HYDERABAD WORLD

Pakistan takes a right turn

2009-03-16T04:18:00.000-07:00

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Just when it seemed that all efforts by the United States and the Pakistani military had failed to defuse a rapidly escalating political crisis, the government on Monday morning capitulated to the demands of protesters.

With thousands of people on the streets heading for the capital Islamabad, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced on state television at 5:45am that former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry and other former justices would be reinstated.

They were fired by then-president General Pervez Musharraf in March 2007, a move that precipitated the lawyers' protests that came to a head over the past few days.

Gilani's surprise announcement followed intense negotiations over the past few days in which the lawyers and opposition political parties had flatly refused to make any compromises with the government.

Gilani also promised that the government would revisit this month's Supreme Court decision that barred former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz from holding elected office. He also said that all demonstrators arrested in recent days - including Nawaz Sharif - would be released.

It appears that Gilani had little choice. Local administrations and police had completely defied the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) government and allowed thousands of marchers to proceed to Islamabad. Significantly, the United States had looked towards the army to intervene, but it was in no position to do so, raising a serious question mark over the US's ability to influence decisions in Pakistan, its chief ally in the regional war theater.

The US Embassy responded at 7am on Monday with with a statement: "We welcome the announcement by the government of Pakistan of its plans to reinstate former chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. This is a statesmanlike decision taken to defuse a serious confrontation, and the apparent removal of this long-standing national issue is a substantial step towards national reconciliation. Now is the time for all Pakistanis and their political representatives to work together, with the support of their friends and allies, to peacefully strengthen their democracy and ensure a positive dialogue as they move forward to deal with the many issues confronting them."

Apart from the issue of the reinstated judiciary, Monday's decision changes the political dynamic in Pakistan.

The right-wing parties - Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Jamaat-i-Islami and Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, which were planned by Washington to distance themselves from the post-February 2008 political setup, have now established themselves as a decisive force.

Nawaz Sharif and the lawyers immediately welcomed the prime minister's announcement and said they would end their long march to Islamabad.

This is not necessarily the end of such protest marches or unrest. Once Chaudhry is sworn in on March 21, when current chief justice Abdul Hameed Dogar retires, he is expected to carry on where he left off by challenging the very issues which contributed to his dismissal in the first place.

Key among these is the credibility of the National Reconciliation Ordinance - a presidential pardon - which Musharraf issued over the corruption cases against now-President Asif Ali Zardari and other PPP leaders, which enabled them to participate in elections and then form a government early last year.

There is also the issue of the many dozens of missing people, that is, people detained for alleged "war on terror" crimes without trail. Prior to his dismissal, Chaudhry had had run-ins with the military establishment over this.

Opposition stands firm A deal brokered by the US and Pakistan army at the weekend got Zardari to accept a face-saving package under which he would review the disqualification of the Sharif brothers. The leader of the PML-N, Nawaz, had been barred from elected office and Shahbaz had been forced to step down as chief justice of Punjab province.

The Americans had been frantically involved. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to Zardari, Nawaz Sharif and army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani. Earlier, US envoy Richard Holbrooke, US ambassador Anne W Peterson and other officials had been active.

Everybody had expected that the American mediation would break the ice, but opposition leaders on Sunday rejected their proposal and their supporters continued to gather in vast numbers in Lahore. They said they would accept nothing less than the restoration of judiciary and the sacking of all the judges appointed and promoted by Musharraf and Zardari following this.

On Sunday evening, many police officers and local administration officials resigned, saying they were not prepared to use force against protesters.

These included the deputy attorney general of Pakistan, the district coordination officer of Lahore, the inspector general of the Punjab police and the deputy inspector general of police in Lahore.

This seems to have been the final straw that forced the government to capitulate as it feared it would not be able to contain the many thousands who were to descend on the capital on Monday for a sit-in: whatever little writ of government was left would collapse and nobody, including the army, could afford to intervene.

The immediate political crisis in Pakistan has been defused, but the pot is still boiling and Zardari's government remains under threat.

The leader of the House and a PPP federal minister, Mian Raza Rabbani, resigned last week. Naheed Khan, the trusted political secretary of slain PPP leader Benazir Bhutto - Zardari's wife - on Friday joined forces with the lawyers. Bhutto died in the arms of Khan after the car in which they were travelling was attacked in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. Khan's husband, Safdar Abbasi, a PPP leader and senator, stood beside her when she later addressed a lawyers' rally.

However, the biggest blow has been the resignation of the minister of information, Ms Sherry Rahman, on Friday evening after a government clampdown on private television channels to stop them from covering the lawyers' march.

The victorious right-wing parties are now circling.

On Sunday, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the chief of the leading Islamic party, the Jamaat-i-Islami, warned Washington to stay away and not to try to exert any influence in Pakistan. Jamaat was the main engine of the lawyers' protests because of its organized cadre. It also urged army chief Kiani to use his influence to force the government into accepting the opposition's demands.

Zardari's ability to govern is now in question, as is the US's ability to mold the country to suit its needs in the "war on terror". The annual Taliban offensive in Afghanistan, of which Pakistan is an integral factor, is only weeks away.

Exclusive: Buyer beware

2009-03-13T04:17:00.000-07:00

By M H Ahssan

"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it." - George Bernard Shaw

Central banks across the Group of Seven leading industrialized countries are opening their purse strings with the first wave of quantitative easing (QE) measures seen in the current generation. After the US Federal Reserve started buying eligible corporate debt directly from the end of last year, we now have the Bank of England completing its first wave of QE-related asset purchases this week.

As with the moves by the US Federal Reserve in the past, the Bank of England quickly found itself overwhelmed by sellers who were quite eager to get rid of their UK government bonds (termed "gilts" ), with requests for around 10 billion pounds sterling(US$1.4 billion) against the 2 billion pounds that had been initially expected.

What followed was interesting: the immediate decline in the yield of UK government bonds by around 50 basis points (five-year gilts fell to 2.12% from 2.61% at the end of February) made the Bank of England move an unqualified success. About the one thing we know for sure about the world's central banks is that they love to copy each other; therefore in short order it is highly likely that the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and perhaps even the European Central Bank (more on that later) will start buying up the bonds of their respective governments or member states.

In recent history, the Japanese government embarked on QE in the late 1990s after its policy of cutting interest rates to zero failed to produce any economic bounce: the failure was due to the significant losses on the balance sheets of Japanese banks and companies which rendered the actual interest rate moot as against the painful decline in asset value on the other side of their balance sheets. The QE policy of the Bank of Japan did not succeed in pulling Japan from the depths of its recession, and indeed may have only served to accentuate the deflationary forces that were unleashed by the country's demographic decline.

The UK on the other hand bears watching, for almost alone among the major economies it resembles the US in every respect - a house-price bubble, endemic leverage, bankrupt financial institutions and so on - with the main difference arising from the absence of a reserve currency status. In other words, Americans who wonder about what would happen to their country if the US dollar weren't the world's de facto currency would need to look no further than the UK.

Deliberately pushing down government yields in the UK would serve to push down the value of the currency against its major trading partners: the US and the European Union; which, given a service-oriented economy focusing on areas such as trade, insurance and financial services, would give the UK economy a significant competitive boost.

The move was repeated in Switzerland, which also this week acted deliberately to push down the value of its currency against the euro as it sought to maintain a competitive advantage in areas such as banking, tourism and manufacturing in the face of significant government intervention in neighboring European countries effectively supporting its competitors.

Meanwhile, in Asia, after revealing a current account deficit for the first time in recent memory, Japan has quietly seen its own version of devaluation as the yen now hovers around the 100 level from around 90 to the US dollar in late January - a level that presented tremendous difficulties for the country's exporters and even made the famously conservative Toyota Motor Corp at one stage request government assistance.

By now, readers will have recognized the game that is afoot: competitive devaluations across the G-7 - composed of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US - and the United States as every economy attempts to secure the future of its constituents, albeit at the cost of other major economies.

This phase will continue for a while longer, at least until the hapless European Central Bank (ECB) finally also caves into the demands of its member states and succumbs to the same logic - namely, of effecting a steady erosion of the purchasing power of their own currencies. The ECB is the central bank for Europe's single currency, the euro. According to its own web site, the ECB's "main task is to maintain the euro's purchasing power and thus price stability in the euro area". The euro area comprises the 16 European Union countries that have introduced the euro since 1999.

Who is the fish?
An oft-repeated saying from the game of poker holds that "around the table, you should always know who the fish is. If you don't, it's you." In this case, the "fish" refers to the worst player on the table, the one who is effectively paying for everyone else's winnings.

Non-Japan Asia is the unfortunate fish in the global game of devaluation being played by the major economies: the US, the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Japan and so forth. In particular, export powerhouses such as China, South Korea and Taiwan really have it bad, as do the Southeast Asian economies as we enter the next phase of the economic slowdown in the global economy.

It is not just in terms of currency values that the Asians are being made out to be the fish in this game. Adding insult to injury, it is the savings of Asians that actually help fund the government bonds of the major world economies. As interest rates are pushed down along with a parallel shift in the value of the currencies, savers in Asia are getting the worst possible deal, namely a decline in both current income and future purchasing power.

Central banks around the region are holding on to the bonds issued by the major economies because of fears that a large sell-off - by say, China - would damage the total value of their holdings and cause significant pain. However, this is to forget the longer-term, slow leakage that is currently on the cards anyway; leading as it will to the eventual destruction of values.

On the other side of the ring, we have countries such as South Korea, China and India all creating their own stimulus programs to push up domestic demand. Instead of participating in each other's government bond auctions though, the countries have been busy supporting the activities of the major economies and herein are the main problems for the region as a whole.

China certainly needs the experience of Korean construction companies in its initiative, much as India does too. The easiest way for both these countries to help Korea would be to award contracts to the latter; in return, the Korean government could easily buy infrastructure bonds denominated in US dollars issued by China or India. Similar instances of possible cooperation abound in areas ranging from energy to health.

A lot of this, though, will remain a pipe dream of this writer as Asian central banks continue their slavish purchases of whatever they have always been buying. For the citizens of the region though, the same question that should have been asked 24 months ago arises once again: who do these guys work for: their own citizens or those of the G-7?

Kings of Cash: The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Sovereign Wealth Funds

2009-03-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

By M H Ahssan

The worldwide financial crisis has raised many questions about the efficacy and role of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), the large, state-controlled investment funds typically carrying a mix of assets. Some of the largest funds, as a proportion of GDP, reside in the Middle East -- a prime example is Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, with $875 billion in assets. In the wake of the financial meltdown, most of the SWFs in the Middle East have either stopped investing or have become very risk-averse. Instead, they are now turning inward to stimulate their own slumping economies -- and thus reducing purchases of foreign assets. The need to expand government spending to moderate the hit on local economies, along with lower oil revenues, is absorbing most, if not all, of any surpluses at home.

A History of Competitive Returns
Generally passive investors with little significant interaction with the management of their investment targets, SWFs in the Middle East have largely followed a long-term, conservative investment strategy.

It is widely accepted that traditional reserve management by central banks, usually heavy on dollar-denominated Treasury bill holdings, generate low returns and sometimes actual losses in real terms over the longer run. Yet a typical pension fund portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds -- at least up until the current crisis -- was expected to provide much higher returns in the long term. SWFs that followed the pension-portfolio investment approach generally saw higher returns, which are more consistent with returns generated by oil investments and much higher than funds that followed the central bank investment model. Now, however, the global crisis has made it clear that conservative SWFs that placed the bulk of their investments in less risky, liquid securities performed better than those that invested aggressively, an approach mostly tied to the recent oil boom. On balance, most Middle Eastern SWFs, like their peers elsewhere, are estimated to have lost up to 30% of their portfolios in the precipitous decline in global equity markets.

Yet, "if they have only lost 30%, they are doing pretty well relative to most other institutional investors," notes Wharton finance professor Franklin Allen. "I think the main lesson is that downside risks are definitely there. The last 30 years have been so good for equities that we have been lulled into thinking they must inevitably go up. This is a stark reminder of how much they can lose."

What are the likely effects going forward? Howard Pack, a Wharton professor of business and public policy, says it is too early to have a firm sense of the impact of the recent oil price decline on capital flows, but "it is certain that many of the governments such as [that of] Dubai have significant problems. Given that there was a substantial commitment of resources to diversify the economies, and that this effort was far from complete before the precipitous decline in crude prices, it is pretty certain that all of the Gulf countries will suffer from a significant slowdown in growth and substantial drawing down of accumulated reserves." He adds that the full effect of the drop in oil prices will not be known for about six months when more data becomes available, "but it would be very surprising if both the slowing of growth, perhaps a significant downturn, and large scale loss of reserves are not occurring."

Not all SFWs suffered equally, however. Libya's SWF investments of $50.6 billion have returned profits of about $2.4 billion since 2006, with 78% of the portfolio invested in short-term financial instruments and only $8 billion in equities, spread mostly across North Africa and Asia. Similarly, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), which acts as both the country's central bank and wealth manager, is understood not to have lost as much as others in the financial crisis thanks to its conservative dollar-and-bond-heavy portfolio, with only a 20% percent exposure to equities.

One important risk management lesson in all this is clear. "If your export revenue stream is correlated with global growth, not all of your wealth should be invested in assets that are also likely to be highly correlated with global growth. For funds with a stabilization mission, the value of an asset in bad times matters far more than its value in good times," noted the Council on Foreign Relations in a working paper titled, "GCC Sovereign Funds -- Reversal of Fortune," published in January. (GCC stands for the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of six Arab nations -- Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait.)

Wharton finance professor Richard Herring notes that since SWFs are long-term investors, the fall in asset values should offer an opportunity to reallocate some assets in a way that will be highly profitable in the long run. At the same time, "I'm sure they will be looking for new and better ways to diversify and hedge their investments, since many of the anticipated diversification measures simply didn't work in a down market. They learned that the only thing that goes up in a falling market is correlations."

Just how Middle East SWFs change their investment patterns in the future "is the key issue," notes Allen. "It depends a lot on the governance in the country whose wealth they are investing. I think they will come under considerable pressure to reduce risk taking and to invest mainly in bonds."

Varying Investment Strategies

Across the world, there are an estimated 53 SWFs of varying sizes and mandates, with an estimated $3.8 trillion in assets as of early 2008. GCC funds are the wealthiest, and according to figures from management consulting firm Booz & Company, they make up about 40% of the total. In the Middle East, SWFs' critical stabilization role came into play in the 1990s when oil prices fell to around $10 a barrel. For example, SAMA, which has been accumulating surplus oil revenues since the 1970s, helped fund expansion in Saudi Arabia throughout a decade of low growth. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) emerged as the main driver for rebuilding the country's war-shattered economy.

Until the 1990s, Middle Eastern SWFs were primarily risk-averse investors of foreign exchange reserves that injected funds back into the local economy only in times of need. But then, several significant, regional political events highlighted the need for the region's economies to diversify revenue streams and reduce their dependence on oil. With fewer immediate possibilities at home, these SWFs started investing in relatively riskier assets abroad, such as equities and real estate. The trend gained strength as oil prices started to rise at the beginning of the new century, and ran up further support through the expansion of globalization, spurred on by institutions like the World Trade Organization.

Given the condition of world financial markets, it is not surprising that SWFs might be more wary today of making investments abroad, Don DeMarino, co-chairman of the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce, notes. "The sovereign funds are financed from retained earnings. At $40-per-barrel oil, there are other, more pressing local calls on those retained earnings. But I think of equal if not greater importance in explaining the inactivity of the funds during the meltdown is the treacherous political environment for them in the West. All the Gulf funds vividly remember the Dubai Port World debacle. The prospect that the funds might again encounter another firestorm -- this time of 'Arabs buying up assets too cheaply' -- is a real concern."

With oil prices rising, the number of SWFs grew and new entrants sought not just to serve as ballast for economic stability and investment diversification, but also to maximize returns. That drove most of them to even riskier investments. Even some of the older, more conservative institutions were sucked into the general shift of national savings from bonds, which had been the traditional style of reserve management by central banks, to value- and return-driven equity investments, once thought to be the appropriate domain of private equity and hedge funds. Examples of aggressive investors among Middle Eastern SWFs would include the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Kuwait Investment Authority and Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).

QIA, however, also belongs to the club of SWFs that emerged during the oil boom with a mandate to complement ambitious domestic socioeconomic development plans. These proactive SWFs seek investments at home and abroad will underpin economic development, boost knowledge and technology transfers and leverage cost advantages. These more proactive SFWs also seek more involvement in managing the companies they invest in. Other examples of proactive investors include the U.A.E.'s Mubadala Development Company and Dubai Investment Corp.

Taking the lead from Asian SWFs like Singapore's Temasek Holdings and Malaysia's Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Mubadala is probably the most successful of the proactive SWFs in the Middle East. Its 5% stake in Ferrari brought with it the potential for increased tourism to Abu Dhabi in the form of the Ferrari theme park. More recently, Mubadala has invested $8 billion in an R&D partnership with General Electric, which in turn has committed to increasing its investments and technology transfers to the U.A.E.

Whatever investment strategy GCC SWFs ultimately adopt, economists agree that the region will have to look beyond its oil wealth for future growth. Herring notes that many of these economies have a finite pool of natural resources which they are converting to better diversified assets. Over the long term, those assets can continue to produce income once the natural resources have been exhausted. "Some of the opportunities may be within their own economies, but generally they are so small relative to the world economy that it's unlikely a very large share should be devoted to domestic investments."

A futile search for 'moderate' Taliban

2009-03-10T03:42:00.000-07:00

By M H Ahssan

In an interview with the New York Times on March 7, United States President Barack Obama said he "hopes US troops can identify moderate elements of the Taliban and move them toward reconciliation". The proposition came as a conclusion to a larger picture: the battlefield situation in Afghanistan.

According to the New York Times, he said the United States "was not winning the war in that country" and thus the door must be opened to a "reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq".

Following these statements, a flurry of comments exploded throughout the international media: while most of the mainstream press and networks in the West praised the "new daring turn" in US policy, that is, the readiness to "engage the Taliban", most of the pan-Arabist and jihadi sympathizer outlets in the region warned the move won't be successful. In a panel discussion on BBC TV Arabic (in which this author participated), a noted expert in Islamist affairs from Amman said, "There is no such thing as Taliban independent from the high-ups like [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar."

Another panelist, a seasoned Afghan journalist from Kabul added: "In Iraq, you have a bigger US force, and a totally different geopolitical context than in Afghanistan. Besides, why would Washington want to engage a terror force which is not accepted by the population?" This was a small sampling of the brouhaha reigning in the debate about the real strategic intentions of the Obama administration.

The good and the bad
The US administration is being advised that any change in strategy in Afghanistan is better than the previous situation. It is being told that the troop surge model as applied in Iraq may work, if modified to meet Afghanistan's "complexities". The president must also be attracted to the idea that an "engagement" with some quarters of the Taliban will fit perfectly with the global idea of engagement and sitting down and listening that he seems to have adopted for the entire region.

But many questions still need to be answered. Does the plan require a dialogue with the Taliban organization as a whole or with elements "within" the organization? Apparently, the US channel is to be established with "elements" not with the leadership of the network. Then the next question is: if they aren't part of the top leadership, are these elements able to sway the entire organization towards engagement? Apparently not, according to experts on the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So, the goal is to sway these factions - called moderates - from the Taliban, not to steer the entire group in another direction.

Here we have to pause and come to the first "complex" conclusion: while Afghan President Hamid Karzai has extended an olive branch to Mullah Omar to join the government, an invitation quickly rejected, Obama is announcing a more modest goal that is to identify "moderate elements" from the Taliban and "strike a deal with them". But the modest narrative of the goal doesn't make it necessarily reachable. Here is why.

If the "moderate Taliban" we're looking to identify are "inside" the network, when they engage with the US, they will be lethally ejected by the hard core of the group, backed by al-Qaeda. Hence, the next question will be to know if those "dissidents" would actually secede and form a "moderate Taliban" organization working with the US and the Karzai government.

