistani and American authorities say poses a serious risk to the stability of the country.
The deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, they said.
Now police officials, local residents and analysts warn that if the government does not take decisive action, these dusty, impoverished fringes of Punjab could be the next areas facing the insurgency. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials also said they viewed the developments with alarm.
“I don’t think a lot of people understand the gravity of the issue,” said a senior police official in Punjab, who declined to be idenfitied because he was discussing threats to the state. “If you want to destabilize Pakistan, you have to destabilize Punjab.”
As American drone attacks disrupt strongholds of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, the insurgents are striking deeper into Pakistan — both in retaliation and in search of new havens.
Telltale signs of creeping militancy abound in a belt of towns and villages near here that a reporter visited last week. Militants have gained strength considerably in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan, which is a gateway both to Taliban-controlled areas and the heart of Punjab, the police and local residents say. Many were terrified.
Some villages, just north of here, are so deeply infiltrated by militants that they are already considered no-go zones by their neighbors.
In at least five towns in southern and western Punjab, including the midsize hub of Multan, barber shops, music stores and Internet cafes offensive to the militants’ strict interpretation of Islam have received threats. Traditional ceremonies that include drumming and dancing have been halted in some areas. Hard-line ideologues have addressed large crowds to push their idea of Islamic revolution. Sectarian attacks, dormant here since the 1990s, have erupted once again.
“It’s going from bad to worse,” said a senior police official in Dera Ghazi Khan. “They are now more active. These are the facts.”
American officials agreed. Bruce Riedel, who led the Obama administration’s recently completed strategy review of Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the Taliban now had “extensive links into the Punjab.”
“You are seeing more of a coalescence of these militant groups,” said Mr. Riedel, a former C.I.A. official. “Connections that have always existed are becoming tighter and more public than they have in the past.”
The Punjabi militant groups have had links with the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribesmen, since the 1980s. Some of the Punjabi groups are veterans of Pakistan’s state-sponsored insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir. Others made targets of Shiites.
Under pressure from the United States, former President Pervez Musharraf cut back state support for the Punjabi groups. They either went underground or migrated to the tribal areas, where they deepened their ties with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
At least 20 militants killed in American strikes in the tribal areas since last summer were Punjabi, according to people from the tribal areas and Pakistani officials. One Pakistani security official estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent of militants in the tribal regions could be Punjabi.
The alliance is based on more than shared ideology. “These are tactical alliances,” said a senior American counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss intelligence matters. The Pashtun Taliban and Arab militants, who are part of Al Qaeda, have money, sanctuary, training sites and suicide bombers. The Punjabi militants can provide logistical help in Punjabi cities, like Lahore, including handling bombers and target reconnaissance.
The cooperation between the groups intensified greatly after the government’s siege of Islamic hard-liners at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, in mid-2007, Pakistani and American security officials say. The siege has since become a rallying cry.
One such joint operation, an American security official said, was the Marriott bombing in Islamabad in September, which killed more than 50 people.
As this cooperation intensifies, places like Dera Ghazi Khan are particularly vulnerable. This frontier town is home to a combustible mix of worries: poverty, a growing phalanx of hard-line religious schools and a uranium processing plant that is a part of Pakistan’s nuclear program.
It is also strategically situated at the intersection of two main roads. One is a main artery into Pakistan’s heartland, in southern Punjab. The other connects Baluchistan Province in the west to the North-West Frontier Province, both Taliban strongholds.
“We are being cornered in a blind alley,” said Mohammed Ali, a local landlord. “We can’t breathe easily.”
Attacks intended to intimidate and sow sectarian strife are more common. The police point to a suicide bombing in Dera Ghazi Khan on Feb. 5. Two local Punjabis, with the help of Taliban backers, orchestrated the attack, which killed 29 people at a Shiite ceremony, the local police said.
The authorities arrested two men as masterminds on April 6: Qari Muhammad Ismail Gul, the leader of a local madrasa; and Ghulam Mustafa Kaisrani, a jihadi who posed as a salesman for a medical company.
They belonged to a banned Punjabi group called Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, but were tied through phone calls to two deputies of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, the police said.
“The phone numbers they call are in Waziristan,” said a police official, referring to the Taliban base in the tribal areas. “They are working together hand in glove.” One of the men had gone for training in Waziristan last summer, the police said. The operations are well-supported. Mr. Kaisrani had several bank transfers worth about $11 million from his Pakistani account, the authorities said.
Local crimes, including at least two recent bank robberies in Dera Ghazi Khan, were also traced to networks of Islamic militants, officials said.
“The money that’s coming in is huge,” said Zulfiqar Hameed, head of investigations for the Lahore Police Department. “When you go back through the chain of the transaction, you invariably find it’s been done for money.”
After the suicide attack here, the police confiscated a 20-minute inspirational video, titled “Revenge,” for the Red Mosque, which gave testimonials from suicide bombers in different cities and post-attack images.
Umme Hassan, the wife of a fiery preacher who was killed during the Red Mosque siege, now frequently travels to south Punjab, to rally the faithful. She has made 12 visits in the past several months before cheering crowds and showing emotional clips of the attack, said a Punjabi official who has been monitoring her visits.
“She claimed that they would bring Islamic revolution in three months,” said Umar Draz, who attended a rally in Muzzafargarh.
The situation in south and west Punjab is still far from that in the Swat Valley, a part of North-West Frontier Province that is now fully under Taliban control after the military agreed to a truce in February. But there are strong parallels.
The Taliban here exploit many of the same weaknesses that have allowed them to expand in other areas: an absent or intimidated police force; a lack of attention from national and provincial leaders; a population steadily cowed by threats, or won over by hard-line mullahs who usurp authority by playing on government neglect and poverty.
In Shadan Lund, a village just north of here, militants are openly demanding Islamic law, or Shariah, said Jan Sher, whose brother is a teacher there. “The situation is sharply going toward Swat,” Mr. Sher said. He and others said the single biggest obstacle to stopping the advance of militancy was the attitudes of Pakistanis themselves, whose fury at the United States has led to blind support for everyone who goes against it.
Shabaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, said he was painfully aware of the problems of insurgent infiltration and was taking steps to restore people’s faith in government, including plans for new schools and hospitals. “Hearts and minds must be won,” he said in an interview Monday. “If this struggle fails, this country has no future.”
But people complain that landowners and local politicians have done nothing to stop the advance and, in some cases, even assist the militants by giving money to some of the religious schools.
“The government is useless,” said Mr. Ali, the local landlord. “They live happy, secure lives in Lahore. Their children study abroad. They only come here to contest elections.”
The police are left alone to stop the advance. But in Punjab, as in much of the rest of Pakistan, they are spread unevenly, with little presence in rural areas. Out of 160,000 police officers in Punjab, fewer than 60,000 are posted in rural areas, leaving frontier stations in districts virtually unprotected, police officials said.
Locals feel helpless. When a 15-year-old boy vanished from a madrasa in a village near here recently — his classmates said to go on jihad — his uncle could not afford to go look for him, let alone confront the powerful men who run the madrasa.
“We are simple people,” the man said. “What can we do?”
Sabrina Tavernise reported from Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan; Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Peshawar, Pakistan; and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington, Waqar Gillani from Dera Ghazi Khan, and Pir Zubair Shah from Peshawar.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Imperious realities of an ever smaller world
The diverse peoples of the world are being obliged, by ever stronger and more imperious realities, to live together as neighbors. No wonder that so many peoples around the world are recoiling at what they see happening around them. The following two quotations refer to two different perceptual worlds. Putting them next to each other we can see how asymmetric are the understandings of those who could make portentous decisions for millions of people.
On American priorities: “... there are more musicians playing in military bands than there are diplomats working around the globe. The Pentagon’s budget is 24 times larger than the State Department’s and USAID combined . . .” [Dexter Filkins, NYTimes 4/11/09] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/weekinreview/12filkins.html?ref=todayspaper
On Taliban perceptions: "We hate democracy," Sufi told a crowd of thousands of followers in Mingora after the ratification of the Malakand Accord was announced in mid-February. "We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. Islam does not permit democracy or election." [Sufi Muhammad, spokesman for an organization believed to be a front for the Taliban, quoted by The Long War Journal] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/04/analysis_pakistani_t.php
On American priorities: “... there are more musicians playing in military bands than there are diplomats working around the globe. The Pentagon’s budget is 24 times larger than the State Department’s and USAID combined . . .” [Dexter Filkins, NYTimes 4/11/09] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/weekinreview/12filkins.html?ref=todayspaper
On Taliban perceptions: "We hate democracy," Sufi told a crowd of thousands of followers in Mingora after the ratification of the Malakand Accord was announced in mid-February. "We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. Islam does not permit democracy or election." [Sufi Muhammad, spokesman for an organization believed to be a front for the Taliban, quoted by The Long War Journal] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/04/analysis_pakistani_t.php
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Roggio on the Taliban April 11 09
April 11, 2009
Bill Roggio [The Long War Journal] gets his information from personal sources as well as published ones and these days he seems to have the best news on what’s going on in tribal territory – now Taliban territory – in Pakistan. Today’s report is that the Taliban are moving on Buner. His last two reports tell us that the Taliban are expanding their influence in the Tribal Areas, today moving on Buner and yesterday announcing their renunciation of the Malakand Accords previously made with the army in Swat.
Here are the two articles:
=========
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/04/taliban_move_on_bune.php
“Taliban move on Buner despite promise to withdraw.” By Bill Roggio April 10, 2009 9:32 PM
The Taliban takeover of the district of Buner in Pakistan's insurgency-plagued Northwest Frontier Province has accelerated as forces are fanning out through the region unopposed.
Security forces and the tribal lashkars, or militias, have not resisted the Taliban advance. "They have taken control of vast areas in Buner," a witness told Dawn "They are freely moving around while police and other law-enforcement personnel remain confined to their posts."
Police were ordered not to fight the Taliban, an officer said. "We have been asked by our seniors not to interfere with the Taliban," an officer said, while claiming the Taliban carried advanced weapons.
The Taliban are patrolling the main roads in the district and are just outside the main town of Daggar, according to Dawn. Taliban fighters have taken control of the homes of tribal leaders who raised the lashkars and threatened to punish them for opposing the advance.
The local tribes in Buner raised lashkars earlier this week and clashed with the Taliban as they entered the district. Sixteen Taliban fighters, three policemen, and two tribal fighters were reported to have been killed.
Taliban fighters have begun to enforce their radical brand of sharia, or Islamic law, in Buner. "Militants set on fire TV sets, pictures and paintings and audio and video cassettes before the Friday prayers," Dawn reported. "They locked the [Pir Baba] shrine, stopping followers of Pir Baba from visiting the place." Pir Baba was a Sufi saint. The Taliban have targeted Sufi shrines during their takeover of Northwestern Pakistan.
The push to overtake Buner comes just one day after the Taliban agreed to withdraw from Buner. Yesterday, Syed Mohammad, the Malakand Division Commissioner, said the Taliban would pull out of Buner on April 10. Instead the Taliban used the negotiations as cover to finish their push into the defenseless district.
Pakistani tribes unable to resist the Taliban onslaught
Last fall, the Pakistani government and the military encouraged tribal leaders to raise lashkars to oppose the spread of the Taliban. Since the beginning of 2008, Pakistani tribes organized lashkars in regions in Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, Swat, Dir, Buner, and Lakki Marwat. The tribes have had some success in driving the Taliban from local areas by conducting patrols and burning down the homes of Taliban fighters and their supporters, but ultimately failed to halt the Taliban advance.
"The Taliban is more vicious, more motivated, and more capable than the tribes," a US military officer who closely follows the situation in northwestern Pakistan told The Long War Journal. "Time and time again, the Taliban has ruthlessly crushed any resistance. It doesn't matter if it is the tribes, the police, the Frontier Corps, or the Army, the Taliban continues to gain ground."
The Taliban have viciously responded to efforts by tribal leaders to oppose the spread of extremism. Tribal opposition has been violently attacked and defeated in Peshawar, Dir, Arakzai, Khyber, and Swat. Suicide bombers have struck at tribal meetings held at mosques, schools, hotels, and homes.
The Taliban have also made examples of local leaders who have dared to resist. In Swat, the Taliban executed a local tribal leader named Pir Samiullah, then returned to the village to dig up his body and hang it in the town square. The villagers were warned not to remove his body or they would face the same fate.
Samiullah's tribe was the showcase for Pakistan's "awakening," the indigenous tribal uprising against the Taliban modeled after Iraq's Sunni resistance to al Qaeda and allied jihadi groups. The Swat tribal resistance collapsed with Samiullah's death and desecration.
Problems with manpower, training, geography, coordination between the tribes, and support from the military and government plague the tribal efforts to oppose the Taliban.
The Pakistani tribes are operating as distinct, local fighting forces with no central coordination, while the Taliban can coordinate their activities across the northwest and even from inside eastern Afghanistan. The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud's unified Taliban command, was established to share manpower and resources and to coordinate activities.
"The tribes are limited by geography, the TTP [Pakistani Taliban] is not," a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal in September 2008 [see LWJ report: Pakistan engages the tribes in effort to fight the Taliban]. "Moreover, the Taliban out-number and out-gun them by more than 20 to 1. The tribes may achieve tactics success in some areas, but likely will fail to achieve strategic success."
The problems are complicated by the tribes' unwillingness to cooperate with the government and the military. "We keep the government away," a senior tribal leader in Lakki Marwat told Geo News last fall.
The tribes fear cooperation with the government will further turn the Taliban and sympathetic tribes against them. "If we became part of the government they would become an excuse, a liability, a rallying cry against us," the Lakki Marwat tribal leader said. Similar sentiments were expressed by Buner tribal leaders earlier this week. This attitude prevents the military from providing the needed security to oppose massed Taliban attacks.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/04/swat_peace_agreement.php
“Swat peace agreement collapses”
By Bill Roggio April 9, 2009 8:49 AM
The Swat Taliban have withdrawn from the two-month-old peace agreement, citing the central government's unwillingness to sign the legislation that will impose sharia courts in the Malakand Division.
The peace agreement, known as the Malakand Accord, put an end to military operations in Swat and the surrounding regions and established sharia, or Islamic courts. The Malakand Accord was imposed in Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, Chitral, and Kohistan, a region that encompasses more than one-third of the Northwest Frontier Province.
Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the radical pro-Taliban Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammed [TNSM or the Movement for the Enforcement of Mohammed's Law], recently called off the peace agreement and ended all peace camps in the region. Sufi blamed President Asif Ali Zardari for failing to sign into federal law the legislation to establish sharia courts and blamed Zardari for any repercussions.
"From now on, President Zardari will be responsible for any situation in Swat," Sufi said, according to Dawn. "The provincial government is sincere and our agreement with the provincial government is intact, but we are ending our peace camp."
Sufi claimed to have eschewed violence after being released from prison in November 2007 as a condition of a similar failed peace agreement in Swat. Sufi led more than 10,000 Pakistanis into Afghanistan after the US invasion in 2001. Mullah Fazlullah, the radical anti-government cleric behind the insurgency and terror attacks in Swat, is his son-in-law.
The Swat Taliban and Sufi's TNSM maintained very close links to the radical administration of the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, the pro-Taliban mosque in the heart of Islamabad whose followers enforced sharia and kidnapped policemen just one mile from the seat of government. The Pakistani military stormed the Lal Masjid in July 2007 after a several-month standoff. More than a hundred followers and more than a dozen soldiers were killed in the battle.