From the names available on such a list, including former "Taliban ambassadors" to Pakistan and the international community and those who sought Saudi Arabia's help in launching a dialogue, we can't see strong commanders willing to surge militarily against the mother ship. As far as we can project, there are no leaders and radical clerics who would carry that task of establishing an all-out new "good Taliban", even with millions of dollars as incentive. A Taliban civil war is not going to happen, for now.

But is there another more attainable goal? According to the Obama administration and some experts, there may be other options.

Little 'talibans?'
In recent months, a new concept has been pushed via defense and counter-terrorism circles arguing that instead of chipping off from the actual "Taliban" militia on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, attention must be focusing on harvesting the local "taliban" (little "t"). According to this theory, the little "ts" are individuals and groups who have joined the large umbrella under Mullah Omar but not the membership of the organization, or have proclaimed themselves as "taliban affiliates".

Hence, in comparison with the Iraqi Sahwa (Awakening) movement backed by the US-led coalition, these sub-militias of all walks of life would become the target of American political charm and dollars. If identified and reached out to - so believe the architects of the forthcoming Afghan "surge" - they will become the Afghan parallel to the Sahwas of Mesopotamia. Note that Obama specified that it would be the "American military who would reach out to these moderate elements"; meaning they will be dealt with from a lower level rather than from a full-fledged diplomatic perspective.

In that case, unlike what the media has been speculating about, this is not a US dialogue with the party it is at war with, headed by Mullah Omar and his emirs. It is not even an attempt to break the mother ship into two and recuperate the more moderate branch. There are no takers for a massive retreat from the Taliban into the arms of Kabul's government or Washington's "infidel" generosity.

What the US move is about is much more pragmatic and realistic: nibbling off from the wide pool of angry people and shifting them from frustration with Karzai to enmity towards Mullah Omar. Indeed, there are tens of thousands of armed males aggregating in villages, clans, tribes and neighborhoods, who wear turbans and sometimes claim they are Taliban for a thousand reasons. These sub-militias aren't particularly ideological or maybe do not even understand much of the doctrine they claim to be following. A number of experts and some strategists believe that these men of the Afghan underworld can become the "new army" against the "bad Taliban". Can they?

Not only it is possible, it should have been the case eight years ago. However, there are two fundamental mistakes not to make.

First, the Obama administration and US military strategists must not see these new war constituents, nor announce them, as who they aren't. These sub-militias sought to turn the tide against the real Taliban aren't your "moderate" guys. In reality they have no firm ideological affiliation. With few exceptions, the tribal and urban forces to be targeted for "integration" will simply shift alliances or allegiance for money and power. The American, Western and international public must not be led to believe that a piece of architecture will be successful in transforming radicals into moderates or swaying away bands of armed men from extremism, let alone jihadism.

The mutation to moderation happens not via cash deals but through years of schooling, an efficient media and perseverant non-governmental organizations. It happens from younger into older age. Hence, forget about the "identification of moderate" part of the Obama strategy. Inducing civil societies into liberalism, or even moderation, needs government crafting of a kind that doesn't exist in Washington or Brussels for the time being.

In addition, these militias and militants to be swayed away from Waziristan's exiles aren't going to produce a national reconciliation. They do not represent the radical ideological web which is behind the war against the new Afghan democracy. National reconciliation takes place between two or more large, historical and strategic forces. Instead, we're talking about recuperation of elements extracted from the Taliban, not reconciliation with the latter. Hence, US stated goals should be even more modest in this regard.

The second fatal mistake not to commit is to call them Taliban, proto-Taliban or crypto-Taliban. Even if for publicity purposes it suits the goal of soothing the US and Western public, constructing a fictive identity to a plethora of tribal-urban sub-militias will backfire on the whole campaign. Here is why.

Since they aren't a breakaway faction from the main organization, they can't form another Taliban to challenge the Mullah Omar leadership. And since they have no ideology of their own they won't be able to de-radicalize others. Hence, if they are baptized as the other "taliban", instead of using the credibility of the name to push back against the bad guys, the name will ultimately transform them into what we don't want them to be: Taliban!

If we call them nice Taliban or "little ts", we would be throwing them back into the arms of the forces we want to sway them from. Knowing what I know from jihadi strategies, it won't take long before the two Talibans would eventually sit down and strike a deal, and overwhelm the Kabul government.

Learn from Iraq
If the Iraq Sahwa model is the inspiration for an Afghan engagement with local forces, we need to learn the right lessons from it. In Iraq, the US didn't create good al-Qaeda versus bad al-Qaeda; it didn't identify moderate elements from al-Qaeda to pit them against the mother force. The political dimension of the "surge" relied heavily on recruiting tribes, social cadres and Sunni elements regardless of their affiliations and empowering them via a "new" organization, called Sahwa Councils. We gave these new local allies an identity of their own, not the identity of the forces they fought against.

But more important, the greater dimension of the "surge" wasn't the mere rise of the Sahwas, but the moving forward of the democratic political process with its political parties, non-governmental organizations, movements and media. Swaying Sunni militias against al-Qaeda was only one component of the strategy; the larger strategy was to sustain pressures until Iraqi forces, legislators and ministries are up and running.

By comparison, in Afghanistan, we should make the case of a similar, not necessarily identical process: mobilizing popular militias, giving them an identity of their own, not calling them Taliban, and not expecting them to be the missing link to the future but a force helpful in pushing the political process forward until it can resist, contain and reverse the Taliban.

How to measure victory and defeat
Obama, and before him president George W Bush, were always trying to measure the success in the war in Afghanistan. While the latter spoke of victories, the current president speaks of failures. The real issue is how to measure victory or a defeat.

Is destroying al-Qaeda and Taliban bunkers a definitive indicator of victory? Are the relentless terror attacks by the jihadis the other definitive measurement of failures? I don't think either parameter gives us an answer. Rather, it is the battle taking place over the conquest of the minds and hearts of the school children and teens of the country that will make or break that burgeoning democracy. Unfortunately, neither the past nor the current administration seems to see the war of ideas with such urgency.

The Obama administration has to be relentlessly accurate in describing the choices it intends to make in Afghanistan and in the confrontation with jihadis worldwide. If its final intention is to cut a deal with the Taliban - in this article I won't argue about the choice - it must faithfully inform the US public of this choice, instead of developing a phased narrative of disengagement.

But if it seriously intends to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda by isolating them further inside Afghanistan and mobilizing the international community, the administration also needs to prepare the American and Western public for that choice. For in this age of hyper-globalization, the jihadi forces have an astonishing capacity to outmaneuver the smartest strategies devised by their enemies and, on the other hand, the public in the US has developed a surprising ability to understand the intentions of both the terror forces and of its own government. Transparency is everything in this age.

An unlikely engagement
United States President Barack Obama's suggestion that the United States might reach out to "moderate" Taliban as part of the effort to end the Afghan insurgency has been greeted warmly by many, including the Afghan president.

In an interview published in the New York Times, Obama said flatly that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan, and was ready to adapt tactics it had learned in Iraq to the Afghan war effort.

Obama explained that if one were to speak with the US military general responsible for the strategy in Iraq, "I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has been urging talks with the Taliban for some time, welcomed the comments in Kabul on March 8.

"Yesterday, the American President Obama accepted and approved the path of peace and talks with those Afghan Taliban who he called 'moderates'," Karzai said. "This is good news. This is an approval of our previous stance and we accept and praise it."
However, while Karzai is not alone in his support for such negotiations, there is much debate as to whether the strategy can be successfully exported to Afghanistan.

Some Afghanistan observers, for example, note that Karzai may have been quick to laud the proposal to counter the criticism with which his previous calls for negotiations were met.

Others, such as Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former Taliban cabinet member and diplomat who last year participated in an informal Saudi Arabia-sponsored effort to initiate dialogue with the Taliban, say the US had no choice but to adopt this strategy.

"First Obama has admitted that the Americans cannot win in Afghanistan and that war is not the solution," Zaeef said. "So if they cannot win, what should they do? Automatically they have to look for an alternative, which is that they have to resolve this conflict though negotiations based on mutual respect."

While he says the initiative is a good omen for peace in Afghanistan, Zaeef added in an interview with HNN that it is up to the United States to create an atmosphere of trust.

Choosing the right partners
Still others foresee additional roadblocks in the way of successful negotiations.

While in Washington, the idea of "talking to the Taliban" rests on the premise that negotiations can peel away some moderate Taliban from their extremist comrades, there is skepticism as to whether such moderates could actually influence hardline Taliban leaders.

And Afghan commentator Waheed Muzda, for example, warns even against making such distinctions, saying the Taliban in Afghanistan are dangerous whatever label is bestowed on them.

Though an Afghan government-sponsored program has "reconciled" thousands of Taliban fighters with the government, Muzda suggests that the move has not dented the group's capacity to launch attacks. In fact, the number and sophistication of Taliban attacks have only increased in recent years, he says.

"Moderate Taliban is an undefined term, but it is being used a lot," he said. "If there are moderate Taliban, they are people who are not involved in fighting and might be hiding somewhere inside Afghanistan or outside in [neighboring] Pakistan."

Kabul-based analyst Nasrullah Stanekzai noted that in Afghanistan itself, there are many elements opposed to such negotiations - both within the government and the Taliban.

Still, he tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, while some Taliban leaders outside the country are compromised because of their close links with global extremist networks, any effort that brings Afghans themselves to the negotiating table could bear fruit.

"Afghans have this capacity to talk to each other. But there are elements within the Afghan government who do not want to see the Taliban being included into the political process because they think it might threaten their power," Stanekzai said.

He continued: "Anyway, the only option we have [to resolve the conflict in our country] is to bring together all Afghans, on the basis of Afghanistan's national interests, to bring peace to our country."

Other steps toward peace
After spending years in detention at the US facility in Guantanamo, Cuba, former Taliban cabinet member Zaeef now stands among those who have left the ranks of the Taliban and reconciled with the Afghan government.

Today a commentator on Taliban issues, Zaeef explains what steps he believes the United States should take to help ensure that negotiations with the Taliban end in success.

First, he says, the United States must close prisons that Taliban members associate with abuse, in particular the facilities at Guantanamo and at the Bagram air base north of Kabul. He also says the names of Mullah Muhammad Omar and other Taliban leaders must be removed from United Nations and US "black lists" and reward offers dropped.

Zaeef also believes that distinguishing between "moderate" and "extremist" Taliban is not practical - but not because different types don't exist.

"If the Americans are thinking, and as Obama has also said, that they want to distinguish between the hardline and moderate Taliban, it will not be acceptable to anybody, because it is like telling two brothers that you love one and want to play with him while you want to kill the other one," Zaeef said. Nader Khan Katawazi, a parliamentarian representing Afghanistan's eastern Paktika Province, believes moderate Taliban will be able to influence their hardline brethren, as long as the talks are conducted in a spirit of openness. "It is natural that there are elements within the Taliban who want to resolve this issue through negotiations," he said.

"If both sides agree to hold open-hearted constructive talks, I think, it will even force what you and I would call the extremist Taliban to accept that process." Hardline Taliban are already taking steps to counter another new US strategy - the "surge" of 17,000 fresh troops into the theater. Pakistani and international media reports indicate that, in an apparent attempt to answer Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar's call for unity, the three main Taliban factions in Pakistan's restive Waziristan tribal region formed a "Council of United Holy Warriors" late last month.

Meanwhile, analysts suggest that the recent ceasefire agreements in the Pakistani regions of Swat and Bajaur could free up fighters to battle US forces in Afghanistan. Zaeef, noting the possibility that increased numbers on both sides could lead to intensified fighting, says the United States is sending mixed messages. "Sending more troops to Afghanistan is a difficult proposition to agree to," Zaeef said. "This only creates concerns among people here and in the region that on the one hand, Americans are talking peace, while on the other, they are doubling and even tripling their troop numbers. And this is contrary to the talk of peace."

Editorial: Clear And Present Danger

2009-03-10T00:39:00.001-07:00

By M H Ahssan

The BDR mutiny is over, the threat to Hasina remains

For Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the February 25 mutiny by Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) troops was a near-checkmate. It pitted the powerful army in direct confrontation with a smaller borderguard force. The mutiny spread to districts within a day, threatening to spin out of control. But Hasina managed to avert a fratricidal conflict with decisive political intervention. Her initial announcement of a general amnesty for the mutineers upset the army. Tempers rose further when mass graves of massacred army officers commanding the BDR were found. So much so that army chief General Moeen U Ahmed was heckled by his own troops and twice offered to resign.

Hasina herself took a great risk by going to the Dhaka cantonment two days after the revolt to placate the army. She could have fallen to a lone assassin or a small group of conspirators close to the Islamic radicals. Hasina has come back from the brink, her fortunes wavering over the last two years. The military-backed interim government’s advent followed her imprisonment on a host of trumpedup corruption charges. Her party was nearly split by the military intelligence agency, Directorate General of Forces Intelligence. Late last year, her fortunes improved. The corruption charges came unstuck. Her party remained united despite attempts by the ‘reformist lobby’ to oust her. She emerged a clear front runner once the Awami League started campaigning.

The nation had had enough of military intervention by remote control — General Moeen understood that. For over a year, he had tried to develop ties with the Indian Army to convert his own army into an Indian-style professional fighting machine rather than remain a Pakistan-style political army. The interim administration is credited for organising the fairest election ever. But it is also clear that, if polls are free and fair, the Awami League and its secular allies stay miles ahead of their fundamentalist Islamist rivals. The spirit of 1971 and of Bengali nationalism has lived on, despite militant Islam’s global surge, to ensure Bangladesh doesn’t turn into another Pakistan.

Hasina’s huge electoral victory gave her confidence to purge ‘reformist elements’ in her own party, especially senior leaders, heroes of the liberation generation. A relatively young cabinet, sans these tested leaders and with many women, gave her ministry a new look. Hasina also decided to press ahead with her electoral promise: the trial of 1971 war criminals. A unanimous resolution in parliament for the proposed trial — of mostly top Jamaat-e-Islami leaders and some from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) as well — was followed by Hasina’s vocal support for a
South Asian anti-terror task force that upset Pakistan and its allies in Bangladesh. Her government arrested Chittagong’s leading arms dealer Hafizur Rehman and restarted the Chittagong arms seizure case in view of Rehman’s confessions that the huge arsenal seized in the port city in April 2004 was meant for India’s north-eastern rebel group, ULFA, and that several BNP and Jamaat leaders were involved.

Then came the mutiny. Hasina risked military intervention if the crisis was not tackled to the army’s satisfaction. Home minister Sahara Khatun and local government minister Jehangir Kabir Nanak helped disarm the BDR troops. Hasina also backed off from the general amnesty, promising exemplary punishment for those who had murdered officers and their families. Military pressure is on Hasina to hand over the BDR to the army command, to punish mutineers harshly and even to disband the borderguard force while sacking Khatun and Nanak for alleged proximity to the mutineers.

The BDR’s grievances — pay and perks, military domination since the entire BDR officer corps is from the army and denial of UN peace keeping duties — are old. The rank and file seethed at not being able to raise these issues with Hasina during her Pilkhana visit a day before the revolt. But investigations now reveal calculated planning behind the mutiny, with truckloads of weapons and scores of ‘outsiders’ entering Pilkhana in BDR uniform to carry out killings meant to sink Bangladesh into chaos.

The massacres were not sudden. BDR chief Major General Shakil Ahmed managed to speak twice to Hasina from the barracks after the mutiny started. District processions with slogans like “BDR-Janta Bhai Bhai” involved opposition supporters. Hasina alleges the latter even provided vehicles to fleeing mutineers. The Jamaat-e-Islami, which would suffer the most in any 1971 war crimes trial, is believed to be the main conspirator with the shadow of Pakistan, whose president has appealed to Hasina to defer the trials, lurking.

General Moeen has repeatedly asserted the army is “subservient to the government of the people”. He has only a few months left and is under pressure from his next rung commanders to extract the army’s pound of flesh from the mutiny-rattled government. Hasina has conceded some ground, withdrawing the general amnesty and arresting hundreds of mutineers now booked under serious criminal charges. But she is lucky to have survived a deep conspiracy, emerging stronger and more confident.

If Jamaat’s role in the massacre is conclusively established, Islamic radicals will risk the army’s wrath. That’s not bad for Hasina. Hopefully, the mutiny won’t make her back out on the war crimes trials and cases related to the Sheikh Mujib murder and Chittagong arms seizure. If she doesn’t go all out to decimate her Islamist rivals politically, she could be looking at another conspiracy.

Obama and his magic lamp

2009-03-09T03:28:00.000-07:00

By M H Ahssan

For the United States to borrow the US$2 trillion a year that it wants, a poor country like Turkey cannot borrow the $30 billion a year that it needs - unless, that is, the United States borrows it first and re-lends it to Turkey.

When President Barack Obama respectfully suggests that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan might like to jump, Erdogan will ask, "How long should I remain in the air?" Turkey requires a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at which the US has the biggest vote. News that an IMF loan might be delayed sent Turkey's lira crashing to a new low against the dollar last week. Just then, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned up in Ankara to announce that Obama would visit Turkey in April.

Most analysts expected Obama to adjust American foreign policy to the modesty of his circumstances, constrained by rising foreign debt and enervating entanglements. Instead, Obama has entered the foreign policy area with a magic lamp in hand, namely America's bottomless capacity to borrow, and the whole of the world seems to him a Cave of Wonders - at least for the moment. Does America want logical support for its withdrawal from Iraq, or mediation with Iran, or a back channel to Hamas, or anything else? Obama's wish is Erdogan's command, as long as Erdogan can hold onto power.

Obama will run foreign policy precisely as he ran his presidential campaign, by dismissing consistency as the hobgoblin of small minds as he promised diametrically opposed things to irreconcilable factions. And the rest of the world will smile and nod and take American checks, at least for the moment, while there still are functioning governments to take American checks.

US dollars per Turkish lira
Whether Erdogan offers a moderate strain of political Islam that retards extremism, or whether the Turkish leader is a stalking-horse for a Ruhollah Khomeini-like Islamic revolution in Turkey, has been a matter for bitter disagreement among American analysts.

An Islamist political leader in a putatively secular state, Erdogan has imprisoned political enemies and dismantled secular institutions in a cold coup d'etat, according to Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. I shared Rubin's concern (Please see Turkey in the throes of Islamic revolution? Asia Times Online, July 22, 2008), warning that Turkey was half-pregnant with political Islam.

It's a pity that we never will find out who was right, because the collapse of the Turkish economy will pre-empt whatever plans Erdogan might have entertained. It will be like the fire or earthquake that pop up in the pulp novels of James Clavell whenever the plot reaches a dead end.

As of January, Turkish industrial production had shrunk by 20% in a year, and that is before the worst of the crisis affected Turkey's trading partners to the east. The country's stock market has fallen further than that of any of the big emerging countries, except for Russia's, losing three-quarters of its value since January 2008 in US dollar terms.

Until September 2008, Turkey lived off short-term capital flows seeking high interest ("carry") in local-currency deposits paying close to 20%. With the collapse of leverage and the shift to risk aversion, Turkey's financial position has turned tenuous. The collapse of the oil price, moreover, has made Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern investors far less of a factor in the country's economy. A year ago, with its currency and stock market buoyed by exports and capital inflows from its Arab and Persian neighbors, Turkey could ignore Washington. Now Ankara needs Washington and the IMF badly.

In the short term, the region's economic misery gives Washington enormous leverage; past the short term, however, the question is whether the lever will be attached to anything. Erdogan has attempted to buy social peace and political power with subsidies, which cannot be sustained. American borrowing of about $2 trillion per year requires capital inflows from the rest of the world of close to $1 trillion, depending, of course, on how much debt the Federal Reserve takes onto its own books. As long as the US dollar remains the world's reserve currency, the US Treasury always will push to the front of the borrowing queue.

The result of the global crisis is an enormous reversion of capital back to the US dollar, which has risen from 1.6 euros last April to 1.25 euros last week. Most noteworthy is the deterioration of the credit of the major European countries. As shown in the chart below, the cost of buying protection on default by the United Kingdom at LIBOR +160 is what the insurance cost was on Turkey as recently as January 2008. The UK, along with other European countries, is struggling to preserve its credit because European banks lent too much to emerging Europe, including Turkey. Emerging Europe is the subprime swamp of the European banks.