In recent interviews, Sufi has declared his hatred for democracy and the West, and described Mullah Omar's regime in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 as "ideal."
Sufi is the father-in-law of Mullah Fazlullah, the Swat Taliban leader who is responsible for nearly two years of bloody violence in Swat that killed hundreds police and paramilitary troops and caused the exodus of more than 500,000 of Swat's estimated 1.5 million residents. During the fighting between the Swat Taliban and government forces, the Swat Taliban targeted police officers, tribal leaders, and politicians. Family members of government officials and tribal leaders were killed, and their homes were torched. Suicide attacks and beheadings were commonplace in Swat during the fighting.
The military ceased operations in Swat in February 2009 after it failed to dislodge the Taliban. Sufi brokered a peace agreement between the government and the Taliban. Under the agreement, the government has committed to implement sharia, end the military campaign, and release Taliban prisoners, while the Taliban agreed to end attacks. But the Taliban has violated the agreement several times: the Taliban kidnapped the district coordinating officer and his bodyguards, murdered two soldiers, and captured a Frontier Corps officer and several of his men. In addition, the Taliban never gave up its weapons and continues to conduct armed patrols and manage checkpoints in some regions of Swat. Yet the government has failed to respond to these violations of the accord and instead has released more than 50 Taliban leaders and fighters from custody.
The collapse of the Swat accord takes place as the Swat Taliban are working to take the neighboring district of Buner by force. More than 100 Taliban fighters entered Buner on April 5. Just two days later, the Taliban clashed with local militias and police who are attempting to halt the Taliban advance. Five police and tribal fighters and 16 Taliban were reported killed in the clash, but the Taliban have continued to move through Buner.
Bill Roggio [The Long War Journal] gets his information from personal sources as well as published ones and these days he seems to have the best news on what’s going on in tribal territory – now Taliban territory – in Pakistan. Today’s report is that the Taliban are moving on Buner. His last two reports tell us that the Taliban are expanding their influence in the Tribal Areas, today moving on Buner and yesterday announcing their renunciation of the Malakand Accords previously made with the army in Swat.
Here are the two articles:
=========
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/04/taliban_move_on_bune.php
“Taliban move on Buner despite promise to withdraw.” By Bill Roggio April 10, 2009 9:32 PM
The Taliban takeover of the district of Buner in Pakistan's insurgency-plagued Northwest Frontier Province has accelerated as forces are fanning out through the region unopposed.
Security forces and the tribal lashkars, or militias, have not resisted the Taliban advance. "They have taken control of vast areas in Buner," a witness told Dawn "They are freely moving around while police and other law-enforcement personnel remain confined to their posts."
Police were ordered not to fight the Taliban, an officer said. "We have been asked by our seniors not to interfere with the Taliban," an officer said, while claiming the Taliban carried advanced weapons.
The Taliban are patrolling the main roads in the district and are just outside the main town of Daggar, according to Dawn. Taliban fighters have taken control of the homes of tribal leaders who raised the lashkars and threatened to punish them for opposing the advance.
The local tribes in Buner raised lashkars earlier this week and clashed with the Taliban as they entered the district. Sixteen Taliban fighters, three policemen, and two tribal fighters were reported to have been killed.
Taliban fighters have begun to enforce their radical brand of sharia, or Islamic law, in Buner. "Militants set on fire TV sets, pictures and paintings and audio and video cassettes before the Friday prayers," Dawn reported. "They locked the [Pir Baba] shrine, stopping followers of Pir Baba from visiting the place." Pir Baba was a Sufi saint. The Taliban have targeted Sufi shrines during their takeover of Northwestern Pakistan.
The push to overtake Buner comes just one day after the Taliban agreed to withdraw from Buner. Yesterday, Syed Mohammad, the Malakand Division Commissioner, said the Taliban would pull out of Buner on April 10. Instead the Taliban used the negotiations as cover to finish their push into the defenseless district.
Pakistani tribes unable to resist the Taliban onslaught
Last fall, the Pakistani government and the military encouraged tribal leaders to raise lashkars to oppose the spread of the Taliban. Since the beginning of 2008, Pakistani tribes organized lashkars in regions in Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, Swat, Dir, Buner, and Lakki Marwat. The tribes have had some success in driving the Taliban from local areas by conducting patrols and burning down the homes of Taliban fighters and their supporters, but ultimately failed to halt the Taliban advance.
"The Taliban is more vicious, more motivated, and more capable than the tribes," a US military officer who closely follows the situation in northwestern Pakistan told The Long War Journal. "Time and time again, the Taliban has ruthlessly crushed any resistance. It doesn't matter if it is the tribes, the police, the Frontier Corps, or the Army, the Taliban continues to gain ground."
The Taliban have viciously responded to efforts by tribal leaders to oppose the spread of extremism. Tribal opposition has been violently attacked and defeated in Peshawar, Dir, Arakzai, Khyber, and Swat. Suicide bombers have struck at tribal meetings held at mosques, schools, hotels, and homes.
The Taliban have also made examples of local leaders who have dared to resist. In Swat, the Taliban executed a local tribal leader named Pir Samiullah, then returned to the village to dig up his body and hang it in the town square. The villagers were warned not to remove his body or they would face the same fate.
Samiullah's tribe was the showcase for Pakistan's "awakening," the indigenous tribal uprising against the Taliban modeled after Iraq's Sunni resistance to al Qaeda and allied jihadi groups. The Swat tribal resistance collapsed with Samiullah's death and desecration.
Problems with manpower, training, geography, coordination between the tribes, and support from the military and government plague the tribal efforts to oppose the Taliban.
The Pakistani tribes are operating as distinct, local fighting forces with no central coordination, while the Taliban can coordinate their activities across the northwest and even from inside eastern Afghanistan. The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud's unified Taliban command, was established to share manpower and resources and to coordinate activities.
"The tribes are limited by geography, the TTP [Pakistani Taliban] is not," a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal in September 2008 [see LWJ report: Pakistan engages the tribes in effort to fight the Taliban]. "Moreover, the Taliban out-number and out-gun them by more than 20 to 1. The tribes may achieve tactics success in some areas, but likely will fail to achieve strategic success."
The problems are complicated by the tribes' unwillingness to cooperate with the government and the military. "We keep the government away," a senior tribal leader in Lakki Marwat told Geo News last fall.
The tribes fear cooperation with the government will further turn the Taliban and sympathetic tribes against them. "If we became part of the government they would become an excuse, a liability, a rallying cry against us," the Lakki Marwat tribal leader said. Similar sentiments were expressed by Buner tribal leaders earlier this week. This attitude prevents the military from providing the needed security to oppose massed Taliban attacks.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/04/swat_peace_agreement.php
“Swat peace agreement collapses”
By Bill Roggio April 9, 2009 8:49 AM
The Swat Taliban have withdrawn from the two-month-old peace agreement, citing the central government's unwillingness to sign the legislation that will impose sharia courts in the Malakand Division.
The peace agreement, known as the Malakand Accord, put an end to military operations in Swat and the surrounding regions and established sharia, or Islamic courts. The Malakand Accord was imposed in Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, Chitral, and Kohistan, a region that encompasses more than one-third of the Northwest Frontier Province.
Sufi Mohammed, the leader of the radical pro-Taliban Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammed [TNSM or the Movement for the Enforcement of Mohammed's Law], recently called off the peace agreement and ended all peace camps in the region. Sufi blamed President Asif Ali Zardari for failing to sign into federal law the legislation to establish sharia courts and blamed Zardari for any repercussions.
"From now on, President Zardari will be responsible for any situation in Swat," Sufi said, according to Dawn. "The provincial government is sincere and our agreement with the provincial government is intact, but we are ending our peace camp."
Sufi claimed to have eschewed violence after being released from prison in November 2007 as a condition of a similar failed peace agreement in Swat. Sufi led more than 10,000 Pakistanis into Afghanistan after the US invasion in 2001. Mullah Fazlullah, the radical anti-government cleric behind the insurgency and terror attacks in Swat, is his son-in-law.
The Swat Taliban and Sufi's TNSM maintained very close links to the radical administration of the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, the pro-Taliban mosque in the heart of Islamabad whose followers enforced sharia and kidnapped policemen just one mile from the seat of government. The Pakistani military stormed the Lal Masjid in July 2007 after a several-month standoff. More than a hundred followers and more than a dozen soldiers were killed in the battle.
In recent interviews, Sufi has declared his hatred for democracy and the West, and described Mullah Omar's regime in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 as "ideal."
Sufi is the father-in-law of Mullah Fazlullah, the Swat Taliban leader who is responsible for nearly two years of bloody violence in Swat that killed hundreds police and paramilitary troops and caused the exodus of more than 500,000 of Swat's estimated 1.5 million residents. During the fighting between the Swat Taliban and government forces, the Swat Taliban targeted police officers, tribal leaders, and politicians. Family members of government officials and tribal leaders were killed, and their homes were torched. Suicide attacks and beheadings were commonplace in Swat during the fighting.
The military ceased operations in Swat in February 2009 after it failed to dislodge the Taliban. Sufi brokered a peace agreement between the government and the Taliban. Under the agreement, the government has committed to implement sharia, end the military campaign, and release Taliban prisoners, while the Taliban agreed to end attacks. But the Taliban has violated the agreement several times: the Taliban kidnapped the district coordinating officer and his bodyguards, murdered two soldiers, and captured a Frontier Corps officer and several of his men. In addition, the Taliban never gave up its weapons and continues to conduct armed patrols and manage checkpoints in some regions of Swat. Yet the government has failed to respond to these violations of the accord and instead has released more than 50 Taliban leaders and fighters from custody.
The collapse of the Swat accord takes place as the Swat Taliban are working to take the neighboring district of Buner by force. More than 100 Taliban fighters entered Buner on April 5. Just two days later, the Taliban clashed with local militias and police who are attempting to halt the Taliban advance. Five police and tribal fighters and 16 Taliban were reported killed in the clash, but the Taliban have continued to move through Buner.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Egregious criminality of the Iranian government
Today, 60 Minutes aired an interview with an Iranian who was imprisoned and tortured in Iran because he was photographed in a demonstration and his picture was placed on the cover of the Economist Magazine. Ahmad Batebi was one of what is believed to be thousands who are held in Iranian prisons for political reasons. Not only that, they torture their prisoners. And they make the process of execution as painful and prolonged as possible.
Batebi reports that when he was in prison they beat him on the feet and back with a cable and beat him on the testicles. When he fainted they slashed his skin and rubbed salt into his wounds.
Other forms of torture that were mentioned by 60 Minutes:
• Hanging by pulling the victims up slowly so their necks would not be broken but would be awake as they strangled to death.
• Partly burying people in the ground before they are stoned by rocks that are not too big so that the victim will die slowly.
The point seems in some cases to be to force confessions and in other cases to terrorize the populace from displaying any dissent.
Wherever such brutal practices take place they deserve the highest condemnation of the world. The claim to be acting on God's behalf, as the Iranian state avers, adds to the egregiousness of their criminality.
Batebi reports that when he was in prison they beat him on the feet and back with a cable and beat him on the testicles. When he fainted they slashed his skin and rubbed salt into his wounds.
Other forms of torture that were mentioned by 60 Minutes:
• Hanging by pulling the victims up slowly so their necks would not be broken but would be awake as they strangled to death.
• Partly burying people in the ground before they are stoned by rocks that are not too big so that the victim will die slowly.
The point seems in some cases to be to force confessions and in other cases to terrorize the populace from displaying any dissent.
Wherever such brutal practices take place they deserve the highest condemnation of the world. The claim to be acting on God's behalf, as the Iranian state avers, adds to the egregiousness of their criminality.
Another list displaying the conflicted society of Pakistan
Reuters today provides a list of the "militant violence" that has taken place in Pakistan since December 2007. It is a convenient list because it reveals how many targets the extremist insurgents have. The list does not include many other occasions of abuse of human beings -- like the flogging of a 17 year old girl in Swat. We can only grieve for those who have to live in such a world. For most Americans it seems so alien, so far away -- while in the mean time they have their own problems: gunmen lay in wait for police officers in Philadelphia and an estranged man attacks the only world he knew, a center for habiltating immigrants. RLC
TIMELINE - Attacks destabilise strife-torn
Sun Apr 5, 2009 10:50am BST
(Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up in a religious centre for minority Shi'ite Muslims in central
Militant violence has surged in nuclear-armed
October 19, 2007 - At least 139 people are killed in a suicide bomb attack on former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's motorcade as she is driven through the financial capital of
December 21 - A suicide bomber kills at least 41 people in a mosque in Charsadda district, in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), during the Muslim Eid festival prayers.
December 27 - Bhutto is killed in a gun and bomb attack after a rally in northern garrison town of
February 29, 2008 - A suicide attack on a police funeral kills 40 people in the turbulent northwestern district of Swat, 160 km (100 miles) from
March 2 - At least 40 people are killed as suicide bomber attacks a gathering of tribal elders in Darra Adam Khel, a northwestern tribal region.
March 11 - Two suicide car bombers kill 24, most of them in an attack on a government security office in the country's second largest city,
March 15 - A bomb attack at an Italian restaurant in
August 19 - Suspected suicide bomber kills 23 in compound of hospital in Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP, southwest of
August 21 - Two suicide bombers blow themselves up outside the main defence industry complex in Wah, 30 km (18 miles) northwest of
September 20 - Suicide truck bomb attack blamed on Islamist militants kills 55 people, destroys Marriott hotel in
December 5 - A car bomb kills at least 20 people and wounds scores in
December 28 - At least 30 people are killed in a suicide car bomb blast at a polling station near Buner, in the NWFP, during a by-election for a provincial assembly.
February 5, 2009 - At least 24 people are killed in a suspected suicide bombing near Shi'ite mosque in Dera Ghazi Khan, central
February 20 - Suicide bomber kills 27 people and wounds 65 in an attack on a funeral procession for a Shi'ite Muslim killed a day earlier in Dera Ismail Khan.
March 3 - Gunmen attack a bus carrying
March 27 - A suicide bomber kills 37 people when he blows himself up in a crowded Pakistani mosque near the Afghan border. Among the dead are 14 policemen and paramilitary soldiers.
March 30 - Militants armed with guns and grenades storm a police training centre in
April 5 - A suicide bomber blows himself up in a religious centre for minority Shi'ite Muslims in Chakwal in central
(Writing by David Cutler and Carl Bagh; Additional writing by Jijo Jacob, Editing by Dean Yates)
© Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.
Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Another assassination in the Russian sphere of influence: What does it mean?
The assassination in Dubai of a former Chechen opponent of the current Kremlin chosen leader of Chechnya reveals how actively President Kadyrov is working to ensure there is no further question about his power. Chechnya, which fought so vigorously against Russian domination, twice in recent years, and many times before that, no longer exists: It is now part of Russia. And one wonders if that whole regime has gone into the hands of a kind of mafia organization, that cannot bear to have its reporters reveal what they know (and so have to exterminate Anna Politkovskaia) and cannot bear to have a remotely potential rival remain alive, even in another country (general, Sulim B. Yamadayev; his brother Ruslan; and Umar S. Israilov).
But there is another reason to wonder if not worry about this report: the Dubai source for this article was not revealed. Is there a risk of telling the truth there?
New York TimesMarch 31, 2009
Another Foe of Chechen Leader Shot Dead Abroad
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
MOSCOW — A former general in Chechnya and foe of the republic’s Kremlin-backed president was shot over the weekend in the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, and the police there said Monday that he had died.