The idea that Europe might offer economic or monetary competition to the US is absurd. Europe's relatively strong economies are carrying the burden of parasitic or moribund economies to their south and east. Turkey's brief economic flowering during the past five years followed the profile of emerging Europe. It represented a source of cheap manufacturers for the European market, similar to Poland and Hungary, with the additional benefit of good connections to oil-producing countries. Both windows are shut off, with the Middle Eastern window shut the tightest.

"As Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) begins its seventh year in leadership, Turkey is no longer the secular and democratic country that it was when the party took over. The AKP has conquered the bureaucracy and changed Turkey's fundamental identity. Prior to the AKP's rise, Ankara oriented itself toward the United States and Europe. Today, despite the rhetoric of European Union accession, Prime Minister Erdogan has turned Turkey away from Europe and toward Russia and Iran and re-oriented Turkish policy in the Middle East away from sympathy toward Israel and much more toward friendship with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria," wrote Rachel Sharon-Krespin in the Winter 2009 Middle East Quarterly. [1]

Economic crisis gives Erdogan's secular opponents a chance to take the country back. The Islamist prime minister will have to fall back on an Islamist hard core or cede power, and Turkey will end up an Islamist regime that more closely resembles Iran, or a secular government once again in 2010 or 2011.

In the meantime, Obama will receive a benefactor's welcome in Ankara next month. With the magic lamp of American funding, the Obama administration has the leeway to play every angle at once.

1. It will "engage Iran" as a factor in Afghanistan in order to teach the recalcitrant Pakistanis a lesson;
2. At the same time, it will try to bribe the Russians to help prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons;
3. It will make an approach to the "moderate Taliban" in Afghanistan;
4. At the same time, it will increase Western military forces in Afghanistan;
5. It is helping to assemble an $11 billion potlatch for Gaza;
6. At the same time, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists that not a penny of that money will reach Hamas, which constitutes the civil society in Gaza;
7. It will push for a Palestinian unity government including Hamas, which of course would be dominated by Hamas;
8. At the same time, it will refuse to negotiate with Hamas, etc, etc.

For the time being, regional leaders will follow American initiatives with bewilderment and attempt to follow Obama's steps without tripping over themselves. It will turn out to be an exercise in absurdity. After the initial flush of goodwill from failing governments, the Obama administration will confront a degree of chaos barely imaginable from the present vantage point. Along with Pakistan, Turkey is the most vulnerable Muslim country, as I wrote in December , although Iran will be a contender for that title when its reserves start to run out at the end of this year.

The best advice I can give to residents of those countries is: live somewhere else.

Editorial: No work and no play ...

2009-03-07T01:15:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

All work and no play has made Indians among the dullest people on Earth with whom to have a conversation, while no work and all play has pushed Americans to the most terrifying economic crisis of our time. What then do we do about countries that neither work nor play, as Pakistan seems in the danger of becoming, if one were to go by the most recent terrorist outrage?

Granted that both parts of the first statement are more than a trifle exaggerated, it is likely that readers will sympathize with the view on a broader scale. Any conversation with an Indian inevitably leads to politics, religion - or worse, Bollywood. If Indians manage at all to make any observations about sports, expect to talk about cricket, that ancient English game invented for people to play on lazy summer afternoons after a large beer-laden lunch. Generally one dreads these conversations if one has nothing to say about the most recent Intel chip, and especially if you have not a clue what a quad-core chip is.

Having conversations with Americans is generally a pleasure if for nothing else because serious topics such as religion and geopolitics are almost never broached; but most folks from Asia are usually left wondering how Americans manage to follow such a dizzying array of sports. Usually the next observation is along the lines of why do people with such strong sporting passions fail so miserably in their jobs?

All these though pale in comparison to the dangers of the third bunch of people who are progressively denied, as a religious tool, access to entertainment, eventually culminating in stunted social development that creates its own cycle of poverty. Afghanistan is the foremost example of this in the Islamic world.

After the Taliban takeover of the country in the early 1990s, sporting activities were progressively banned (perhaps that should be "regressively") or else merged with the ruling party's socio-economic ethic, which led to the chilling images filmed secretly by a British television channel that showed a veiled woman being stoned to death in the middle of a football pitch watched by some 30,000 spectators.

Americans have half-time entertainment too during their football games, although it takes more than a simple leap of imagination from having a couple of nubile, half-naked singers performing the latest pop hits to a crowd stoning a woman to death. To ensure full attention, the Taliban also suspended the actual football games on the pitch; perhaps they were worried about safety of players encountering difficulties playing football on a pitch littered with stones and pools of blood.

Given that the perpetrators of the most recent outrage in Pakistan this week involving the attacks on a visiting Sri Lankan cricket team had similar motivations, the question does arise if the first shots have been fired in the ultimate Talibanization of the country; a scenario that I have explained more than once on these pages.

Sporting prestige
Harking back to George Clemenceau's quote that war is too important to be left to generals, sport has become a new focus in a world where full-scale bilateral conflicts have been replaced with guerrilla warfare and random attacks on civilians.

Beginning in 776 BC, the Greeks certainly knew the importance of sports as the various city-states vied for honors in the Olympic games. The reputation of many a nation was forged not so much in the theatres of war as the sandpits of Olympia. The Roman emperor Nero took the games seriously enough to bribe officials for the express purpose of disqualifying all other competitors in his category.

The echoes of Nero were to ring 2,000 years later, when Hitler staged Aryan superiority Olympics in Berlin, only to be upstaged by the black American athlete Jesse Owens' triumphs on the field, as his pet-architect Albert Speer was to recall: "Each of the German victories, and there were a surprising number of these, made him happy, but he was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games. Hitler was also jolted by the jubilation of the Berliners when the French team filed solemnly into the Olympic Stadium ... If I am correctly interpreting Hitler's expression at the time, he was more disturbed than pleased by the Berliners' cheers."
Following from Adolf Hitler, various communist countries quickly adopted sports as a matter of national prestige starting with the Soviet Union [5], a focus not lost on its acolytes in the rest of the Warsaw Pact as well as others including China and Cuba.

All this while other countries, including the United States and those in Western Europe, broadened the commercial appeal of sports; the 1951 live telecast of a college football game in the US opened the doors for sportsmen to become idolized and increasingly successful in the financial sense. In turn, this attracted more participants to sports; a self-feeding frenzy that soon produced better sports as events became much more competitive.

Between communist pride and Western commercial interests, the frenzy in sports also led sportsmen to cheat, resorting to steroids and banned drugs with a view to performance enhancement. In communist countries, the penalty for getting caught was nothing more than a slap on the wrist, the ongoing damage to bodies was another matter altogether being the subject of basic denial. Meanwhile in the West, commercially induced cheating produced a mini-boom in demand for chemistry graduates albeit in areas far removed from their usual spots in foul-smelling school labs.

The reason any of this became relevant in the rest of the world is of course the effect that cheating had on the aspirations of the young as well as the social commentary that inevitably followed. Sportsmen who cheated lost their fan following (at least in the past they did) but also elicited broader comparisons going back to their social or ethnic groups; in some cases it became the subject of national scandals.

Virtuous non-participation
With all this cheating going on, many countries and societies have fallen by the wayside of modern sports. I wrote in the previously cited article [5] about the poor record of Indian sportsmen, concluding that the lack of economic incentives explained their lack of participation not to mention excellence. About the only sport that Indians seem to be any good in is cricket, and herein lies the rub for the most recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

Indian cricketers are paid substantially more than those in any other nation playing the sport; more importantly they are also reportedly in the top echelons of the country's own population when it comes to oversized pay. This puts them in the same category as American baseball and football stars, not to mention the ubiquitous basketball legends of the Michael Jordan variety.

All that wealth in an Asian sport clearly attracts attention, of the type that Islamic terrorists revel in. Far from an ideological conflict involving sports per se (although enough Wahhabi scholarship holds that sports activities are frowned upon) the issue is more subtle, involving the attention span of a people used to diversions.

In any poor country, the general time allocated to sports, leisure or entertainment activities is relatively small, which means that avid spectators are unlikely to also care about more serious topics such as religion and politics. That fear of marginalization, more than any specific political agenda, justifies the attention of Islamic terrorists who would like nothing more than keeping their support pipelines thick and strong with embedded national outrage.

In contrast, a people inured to the ups and downs of sports are unlikely to support extremism in its many forms. Good sportspeople respect their competitors, as do good spectators however fervent their support for the home team may be. People without much interest in sports - playing or watching - are more likely to indulge in violence: although ironically that observation reverses when we discuss peoples rather than the propensity of specific individuals to violence [6].

This then is the actual battleground. As Pakistanis suffer further damage on their economy due to the economic crisis, their sporting aspirations are also being dented, in turn pushing more young people into the path of the fundamentalists to recruit, train and utilize as cannon fodder.

Winds of change swirl in Pakistan

2009-03-07T01:13:00.000-08:00

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Pakistan's deteriorating political situation has activated the previously very low profile Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani. He met President Asif Ali Zardari for the first time this week - actually twice - after returning from Washington, where he had met with senior officials.

As a result, a planned crackdown against opposition parties has been shelved. The Punjab Assembly, which was closed down this month after the High Court disqualified the chief minister of the state, Shahbaz Sharif, was reopened. It had been placed under governor's rule, that is, by the central government in Islamabad.

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani has also asserted his strength and advised the president, through parliament, to rescind an ordinance on mobile law courts. Zardari had issued a decree to establish mobile courts that would have the power to adjudicate on minor offences on the spot. Opposition parties claimed the courts would be used to target their activists, who plan a number of street protests in the coming weeks.

Among these are lawyers who plan a "long march" from March 12 to March 16 in their campaign for the restoration of the chief justice who was sacked by former military ruler president General Pervez Musharraf in November 2007.

Kiani's trip to Washington appears to have acted as a catalyst for change. Since taking over the military from Musharraf on November 28, 2007, Kiani, a former director of the Inter-Services Intelligence and director general of Military Operations, had kept his head down.

The ongoing strife in the country, with militants and al-Qaeda steadily gaining ground in the tribal areas, and the government busy settling scores with opposition parties and civil society, has compelled Washington and its prime contractor in the region, the Pakistan military, to rewrite the political scenario.

On Thursday, Kiani discussed the situation at a meeting with the corps commanders - the heads of the regional army groups - and shared Washington's concerns about governance in Pakistan.

One of these concerns relates to Zardari. He assumed the presidency last September as an "iron man", but in recent weeks he as been more subdued.

One reason could be a proclamation of the recently formed United Front of Mujahideen in Pakistan in the tribal areas which announced that Zardari was on its hit list - the only politician to be included.

However, he suffered a political defeat - directly as a result of the military's persuasion - when this week he lifted the ban on the Punjab Assembly and allowed it to meet. The majority of its members belong to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, arch foes of Zardari.

More humiliating though was the issue of the mobile courts. Premier Gillani advised the president that since parliament was in session, he had to withdraw the ordinance. In this instance, the prime minister's advice was binding, so the ordinance was canceled.

Zardari has also been upset because Gillani fired his national security adviser, Mahmood Ali Durrani, in January for acknowledging that the sole surviving gunman captured by India during November's terrorist attack on Mumbai was Pakistani. Durrani is close to Zardari.

This military intervention - and Gillani getting closer to the army - coincides with a drop in Zardari's popularity within his own Pakistan People's Party, the lead party in the ruling coalition. Zardari has been particularly outspoken - if not rude - towards some of parliament's members, including in his own cabinet. He is even in danger of losing control of the party as he is accused of surrounding himself with friends and associates, many unelected, to act as advisors in key areas.

The situation in Pakistan is fast becoming untenable. Although Kiani has become more active, neither the Americans nor the Pakistan army actually wants to change horses in mid-stream. Yet the country is becoming less and less governable under the present arrangement, and quick action is required.

This does not necessarily mean getting rid of Zardari, but he could well be forced to make further concessions to his political rival, former premier and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, by giving him a share of power. If Zardari does not do this, the military's hand could be forced.

Taliban force a China switch

2009-03-05T03:12:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Because of its deep strategic and economic relationship with Pakistan, the inviolability of Chinese interests has been largely accepted by all the major political players inside Pakistan and its sphere of influence in western Afghanistan.

However, in a development that Beijing undoubtedly finds very disturbing, China is getting sucked into the security crisis in the Pashtun border areas of Pakistan.

Two Chinese hostages, engineers working on a cell phone project in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), were captured by the Pakistan Taliban in August 2008. One escaped; the other was released "in a goodwill gesture" by the Taliban after the President Asif Ali Zardari administration acquiesced to the imposition of sharia law in the Swat Valley in February.

It is not inconceivable that Zardari approved the sharia decision - which has appalled just about everybody - so that the Chinese man would be freed and Zardari's second state visit to China in February would not fall under the same hostage cloud that overshadowed his first state visit, in October 2008.

Shoring up Chinese support would be very important to Zardari, given the implementation last week of his long-brewing and risky plan to curb former president Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif's political fortunes by the High Court banning them from elected office over a hijacking in 1999. Shahbaz Sharif was the chief minister of Punjab province and after he was forced to step down Islamabad asserting federal control over the Pakistan heartland province (and Sharif stronghold).

China regards security issues in the Muslim lands of Central and South Asia through the lens of its fraught relations with the Uyghur Muslim population of its northwestern province of Xinjiang. Chinese rule over Xinjiang is not popular, there is a Xinjiang independence movement, and Uyghur militants have claimed responsibility for several bloody actions, both in the province and in the Han areas of China.

China is very concerned that Xinjiang separatism enjoys a favorable regional environment thanks to the collapse of political order in Afghanistan and western Pakistan - a collapse that China accelerated by pouring arms, training and some fighters into the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

After September 11, 2001, China aggressively played the Islamic terrorism card in stigmatizing the Uyghur self-determination movement and conflating it with the activities of the violently militant East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). In 2002, the George W Bush administration acceded in listing ETIM as a terrorist organization, thus largely foreclosing to Uyghur activists the international affection and support that has accrued to the Tibetan independence movement.

However, with the retreat of the central government from Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering NWFP and the resurgence of militancy throughout the Pashtun homeland from the opium fields of Helmand in Afghanistan's west all the way to the Swat Valley, 160 kilometers from Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, an enormous haven for Islamic militants is coming into being.

And the local allies, especially Pakistan, that China has traditionally relied on to police Uyghur militants on its behalf, are in danger of being marginalized by a powerful and assertive Taliban movement apparently less willing to defer to China.

Prior to 9/11, elements within the Taliban were eager to deal with China and display the same consideration for Beijing's interests that characterized their Pakistani sponsors. "No troublemaking in Xinjiang" has been the repeated refrain of virtually every Islamist group seeking to curry favor with China.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) (not the Chinese government) concluded an agreement at the end of 1998, soon after the Taliban took power and while the Chinese were wrestling with blowback inside Xinjiang from the participation of Uyghur fighters in the anti-Soviet jihad. In return for training assistance, the Taliban promised not to "provide any training to Chinese Muslims in China's Xinjiang province and that it will assist the Chinese authorities maintain places of worship and madrassas as in China".

In 2000, Stratfor reported: [T]he Afghan ambassador to Pakistan guaranteed a Chinese delegation that no groups would be allowed to operate against China from Afghanistan.

When the Taliban became international pariahs after 9/11, their opportunities for engagement with China diminished. However, on the occasion of one of the bloodier attacks against foreign interests - the massacre of 11 Chinese workers laboring on a World Bank road project in Afghanistan in 2004 - the traditional deference toward China required of current and hopeful clients of Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was on full display.

The Taliban, who had no qualms about claiming responsibility for the brutal concurrent massacre of five Medicien Sans Frontiers staff, quickly disclaimed responsibility and made their pro-Chinese feelings known with alacrity:
The Taliban militia has denied responsibility for the killings ... "We deny the accusation of killing the Chinese workers in Kunduz province of Afghanistan," Abdul Latif Hakimi, who claims to represent the ousted militia, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. Hakimi said the deaths "should not have happened".

The Taliban also worked the phones with the Associated Press, with another spokesman "pointing the finger" at Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the independent insurgent leader who operates in Kunduz, as the most likely author of the massacre. Then the Taliban went the extra mile and organized a demonstration of 3,000 people "to show their support for the Chinese".

The defiantly anti-foreign Hekmatyar, who counts Russia, the United States and Iran as his enemies, also denied responsibility in an interview with Sikh Spectrum:
Question: Are you behind the recent killing of the Chinese?

Hekmatyar: I have no idea about it. The Taliban have split now. The other faction is led by Mullah Soban. It could be his brainchild. I have expelled some miscreants from my party. It could be their handiwork. I really have no idea. [The interviewer also had the praiseworthy temerity to challenge Hekmatyar on his version of events.]
Question: But the Afghan government strongly suspects that you have masterminded it. They have good reasons to believe this. In fact, you have admitted it off-the-record while talking to some journalists.

Hekmatyar: It is not true. I cannot accept the responsibility if some miscreants have masterminded it at the US's behest. I believe it is the handiwork of the Americans. They have used some greedy mujahideen for this inhuman act to defame the true mujahideen. I suspect that the Americans have also masterminded the killing of Chinese in Gwador, Balochistan. The US agenda is to malign jihad and jihadis.

A kidnapping of two Chinese engineers inside Pakistan in the same year by renegade Taliban leader Abdullah Mehsud elicited a storm of criticism.

The constituent parties of Pakistan's Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal six-party Islamist alliance made demands that the hostages be released, and it was made known that the Pakistan Taliban itself suspected that Mehsud - a jihadi who had been detained at Guantanamo for 25 months and then rather mysteriously released - was a US double agent intent on sabotaging Sino-Pakistani relations.

Although one hostage died and one was rescued in a botched rescue by Pakistani special forces, the understanding across the political spectrum that Chinese interests were a protected class was reconfirmed.

Nevertheless, Taliban and Pakistani relations with China have always been complicated by the presence of a few hundred Uyghur militants who trained and fought with some combination of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the ISI.

As early as 1992, almost two dozen Uyghurs died in an armed clash near Kashgar in Xinjiang and the Chinese government shut down its road links with Pakistan, including the legendary Karakorum Highway, for several months to stop the destabilizing flow of fighters, drugs, and AIDS.

Before 9/11, a special training camp for Uyghurs was reportedly operated at Tora Bora under al-Qaeda and Taliban auspices near the Pakistan border, and a safe house maintained in the Afghan provincial town of Jalalabad. According to one report, the Chinese claim 1,000 Uyghur militants trained in al-Qaeda camps.

After the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, 22 Uyghurs were captured and delivered to the United States for incarceration at Guantanamo. Although some of the captives may have been innocents snared in the web of bounty hunters (five were released to Albania), most of them did confess to receiving training on firing an AK-47 at the ETIM training camp at Tora Bora, according to a study of the publicly available court documents by Long War Journal.

The Uyghur detainees' advocates exploited the fact that the prosecution was unable to demonstrate unambiguous links between ETIM and al-Qaeda or the Taliban and made the argument that these young men should be released since had never displayed any intention of committing terrorist attacks against the United States, the implication being that they had sought military training solely for the purpose of the independence struggle against the Chinese in Xinjiang.

The Chinese were appalled at the possibility that the legitimacy of the Uyghur struggle might receive explicit or implicit international endorsement, or that independent militants or their sympathizers will find a political haven anywhere.

Beijing has exerted considerable political pressure on the United States not to release 17 of the detainees into the custody of avowedly non-violent pro-independence Uyghur emigres in the Washington, DC area, and was also able to prevail on the Australian government in January 2009 to refuse to take any Guantanamo Uyghur detainees, either.

The Chinese government has always been extremely aggressive in its efforts to ensure that Uyghur militants seeking independence for Xinjiang do not find welcome anywhere, especially in Pakistan.

B Raman reported in the South Asia Analysis Group:
Talking to a group of senior Pakistani newspaper editors after a visit to China in 2003, [President General Pervez] Musharraf was reported to have stated that he was shocked by the strong language used by the Chinese leaders while talking of the activities of the Uyghur jihadi terrorists from Pakistani territory.
However, except for the killing of ETIM head Hahsan Mahsum in FATA in 2003 by Pakistani forces, Chinese efforts to get Pakistan to hand over East Turkestan fighters have been unsuccessful.

In October 2008, on the occasion of Zardari's first official visit to China, the Chinese media pointedly published a detailed bill of the particulars of the eight most-wanted ETIM terrorists, presumably so that the Pakistani government could not excuse continued inaction with any pretended confusion as to who Beijing was after and why.

To be fair, Pakistan's dilatory response to Chinese demands may have reflected recognition that attempts to repatriate Uyghur militants to China for incarceration or worse would probably have provoked the biggest headache for Sino-Pakistan relations: retaliation against Chinese interests and individuals inside Pakistan.

However, in 2007, the issues of Islamic radicalism, Uyghur separatists and Chinese interests collided catastrophically in the matter of the fundamentalist Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad. The mosque, avowedly pro-Taliban and linked to al-Qaeda, was a large and provocative bastion of fundamentalist Islamist power inside Pakistan's capital and committed to the imposition of sharia law.

Lal Masjid's creeping attempts to extend and deepen its reach beyond its walls through Islamic vigilantism elicited the same dilatory response from the Pakistan government that it subsequently displayed in mishandling the growing crisis in FATA and NWFP.

Abduction of Chinese managers and employees of a massage parlor by the female members of a madrassa associated with the mosque as punishment for allegedly immoral activities provoked the anger of the Chinese government and prompted a cautious, protracted siege of the mosque by the Pakistani army.

Later, when declaring a state of emergency, Musharraf highlighted the Lal Masjid situation as the primary example of Pakistan's problems with Islamist extremism:
Now. We saw the event of Lal Masjid in Islamabad where extremists took law into their own hands ... The Chinese, who are such great friends of ours - they took the Chinese hostage and tortured them. Because of this, I was personally embarrassed. I had to go apologize to the Chinese leaders, "I am ashamed that you are such great friends and this happened to you."

After a round of humiliating kow-towing by Pakistan government officials, the hostages were clad in burkas supplied by the mosque and released, and another successful interaction in the "hands off" China tradition of Pakistani security politics was apparently chalked up.

The mosque's leaders ostentatiously advertised their friendship towards China, as Dawn reported:

We released [the hostages] in view of Pakistan-China friendship and after an assurance by the local administration that all such health clinics and massage centers, where "objectionable activities" are carried out, would be closed in Islamabad," said Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy chief of Lal Masjid.
Despite this happy ending, the Chinese government was still very disturbed that Uyghurs were associated with the mosque and that they had accused the masseuses of being Chinese agents sent to spy on them to forestall disruption of the Beijing Summer Olympic Games by Xinjiang militants.

Subsequently, three Chinese were murdered in an attack on a rickshaw factory in NWFP in apparent retaliation for the ongoing siege.

The Chinese government apparently decided that the escalating violence against Chinese and the disturbing presence of Uyghur separatists had to be dealt with firmly - by Pakistan. Beijing splashed gory pictures of the Peshawar attack across the media and on the websites of Chinese consulates around the world and demanded action from the Musharraf government.

In what is now recognized as a watershed moment symbolizing the rupture between the Pakistani government and the fundamentalist Islam infrastructure it had nurtured, Musharraf ordered an assault on the mosque on July 10 by 15,000 troops personally loyal to him that cost upward of 100 lives (perhaps even 1,000) and the death of several of the mosque's key leaders.

In the wake of the traumatic assault, the Chinese government took the remarkable step of having its ambassador, Luo Zhaohui, deny Chinese involvement in the decision to attack the mosque, something that would be unlikely to convince or mollify the Taliban: "We enjoy very cordial relations with the ruling party here and likewise we maintain friendly ties with other segments of the society, including the political parties of the opposition."

Pakistan's security apparatus, including Hamid Gul, ex-chief of the ISI and the "Godfather of the Taliban", made heroic efforts to plant stories that the outrages against the Chinese had been carried out by double agents inside the Taliban trying to drive a wedge between Islamabad and Beijing on behalf of Washington and/or New Delhi.

However, the abduction of two Chinese telecommunications engineers, Zhang Guo and Long Xiaowei, in NWFP by the Pakistani Taliban on August 29 of last year apparently marked the crossing of a new threshold. The Taliban reportedly demanded the release of 136 hostages and ransom in return for the release of the Chinese.

Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani's exasperated comment in parliament in the aftermath of the seizure of Zhang and Long revealed the traditional conceptions about Chinese immunity from these outrages, as well as exposing the gulf between Pakistani attitudes towards China and the United States: "You are always going on about America being your enemy. So why did you kidnap our Chinese friends?"

However, it appears that China may have lost the privileged status that it previously enjoyed in Pakistan and Pashtun Afghanistan thanks to its alliance with Pakistan and the good offices of the ISI.

A quote in a study by security expert B Raman provides an interesting contrast between the deferential handkissing by the Taliban and Hekmatyar in the case of the massacred Chinese road workers in 2004 at Kunduz and the casual defiance of the kidnappers of the two Chinese engineers in 2008:

Muslim Khan, who described himself as a spokesman of the TTP [Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan] in the Swat Valley, claimed that the Chinese engineers were in the custody of the TTP, which would be shortly announcing its demands for their release. Initially he said: "Our aim is to hit the government's interests wherever they are. We kidnap everyone irrespective of whether he's Pakistani or Chinese and we'll continue to do this until they stop killing our people." (Emphasis added.)
It also appears that the Taliban were deliberately putting the China factor into play by seizing the hostages.

Shortly after the kidnapping, The News reported:
"We are getting angry at the lack of interests of the governments of China and Pakistan and will close doors for negotiation, if they do not hold serious talks for solution to the issue," a top militant commander told The News. (Emphasis added.)

A few weeks later, The News followed up:
The sources said they had not reached any deal for the Chinese so far, though they had been holding negotiations for the release of the engineer. The talks were, according to the sources, being held between the central leadership of the TTP and the Chinese authorities. The sources denied any contact with the government despite the latter's claim to be making hectic efforts to secure the release of Long.

This gives the appearance that the Taliban wished to use the hostages to establish direct contact with Beijing, exploit the vulnerability of Chinese interests in the region to intimidate China, discredit the Zardari government by demonstrating its inability to protect them, and encourage the Chinese to involve themselves in Taliban matters to help pressure Pakistan's civilian government.

Zardari acknowledged as much in an op-ed published under his name in the China Daily on February 23, 2009: "[T]errorists have specifically targeted some of our Chinese friends who were working in Pakistan to drive a wedge between the two countries and peoples."

Aware of the weakness and instability of the Zardari government - and unhappy with its marked pro-US tilt - China appears to be reaching out to other stakeholders in the Taliban mess. A commentary in the People's Daily on February 23 contained a clear statement of China's desire that the threat of Islamic militancy be neutralized through concerted multilateralism instead of by a quixotic US-led military campaign of extermination.

It warned the President Barack Obama administration not to rely solely on a unilateral hard power surge to solve the Afghan problem, and urged the United States to stabilize Pakistan, conciliate Russia, and be realistic in defining acceptable outcomes for Afghanistan.

Chinese President Hu Jintao's recent overseas trip included a high-profile swing into Saudi Arabia, which is working to mediate a deal that would have the Taliban repudiate al-Qaeda and enter the Kabul government.

Closer to home, the Chinese Communist Party hosted a delegation from Pakistan's leading Islamic political party, the Jamaati-i-Islami (JI) in Beijing, Xi'an and Shanghai in February.

China was certainly pleased with JI's unambiguous endorsement of China's Xinjiang policy and the two parties signed a memorandum of understanding and the JI's office advised:

Both parties have agreed upon four principles including independence, equality, and mutual respect and not to interfere in the internal matters of each country ... Both sides assured full support to China's national and geographical unity, and fully backed China's stance on Taiwan, Tibet and Xin Jiang issues.

Back in the NWFP, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the head of JI, heaped praise on China while skating over the awkward issue of an alliance between an Islamic party and a godless communist state (like the one JI had conducted jihad against in Afghanistan).

Qazi said the JI respected China's independence and geographical authority and that China had to be assured that bilateral friendly relations would not be affected if the JI came to power as the JI could prove to be a more dependable friend since it was not under control of any foreign power.

CBS reported the spin on the meeting: A senior JI leader speaking from Mansoora, the party's headquarters in Pakistan's Punjab region, told CBS News that the agreement which was signed this month "makes us accept finally and formally that China's internal affairs are not our business". While confirming the JI's agreement with the Chinese Communist Party, one senior Pakistani intelligence official who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity said, "This is a major event for Pakistan and for China. It formally ends what I consider a very bad chapter in Pakistan's relations with China."

It is unlikely that the motivation for the agreement, perhaps midwifed by the ISI, was to obtain protection for China's interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Xinjiang.

If the Pakistan Taliban are rescinding China's traditional immunity to attack, the JI - whose brief from the ISI excludes the Taliban, and whose modernist Islamicism is far removed from the Taliban's theological obscurantism - is not the go-to party for China.

The significance of the agreement - and the involvement of "one senior intelligence official" - probably indicates that China anticipates a festering crisis in the Taliban-controlled Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan and doesn't expect that the Zardari administration will be especially responsive or effective in helping China with its security issues.

Therefore, instead of relying on Pakistan's central government, Beijing is upgrading its direct contacts with the non-Taliban sectors of Pakistan's civilian polity, Islamist political parties, and intelligence apparatus.

It may also mean that China is considering placing a cautious bet with one of the most important non-Taliban Pashtun insurgent commanders in Afghanistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

At the political level, the JI is allied with Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League. The other major Islamic party, the Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-Islam, has joined the Zardari government. If Zardari falls, the JI would be the main Islamic partner in the new ruling coalition.

Beyond this implicit endorsement of the anti-Zardari coalition, China's pact with the JI revives the historic link between China, the ISI, the JI and Hekmatyar.

During the anti-Soviet jihad, Hekmatyar was strongly favored by the ISI and received the lion's share of aid Pakistan funneled to the mujahideen - perhaps US$600 million worth.

When the flow of secret dollars became a flood and the demand for arms and ammunition became so great that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could not satisfy it from the usual clandestine sources, China became Hekmatyar's primary supplier of everything from bullets to AK-47s to mules.

The Soviet-backed government in Kabul estimated that Afghanistan was flooded with $400 million worth of weapons provided by China. The Chinese government also provided 300 advisors and trainers for the mujahideen in camps run by the ISI on the Pakistan side of the border. Purportedly, 55,000 fighters passed through these camps.

Today, the unpredictable Hekmatyar, who has survived the jihad, the civil war, defeat at the hands of the Taliban, exile in Iraq, an assassination attempt by the CIA, and return to Afghanistan as an insurgent leader, is the great hope of all parties as the only Pashtun strongman untainted by al-Qaeda and possibly capable of taking on the Taliban.

As a result, despite his status as a declared terrorist with a $25 million price on his head, Hekmatyar has been wooed by the President Hamid Karzai government in Kabul, the Saudis, the Pakistanis, the ISI, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Kingdom, the US and, perhaps now, through its JI link, by China.

By appearing to take sides in the Pakistan and Afghanistan mess, China is taking a considerable risk, not just to its reputation as the universal friend of all factions, but to its interests and the lives of its citizens inside Pakistan and Afghanistan.

If China persists in tilting away from the Zardari administration and from the Taliban to a nascent third force in regional security, it will be an indication of how dangerous it believes the current crisis to be.

Terror's guns don't discriminate

2009-03-04T02:30:00.000-08:00

By Beena Sarwar

South Asia is caught in a vortex of violence as the countries that form this region - from Sri Lanka at its southern-most tip, Bangladesh to the east, Nepal crowning the north, Pakistan along the west and India in the middle - deal with internal nightmares.

Wednesday's armed attack on a convoy carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team in the historic city of Lahore in Pakistan has sent shockwaves through a country already a victim of regular suicide and other attacks. Six Pakistani policemen died and several were injured saving the Sri Lankan cricketers, six of whom were wounded in the attack.

At the other end of the sub-continent, Bangladesh is still reeling from the shock of a Border Guards' mutiny over pay and working conditions, resulting in soldiers massacring over 140 officers, including some of their wives. Some analysts fear that the horrific incident might elicit copycat responses elsewhere where soldiers are unhappy with the tasks they are made to do.

India has yet to recover from the horror of the attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, which claimed some 180 lives. New Delhi had, as a direct result of the attacks, called off participation of the Indian cricket team in the Pakistan tests.

Sri Lanka, in the last stages of a heavy-handed army operation against Tamil separatists who have been fighting a guerrilla war against the state for over two decades, could hardly have imagined that its cricket team would come under fire in Pakistan, a friendly country.

Still, as the Sri Lankans told journalists after the Lahore attack, they had come here "well aware of the risks".

Analysts point out that Tamil separatists are unlikely to be responsible for the attack, given the back foot from which they are operating.

The Sri Lankan team, in Lahore for a five-day Test match of which they had already played the first two days, was en route from their hotel to the stadium early in the morning on March 3 when the gunmen attacked.

The firing reportedly began from three directions as their van slowed down near a roundabout close to the Gaddafi cricket stadium. Shaky television footage has showed men with guns and backpacks taking position and firing. Their first target was the police escort.

According to the van driver, one of them flung a hand grenade which rolled under the van without damaging it. He said that the cricketers flung themselves to the floor of the van as he accelerated to escape the gunfire, managing to get the bullet-riddled van with the cricketers to the stadium.

There is universal condemnation for the terrorist act, which many believe is an attempt to further discredit and isolate Pakistan. Many are praying for the quick recovery of the injured cricketers who have been airlifted home to Sri Lanka.

"They were our guests, they came to Pakistan when most people were not willing to come," one man in Peshawar told a television journalist.

"We are a friendly and cricket-loving nation," said another passer-by. "Now no cricket team will want to play here."

The incident has more or less put paid to Pakistan's aspirations of hosting the next World Cup in 2011, say observers.

New Zealand said on Wednesday that it would call off its November tour of Pakistan, and the International Cricket Council raised doubts over whether the country could still co-host the World Cup.

"I don't think any international team will be going to Pakistan in the foreseeable future," New Zealand Cricket chief executive Justin Vaughan told Agence-France Press.

The Age newspaper in Australia said: "The Sri Lankan team airlifted out of the Gaddafi stadium is likely to be the last to tour Pakistan for a generation."

The attackers struck at a sport that is hugely popular across South Asia, a throwback to a common colonial past for all the countries, except Nepal, which was never under British rule. The colonial legacy includes the English language, administrative systems and railways.

In normal times, when India and Pakistan's cricket teams meet on the pitch the fans often see it as a battlefield. A Pakistan-India game is referred to in parts of India as Qayamat (doomsday). Despite the keen rivalry, however, love of the sport is a unifying factor. "Cricket diplomacy" has featured among the permissible people-to-people contacts that have grown immensely over the past decade or so.

"Cricket is not the bone of discord between the two countries," Gul Hameed Bhatti, sports editor of the country's largest media group, Jang, told Inter Press Service. "Basically, the problem is the tensions between both countries, and cricket has become a casualty. This incident has thrown cricket and other sports back into the dark ages. I don't see anyone agreeing to come and play here now."

Bhatti added that he had long "feared that this was a disaster waiting to happen, because the situation in the rest of the country is so volatile. It was unrealistic to think that sportsmen could remain isolated from it''.

Nor, say analysts, can other areas of society, like culture. In early November, explosions on the penultimate night of a major international performing arts festival in Lahore caused panic. There were no casualties, although some people sustained minor injuries. Artists, foreign and local, defiantly rallied around to make the festival's last day a resounding success.

The festival was held in the cultural complex next to the stadium where the Sri Lankans were headed when they were attacked.

"Most people," said Bhatti, "had become complacent, thinking they would never target sportsmen."

They included Pakistani cricket hero-turned-politician Imran Khan, who shortly after the Mumbai attacks categorically told an Indian newspaper, "There is no problem about the security of cricketers in Pakistan. The terrorists will never target cricketers knowing that they will then lose the battle of hearts and minds of the people. Cricketers are safe in Pakistan."

The audacious attack in an upmarket Lahore locality is now being compared to the Mumbai attacks, where 10 gunmen targeted symbols of national strength like the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Police are saying that about a dozen gunmen were involved in the Lahore attacks.

Cricket is an area in which Pakistan has traditionally shone as a global power with a huge fan following around the world.

Security fears have, however, massively dented enjoyment of the sport as many foreign teams have over the past years canceled tours, including India after the Mumbai attacks that similarly cast a shadow over "India shining", raising doubts about internal security.

Police were still hunting on Wednesday for the gunmen behind the Lahore attack, with five people being questioned.

Pakistan, already beset by multiple political problems, has for some time been facing a deadly threat from jihadi forces - regional players like the Taliban (from Afghanistan and Pakistan), al-Qaeda and local militant outfits like the banned Laskhar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, many of whom have roots in the southern Punjab and links to Pakistan's intelligence agencies that nurtured them during the Afghan war of the 1980s.

Following the events of September 11, 2001, these forces have converged, to emerge as a greater threat than ever before, not just for Pakistan, but for world peace, say analysts.

Their agenda is not just to enforce what they consider to be an Islamic system, but to overrun and destabilize the state itself. Pakistanis have suffered heavily under this agenda, paying a price for the policies of military rulers - who have run the country for more than half its 60 years of existence - that civilian governments have been unable to change.

These policies have included cultivating Islamic warriors to fight against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan during the 1980s, supporting the Taliban to create strategic depth in Afghanistan (citing the threat of a hostile India on the eastern border), and using some of these elements to bleed India in the disputed region of Kashmir.

No elected government in Pakistan has ever completed its tenure. They are routinely overthrown either by the army or dismissed by various presidents using the powers invested in that office by the military dictator General Zia ul-Haq, who also got himself appointed as president.

The current elected government, say analysts, is the first that is actually serious about fighting the jihadi threat which it recognizes as endangering the country's very existence. "But it appears that various elements within the establishment are still bogged down in the old policies and are unwilling to give democracy a chance," said an observer.

Just as enraged Indians had "jumped on the blame Pakistan bandwagon" immediately following the Mumbai attacks of November, "some in Pakistan are now blaming the Indian hand", for the cricket attack, says Bhatti.

Many see the attack on the Sri Lankan team as an Indian attempt to take "revenge" for Mumbai and an attempt to isolate Pakistan internationally.

Lieutenant General (retired) Hameed Gul, former head of Pakistan's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence and a known hawk, said on television that "India wants to declare Pakistan a terrorist state". The attack on the Sri Lankan team, he declared, "is related to that conspiracy".

The Pakistan government itself has been more circumspect, as have other analysts, including retired army officers like Major General (retired) Jamshed Ayaz Khan, who cautioned against such accusations "without a full investigation".

The Sri Lankan government's response has been conciliatory. "Pakistan's cricket team was willing to visit our country when others weren't because of security worries," said Palitha T B Kohona, Sri Lanka's foreign secretary, "and his government was pleased to reciprocate. The game must not be affected by a lunatic fringe."

Media proliferation, particularly the 24-hour television news channels, has increased the intensity and probability of such dramatic high-profile attacks. Terrorism thrives in the media spotlight which terrorists successfully attracted in Mumbai last November and now with the Lahore attack.

Ultimately, those who suffer the most after such incidents are ordinary people in India and Pakistan. The Lahore attack is bound to generate further tension between the two countries, which have still not resumed the composite dialogue process stalled after the Mumbai attacks in November.

Rather than cooperating to solve a common problem, India and Pakistan remain prisoners of their hostile pasts. The ultimate winners in this game, note analysts, will only be the terrorists, whose aim is destabilization and raising tensions around the region and the world.

Pakistan's militants ready for more

2009-03-04T02:29:00.001-08:00

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Tuesday's attack in the Pakistani city of Lahore on a convoy carrying Sri Lankan cricketers was carried out by disgruntled Punjabi militants seeking to extract concessions from the government, HNN has learned.

And the 12 highly trained gunmen who fled the scene after killing six police officers and wounding six of the cricketers had planned to take the sportsmen hostage, not kill them, high-level sources maintain.