The former general, Sulim B. Yamadayev, was shot at least three times outside an elite apartment complex in
The identity of the man who was killed was the subject of conflicting reports. Officials of the hospital in
The attack evokes others on Chechens, in
The Kremlin has invested Mr. Kadyrov with almost unchecked authority in a bid to return stability to
He has also built a powerful security force that has all but crushed
In January, a Chechen hit man tracked down and killed Umar S. Israilov, a former bodyguard of Mr. Kadyrov, who had received asylum in
Mr. Kadyrov’s government has denied responsibility for these deaths and others, and Alvi A. Karimov, Mr. Kadyrov’s spokesman, said Monday that the president had no information about the killing in
Sulim Yamadayev, who until last year commanded his own heavily armed fighting force in
A separatist fighter in
Mr. Yamadayev ultimately emerged as something of an independent power center in
Soon, Mr. Yamadayev was stripped of his command and charged with involvement in kidnappings and murders, though there have been persistent reports that he commanded his Vostok troops in fighting last August during
According to Russian news reports citing relatives of Mr. Yamadayev, he, his wife and their six children left
Hands "smeared with the blood of their own people"
Despite Omar Hassan al-Bashir's involvement in the killings and abuses of thousands of people in Darfur he has been welcomed and feted by the leaders of the Arab world. What must not be said in that group is that none of them holds power by popular suffrage. The former Kuwaiti minister of information said it well. Referring to the one thing that the Arab leadership can agree on -- that is, to support Sudan dictator al-Bashir in the face of indictment by the International Criminal Court -- he put the issue succinctly:
“The leaders’ position is their own self-defense, because they don’t want to open the door to an international tribunal of any kind that will open the file of any crimes they committed against humanity or against their own people. Most of those regimes are actually dictatorships, and most of them have their hands smeared with the blood of their own people.”
It's refreshing to see someone in the Middle East call a spade a spade. What I wonder now is, what kind of future does this guy have if he plans to live in the Arab world?
[Click on the title for a link to the source.]
“The leaders’ position is their own self-defense, because they don’t want to open the door to an international tribunal of any kind that will open the file of any crimes they committed against humanity or against their own people. Most of those regimes are actually dictatorships, and most of them have their hands smeared with the blood of their own people.”
It's refreshing to see someone in the Middle East call a spade a spade. What I wonder now is, what kind of future does this guy have if he plans to live in the Arab world?
[Click on the title for a link to the source.]
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tajikistan's troubles are mounting [Wired]
Below I highlight some issues of interest. RLC
“Central Asia's cold war over heat” Pulitzer Center Wired
By Ilan Greenberg
March 26, 2009
Wired
Ilan Greenberg, a journalist based in New York, lived in Central Asia from 2002 to 2007. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting contributed funding for the reporting of this article from Khojand, Tajikistan.
"This is why we have no electricity, no water," says Alovutdin Sololiev, waving at the broken-down traffic lights as he speeds into a major intersection, asserting a right of way not recognised by other drivers. His gesture extends from the dead signals to the belching little gas generators with rubber hoses, which colonise the pavements like a maze of octopuses stranded on cement. "Nobody wants to stop and figure out rules."
Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago, most of Tajikistan – including big cities like Khojand – has little access to electricity or running water for the majority of the year. Tajikistan generates electricity from hydroelectric dams, which don't work when the country's alpine lakes freeze during winter months. Without electricity, the country can't run the Soviet-era pump technology that delivers clean water to cities, villages, and farms.
Central Asia's political problems compound Tajikistan's resource problems. A deal it struck this winter to buy electricity from neighbouring Turkmenistan, for example, was terminated by Uzbekistan, which controls a critical piece of the grid between the two countries. The governments of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are currently having back-room talks, according to diplomats in the region, but the two countries have long been engaged in a resource-driven cold war. Each side has multiple grievances against the other, but key among them are Tajikistan's demands that Uzbekistan supply its energy and Uzbekistan's demand that Tajikistan release more water downstream.
The volatile resource conflict flares beyond Tajikistan across Central Asia, the massive centre of the Eurasian continent which stretches into Russia. However, unlike Europe's recent energy crises, which were rooted in Russia's foreign policy goals, Central Asia's energy issues are mostly homegrown. The region is rich in oil and gas – and in Tajikistan, rich in water – but hampered by state rivalries, quixotically drawn borders, authoritarian modes of government and daunting pipeline problems informed by geographical isolation and crippling geopolitical calculations.
While the problems begin at home, Russia's role in the politics of energy in Central Asia is starting to grow. “Russia in various ways has started to insert itself into these intra-regional power conflicts,” says Katherine Hardin, senior director for Russia and Caspian research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultancy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Russia is Central Asia's major customer for natural gas and weakening demand from Europe is likely to affect gas deliveries to Russia, said Hardin.
Russia sells Europe all the gas Europe will buy, gaining foreign currency and profit in the process, but it doesn't have enough gas to meet both European and domestic demand. Russia therefore buys Central Asian gas on the cheap, using its control of the supply route to Europe as a bargaining chip to demand low prices, and then marks up the gas and re-exports it to Europe. Slackening European demand for gas means Russia can meet most of Europe's needs with its own gas supplies, and that has pushed down demand for Central Asian gas. That, in turn, could jeopardise a large portion of some Central Asian governments' revenues. "It's interesting to me that we're seeing Gazprom sticking itself into the region, and to ask how that will play out," said Hardin.
Russian economic difficulties are poised to exacerbate the region's resource conflict. The global financial crisis imperils the payments from Russia on which Central Asia relies, potentially destabilising regimes, expanding powerful criminal networks, and disrupting Nato strategies in Afghanistan, which shares a long northern border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In a recently released report widely cited by Western diplomats here, the International Crisis Group concluded that there is a risk of social unrest in Tajikistan, and that the country is no longer a “bulwark against the spread of extremism and violence from Afghanistan.”
Back in Khojand, Sololiev drives his car through the city's dangerously laissez-faire intersections to pick up home repair supplies. His visit to Tajikistan is a brief one: he has returned from a job as a construction worker in Russia to spend March with his family, but plans to return to Russia next month, when he hopes Russia's massive building spree will resume. This pattern of work is not uncommon. More than a million Tajik migrants work in Russia's seasonal construction industry, as well as in Russian factories and in its agriculture sector. According to the International Monetary Fund, half of Tajikistan's GDP is derived from the income of workers in Russia.
Tajikistan has almost no jobs to offer returning migrant workers. Sololiev knows of only two factories in Khojand, Tajikistan's second largest city: a spirits factory, and an Italian-Tajik jeans manufacturing co-venture. The government has promised to hire 5,000 workers to build one of two new planned dams, but wages are expected to be low. The energy problem, meanwhile, has encouraged an across-the-board lack of business investment. Money from pay cheques have been poured into home repairs and used cars imported from Russia and Europe, but without electricity in winter, few returning migrants have started new businesses.
“How can I work in Tajikistan without electricity? I have to go back to Russia. Whether there is work in Russia for me is something I can't think about. Let the Russians think about it,” said Sololiev, still driving his car, newly purchased.
See the story as it ran at Wired.co.uk
For related reporting and dispatches from the field in Tajikistan visit the Tajikistan: Winter of Discontent project page.
Tajikistan: Winter of Discontent is part of our Food Insecurity project that includes Nigeria: Oil Rich but Hungry and Stalking a Wheat Killer.
“Central Asia's cold war over heat” Pulitzer Center Wired
By Ilan Greenberg
March 26, 2009
Wired
Ilan Greenberg, a journalist based in New York, lived in Central Asia from 2002 to 2007. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting contributed funding for the reporting of this article from Khojand, Tajikistan.