The militants, working directly under the command of a joint Punjabi and Kashmiri leadership based in the North Waziristan tribal area and allied with al-Qaeda, planned the Lahore operation. The object was to hold the cricketers ransom in exchange for jailed militants and the safe passage of their colleagues to North Waziristan.

A spokesperson at the Sri Lankan Embassy at Islamabad also said on Tuesday that he did not believe the Sri Lankan players were meant to be killed as all fire was aimed at the police protecting the players.

The gunmen's plan to take hostages was foiled by the fierce resistance put up by the elite commandos of the Punjab police in the escorting convoy. They stood their ground and were quick to return fire. An assistant superintendent of police in the bus carrying the cricketers was smart enough to immediately urge the driver to speed to safety inside the Gaddafi Stadium where the Sri Lankans were due to resume their five-day Test match against Pakistan. The Sri Lankan team later presented the driver with their playing shirts as a sign of gratitude.

Items recovered from the scene of the attack just a few hundred meters from the stadium included bags containing AK-47s, light machine guns, hand grenades, small rocket launchers, plastic bombs and wireless sets.

Inspector General Khawaja Khalid Farooq of the Punjab police said the militants were carrying sufficient weaponry to fight for many hours. They also had plentiful supplies of food, such as almonds and mineral water.

Video footage of the incident shows the gunmen as extremely composed and well trained and dressed in urban attire, including running shoes - nothing like the rustic mountain-dwelling Taliban fighters who invariably wear traditional clothing such as turbans, long robes and sandals. They also appeared to be in excellent physical condition.

All indications are that the militants are "good sons of the soil" trained by Pakistan's premier secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence's India cell to fight against the Indian security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir. The ISI shut its Kashmir operations a few years ago and many militants joined forces with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Indeed, the appearance and modus operandi of the gunmen resembles that of the 10 gunmen who attacked Mumbai in India last November in a two-day rampage of violence that led to the deaths of 180 people, including all but once of the militants. Investigations showed that the men were linked to the banned Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has deep roots in the Kashmir struggle.

These "Kashmir" militants are mostly non-Pashtun (unlike the Taliban), with the majority being ethnic Punjabis.

Troubles in the mountains
The attack on Tuesday is most likely related to events in the Swat Valley, where the government last month signed a peace treaty with militants after several years of fighting. The accord also allowed for the implementation of sharia law in the area.

Before the Swat agreement was inked, the Pakistani Taliban presented their demands. These included a financial package worth 480 million rupees (US$6 million) for compensation for families that had lost members through death or injury or which had lost property as a result of the operations of the security forces. They also demanded the release of prisoners.

The government accepted all of the demands, but it refused to release those prisoners who were not from Swat. At the top of this list was Maulana Abdul Aziz, a radical cleric from the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad who was arrested in July 2007 while fleeing from the mosque after security forces stormed it. The government also refused to release several other militants, including a very important person, who were recently arrested in Islamabad.

The Punjabi militants were clearly upset at having their demands rejected, while the Pashtuns got what they wanted. The attack in Lahore was meant to redress the "injustice".

Ironically, the peace agreement in Swat is itself now at risk.

On Sunday, militants violated the agreement by detaining a few paramilitary Frontier Corps personnel who were later released. The next day they attacked a military convoy and killed a soldier.

In response, the army on Tuesday arrested a few important Taliban commanders in the Swat Valley. Maulana Sufi Mohammand, the main driver behind the peace agreement, then appealed at a press conference to both the Taliban and the security forces to abide by the agreement. Otherwise, he said, he would no longer stand as a guarantor of the deal.

A new phase of militancy
At the time of the United-States-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Pakistani and Taliban groups linked to al-Qaeda had little ability to execute planned and coordinated attacks. At best, they could carry out sectarian assassinations against Shi'ites or plant bombs at religious congregations.

All this changed from 2003 onwards when Arabs and Pakistani militants started regrouping in the South Waziristan tribal area on the border with Afghanistan. (See The legacy of Nek Mohammed Asia Times Online, July 20, 2004.)

The attack by the jihadi group Jundullah in 2004 on the then-corps commander Karachi's motorcade could be termed as the militants' first well-planned operation. Although the attack was unsuccessful, the militants opened coordinated fire from several directions and had an exit strategy in place. The only blunder was that a cell phone was dropped at the site, which led to the arrest and destruction of the whole network.

About this time, the militant training camps were closed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir as Islamabad re-orientated as a partner in the US's "war on terror". Several respected commanders, such as Maulana Ilyas Kashmiri and Abdul Jabbar, were arrested, causing much humiliation among the country's former "heroes". At this point, several top fighters joined the Afghan resistance in the Waziristan tribal areas.

These highly trained militants, courtesy of the Pakistani state, brought with them considerable expertise and muscle and they began training local youths. Some of their most successful operations were the attacks on the Kabul Serena Hotel in January 2008 and on a national parade in Kabul in July 2008. A hallmark of these militants is that they are well versed in modern warfare and that they are ruthless in achieving their goals, even at the expense of innocent civilians.

Their attack in Lahore on Tuesday is testimony to this; they are now prepared to take the war theater to urban centers to get their comrades released, and anybody is fair game - from cricketers to high-profile personalities including ministers, diplomats, politicians and other influential people.

The emergence of these new zealots is an ominous development for a country already mired in militancy in its border areas. And things could get a lot worse as Asia Times Online has learned that Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani has returned from a visit to Washington committed to a much more pro-active approach against militants.

Protectionism a dirty ASEAN word

2009-03-02T03:16:00.000-08:00

By Charles McDermid

Southeast Asian leaders issued an economic rally cry for the region on Sunday, calling for greater coordination to ensure the free flow of goods and taking aim at the protectionist sentiment many of them fear is on the rise in countries such as the United States.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) [1] at its 14th summit also pledged to form a European Union-like economic bloc by 2015 and called for an overhaul of the international finance system to better serve and protect developing nations.

The summit meeting also endorsed a free-trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand and measures to expand a pre-existing emergency foreign exchange pool to bolster regional currencies that come under speculative assault.

"We want to send a strong signal that we are anti-protectionist," Thai Deputy Prime Minister Korbsak Sabhavasu told Asia Times Online. "We see what other countries are doing and we want to signal that while other countries are looking out for themselves - in ASEAN we are helping each other out."

"Regional cooperation becomes even more important as we seek to pursue joint approaches and pool our resources to cope with difficulties that we all face," Asian Development Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda told reporters on Sunday.

But even as ASEAN announced its raft of feel-good policies and delivered its unified mantra of anti-protectionism, economists were scratching their heads as to how the lofty proclamations of togetherness will actually help the fractious region's export-driven economies and shield its 570 million people from rising global economic turbulence.

While ASEAN's anti-protectionism line was clear, mixed messages were rife from individual countries. For instance, it was reported this month that Indonesian civil servants were ordered by the Trade Ministry to buy and use domestic products. Smaller economies such as Cambodia and Laos have long had "buy local" campaigns in place.

It was only a little over two years ago that Thailand imposed capital controls on foreign equity, currency and bond transactions, in a surprise market intervention aimed at curbing the appreciation of the local currency, the baht. In fact, ASEAN's much-touted new charter, ratified in December, includes no mechanisms to stop or punish member countries from implementing protectionist policies.

In an interview with local media last week, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi said it was perfectly normal for countries to protect their domestic industries during an economic slowdown. Abdullah, however, modified his stance in the summit's press finale on Sunday, saying: "All of us are of the same mind: we are anti-protectionist. Countries that are saying 'buy us', countries that are engaging in protectionism - we want to engage with them."

"I think we have to pay a lot of attention, whatever measures we do, we do not give the impression that we are becoming protectionist, that we are turning inwards, because ASEAN depends on this global market," said Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The Southeast Asian blitz against protectionism - defined as economic policies restraining trade between nations by way of tariffs and quotas - was seen by some as a thinly veiled challenge to the United States. In an interview with Asia Times Online, US ambassador for ASEAN Affairs Scot Marciel admitted that " ... in the region, there are some people who have put the blame on us".
As the largest importer of Southeast Asian goods, the US's recently approved stimulus package, bent on internal spending and including mandatory American purchases from trade partners, has sent shivers through the region's export-dependent economies.

ASEAN countries have been mired in an economic slowdown that has slashed demand for computer chips, autos and commodities. According to figures released by ASEAN, the region is almost twice as dependent on exports as the rest of the world.

Singapore, Southeast Asia's most trade-reliant economy, is now technically in recession, with two consecutive quarters of negative growth, including a -3.7% year-on-year contraction in the fourth quarter.

Thailand, where exports usually account for over 65% of gross domestic product (GDP), is widely expected to be the region's next recessionary domino. In US dollar terms, Thailand's goods export growth was down 26.5% year-on-year in January. Malaysia recorded its slowest growth in seven years in the fourth quarter while the Philippines saw its goods exports contract over 40% in December.

Still, the summit was bullish about its accomplishments. Attending finance ministers agreed to boost a regional foreign currency pool from US$80 billion to $120 billion. The 10 members of ASEAN plus Japan, China and South Korea - or ASEAN+3 - had arranged to pool bilateral currency swap pacts under the so-called Chiang Mai Initiative - providing a multilateral fund that could be tapped in emergencies.

Southeast Asian currencies have slid in recent months, diminishing the ability of countries hit with short-term liquidity shortages to borrow foreign reserves from other countries to absorb selling pressure on their currencies. "We have learned from previous experience that if we work together, the damage is less when we have a currency crisis," said Malaysian Premier Abdullah, referring to a special regional meeting to address the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

ASEAN heads of state, however, warned that any global economic recovery could take years. "The financial crisis is worldwide. Each ASEAN country, each one of us is affected," said Singapore's Lee. "You could easily be in for several more years of quite slow growth worldwide. And I think it's best that we prepare for that, and our people."

Whether committed to protectionism or free trade, ASEAN countries are in for rocky economic times.

Power play behind Bangladesh's mutiny

2009-03-02T03:12:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

As the body count from the bloody mutiny by the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) crosses 140 amid the exhuming of fresh graves, questions arise whether this pre-planned event could have been motivated by simple economic grievances.

The standard line being disseminated in public about the two-day running battle between the BDR and the Bangladesh army in urban centers of Dhaka - Teknaf, Cox's Bazaar, Naikhongchari and Sylhet - is that the rebels were demanding better pay, clearance to participate in lucrative United Nations peacekeeping missions and a change in the command and control structure of the force.

Though these are by no means petty concerns, the scale of the mutiny and the brutality of its perpetrators were far more vicious than rationally required to press mere economic demands. If pay scales were the principal bone of contention, BDR cadres could easily have resorted to the standard trade union tactic of going missing without leave or refusing to take orders from their superiors. That they could take senior army officers hostage in the BDR headquarters in Dhaka and massacre so many of them suggests strongly that the forces behind the upheaval had their eyes set on a much bigger prize - political power.

The first indication that the BDR revolt was politically driven comes from its timing. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had barely settled into her post, taking oath of office on January 6 after her Awami League party swept the general elections which had been long delayed due to military intervention.

For nearly two years before her victory, the Bangladeshi military had taken virtual control of the country in the name of a civilian caretaker government. If the BDR had pent up frustrations owing to economic reasons, why did they not attempt a mutiny when the Bangladesh army was in charge? That they chose to attack just after civilian rule under a secular and liberal leader was restored is one sign of the elaborate plot behind their actions.

Already, hints are emerging that the BDR mutiny enjoyed the secret backing of some Bangladesh army officers who had been sidelined by Army Chief Moeen Ahmed. Ahmed is widely seen as a secular officer who clamped down on the fundamentalist outfits that had been close to the previous civilian regime of Begum Khaleda Zia, the leader of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP).

Ahmed made a commitment to roll back the "Talibanization" of Bangladesh, which was going on for several years of Begum Zia's rule. The latitude and state legitimacy that Begum Zia showered on the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) had given Islamists free rein to terrorize Bangladesh's Hindu minorities and enforce strict moral restrictions on the country's majority Muslims and secular intellectuals.

Since the 1975 military coup d'etat that overthrew Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's civilian rule in Bangladesh, pro-Islamic forces have gone from strength to strength within the army ranks.

The dictatorships of General Ziaur Rahman (1976-1981) and of General Muhammad Ershad (1982-1986) took Bangladesh down the path of Islamic theocracy and boosted the pelf and power of Islamist officers.

During Begum Zia's second term in office (2001-2006), a large swathe of the Bangladesh army was infiltrated by JI and JMB elements to strengthen the permanent Islamist constituency in the country's most powerful institution. Many rank-and-file and non-commissioned officers of the Bangladesh military today have Islamist educational backgrounds because madrassa (Islamic school) graduates joined in large numbers and brought with them a fundamentalist fervor that coexisted uneasily with the more secular top echelons of the army led by Ahmed.

There is every possibility that the BDR mutiny in Dhaka was backed by "pro-Islam" army officers. This is why it is being rumored that Ahmed will have to carry out yet another purge within the army after the failed uprising.

The geopolitical dimension of internal feuds within the Bangladesh army has to do with the India-Pakistan rivalry in South Asia. From the very beginning, the "pro-Islam" segments of Bangladeshi society and the army had sympathies for Pakistan and opposed the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. The JI leadership was at the forefront of mass atrocities on behalf of the Pakistan army on the eve of Bangladeshi independence. When the secular Hasina returned to power in January, she implemented a bold initiative to seek war crimes prosecutions with UN assistance of the JI figures who spearheaded the killings in 1971.

Just a few days prior to the BDR mutiny, trials had begun against the JI chief, Matiur Rahman Nizami, and nine others for "carrying [out a] massacre during the war of independence in 1971". Hasina's steps against the fundamentalists were based on detailed investigations and a collection of documents over a long period by non-governmental organizations and associations of former freedom fighters. That the JI and JMB would hit back in the form of terrorist attacks or serial bomb blasts in the country was expected, but few thought that they could attempt a mutiny through sympathizers in the army and the BDR.

The BDR itself is staffed entirely by Bangladesh army officers, many of whom have distinctly anti-India and pro-Islamic leanings. In 2005, BDR's chief Jehangir Alam Chowdhary alleged that "some criminal elements from India had colluded with the Bangladeshi groups" to carry out the sensational 500-bomb serial attacks all over the country.

Although all evidence suggested that the attacks were the handiwork of the JI and the JMB, the BDR insisted that the blasts had a sinister foreign hand. The BDR's forces were also been involved in a major security incident along the border with India in 2001, when 16 Indian soldiers were killed. The shared perception of Indian intelligence agencies is that the BDR's lower rung cadres, who executed the massacres in last week's failed mutiny, were completely under the JI and the JMB's ideological sway.

General Ahmed himself was not present in the BDR headquarters when the mutiny broke out, but he was a likely target of the plotters because of his perceived secular and pro-India character. In March 2008, he visited India and met the top civilian and military leadership, generating newfound confidence in New Delhi that they could do business with him. The assessment in India for the past two years has been that the caretaker government under Ahmed's supervision was cracking down on the "pro-Islam" juggernaut that had gone on the rampage during Begum Zia's rule.

The master plan of "Talibanizing" Bangladesh with state power and the backing of religious sections of the army and the BDR fell flat when Ahmed shepherded the transition to democracy in December 2008 and installed the secular Sheikh Hasina in power. The election of Hasina was a severe blow to jihadi sections in Bangladeshi society, the army and the paramilitaries who were intent on Islamizing the country along the model of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. If there was a combine which badly wanted to stage yet another coup d'etat, it was this coalition of "Islam-pasand" ("Fond of Islam" in Bengali) elements desirous of a counter-revolution against Hasina's government.

Hasina's government and Ahmed's army are obviously going to try to get to the root of the matter in the following days, and they will probe Indian "leaks" of a Pakistani hand in the affair. What is certain is that the BDR putsch had grand religious and geopolitical causes which are far more profound than the relative trifle of a salary raise.

DUBAI BUBBLE YET TO BURST

2009-03-01T22:23:00.000-08:00

By Mohammed Sujan Shaikh

Executives in Dubai these days agonise before they muster the courage to check office e-mails in the morning. Until you have seen the last message, you can't be sure the day's mail doesn't include that much-feared one line which advises you to "get in touch with the HR department as your services are no longer required".

The fear and sense of helplessness is palpable across the UAE. Businesses, companies, employers and employees, everyone's going through the agony as they try to second-guess the effects of the global financial crisis on them. There is panic everywhere. Companies are refusing to pay creditors even if they have the cash, on the ground their debtors haven't paid up either. Banks have stopped lending, and credit card agents who till the other day harassed people with their 'incredible' offers have disappeared from the scene. Probably most of them have lost their jobs and gone back to their home countries.

A recent survey among UAE residents revealed that one-third respondents had at least one close friend or family member who had lost his/her job in the last three months. People are even avoiding the shopping malls and there is a visible easing of traffic on the roads. All non-essential purchases have been put off; the compulsive shopping Dubai is famous for has taken a backseat. Supermarkets, grocery shops and even small corner shops are reporting a loss of business. There are reports about people abandoning cars at the airport and taking flights home, leaving big liabilities behind.

The big rush has instead shifted to the labour/immigration offices, mostly for cancellation of visas. In January alone, official statistics say 86 per cent more residence visas were cancelled in comparison with the same time period last year. The figures are over 54,000 last month, compared to 29,000 last year. This works out to an average of 1,700 everyday, at least 200 more than the 1,500 cancellations daily being 'rumoured about' in private conversations.

On its part, it's nothing short of a double whammy for Dubai. The first crisis was brought about by its own real estate bubble, long overdue for a correction anyway.

Unfortunately, that coincided with the global financial tsunami, which has blown away even the so-called invincible fortresses of global finance.

The coincidence may be somewhat surprising but Dubai's current state of affairs has an organic link with what has been happening here in the past 2-3 years. On view are two sides of the same coin: the head denoting greed and the tail standing for fear. Last year was marked by no ordinary greed, but one of epic proportions, with everyone—individuals, companies, institutions and even the government—overcome with an obsession to make money. Developers kept raising the price bar, only to realise the market was ready for more and more. In fact, the real estate boom that brought the world here was driven all the way by speculation, much less by fundamentals.

Irrespective of what was being built on the ground, or whether anything was being built, properties that existed on paper were being flipped to make money multiple. Whoever was not 'in' was considered good for nothing. The boom even created a new segment of business class and community, whose social circles discussed nothing but flipping for profit. Obviously, this party could not go on forever—and it has finally ended.

It is now the time for fear to get full play. It seems everyone has become suspicious about everything. Property prices in prime locations have dropped by 40-50 per cent compared to September levels. Prestigious properties are being offered in distress sale, and still there are no takers. Even if there are buyers, there is nobody to provide the money. According to various estimates, nearly a trillion dirhams worth of projects in the UAE have been delayed indefinitely or have been put on hold as developers struggle to find resources to go ahead. On the casualty list are some proposed world-beaters, including the one-kilometre-tall tower that was supposed to dwarf the Burj Dubai, the current record holder.

The fallout on the Indian construction worker is plain to see. In the camps which house them, there is nothing but gloom. Employers are finding it difficult to pay salaries. Some have not even given out return tickets. There's a growing number who want to put together some money and catch the next flight home. There's little to hope for in the Gulf.

The problems have been confounded by the huge market debt that the Dubai government and its entities have run up. Investments made with market borrowings have all gone sour and billions are required to service repayments coming due. The market was expecting support from Abu Dhabi, which is apparently not quite forthcoming. Whatever little has come has strings attached for Abu Dhabi itself is smarting under the loss of billions of dollars gone down the drain in bad investments and many more billions evaporated due to the fall in oil prices.

There has of late been some reassuring news from Abu Dhabi, with the Central Bank subscribing $10 billion out of a $20 billion fixed interest-bearing bond programme that Dubai has launched to bolster finances. But it's too early to see how far this will restore lost confidence while concern stays strong about debt being serviced with additional debt.

US women sell their eggs to fight credit crunch

2009-03-01T21:50:00.000-08:00

By Sarah Williams

Drawn by payments of up to $10,000, an increasing number of women are offering to sell their eggs at US fertility clinics as a way to make money amid the financial crisis.

Nicole Hodges, a 23-year-old actress in New York City who has been out of work since November, says she has decided to sell her eggs because she desperately needs cash. “I’m still paying off college. I have credit card bills and rent in New York is so expensive,” Hodges, who has been accepted as donor and is waiting to be chosen by a couple, said.

Hodges said there was also some satisfaction in helping an infertile couple have a child. “Yes, the money is very nice, but it’s nice to be able to let a mother who wants to be a mother be a mother,” she said. Fertility organizations across the country said there had been a growing interest. The Centre for Egg Options in Illinois has seen a 40% increase in egg donor inquiries since 2008.

New York City’s Northeast Assisted Fertility Group said interest had doubled and the Colorado Centre for Reproductive Medicine said it had received 10% more inquiries.

The Reproductive Science Centre of New England, which does not deal directly with egg donors, said it had gone from no inquiries to now receiving several a month. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends that total payments to donors be capped at $10,000. A 2007 study by the society found the US national average payment was $4,216. Payments by clinics in the Northeast were found to average just over $5,000, while those in the Northwest averaged just under $3,000. Katherine Bernardo, egg donor programme manager at Northeast Assisted Fertility Group, said while some women saw donation as an easy way to make money, not everyone was accepted.

“There is an economic climate that encourages women to find creative ways to make money,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that anyone interested in egg donation actually goes on to donate because so few women are actually eligible.”

‘Parliament of clowns’ laughs off recession
Clowns from across the world met in Germany to pitch laughter as a way to survive the economic crisis.

Organisers of the ‘Parliament of Clowns’,’ performing in a theatre in the eastern city of Dresden on Friday, hoped to prop up people's spirits, saying the health benefits of laughter are proven. “Fear can be laughed away, even in economically tough times,” said clown Antoschka, who spent two decades with the Moscow State Circus and launched the event under the slogan ‘Clowns of the World Unite’.

One performer scheduled to join the red nose and face paint troupe is US physician and professional clown Patch Adams, whose belief in the healing power of laughter reached a global audience when actor Robin Williams portrayed him in a movie.The clowns say their two-hour show will remind people there are alternative ways to respond to bad news after a US study showed anger posed health risks.

“When a balloon bursts, you can either cry or laugh. We clowns are laughing,” Antoschka said. Swiss clown Olli Hauenstein had some advice for the troubled financial sector. “Don't lose courage and happiness in life just because you have been foolish before,” he told German radio station Deutschlandfunk.The clowns plan to meet twice a year and have set up a foundation to finance projects to bring laughter to children.

Pakistan's turmoil echoes in Afghanistan

2009-02-27T02:38:00.000-08:00

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

The Pakistani government's peace agreement last week with militants in the Swat Valley, followed by ceasefires all across the tribal areas and the formation of a united Pakistani tribal front of mujahideen to reinforce the Taliban's battle in Afghanistan were the first seeds sown for the failure of the United States' plans for the region.

Wednesday's development in Pakistan now conclusively ends the political package drawn up in 2007 by Saudi Arabia, the US and Britain and implemented through February 2008 elections to install a consensus government of liberal and secular politicaln parties to provide popular support for the "war on terror".

The possible ramifications for Afghanistan are enormous.

The Pakistani Supreme Court ruled that opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, chief of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), a former two-time prime minister, could not stand for parliament as a result of an old criminal conviction. The court also disqualified his brother, Shahbaz, who was chief minister of the provincial government in Punjab, Pakistan's most prosperous and populous province, ordering him to resign immediately over a plane hijacking incident in 1999.

The decision sets the scene for political turmoil and unrest and a major challenge to the one-year-old government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari and his Pakistan People's party (PPP).

Within hours of the news of the Sharif brothers' disqualification, violent street protests forced the government to impose governor's rule in Punjab for two months.

At a press conference at their Raiwind farm house near Lahore, the brothers blamed Zardari for orchestrating the decision. They said the reason was their support for the restoration of former chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary, who was sacked by the government of president General Pervez Musharraf on November 2, 2007.

Lawyers and others have since then agitated on behalf of Chaudhary and other members of the judiciary who were dismissed and large protests are planned for next month. These could get even bigger, judging by Wednesday's events in which the PML-N-dominated province was brought to a virtual standstill by protesters.

The ability of the federal government to function could well be compromised. A key coalition partner in the PPP-led government, the Awami National Party, issued a statement saying that the court decision was unacceptable and that it would stand with the PML-N.

The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE)-100 index on Wednesday fell by 294.05 points or about 5% to close at 5,580.78 points. Shares earlier gained 1% before the court ruling prompted panic selling. The market is likely to remain under pressure in the short-term because of worry about political instability, according to the local traders.

The Afghanistan connection
The situation in Pakistan impacts heavily on Afghanistan. The Taliban-led insurgency relies to a large degree on its bases inside Pakistan and the latest ceasefires in the tribal areas will allow the Taliban uninterrupted preparations for its spring offensive. The Taliban, therefore, want the political uncertainty to continue as the central government will continue to leave them in peace.

Washington, on the other hand, will view the political turmoil in horror and will possibly back the military to take some form of initiative, at the least in dealing with the militants.

In this regard, the visit by Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani to Washington on February 20 could turn out to be crucial as to date he has advocated neutrality in political matters. The US might have tried to convince him otherwise.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has deployed an additional 3,000 troops in the restive provinces of Logar and Wardak, and US President Barack Obama has ordered 17,000 more US troops to southern Afghanistan. Other countries, such as Italy and Britain, will contribute more troops and the total number could reach 90,000, only 30,000 fewer than the Soviet Union had in the country in the 1980s.

Pakistani strategic expert Dr Farrukh Saleem, however, pointed out to Asia Times Online that today's troops "are far superior to the 120,000 Soviet troops in terms of training, equipment and strategy".

The new troops will be split between Logar, Wardak and Ghazni provinces around the capital Kabul and Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, where they will attempt to stop the infiltration of Taliban fighters from Pakistan.

The Taliban believe they already have sufficient fighters to keep up the heat around Kabul and intend to send more forces to two areas:

Pakistan's Khyber Agency for continued attacks on NATO supply convoys;

Helmand province in Afghanistan.

Asia Times Online contacts say that Pakistani fighters will come mostly from the South Waziristan tribal areas and head for the Garmsir district of Helmand. This is extremely inhospitable territory and the permanent ground deployment of NATO troops is not possible.

From Helmand, forces will be sent to the northwestern Afghan provinces of Nimroz and Herat. The province of Farah, situated on the same belt, is already under the control of the Taliban and the Taliban often slip into Nimroz and Herat to carry out actions against NATO troops.

An added element this year will be a concentration on disrupting NATO's supply lines, whether they enter the country from Pakistan, Iran or Central Asia.

In these new struggles, the decisions that are made in Islamabad over the next few days or weeks will be crucial, that is, just which way the Pakistani military is going to jump.

Exclusive: Beggar, I thy neighbor

2009-02-27T02:37:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Across the world, a number of previously autonomous republics are being forced to swallow their pride in the wake of the unfurling economic crisis. Often the cost of a bailout from a rich neighbor has been political accommodation, but even here shifts are only just beginning.

One of the more interesting stories deals with Dubai, the previously sleepy smugglers' port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that suddenly had aspirations to global dominance, as exemplified by the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building (as an aside, building the world's tallest building almost always condemns the country to an economic downturn; the skyscraper curse is not urban legend).

Anyway, for a country with global aspirations and supposedly US$100 billion in asset values through the stock and property markets, Dubai found it well-nigh impossible to fund the ruling family's hobby horses in banks, hotels and ports around the world, not to mention the real-estate boom that has been ongoing from 2002.

The ruling al-Maktoum family of Dubai reportedly approached their cousins, the al-Zayed family, running Abu Dhabi, for terms of a bailout. Initial conversations were allegedly heated, with the latter demanding that Dubai hand over control of its iconic airline, Emirates, as well as stakes in its biggest property firms, including Emaar and even Dubai Holdings (the ruling family's in-house collection of vanity businesses). With oil prices down and nursing its own losses on ill-fated investments in American and European financial firms in 2008, the al-Zayed family was reportedly not very keen on being on the delivering side of charity.

There were unsubstantiated rumors that both Iran and Saudi Arabia had sent out feelers to Dubai over the terms of a rescue, which galvanized Abu Dhabi into swift action after weeks of dilly dallying. It is not very surprising that a country such as Iran, even on the brink of its own economic collapse, would countenance a bold move to intervene in Dubai's financial mess, albeit for reasons entirely removed from finance.

The more puritanical rulers of Abu Dhabi now control a greater proportion of the UAE federation, after subscribing to $10 billion of a bond issue launched by the Dubai government this week. With the property market looking to face a multi-year slowdown and its banks beaten down by losses on global investments, it is highly likely that Dubai will default on the terms of this bond, among others over the next five years or so, in turn providing even more control to Abu Dhabi directly.

Germany as the new IMF
Typically, countries that find themselves in the midst of an external financing crisis would tend to approach the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which would in turn impose a bunch of nonsensical "austerity" measures, engineer relative poverty to the country's immediate neighbors and thereby create conditions for an export-led recovery.

In almost every such case, neighbors that lost an export edge would soon find themselves in a precarious balance of payments problem and then soon enough approach the IMF. In this way, the IMF and the World Bank - the evil twins of global finance - managed to maintain relevance particularly in parts of the world such as Latin America and Africa.

The good news in the current crisis is that the IMF itself has run out of ammunition, and that before any major debtor nation has been pushed to bankruptcy. The multilateral institution has a paltry $200 billion in firepower, barely enough to save a handful of the most affected countries (for example Ireland, Iceland, Hungary, Ukraine, Turkey) let alone the bigger economies now lurching into a permanent downward spiral such as Japan, Italy, Spain and France.

Realizing this, the European Union has proposed that the IMF capacity be raised to $500 billion, although aside from Japan with its contribution of $100 billion, it is difficult to see any other "donor" country with the financial capacity to actually help the IMF. In particular, the idea will be deeply unpopular in Washington, given the spate of personnel changes that embarrassed Republicans no end; similarly other supposed donors like Britain and France will probably need their own bailouts soon enough.

Late last year, I wrote that the sheer size of the banking system in various European countries relative to their gross domestic product, as well as the extremely low recovery rates on various asset categories, simply meant that the countries offering explicit guarantees on their banking system's deposits would themselves need external assistance sooner than later. (see Europe's death by guarantee (Asia Times Online, October 11, 2008). This is now happening in the case of countries as diverse as Ireland, Portugal, Greece and the United Kingdom among others.

Meanwhile, other European countries, including Austria, have suddenly found another ticking time bomb in the shape of their banks' exposures to emerging European countries. With two of its major banks in more than a spot of bother, Austria had to escalate its own crisis-fighting measures, but finds a complete absence of support from other members, including Germany, for any assistance to Europe's "near abroad".

It must not come as a surprise to note that Europe's tilt towards the windmills of global finance only happened after the declining feasibility of tapping the European Investment Bank (EIB) became apparent. This institution, which operates as a quiet instrument of European policy, has often been used to prop up member states. The alarming decline of members like Italy, Ireland and Greece has meant though that market reaction to the EIB proved highly skittish. Credit default swap spreads widened to levels associated with the most risky of European sovereigns, from their previous levels when the EIB had tended to trade in line with the credit of Germany. This widening effectively removed the EIB from the game of providing unremarked subsidies to member states.

In turn, this brings to mind a continent that is unable to act in the collective best interest, instead sundered by selfish policy moves. As I wrote last year, (see Utterly pointless Europe, Asia Times Online, August 16, 2008), the inability to face down the Russian threat on Georgia was but a simple indication of bigger problems festering under the surface. With the recession, all these problems have started coming to the fore.

With the IMF and the EIB without actual ability to rescue countries and the common European mandate weakened by policy squabbles between the east (new EU members formerly in the Soviet bloc), south (the property-market led bubble economies of Greece, Spain et al) and the west (the troubled Old World of France, the United Kingdom and Germany), there is but one hope for any country facing down its creditors. That would be to secure bilateral assistance from the region's sole solvent sovereign, namely Germany. Indeed, many European government officials have already called on the country to issue an explicit guarantee on the bond obligations of key member states, thankfully not to much avail thus far.

The Germans, though, appear in a funny mood. With a dramatic drop in industrial output going alongside the decline of its banking and insurance giants, there is well-placed fear that xenophobia could raise its ugly head once again. The comparison to Abu Dhabi is fairly straightforward: for all their wealth, the Germans do not feel confident about their place in the world, nor indeed in the likely forbearance of German citizens to further weakness in Europe. That would elicit precisely nationalist moves but effected as pre-emptive gestures: deporting a bunch of Turks or Poles to prove a point to the skinheads.

As the dust clears, it is highly possible that German influence on European policy and institutions will have been strengthened due to the crisis rather than weakened by it.

Power to the center
Elsewhere, the move towards tentative federalism has been halted in its tracks by the crisis. A good example is provided by Scotland, where talk of an independent country that splits with the United Kingdom but attains membership of the EU and uses the euro rather than the pound sterling has died a quiet death in recent weeks.

The reason isn't hard to fathom: the two main industries in Scotland were banking and oil exploration and production. With the price of oil down a fair bit and the main Scottish banks - RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) and HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland) both perilously close to being nationalized - there is a sense of embarrassment all around that simply doesn't lend to nationalistic fervor.

The banks were felled not so much by traditional "Scottish-style" lending of the type that continues to be practiced successfully by the likes of HSBC, but rather by the overexpansion associated with a nationalist pride: a desire in effect for a Scottish institution or two to rise to the top of the world's financial pile. The result has been quite the opposite.

British newspapers report that a furor over a BBC commentator calling Prime Minister Gordon Brown a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" quickly fizzled out because of the widely held belief that the premier in his previous job as chancellor of the exchequer, or finance minister, had laid much of the foundations for the United Kingdom's current crisis of confidence. Rather than drawing more attention to the remark that was widely seen as a true depiction, the story was quietly buried. What this does to his re-election chances later in the year is anyone's guess, but many political pundits are now betting on a return to the dominance of the English in all affairs British.

Then there is California. The nearly-bankrupt state had to corral its lawmakers into a deal designed to rebalance its budget and open the state's access to financing; however, even this deal may soon fail, leaving no alternative but for the state to depend on Washington for a bailout. The state that proudly bills itself as the world's eighth-largest economy is, in the absence of Federal assistance, for all practical purposes bankrupt

Even that is the tip of the iceberg as US$2 trillion of municipal securities, issued by various US towns and cities, head towards default by the year 2011. In many of these cases, the only potential saviour is the federal government itself. What all this means for the famously proud federal districts of America and the political and cultural independence cherished by generations of people in each of these towns and states, we do not yet know. All that we can surmise is that Americans' sense of identity will likely face big changes in coming months, all to the benefit of the center.

Whether it is the case of Dubai losing its independence to the ruling family of Abu Dhabi or Germany taking charge of the EU directly, the imperative to concentrate power in the hands of those with demonstrable financial capacity will only increase in coming months.

THE FIGHT FOR PAKISTAN'S POLITICAL SOUL, Part 2

2009-02-25T01:46:00.000-08:00

By Syed Saleem Shahzad & M H Ahssan

PART 1: Deal with militants emboldens opposition

A new face for militants emerges
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, Washington forced Pakistan to make a major policy reversal and break its alliance with its natural allies, Islamic forces.

Pakistan provided logistical support for the US forces that invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and hunt for al-Qaeda, and Islamabad assisted in the apprehension of al-Qaeda members.

Yet Pakistan, the only Muslim country in the world to have come into being on the basis of Islamic ideology, managed to maintain its alliance with the Islamic parties, militants and the jihadi establishment and orchestrated a war theater in which Islamic forces were largely under its control.

The Pakistani military establishment nurtured an anti-Western opposition religious alliance of six parties - the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal - which was in fact friendly to the government of president General Pervez Musharraf. This allowed Musharraf to have the constitution amended to give him maximum powers. Peace agreements were also signed with militants and the leaders of the jihadi organizations, many of whom were convinced to sit back in comfortable villas until their next orders came.

Everything was under control and by 2007 the situation was heading towards the alienation of al-Qaeda elements.

A dialogue process was initiated in Kabul through a grand jirga (council) after which jirgagais (small jirgas ) were to have started a dialogue process leading to an "honorable" exit for coalition troops from Afghanistan.

However, ultra-radical forces, which were slowly nurturing a new generation of the Taliban, grew in strength, which led to Pakistan's security forces cracking down on the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad in July 2007.

Following this operation, the radicals gained more and more ground in the tribal areas, to the point that today Pakistan has virtually lost control of North-West Frontier Province. And the Islamists, the once natural allies, have become sworn enemies.

However, in the largest province of Punjab and in urban centers such as Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore, the situation is still under control.

The largest jihadi network in Punjab, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), was infiltrated by army officers after their retirement which led to an immoral relationship between the LET and the military establishment.

The premier Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan (JI), was set up by its ideologue Syed Abul Ala Maududi in such a way that it could not deviate from the democratic path and it had to work within the confines of the laws of the land.

However, as the war theater in the Pakistani tribal areas and Afghanistan heated up under the influence of ultra-radical ideologues, many veteran LET commanders left the organization and joined forces with al-Qaeda. A very small number of JI members also joined forces with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

That small group then started an effective campaign within the rank and file of the JI against the status-quo policies of the party, which in essence stress loyalty towards Pakistan and its security forces.

Unprecedented pressure was mounted on the JI leadership to be vocal in favor of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and this could have a vital influence on the selection of a new party president next month.

This is happening at a time that Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani is visiting Washington on an extraordinary trip that could lead either to Kiani being sidelined or his empowerment and a major political change in the country.

The reason for the uncertain outcome is that the American establishment is confused over who is actually pulling the strings. In this context, the JI's elections are being closely monitored by all quarters as they could turn this powerful pro-establishment party in the other direction, eventually leading it down the path of radical Islam.

Jamaat-e-Islami at the crossroads The Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan is the country's only party to hold genuine elections for its president, every four years. All other parties, whether religious or secular, are the personal fiefdoms of family politics.

The chief of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) Fazlur Rahman is the son of the previous party chief, Mufti Mehmood. The JUI's another faction is led by Maulana Samiul Haq, who is the son of the previous chief of the faction, Maulana Abdul Haq.

The Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz group is led by the Sharif family (brothers and now sons and sons-in-law). The Pakistan People's Party was led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then his wife Nusrat Bhutto, then his daughter Benazir Bhutto and it is now co-chaired by Benazir's son Bilawal and her widower Asif Zardari.

The Awami National Party (ANP) has been led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's family members - his son Wali Khan, then his wife Naseem Wali Khan and now his grandson, Asfandyar Wali Khan.

The incumbent president of the JI, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, has indicated that due to his age - 71 - and deteriorating health, he will not stand for re-election. Three candidates have now been nominated - no one is allowed to nomninate themselves.

The three are all former student leaders: the party's secretary general Syed Munawar Hasan, central vice president Liaquat Baloch and the president of North-West Frontier province Sirajul Haq.

Despite its current pro-establishment stance, the JI has a history of confrontation with the state. Its founder, Syed Abul Ala Maududi, was arrested only a year after Pakistan came into being, in 1948, for demanding Islamization in Pakistan.

In 1953 he was arrested again for writing an article which declared Qadyanis as non-Muslims. (Qadyanis - a movement that harbors some controversial Muslim beliefs - were declared non-Muslims in 1973 by the Pakistani parliament.) Maududi was sentenced to death, but due to nation-wide protests and extraordinary pressure from Saudi Arabia he was released.

The JI was banned by then-president General Ayub Khan in the early 1960s and its entire leadership was arrested. The party filed a case against the ban and eventually had it reversed. However, being the main opposition leader, Maududi was kept behind bars.

The JI was the main engine behind the movement of combined opposition parties in late 1960 which laid the foundation for Ayub Khan's departure from the power. But the movement was later hijacked by a young Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and his newly founded Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and its slogan of socialist revolution.

In 1969, Maududi stepped down as party president and Mian Tufail Mohammad was elected. This was the beginning of the JI's alliance with the Pakistani military establishment.

In 1970 elections, the Awami League emerged as the majority party, drawing all its support from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The second-largest party, by a long way, was the PPP, scoring well in West Pakistan (now Pakistan).