"This is why we have no electricity, no water," says Alovutdin Sololiev, waving at the broken-down traffic lights as he speeds into a major intersection, asserting a right of way not recognised by other drivers. His gesture extends from the dead signals to the belching little gas generators with rubber hoses, which colonise the pavements like a maze of octopuses stranded on cement. "Nobody wants to stop and figure out rules."
Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union almost 20 years ago, most of Tajikistan – including big cities like Khojand – has little access to electricity or running water for the majority of the year. Tajikistan generates electricity from hydroelectric dams, which don't work when the country's alpine lakes freeze during winter months. Without electricity, the country can't run the Soviet-era pump technology that delivers clean water to cities, villages, and farms.
Central Asia's political problems compound Tajikistan's resource problems. A deal it struck this winter to buy electricity from neighbouring Turkmenistan, for example, was terminated by Uzbekistan, which controls a critical piece of the grid between the two countries. The governments of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are currently having back-room talks, according to diplomats in the region, but the two countries have long been engaged in a resource-driven cold war. Each side has multiple grievances against the other, but key among them are Tajikistan's demands that Uzbekistan supply its energy and Uzbekistan's demand that Tajikistan release more water downstream.
The volatile resource conflict flares beyond Tajikistan across Central Asia, the massive centre of the Eurasian continent which stretches into Russia. However, unlike Europe's recent energy crises, which were rooted in Russia's foreign policy goals, Central Asia's energy issues are mostly homegrown. The region is rich in oil and gas – and in Tajikistan, rich in water – but hampered by state rivalries, quixotically drawn borders, authoritarian modes of government and daunting pipeline problems informed by geographical isolation and crippling geopolitical calculations.
While the problems begin at home, Russia's role in the politics of energy in Central Asia is starting to grow. “Russia in various ways has started to insert itself into these intra-regional power conflicts,” says Katherine Hardin, senior director for Russia and Caspian research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultancy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Russia is Central Asia's major customer for natural gas and weakening demand from Europe is likely to affect gas deliveries to Russia, said Hardin.
Russia sells Europe all the gas Europe will buy, gaining foreign currency and profit in the process, but it doesn't have enough gas to meet both European and domestic demand. Russia therefore buys Central Asian gas on the cheap, using its control of the supply route to Europe as a bargaining chip to demand low prices, and then marks up the gas and re-exports it to Europe. Slackening European demand for gas means Russia can meet most of Europe's needs with its own gas supplies, and that has pushed down demand for Central Asian gas. That, in turn, could jeopardise a large portion of some Central Asian governments' revenues. "It's interesting to me that we're seeing Gazprom sticking itself into the region, and to ask how that will play out," said Hardin.
Russian economic difficulties are poised to exacerbate the region's resource conflict. The global financial crisis imperils the payments from Russia on which Central Asia relies, potentially destabilising regimes, expanding powerful criminal networks, and disrupting Nato strategies in Afghanistan, which shares a long northern border with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In a recently released report widely cited by Western diplomats here, the International Crisis Group concluded that there is a risk of social unrest in Tajikistan, and that the country is no longer a “bulwark against the spread of extremism and violence from Afghanistan.”
Back in Khojand, Sololiev drives his car through the city's dangerously laissez-faire intersections to pick up home repair supplies. His visit to Tajikistan is a brief one: he has returned from a job as a construction worker in Russia to spend March with his family, but plans to return to Russia next month, when he hopes Russia's massive building spree will resume. This pattern of work is not uncommon. More than a million Tajik migrants work in Russia's seasonal construction industry, as well as in Russian factories and in its agriculture sector. According to the International Monetary Fund, half of Tajikistan's GDP is derived from the income of workers in Russia.
Tajikistan has almost no jobs to offer returning migrant workers. Sololiev knows of only two factories in Khojand, Tajikistan's second largest city: a spirits factory, and an Italian-Tajik jeans manufacturing co-venture. The government has promised to hire 5,000 workers to build one of two new planned dams, but wages are expected to be low. The energy problem, meanwhile, has encouraged an across-the-board lack of business investment. Money from pay cheques have been poured into home repairs and used cars imported from Russia and Europe, but without electricity in winter, few returning migrants have started new businesses.
“How can I work in Tajikistan without electricity? I have to go back to Russia. Whether there is work in Russia for me is something I can't think about. Let the Russians think about it,” said Sololiev, still driving his car, newly purchased.
See the story as it ran at Wired.co.uk
For related reporting and dispatches from the field in Tajikistan visit the Tajikistan: Winter of Discontent project page.
Tajikistan: Winter of Discontent is part of our Food Insecurity project that includes Nigeria: Oil Rich but Hungry and Stalking a Wheat Killer.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Brahimi on Sri Lanka: "A Slaughter Waiting to Happen"
Lakhdar Brahimi, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (from 3 October 2001 to 31 December 2004), and before that the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Afghanistan from July 1997 until October 1999, has written a special appeal on behalf of civilians caught in the last throes of the Sri Lankan civil war. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are now desperate and using civilians as cover rather than consenting to the situation they have, namely, total defeat. RLC
Here is his article from the International Herald Tribune.
A slaughter waiting to happen
By Lakhdar Brahimi
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The already severe humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka is on the brink of catastrophe. It will take the quick arrival of humanitarian relief and high-level international political muscle to bring the nightmarish situation to an end and prevent a slaughter.
An estimated 150,000 civilians are now trapped in a tiny pocket of land between Sri Lankan military forces, whose artillery shells regularly fall among them, and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who shoot at them if they try to escape. Food, clean water and medical assistance are all increasingly scarce.
According to U.N. figures, 2,300 civilians have already died and at least 6,500 have been injured since January. Some 500 children have been killed and over 1,400 injured. What happens to the rest of those caught in the middle of the government’s onslaught and the Tigers’ fight to the death depends not only on the two parties but on the international response as well.
The crisis is born of acts by both sides that most probably amount to serious violations of humanitarian law and perhaps to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
As it has withdrawn before the government forces, the LTTE has sought refuge in the civilian population. It has been holding men, women and children as hostages, forcibly recruiting them and using them as human shields.
The government has responded with attacks that independent observers describe as indiscriminate. Distinguishing combatants from noncombatants has become impossible with fighters and civilians packed so closely together. Alarming reports are coming in that government forces are shelling even those areas they themselves have declared ‘‘no-fire zones.’’
If both groups do not end the fighting immediately, the lives of tens of thousands of civilians are at risk. Both parties must understand that the continuation of their current actions is not acceptable.
The situation is even more tragic because it represents an unnecessarily devastating coda to a war that is already over.
Totally overwhelmed by government forces, the LTTE has lost. Holding civilian hostages and showing complete disregard for the Tamil population that it claims to want to liberate will not resurrect its ability to fight this war.
Nor will the annihilation of thousands of civilians secure the government’s long-cherished victory over terrorism. On the contrary, the indiscriminate killing of its own citizens will make it harder for Colombo to seal its military victory with post-conflict reconciliation and development of the Tamil-majority north.
Opinion among the millions of Tamils around the world, especially those in southern India, is being dangerously radicalized by images and stories of intense civilian suffering.
The international community should not let the already desperate situation end up an all-out humanitarian catastrophe. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should insist on immediate access for U.N. staff to no-fire zones in order to assess the needs of the population. He should appoint a special representative to work with the government of Sri Lanka and all the relevant parties to guarantee the rights and protection of the endangered civilians.
On the political side, other international leaders — in particular, President Barack Obama, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders from Asia, the nonaligned movement and the Commonwealth — must urgently use their leverage to convince the Sri Lankan government to stop its offensive.
They should help shift the government from a strategy of total annihilation to one of containment by addressing government fears that LTTE leaders will use a pause in the fighting to flee and regroup.
In addition to assisting the U.N. in the evacuation of civilians, all these friends of Sri Lanka should commit themselves to supervise the surrender of the LTTE, with guarantees of the physical security of those who surrender, backed up by the presence of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees wherever the military receives civilians or surrendered fighters.