Neither the PPP nor the military establishment was in favor of transferring power to the Awami League, which was demanding complete provincial autonomy. This resulted in an insurgency in East Pakistan, where the Bengali population was hostile towards the state of Pakistan.

The province's administration, comprising Bengalis, rebelled and openly supported the insurgents. The Pakistan army was desperate for local support and hit on the JI, which which believed in the state of Pakistan.

The military armed the JI's student wing (which had won student union elections at Dhaka University and Rajshahi University) and pitched it against the insurgents. Pakistan lost the war and Bangladesh was born in 1971, but the JI was by now reckoned as the most trusted ally of the military establishment.

In 1977, the JI's dedicated workers changed the dynamics of street agitation and crippled Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's government, which had just swept elections. The military intervened and General Zia ul-Haq imposed martial law.

The new cabinet comprised JI leaders such as Professor Ghaffour Ahmad (minister of Railways), Professor Khurshid Ahmad (minister for the Planning Commission) and former student leader of the JI, Javed Hashmi (minister for Youth Affairs). The latter is now the central leader of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz group.

The then-leader of the PPP, Kausar Niazi, has documented that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto went to the residence of JI founder Maududi and asked him to fight against the martial law and save him (Bhutto) from court trails. Maududi did issue statements against martial law, but JI president Mian Tufail strongly supported Haq and the decision to execute Bhutto over charges of the murder of a political opponent. (Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979 - aged 51- in Rawalpindi jail.)

These experiences helped the military establishment understand the value of the JI, which is why it takes a special interest in its president.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 an Afghan Islamic resistance sprung up. This proved to be another major turning point in relations between the Pakistan military and the JI, which at that time was the only political and religious party which supported the Afghan resistance.

All the big parties, including the PPP and the National Awami Party (NAP - now the Awami National Party), claimed to be Marxists and therefore supported the invasion. The NAP openly supported a "red revolution" in Pakistan and even wanted to welcome Soviet tanks into Pakistan.

Half of the NAP leadership fled to Russia and Afghanistan, including Afrasiab Khattak (now the provincial president of the ANP in North-West Frontier Province) and Ajmal Khattack. Two other major religious parties, the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam led by Fazlur Rahman (now pro-Taliban) and the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Pakistan, were close to pro-Russian Muslim countries like Iraq and Libya, therefore they declared the Afghan resistance merely a civil war.

Pakistan was concerned of a Soviet threat on its western borders, while the Soviet presence emboldened pro-Russian India against Pakistan.

The JI supported the Afghan resistance as some of its leaders, such as Ahmad Shah Massoud, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Professor Abdul Rab Rasool Sayyaf and Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, were ideologically close to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.

JI leader Qazi (now the president) was sent by party founder Maududi in the mid-1960s to Kabul University to lay the foundations of an Islamist student union, which further strengthened the JI's ties to the resistance leaders.

Washington was sponsoring the Afghan resistance through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the JI was its field force. When Mian Tufail stepped down as chief of the JI, the ISI for the first time exerted influence over the JI's elections and helped have Qazi elected as president in 1986.

The ISI wanted to use the JI not only in Afghanistan but also for newly planned operations in disputed Kashmir, which started in 1988-89. The JI had to fuel these operations woth supplies and human resources.

After 2001, a personality clash between Qazi and Musharraf created some distance between the JI and the military establishment, but the JI did not turn hostile, rather remained neutral and inactive.

Qazi has written articles critical of the Taliban's policies, their vision and their brand of Islam - he was inspired by the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979 and is against the Taliban.

When the administration of US president Bill Clinton adopted a policy of engagement with democratic forces in the Muslim world and encouraged engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood, the US State Department invited Qazi to the US under its International Visitor's leadership program. Qazi became a regular guest at an influential think-tank close to the Democrats.

However, some JI workers who had fought against the Soviets became active and hosted some of their old Arab friends, including Khalid Shiekh Mohammad of September 11 infamy and others.

At least four important al-Qaeda members were arrested from the houses of JI workers, including Khalid. Washington put intense pressure on Pakistan to ban the JI and Interior minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat issued a statement on the possibility of doing this.

Within days, the ISI sprang into action and Hayat was removed and the government clarified the JI's position - it would not be banned. Qazi sent out instructions for JI members to stay away from the Taliban and al-Qaeda and made it clear that any person found harboring such people would be disowned.

At this point, party secretary general Syed Munawar Hasan publicly adopted a separate line and proclaimed that the JI did not have any problem with the "Arab mujahideen".

"We don't know what al-Qaeda is all about. We heard this name from the Americans only. We know our Arab mujahideen who fought with our people against the Soviets. If today a world superpower is after them and they ask their Muslim brothers to support them, we don't have any problem helping them," Hasan said.

"Nevertheless, we would never support any sort of terrorism, neither would we allow them any operations from Pakistan."

These words stunned everybody, including the JI's leadership, but Hasan immediately became a hero figure within militant circles disgruntled with the behavior of Islamic parties. Hasan was approached by the military establishment for negotiations, but his refusal in bitter language caused alarm.

Hasan was a student leader at Karachi University and did his masters in sociology in the late 1960s, then emerging as a popular English- and Urdu-language orator.

The socialist-turned-Islamist known for his criticism of the military establishment gradually climbed up the ladder of the JI to become its powerful secretary general. The establishment is clearly concerned that he will become the JI's next president - a landslide victory is predicted.

The timing is not good for Pakistan for this to happen. The military has been forced to back off from operations against militants in the Swat Valley following the government negotiating a ceasefire and the Islamists aim to gain from this in urban centers.

Militants sitting in the mountains are convinced that Hasan will provide them with a political front to fight for their cause - something they have not had before.

THE FIGHT FOR PAKISTAN'S POLITICAL SOUL, Part 1

2009-02-23T02:44:00.000-08:00

By Syed Saleem Shahzad & M H Ahssan

Deal with militants emboldens opposition
Dramatic events over the past week since militants began calling the shots in the Malakand division on the northern fringe of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) - which includes the Swat Valley - have already had an effect on political developments in other parts of the country.

Just over a week ago, the NWFP's provincial government gave in to the demands of militants and announced a ceasefire, lifted a two-year-old curfew and announced the implementation of Islamic sharia law. For their part, the militants agreed to a 10-day ceasefire, which has reportedly now been declared permanent.

In another development resulting from the Malakand accord, a mujahideen shura (Shura Ittehad al-Mujahideen) council was formed this weekend due to the personal efforts of Sirajuddin Haqqani. His network is the most resourceful and strongest component of the Taliban-led Afghan resistance, and has long-standing links to Pakistan. Other members of the council include pro-Pakistan militants such as Moulvi Nazeer and Hafiz Gul Bahadur and, importantly, Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who has fought against Pakistani troops in the tribal areas.

The shura decided that the leaders would combine forces for a joint struggle against coalition forces in Afghanistan and end hostilities against Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the government has sent the first installment of a compensation package for militants in Swat worth 480 million rupees (US$6 million). It will be used to pay the families of those killed and injured by security forces and those who lost property.

Political parties have seized on the mood in NWFP, where the central government in Islamabad is perceived as having lost most of its writ, to force their own agendas.

The premier Islamic party - the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) - has taken a lead role in a campaign by lawyers to have Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the chief justice who was sacked in 2007 by president General Pervez Musharraf, reinstated. The JI believes this volatile issue could boost its popularity in urban centers.

In this atmosphere, Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani travels to Washington this week for meetings with senior officials aimed at protecting the US's plans for the region.

Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan captured the mood succinctly during a television talk show. "God is great! [US Assistant Secretary for State for South and Central Asian Affairs] Richard Boucher and [former state secretary] Condoleezza Rice set up a coalition of secular and liberal parties [in Islamabad] to block the march of Islamization and the Taliban. ... That setup has single-handedly enforced Islam and led to a signed agreement with the Taliban."

This is a clear defeat for the American war in the region, but nobody is ready to accept responsibility, with the Pakistani coalition government criticizing the army for not taming the militants. The Barack Obama administration now faces the prospect of an unending stream of fighters entering Afghanistan from Pakistan without obstruction.

Jamaat-i-Islami on the offensive
The JI, considered the country's most organized political force, especially in street agitation, is gearing up to mobilize its cadre against the Pakistan People's Party-led government when lawyers next month begin a march and sit-in in Islamabad over the reinstatement of Iftakar Muhammad Choudhary. The JI aims to hijack the lawyers' movement to revive its strength in key urban centers such as Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, the capital's twin city.

HNN contacts maintain that top decision-makers in Washington have said the situation is bleak and they want some answers from Kiani, whose appointment was forced on Musharraf by the US as he was perceived as being pro-US. This will be the Pakistan military's first direct contact with the US administration since Kiani took over in late 2007.

Pakistani government officials in private conversations with Washington have blamed Kiani for not launching any "genuine" military operations against the militants, a situation which left them with no choice but to bow to the demands of the militants.

US Ambassador to Islamabad Anne W Peterson has also been urgently summoned to Washington and she will take part in these important discussions.

"After Musharraf, neither the Indians nor the Americans knew who was in charge of the country. The army chief's visit aims to sort out this problem with a clear-cut strategy,” a source said of Kiani's visit.

Whether Kiani is the man to do this is another matter. In conversations with senior representatives of the media, he has indicated that the military does not want to intervene in the affairs of the government.

The trouble is, the situation is rapidly being controlled by non-state actors, and the agreement in Malakand is a major milestone in this regard.

The JI, which boycotted general elections early last year and therefore rapidly disappeared into political oblivion, has been quick to claim "ownership" of the Taliban's victory in Swat and other areas as a victory of Islamic forces.

Its chief in NWFP, Sirajul Haq, was the first leader to hold a press conference to endorse the agreement. The JI has also sent a message to all its members saying that the lawyers' protest should be the "Jamaat-i-Islami's show". The JI sees this as a turning point, where JI-led countrywide protests against the government could draw together scattered Islamic elements in the urban centers under its umbrella, much like the Taliban did in NWFP.

This means that a powerful nexus of militants and anti-American political forces is rising, which threatens to cripple the ability of the American allies in the Pakistan government to act in the US's favor.

HNN spoke to the JI's central vice president, a former federal minister and a senior former parliamentarian, Professor Ghaffour Ahmed, to explore how the JI aims to gain from the Swat deal. Ghaffour, 80, is a cost and management accountant and a pioneer of the Institute of Cost and Management Accountancy in Pakistan. He worked both at the faculty and as a top professional manager in the corporate sector.

HNN: What is your opinion of the Swat agreement? First, the militants used intense force against the state and as a result military operations were carried out. The militants then used the demand for the introduction of Islamic laws as a blackmailing tool and the government surrendered to their terms and conditions. What is your assessment?

Ghaffour Ahmed: I think your assessment is wrong. You know Swat was ruled by a leader wali [when it was a princely state]. Swat was annexed to Pakistan in 1969. Before that it was not part of Pakistan. From 1926 to 1968 Islamic laws were enforced in Swat. Qazi courts were present and justice was quick in those days.

When Swat was annexed to Pakistan, its civil and criminal laws were enforced. Cases of this nature went pending for years. As a result, there was a feeling in Swat that [its people were] being deprived of justice or that they were getting delayed justice. Even the justice they did get was very costly [lawyer, court fees etc] and filing a case could mean spending millions of rupees.

So the people were just demanding that they revert to the old system which was more compatible for them. As far as sharia is concern, the demand is not there only, it is mentioned in the 1973 constitution, approved by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's government, that Islam is the state religion of the country. It says all laws shall be framed according to the Koran and sunnah [traditions and sayings of the Prophet Mohammad]. It also mentioned that all laws which are un-Islamic shall be modified according to Islam. Therefore, their demand [in Swat] was neither unconstitutional nor illegal and there was nothing strange in it. The people only wanted justice, and quick justice.

Then there is another thing, the military operation. The US-led war on terror started over there. When an army initiates action in any area, especially in a place like Swat, which is not a tribal but an urban center, mostly innocent people are killed in the collateral damage. Every day, it was projected that the army had killed many terrorists and miscreants. However, they [the authorities] never gave their names. The reason is that they only killed innocent people. As a result of this operation, at least 350,000 people migrated.

HNN: Over 600,000 people migrated.

GA: I am just giving you a very conservative figure. These people were living in camps. After this peace agreement, there has been a wave of joy among them. I don't know whether this agreement will be successful or not, but the people are happy. Therefore, their demand was justified, legal and constitutional. None of their demands was against the law.

HNN: A statement issued to the press by Qazi Hussain Ahmed [the president of JI] condemned the acts of the Taliban in Swat, such as forcing people to grow beards and executions. He classified these as having nothing to do with Islam and its teachings.

GA: Who was doing such things?

HNN: The Taliban in Swat were blamed for this and for destroying schools and blowing up the shops of hairdressers.

GA: I think there is a lot of propaganda in this.

HNN: Sir, let me say, this is Qazi Hussain Ahmed's statement.

GA: Indeed, he might have issued that statement. I say that all those actions have nothing to do with Islam. Islam does not ask for force in such matters. It is true that there are certain things Islam does insist on, for instance children's schools. Almost 200 schools were destroyed in Swat. But nobody asks who built those schools. The people of Swat built the schools and the majority of them were privately owned - not by the government. The people of Swat were operating them, but suddenly the army occupied them. So the militants argued that those were no longer schools - they were merely buildings used by the army. You see, in such conditions a reaction is generated. You will have seen that such huge military operations failed to bring peace to the tribal areas.

HNN: I had the chance to visit those areas. I also got the chance to speak to militants. They say that they are against the existing education system in secular schools. They want an Islamic system of education. By an Islamic system of education they mean a madrassa brand of education, at least the majority of them believe that ...

[Ghaffour interrupts]

GA: I asked you the question, who built those schools? The 200 schools which were blown up were not Islamic seminaries ... those schools were built by the people of Swat.

HNN: But those schools were not built by the militants either.

GA: Yes, but the schools were built by the people of Swat. I mean to say here that the people there are not against schools. However, they want Islamic seminaries too. You have to appreciate that now even in the Islamic seminaries, different subjects like geography, science, maths and English are taught. Even graduates from the Islamic seminaries do master of arts degrees from universities and in some cases they become Phds.

HNN: I beg your pardon, but the secular syllabus is not part of the Islamic seminaries in North-West Frontier Province.

GA: You are talking about a region which is not under the control of the provincial government. The FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] work under the president of Pakistan and the governor. It is beyond the government's writ. So please don't compare those areas with urban centers.

HNN: What do you think the impact of the Swat peace agreement will be on other urban centers of the country?

GA: Let this peace agreement be a success. This is an agreement with [cleric] Sufi Mohammad. Now there is a process of negotiations with the Taliban. So the talks have not been concluded yet. Neither has any draft of an agreement come out in public. When things come out in black in white, then we shall see how those things are implemented. However, there is one fact that people are happy about, and that is that military operations are over and life has come back to normal.

HNN: The West sees this as Pakistan's surrender to militants. There is a perception that Islamic parties may gain from this situation and use it in other places for their popularity.

GA: I think the West is against Islam and Muslim countries. Pakistan has been an ally of the United States since the Liaquat Ali Khan period [the first prime minister of the country from 1947-1951]. He refused the USSR's invitation and accepted an American invitation for his first visit [abroad]. Since then, all governments have insisted on better relations with the United States.

But on the other hand, see how the Americans behave with us. Even their help always comes with strings. The "war on terror" is a case in point. I fail to understand what the definition of terrorism is. To me, terrorism is all about killing innocent people. I asked America and the West when they invaded Afghanistan [in 2001], did they have any proof that the [September 11] attackers belonged to Afghanistan. To date, nobody knows who was actually responsible for that attack.

They attacked Afghanistan and forced Pakistan to support the war. Musharraf was the president and he was forced to provide logistical support. American aircraft flew from Pakistani bases and bombed Afghanistan. In that process, they destroyed the whole of Afghanistan.

The same happened in Iraq concerning WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and now they admit that it was wrong information, but on wrong intelligence they massacred millions of innocents. Is this not Western terrorism? Why does the West not question itself, that if they are powerful and they possess superior weaponry, does it mean that they can kill innocent human beings?

Now, after so much friendship, Pakistan is in the line of fire. Let us see how the new American administration frames its policies. As far as we are concerned, we don't want any hostilities with America and the West, but the fact of the matter is that they have never recognized the existence of Muslim countries on the political map of the world.

HNN: How do you assess the performance of the present government? It is said that the West set up the coalition of secular and liberal parties to provide popular support to the "war on terror". What is your opinion?

GA: No political party could get a decisive majority in parliament [in the February 2008 elections]. The ruling PPP has about 30% of the seats. After the elections, two majority parties emerged in parliament - the Pakistan People's Party and Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz group [PML-N]. The Pakistan Muslim League, whether you call it liberal or whatever, is the party which laid the foundation of this country on Islamic ideology.

These parties developed differences over the restoration of the chief justice. Therefore, the PML-N separated from the government and the government forged alliances with several smaller parties, and it is a very weak government.

I think the PPP government has made some very wrong decisions and it has antagonized the PML-N not only politically, but it is wrong in principle. The slain [former premier] Ms [Benazir] Bhutto had an agreement with the PML-N to restore the judges, so this is binding on the present government.

Even [President] Asif Zardari had announced that his government would restore the chief justice, but now he is pulling out of this. These factors caused disillusionment within the coalition government and forced the PML-N to resign, which weakened the government.

This apart, there are other factions which caused political disillusionment in this government. For instance, it deviated from its slogans of empowering parliament. Instead, Asif Zardari has retained all the powers as president that Musharraf acquired through the 17th amendment to the constitution. People wanted change after Musharraf. Unfortunately, that change could not happen in the system. Only faces were changed.

At the same time, due to his personal agendas, Zardari is also kicking out the old party leaders who were close to Ms Bhutto. Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan's membership in the central committee of the party has been suspended. Safdar Abbasi, Naheed Khan [political secretary of Ms Bhutto] are a few who have been practically separated from the PPP. All the new men around the government are Asif Zardari's personal friends, like Rahman Malik [a senator and powerful advisor on interior affairs].

HNN: This government is hardly one year old. There was a perception after the last elections that everything would be dealt with through parliament. But now from next month street protests are planned by the lawyers' movement and they are supported by the opposition parties. A sit-in is also planned in Islamabad. Don't you think this will destabilize the elected political setup?

GA: If you review the situation, you will find that the government did not fulfill any of its promises. A resolution was presented in the joint session of parliament and presented by the government [for the restoration of the judiciary]. It should have been very significant, but the government only formed a committee and then set aside the whole issue. What choice is there but street protests?

HNN: Can't you reprimand the government within parliament?

GA: Parliament appears as a rubber stamp.

HNN: Then why not try for a change of government through parliament?

GA: Nobody had a decisive majority but the government charmed smaller parties by giving them ministerial portfolios, so change is not possible through parliament.

HNN: Is it not unfortunate for this country that when an elected government is in place, politicians practice street politics and then allow the military establishment a chance to intervene?

GA: Street politics has always been a compulsion. Look at this lawyers' movement. This is not a new movement. It started on March 9 [2007] when the chief justice was made non-functional by then-president Musharraf. Since March 9, not a single glass has been smashed during rallies. There have been huge rallies, long marches, but you cannot cite me a single example of violence.

HNN: I beg to differ. In 1977 there was a huge opposition movement on the streets against the then Pakistan People's Party government led by Z A Bhutto. You were one of the main leaders of the movement and finally part of a team which held negotiations with the government. You documented the facts in your book that because of the agitation movement, the army got the chance to intervene, although the government and opposition had finalized a draft agreement. [Zia ul-Haq later imposed martial law and ruled for 11 years].

GA: You should read my book with concentration. I clearly mentioned that Bhutto made a blunder by after finalizing the terms of an agreement he did not sign the draft agreement. I was part of a three-member opposition committee holding the talks. I had warned Mr Bhutto that when he already had an agreement on everything, he should not delay in signing the documents [for the sake of proof-reading], otherwise martial law would be imposed. The army was looking for a chance.