The United States and India could also offer to increase naval surveillance in order to prevent remaining Tiger fighters from escaping by sea.
None of these measures will be easy to achieve. The government and the LTTE are locked in a war to the last man and seem oblivious to the civilian death toll around them.
The international community has the means to act; it must not, it cannot fail to act. Being a spectator when 150,000 thousand people are trapped in a death zone is not an option.
Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to the U.N. secretary general, is a board member of the International Crisis Group.
Here is his article from the International Herald Tribune.
A slaughter waiting to happen
By Lakhdar Brahimi
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The already severe humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka is on the brink of catastrophe. It will take the quick arrival of humanitarian relief and high-level international political muscle to bring the nightmarish situation to an end and prevent a slaughter.
An estimated 150,000 civilians are now trapped in a tiny pocket of land between Sri Lankan military forces, whose artillery shells regularly fall among them, and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who shoot at them if they try to escape. Food, clean water and medical assistance are all increasingly scarce.
According to U.N. figures, 2,300 civilians have already died and at least 6,500 have been injured since January. Some 500 children have been killed and over 1,400 injured. What happens to the rest of those caught in the middle of the government’s onslaught and the Tigers’ fight to the death depends not only on the two parties but on the international response as well.
The crisis is born of acts by both sides that most probably amount to serious violations of humanitarian law and perhaps to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
As it has withdrawn before the government forces, the LTTE has sought refuge in the civilian population. It has been holding men, women and children as hostages, forcibly recruiting them and using them as human shields.
The government has responded with attacks that independent observers describe as indiscriminate. Distinguishing combatants from noncombatants has become impossible with fighters and civilians packed so closely together. Alarming reports are coming in that government forces are shelling even those areas they themselves have declared ‘‘no-fire zones.’’
If both groups do not end the fighting immediately, the lives of tens of thousands of civilians are at risk. Both parties must understand that the continuation of their current actions is not acceptable.
The situation is even more tragic because it represents an unnecessarily devastating coda to a war that is already over.
Totally overwhelmed by government forces, the LTTE has lost. Holding civilian hostages and showing complete disregard for the Tamil population that it claims to want to liberate will not resurrect its ability to fight this war.
Nor will the annihilation of thousands of civilians secure the government’s long-cherished victory over terrorism. On the contrary, the indiscriminate killing of its own citizens will make it harder for Colombo to seal its military victory with post-conflict reconciliation and development of the Tamil-majority north.
Opinion among the millions of Tamils around the world, especially those in southern India, is being dangerously radicalized by images and stories of intense civilian suffering.
The international community should not let the already desperate situation end up an all-out humanitarian catastrophe. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should insist on immediate access for U.N. staff to no-fire zones in order to assess the needs of the population. He should appoint a special representative to work with the government of Sri Lanka and all the relevant parties to guarantee the rights and protection of the endangered civilians.
On the political side, other international leaders — in particular, President Barack Obama, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders from Asia, the nonaligned movement and the Commonwealth — must urgently use their leverage to convince the Sri Lankan government to stop its offensive.
They should help shift the government from a strategy of total annihilation to one of containment by addressing government fears that LTTE leaders will use a pause in the fighting to flee and regroup.
In addition to assisting the U.N. in the evacuation of civilians, all these friends of Sri Lanka should commit themselves to supervise the surrender of the LTTE, with guarantees of the physical security of those who surrender, backed up by the presence of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees wherever the military receives civilians or surrendered fighters.
The United States and India could also offer to increase naval surveillance in order to prevent remaining Tiger fighters from escaping by sea.
None of these measures will be easy to achieve. The government and the LTTE are locked in a war to the last man and seem oblivious to the civilian death toll around them.
The international community has the means to act; it must not, it cannot fail to act. Being a spectator when 150,000 thousand people are trapped in a death zone is not an option.
Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to the U.N. secretary general, is a board member of the International Crisis Group.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Stratfor's report on the mosque bombing 3/27/09
Stratfor has announced a brutal bombing of a mosque in Jamrud, which lies on the road to Khaybar in what is effectively Tribal territory. I think Stratfor's suggestion that the Taliban are taking a risk here is savvy. The signs that they are revving up the resistance activity says they expect a fight and may be unsure how things will go. Of course they [like everyone in the fray] will claim they are ready and can handle the new challenge -- for them it is of course the expected arrival of more American / NATO troops in a few months. I wonder if the drone attacks don't worry them also. Everyone says that there will always be new recruits for the battle, but I wonder if there will always be a sufficient supply of effective leaders -- the ones the drones are attacking. We'll see. Thanks to my friends for cluing me to this report. RLC
[Click on the title to link to Stratfor's report.]
[Click on the title to link to Stratfor's report.]
Is the new unity among the Taliban good news or bad?
The news that the Taliban are "uniting" against the Americans sounds worrying. Lots of sabre-rattling. Yes, it is bad news, because it reveals how intent the Taliban leadership is to carry on their holy war. But one wonders -- am I inventing a reason for encouragement? -- if their blustering could be a sign of concern, evidence of a worry that they recognize that they have a serious problem. Actually, they have a great advantage, if the ISI continues to support the Taliban, but maybe, finally, some mechanisms might get put into place to deal with that fundamental cancer in Pakistani society. If it is not, the American venture in Afghanistan is a waste of lives and money. RLC
[Here is Carlotta Gall's report. Click on my title for a link to the original.]
March 27, 2009
Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Unify in Face of U.S. Influx
By CARLOTTA GALL
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year.
In interviews, several Taliban fighters based in the border region said preparations for the anticipated influx of American troops were already being made. A number of new, younger commanders have been preparing to step up a campaign of roadside bombings and suicide attacks to greet the Americans, the fighters said.
The refortified alliance was forged after the reclusive Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, sent emissaries to persuade Pakistani Taliban leaders to join forces and turn their attention to Afghanistan, Pakistani officials and Taliban members said.
The overture by Mullah Omar is an indication that with the prospect of an American buildup, the Taliban feel the need to strengthen their own forces in Afghanistan and to redirect their Pakistani allies toward blunting the new American push.
The Pakistani Taliban, an offspring of the Afghan Taliban, are led by veterans of the fighting in Afghanistan who come from the border regions. They have always supported the fight against foreign forces in Afghanistan by supplying fighters, training and logistical aid.
But in recent years the Pakistani Taliban have concentrated on battling the Pakistani government, extending a domain that has not only threatened Pakistan but has also provided an essential rear base for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
At the same time, American officials told The New York Times this week that Pakistan’s military intelligence agency continued to offer money, supplies and guidance to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan as a proxy to help shape a friendly government there once American forces leave.
The new Taliban alliance has raised concern in Afghanistan, where NATO generals warn that the conflict will worsen this year. It has also generated anxiety in Pakistan, where officials fear that a united Taliban will be more dangerous, even if focused on Afghanistan, and draw more attacks inside Pakistan from United States drone aircraft.
“This may bring some respite for us from militants’ attacks, but what it may entail in terms of national security could be far more serious,” said one senior Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to talk to news organizations. “This would mean more attacks inside our tribal areas, something we have been arguing against with the Americans.”
The Pakistani Taliban is dominated by three powerful commanders — Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulavi Nazir — based in North and South Waziristan, the hub of insurgent activity in Pakistan’s tribal border regions, who have often clashed among themselves.
Mullah Omar dispatched a six-member team to Waziristan in late December and early January, several Taliban fighters said in interviews in Dera Ismail Khan, a town in North-West Frontier Province that is not far from South Waziristan. The Afghan Taliban delegation urged the Pakistani Taliban leaders to settle their internal differences, scale down their activities in Pakistan and help counter the planned increase of American forces in Afghanistan, the fighters said.
The three Pakistani Taliban leaders agreed. In February, they formed a united council, or shura, called the Council of United Mujahedeen. In a printed statement the leaders vowed to put aside their disputes and focus on fighting American-led forces in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied that the meetings ever took place or that any emissaries were sent by Mullah Omar. The Afghan Taliban routinely disavow any presence in Pakistan or connection to the Pakistani Taliban to emphasize that their movement is indigenous to Afghanistan. “We don’t like to be involved with them, as we have rejected all affiliation with Pakistani Taliban fighters,” Mr. Mujahid said. “We have sympathy for them as Muslims, but beside that, there is nothing else between us.”
Several Pakistani officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to talk to news organizations, confirmed the meetings. But they said that the overture might have been inspired by Sirajuddin Haqqani, an Afghan Taliban leader who swears allegiance to Mullah Omar but is largely independent in his operations.
Mr. Haqqani, and his father Jalaluddin Haqqani, the most powerful figures in Waziristan, are closely linked to Al Qaeda and to Pakistani intelligence, American officials say. From their base in North Waziristan, they have directed groups of fighters into eastern Afghanistan and increasingly in complex attacks on the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The Taliban fighters said the Afghan Taliban delegation was led by Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a commander from Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, whose real name is reported to be Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul.
A front-line commander during the Taliban government, Mullah Zakir was captured in 2001 in northern Afghanistan and was detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, until his release in 2007, Afghan Taliban members contacted by telephone said.
The Pakistani fighters described Mullah Zakir as an impressive speaker and a trainer, and one said he was particularly energetic in working to unite the different Taliban groups. Beyond bolstering Taliban forces in Afghanistan, both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban leaders had other reasons to unite, Pakistani officials said.
One motivation may have been to shift the focus of hostilities to Afghanistan in hopes of improving their own security in Waziristan, where more than 30 drone strikes in recent months have been directed at both Mr. Mehsud and Mr. Nazir. Two senior commanders of the Haqqani network have been killed.
The Pakistani Taliban leaders also rely on Mr. Haqqani and their affiliation with the Afghan mujahedeen for legitimacy, as well as the money and influence it brings.
In their written statement, decorated with crossed swords, the three Pakistani Taliban leaders reaffirmed their allegiance to Mullah Omar, as well as the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.
The mujahedeen should unite as the “enemies” have united behind the leadership of President Obama, it said. “The mujahedeen should put aside their own differences for the sake of God, God’s happiness, for the strength of religion, and to bring dishonor on the infidels.” The Taliban fighters interviewed said that the top commanders removed a number of older commanders and appointed younger commanders who were good fighters to prepare for operations in Afghanistan in the coming weeks.
In confident spirits, the Taliban fighters predicted that 2009 was going to be a “very bloody” year.
Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan; Pir Zubair Shah from Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan; and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
[Here is Carlotta Gall's report. Click on my title for a link to the original.]
March 27, 2009
Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Unify in Face of U.S. Influx
By CARLOTTA GALL
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year.
In interviews, several Taliban fighters based in the border region said preparations for the anticipated influx of American troops were already being made. A number of new, younger commanders have been preparing to step up a campaign of roadside bombings and suicide attacks to greet the Americans, the fighters said.
The refortified alliance was forged after the reclusive Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, sent emissaries to persuade Pakistani Taliban leaders to join forces and turn their attention to Afghanistan, Pakistani officials and Taliban members said.
The overture by Mullah Omar is an indication that with the prospect of an American buildup, the Taliban feel the need to strengthen their own forces in Afghanistan and to redirect their Pakistani allies toward blunting the new American push.
The Pakistani Taliban, an offspring of the Afghan Taliban, are led by veterans of the fighting in Afghanistan who come from the border regions. They have always supported the fight against foreign forces in Afghanistan by supplying fighters, training and logistical aid.
But in recent years the Pakistani Taliban have concentrated on battling the Pakistani government, extending a domain that has not only threatened Pakistan but has also provided an essential rear base for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
At the same time, American officials told The New York Times this week that Pakistan’s military intelligence agency continued to offer money, supplies and guidance to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan as a proxy to help shape a friendly government there once American forces leave.
The new Taliban alliance has raised concern in Afghanistan, where NATO generals warn that the conflict will worsen this year. It has also generated anxiety in Pakistan, where officials fear that a united Taliban will be more dangerous, even if focused on Afghanistan, and draw more attacks inside Pakistan from United States drone aircraft.
“This may bring some respite for us from militants’ attacks, but what it may entail in terms of national security could be far more serious,” said one senior Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to talk to news organizations. “This would mean more attacks inside our tribal areas, something we have been arguing against with the Americans.”
The Pakistani Taliban is dominated by three powerful commanders — Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulavi Nazir — based in North and South Waziristan, the hub of insurgent activity in Pakistan’s tribal border regions, who have often clashed among themselves.
Mullah Omar dispatched a six-member team to Waziristan in late December and early January, several Taliban fighters said in interviews in Dera Ismail Khan, a town in North-West Frontier Province that is not far from South Waziristan. The Afghan Taliban delegation urged the Pakistani Taliban leaders to settle their internal differences, scale down their activities in Pakistan and help counter the planned increase of American forces in Afghanistan, the fighters said.
The three Pakistani Taliban leaders agreed. In February, they formed a united council, or shura, called the Council of United Mujahedeen. In a printed statement the leaders vowed to put aside their disputes and focus on fighting American-led forces in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied that the meetings ever took place or that any emissaries were sent by Mullah Omar. The Afghan Taliban routinely disavow any presence in Pakistan or connection to the Pakistani Taliban to emphasize that their movement is indigenous to Afghanistan. “We don’t like to be involved with them, as we have rejected all affiliation with Pakistani Taliban fighters,” Mr. Mujahid said. “We have sympathy for them as Muslims, but beside that, there is nothing else between us.”
Several Pakistani officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to talk to news organizations, confirmed the meetings. But they said that the overture might have been inspired by Sirajuddin Haqqani, an Afghan Taliban leader who swears allegiance to Mullah Omar but is largely independent in his operations.
Mr. Haqqani, and his father Jalaluddin Haqqani, the most powerful figures in Waziristan, are closely linked to Al Qaeda and to Pakistani intelligence, American officials say. From their base in North Waziristan, they have directed groups of fighters into eastern Afghanistan and increasingly in complex attacks on the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The Taliban fighters said the Afghan Taliban delegation was led by Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a commander from Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, whose real name is reported to be Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul.
A front-line commander during the Taliban government, Mullah Zakir was captured in 2001 in northern Afghanistan and was detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, until his release in 2007, Afghan Taliban members contacted by telephone said.
The Pakistani fighters described Mullah Zakir as an impressive speaker and a trainer, and one said he was particularly energetic in working to unite the different Taliban groups. Beyond bolstering Taliban forces in Afghanistan, both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban leaders had other reasons to unite, Pakistani officials said.
One motivation may have been to shift the focus of hostilities to Afghanistan in hopes of improving their own security in Waziristan, where more than 30 drone strikes in recent months have been directed at both Mr. Mehsud and Mr. Nazir. Two senior commanders of the Haqqani network have been killed.
The Pakistani Taliban leaders also rely on Mr. Haqqani and their affiliation with the Afghan mujahedeen for legitimacy, as well as the money and influence it brings.
In their written statement, decorated with crossed swords, the three Pakistani Taliban leaders reaffirmed their allegiance to Mullah Omar, as well as the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.
The mujahedeen should unite as the “enemies” have united behind the leadership of President Obama, it said. “The mujahedeen should put aside their own differences for the sake of God, God’s happiness, for the strength of religion, and to bring dishonor on the infidels.” The Taliban fighters interviewed said that the top commanders removed a number of older commanders and appointed younger commanders who were good fighters to prepare for operations in Afghanistan in the coming weeks.
In confident spirits, the Taliban fighters predicted that 2009 was going to be a “very bloody” year.
Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan; Pir Zubair Shah from Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan; and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