They had already approached us. They were fully informed about the talks and contents and they tried to manipulate us as well. I personally explained this situation to Bhutto, that the military was looking for a chance to topple the government, so please take urgent steps. Although after the fall of East Pakistan [in 1971] and the humiliation they faced, we never expected that the army would fall into any more adventurism, such as imposing martial law, but this lust of power is very bad thing.

HNN: This is precisely my point. The military always looks for nuisances so unrest will spread, then they can conspire to take power. Don't you think once again that with the long march you will give the military a golden chance to exploit?

GA: I am emphasizing the same point. In 1977, the PPP government made a dire mistake which cost the country with martial law, and once again, if they don't comply with their promises, what chance does it leave for the people except street protests? Now the point is, are people wrong? Is not this the same demand, even put by Ms Benazir Bhutto, to restore the judiciary? Even Zardari committed to the same. So much so that a written agreement was signed, and then Zardari publicly said that the written agreement was not the Koran or the sayings of the Prophet Mohammad, which cannot be changed. So after such behavior, it is the government which needs to assess the consequences.

HNN: What is your choice. A bad democracy or good martial law?

GA: Martial law can never be good. Democracy has always been a choice. We don't want to abandon the government. It is neither against the government, parliament nor against Asif Zardari. It is just about the fulfillment of the promises this government made.

HNN: Are Islamic laws implemented through the barrel of a gun acceptable to you?

GA: Islamic laws are always enforced through the will of the people. You have to appreciate this fact, that the particular situation in Swat is the result of a vacuum because from 1926 to 1969 Islamic laws were enforced in Swat. After the merger of Swat into the state of Pakistan, the laws were changed, which resulted in a vacuum. This is Western propaganda, that Islam was spread through the sword. In fact, Islam has always been oppressed. There are 56 Muslim countries at the moment, all of them are oppressed, all are victims of Western oppressions.

NEXT: Crucial choices for the Jamaat-i-Islami.

Obama, Osama and Medvedev

2009-02-19T03:26:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan & Sarah Williams

For those who harbored any doubts, the Barack Obama administration's adoption of the George W Bush framework of the "war on terror" - it does feel like a back-to-the-future "continuity" - here are two key facts on the ground.

Obama has officially started his much-touted Afghanistan surge, authorizing the deployment of 17,000 US troops (8,000 marines, 4,000 army and 5,000 support) mostly to the Pashtun-dominated, southern Helmand province. Justification: "The situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention." The marines start arriving in Afghanistan in May. Their mission is as hazy as it is hazardous: eradication of the poppy culture, the source of heroin (which accounts for almost 40% of Afghanistan's gross domestic product). There are already 38,000 US troops in Afghanistan, plus 18,000 as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 50,000 contingent.

Obama administration nominees, in confirmation testimony that seemed to have disappeared in a black hole, stressed they are in favor of continuing the Central Intelligence Agency's extraordinary rendition practices and detaining - ad infinitum - "terror" suspects without trial, even if they were captured far, far away from a war zone. (Considering the Pentagon's elastic definition of an "arc of instability", this means anywhere from Somalia to Xinjiang.) That has prompted New York Times writers to come up with a delightful headline: "Obama's War on Terror May resemble Bush's in some Areas."

When in doubt, bomb 'em
Basically, the Obama administration's strategy - for now - boils down to turbo-charging a war against Pashtun farmers and peasants. Poppy cultivation has been part of Afghan culture for centuries. A high-tech aerial war on destitute peasants will have only one certified result: more of them increasing their support for, or outright migration to, the multi-faceted fight against foreign occupation which the Pentagon insists on defining as an "insurgency".

Throughout his presidential campaign, Obama defined the key goal of the "mission" in Afghanistan (promoted to "the central front in the war on terror") as capturing Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership. There's no evidence whatsoever that Osama is involved in the heroin trade. There's also scant evidence the sprawling, sophisticated US surveillance system is interested in actually finding Osama. After all, that would remove the only "war on terror" rationale for the US to be semi-occupying Afghanistan.

Plus there's no evidence these extra 17,000 troops are going after Osama in Helmand province. Assuming he has not gone to meet his 72 virgins in eternal bliss, Osama is supposed to be holed up in Parachinar, in Kurram province, at least according to the latest guess circulating among the vast legion of Osama watchers; this one is by University of California Los Angeles' Thomas Gillespie in the magazine Foreign Policy.

Before the legion starts swamping Google Earth with frantic searches, it's worth noting that by a quirky twist of history, Parachinar happens to be the same dusty village Osama and a few al-Qaeda operatives escaped to from a B-52-bombed Tora Bora in early December 2001 - when the neo-cons were already salivating with the prospect of bombing not empty mountains but "target-rich" Iraq.

In fact, since the fabled escape to Parachinar in late 2001 there has been absolutely no credible intelligence on Osama. Obama's new poppy gambit does bypass Osama. So it's fair to assume Obama has not been presented by the US national security apparatus with any new intelligence breakthrough - not to mention pure and simple on-the-ground basic intelligence, as bombing peasants and farmers to oblivion with Predator drones in Helmand is not exactly the best strategy to seduce them into collaborating with the US in finding those al-Qaeda ghosts, as it has been amply demonstrated in the Pakistani tribal areas.

Of course, in all this charade there's never a slight mention in the US - even in passing - of why Afghanistan matters: as a transit node of Pipelineistan - that is, the key Caspian oil and gas branch of the New Great Game in Eurasia. Compared to the real game, the monochromatic Washington rhetoric of "winning Afghanistan for democracy" does not even qualify as a joke.

Moscow to the rescue
The 1,600-kilometer Karachi-Khyber-Kabul supply line envisioned by the US and NATO is for all practical purposes dead - thanks to the hit-and-run guerrilla tactics of neo-Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas, and not Osama and his al-Qaeda ghosts.

Last week, Obama's Afghanistan/Pakistan envoy Richard Holbrooke was duly welcomed in Kabul - the day before he arrived - with a group of suicide bombers and gunmen raising hell in the Justice and Education ministries, killing 26 and wounding 57 and paralyzing the capital. This came after Kyrgyzstan had given Washington a six-month notice to pack up and leave the Manas air base contiguous to Bishkek's civilian airport. Yet more evidence that Central Asia now listens primarily to Moscow, not Washington.

What was not reported was how General David "Iraq surge" Petraeus - a man who calculates his each and every move in terms of ideal positioning for a 2012 presidential run - had rings run around him by those wily Russians. Petraeus told Obama in person on January 21, the day after the inauguration, that the US supply lines in Central Asia were totally secure. Obviously, he forgot to factor in a subsequent regional charm offensive by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, which established exactly the opposite.

In the end, transit salvation for the US and NATO is indeed coming from no one else but Russia - but on Moscow's terms: this means Russia possibly using its own military planes to airlift the supplies. A deceptively charming Medvedev has been on the record identifying "very positive signs" in the new US-Russia chess match. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been on the record saying transit of US and NATO non-military supplies through Russia begins in effect only a few days after the 20th anniversary of the Soviets leaving Kabul.

Obama for his part would have little to lose by listening to the man who was in command at the time - retired Lieutenant General Boris Gromov. Gromov - speaking from personal experience - has said Obama's surge is doomed to fail: "One can increase the forces or not - it won't lead to anything but a negative result."

The price for the US and NATO to have their Afghan supplies arrive via Russia is clear: no more encirclement, no more NATO extension, no more anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland for protection against non-existent Iranian missiles. All this has to be negotiated in detail. Russian media have reported Medvedev wants a summit with Obama in Moscow - with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin obviously at the table. But that still seems far-fetched; what will happen in Geneva in March is a meeting between Lavrov and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Assuming Medvedev has indeed given Obama a tremendous success story - in terms of a new transit route to Afghanistan - a pesky question remains; what is, after all, the US mission? It can't be nation-building; successive US administrations never cared about Afghanistan except as a sideshow. It can't be to "secure" the country and prevent it from becoming a base for attacks on the US because - as much as Russia, alongside the US, doesn't want a Talibanized Afghanistan - if there ever was a "base" it's now in the Pakistani tribal areas.

The best of it all - as usual - is left unsaid. Washington cannot admit that its only real interest in Afghanistan is as a transit corridor for a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India (the TAPI pipeline). Moscow cannot admit that the opportunity of helping the US to be bogged down in Afghanistan for a few more years is too good to pass.

And it gets better.

In the unlikely event Obama and Medvedev decide not to tango, the only other realistic possibility for the US/NATO to have a new supply route would be by courting Iran. Practically, that would mean a very long route from Turkey through Turkish/Iranian Kurdistan, Iran and then Kabul. A very convenient, shorter route would be from an Iranian port, say Bandar Abbas, and then into Afghanistan.

It's obvious that to play chess with Russia is much easier for the Obama administration than to play with Iran. In this case, to get what it needs, the US would have to forcefully end once and for all the three-decades-long "wall of mistrust" between Washington and Tehran; it would have to terminate the sanctions and the embargo; it would have to renounce regime change in Tehran; and it would even have to allow Iran to develop its civilian nuclear program, to which it has a right under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory.

The Obama administration also would have to face unimaginable pressure from the Israeli hard right - from Likud supremo Bibi Netanyahu to the hardline, former Moldova bouncer Avigdor Lieberman - and their minions operating in the Israel lobby in Washington.

Iran is getting closer and closer to Russia. Russia currently holds the presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) - the Eurasian answer to NATO not only in terms of security but also in the economic and energy spheres. The SCO unites Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, with Iran and Pakistan as observers. In an interview with RIA Novosti, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, "Iran has officially addressed SCO members and expects its observer status to be finally upgraded to full membership during Russia's chairmanship period."

This is what it's all about in Eurasia - the inexorable march of Asian integration, via the Asian Energy Security Grid and, in security terms, via the SCO. Both China and Russia are deeply connected with Iran. China has signed mega-multibillion dollar deals to be supplied by Iranian oil and gas while selling weapons and myriad goods; and Russia is bound to sell more weapons and is already selling nuclear energy technology. All this while Washington is focused on bombing Pashtun peasants and chasing the ghost of Osama bin Laden.

Succession worries unsettle Tibetans

2009-02-19T03:24:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Living in exile for nearly half a century, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is now 73. Tibetans in exile are becoming increasingly concerned with the issue of his succession and their future after the passage of the spiritual leader.

Hospitalized recently, living in semi-retirement from the Tibetan movement to let the elected Tibetan government control daily affairs, the health and future of the Dalai Lama is fodder for speculation. Many, especially those from older generations, are afraid that once the Dalai Lama passes away the Tibetan movement will lose steam and gradually fade from the international spotlight.

The Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile here since fleeing Tibet after a failed armed rebellion against Chinese rule in March 1959, says he feels attached to the northern India state where he lives. "I have spent most of my life in this hill station. Now I feel like a citizen of Himachal Pradesh," the Dalai Lama said.

The spiritual leader of Tibetans in exile and at home who also leads the Tibetan government in exile is highly respected internationally. A Nobel Peace Laureate, the Dalai Lama was also listed as one of the 50 most powerful people in the world by Newsweek. During his recent tour of Europe, the Dalai Lama was presented with honorary citizenship in Rome and granted the German Media Prize.

The Dalai Lama's fame, charm and high-profile international activities have helped make the Tibetan movement known to the world and win wide international support. Many Tibetans in exile also believe that it is the Dalai Lama who spiritually sustains their dream of returning to their homeland one day.

Therefore, many Tibetans in exile are worried that without him, the Tibet movement may gradually become forgotten by the world as his successor, if there is one, might not be able to make the same strides.

Older generations believe that following tradition, the Dalai Lama's successor must be a boy, the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. So it will take time for the next Dalai Lama to take up leadership and engage in international activities. But this is a topic too sacred for older Tibetans to talk about, and they are afraid of making any comment when asked.

Tibetan elders in exile simply believe that “His Holiness will make the right decision on choosing his successor which will benefit the future of Tibetans in exile and in Tibet".

But some young Tibetans in exile, who seek "full Tibet independence" and increasingly see the Dalai Lama's "middle way" as a constraint on their radical thinking and action, may feel freer to pursue their goal through more drastic means once the Dalai Lama passes away. These young radical Tibetans in exile, represented by the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), have become increasingly discontent with the Dalai Lama's approach to seeking autonomy instead of independence for the Himalayan region, though spiritually they still hold the Dalai Lama in esteem.

Although the Chinese government has labeled the Dalai Lama a traitor intent on fomenting violent unrest in Tibet with the ambition of achieving independence, the Dalai Lama has not given up his middle-way approach and has made every attempt to hold a dialogue. Although he has admitted that his faith in the Chinese government is becoming thinner and thinner.

Compared with other active Tibetan organizations in exile, TYC has a clearcut goal - rangzen (full independence) - on its agenda. Thus it states that while its members will feel sad about the passage of the Dalai Lama, they will continue to fight for their freedom.

"No doubt, no one will be able to replace the Dalai Lama and we Tibetans won't be able to repay him. But we are struggling for an independent nation and our struggle will continue," said TYC president Twesang Rigzin.

Therefore some analysts are increasingly concerned that once their spiritual leader is gone, the Tibetan movement, now united under the Dalai Lama, is very likely to split, given the differing views on how to achieve its goals.

Many have questions on how the Tibetan movement will proceed. Some have deep worries that the current Tibetan religious and government structure will change after his holiness passes. Others say the Tibetan movement will lose its direction and steam, as there will be growing frustration among exiles with the loss of a leader to guide them and to help them gain international support.

This is despite some of the Dalai Lama's staunch followers who believe that international support for the Tibetan movement is growing even though the Dalai Lama has already taken up semi-retirement to secure the future for the Tibetan movement by allowing the democratically-elected government in exile to play a more active role in deciding the course of the Tibetan movement.

Tibetans in exile are also concerned with who will become the next Dalai Lama and how the successor will be chosen. The Dalai Lama himself has not avoided talking about the issue of his succession in recent years. He seems to leave the question open. He once said whether Tibetans need the next Dalai Lama is an issue to be "democratically" decided by them.

On another occasion he did not rule out the possibility of his successor being female if Tibetans agreed on the issue, though according to Tibetan tradition a Dalai Lama must be male. And recently, the Dalai Lama described himself as "a simple Buddhist monk - no more, no less" and spoke of his "retirement", though according to Tibetan tradition the Dalai Lama is a lifetime god-king.

"If people feel that the institution of the Dalai Lama is still necessary, then this will continue," he said. "There are various ways of [choosing a successor]. The point is whether to continue with the institution of the Dalai Lama or not. After my death, Tibetan religious leaders can debate whether to have a Dalai Lama or not."

But Tibetans in exile widely believe that when their spiritual leader is gone the Chinese government will step in to choose its own reincarnation, as it did in case of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second highest-ranking religious figure.

In 1995, the Chinese government forced Tibetan monks to appoint Gyancain Norbu rather than the Dalai Lama's chosen candidate - Gedhun Choekyi Nyima - in an attempt to further exert its authority over Tibet. And Tibetans in exile claim the Dalai Lama's designated candidate for the Panchen Lama is the youngest political prisoner in the world, held by the Chinese government.

Most Tibetans believe Beijing is not sincere in its desire to talk with the aging Dalai Lama on the Tibet issue, saying China is just buying time, which is not on the Dalai Lama's side as he is 73. Analysts believe that even if Beijing does not intervene in the Dalai Lama's reincarnation (which is very unlikely), once the Tibetan god-king is gone his successor will be a small boy and decades may pass before the new Dalai Lama is ready to assume religious and political leadership, making a much longer wait for Tibetans in exile. And during that long wait, anything can happen.

Yet it may be too early to depict any true image of a post-Dalai Lama era. As long as the Dalai Lama lives, he will continue to do his very best to try and lead his people back to their homeland. As the spiritual leader said, "It is my moral responsibility until my death to work for the Tibetan cause. My body and flesh is all Tibetan. I remain committed to the Tibetan cause."

Pakistan fears poverty surge

2009-02-19T03:23:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan & Ruhena Fatima

Concern is growing in Pakistan that levels of poverty may worsen if the country gets additional support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in addition to a US$7.6 billion deal agreed late last year. A better source of cash, they say, would be the United States in return for Pakistan's contribution to the "war on terror".

The poverty rate has jumped to 37.5% from 23.9% during the past three years. More than 64 million people, out of a 160-million population, were living below the poverty line in 2008, as against 35.5 million people in 2005, according to the Planning Commission of Pakistan.

Pakistan is seeking an additional $4.5 billion loan after agreeing to the $7.6 billion standby loan last November as it grappled with a 30-year high inflation rate and fast-depleting foreign exchange reserves.

Strict IMF conditions have forced the government to ignore social-sector spending and more people are being pushed below the poverty line. A reduction in the fiscal deficit, higher interest rates and a cut in the country's development program have been dictated by the IMF, leading to further increases in unemployment and poverty levels. Local experts fear that tough IMF conditions will drag the country further into a vicious circle of poverty while increasing debt-servicing liabilities.

The government forecasts that the economy, South Asia's second-biggest, will grow at its slowest in seven years after raising interest rates as part of the IMF conditions. The fund late last year released $3.1 billion as the first installment to save Pakistan from defaulting on external payments. Pakistani and IMF officials are now holding talks, due to last until February 26, in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates as part of a review for disbursing the second installment of $775 million under the 23-month program.

"Pakistan is [also] to ask for an additional loan of $4.5 billion from the IMF to patch up an economy wilting under a widening trade deficit," the private Geo TV channel reported, citing a Finance Ministry official. Pakistan may seek that amount from the IMF as the country's fight against terrorists is hurting the economy, Shaukat Tarin, the finance adviser to the prime minister, said on February 15, according to Bloomberg.

While there is little question that Pakistan needs help in meeting its financial obligations, critics question whether the IMF terms and payback conditions do not make the US a more desirable source of support, given the partnership the two countries profess in the "war on terror" on Pakistan's eastern border with Afghanistan.

"Before asking for more loans, the government needs to say how it will pay it back?" Business Recorder quoted Muzzammil Aslam, an economist at KASB Securities in Karachi, as saying. "The government should seek aid from the US, and not a loan from the IMF, as compensation for fighting terrorists. It is time to consolidate the economy and adjust policies for pro-investment activities. The IMF loan can only be used for balance of payments and building foreign reserves. The government needs to cut interest rates to boost businesses."

Islamabad is facing a 45 billion rupee (US$564 million) shortfall in revenue in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, which runs to the end of June, after cutting the budget deficit 27.24% during the first half of the fiscal year to 259 billion rupees compared with a year earlier.

The fiscal deficit is targeted to decline to 4.2% of GDP this fiscal year from 7.4% in 2007-08. In the first six months, the deficit was held back to 1.9% of GDP against a 2% target.

"To meet the IMF's 4.2% fiscal deficit condition, a major cut was made to the development budget," according to a report published in Business Recorder. The report, citing a Planning Commission document, said achieving IMF conditions ultimately would lead to ignoring social sector spending.

The government spent only 19% of the federal Public Social Development Program (PSDP) total allocation of 371 billion rupees, during the six months through December, the lowest since 2005. This PSDP has already been cut by 100 billion rupees.

Pakistani authorities finalizing the next budget outlay will keep in view the IMF's terms and conditions, according to a report in The News.

These terms include a commitment to increase the ratio of tax to gross domestic product. The Federal Board of Revenue submitted to the IMF an action plan for the tax reforms late last year. If the plan is approved, the government will have to choose between increasing the tax base by incorporating the agriculture sector, real estate and stock markets under the tax net or pile up new taxes on existing taxpayers.

Taking the latter route would risk public unrest and political agitation.

Local industrialists, meanwhile, are unhappy over the central bank's decision to keep interest rates at 15%, a level well above rates in the developed world. Critics say the government agreed with the IMF to raise the discount rate by 350 basis points in two phases, with an increase of 200 basis points (or two percentage points) made effective before last year's $7.6 billion deal was approved by the IMF board. An increase of 150 basis points would be dependent on the behavior of relevant indicators this fiscal year.

Industrialists are already struggling from the global slowdown, with textile exports falling 1.79% during the first six months of the current fiscal year. It now looks unlikely that the export target of over $22 billion for the full 12 months will be met.

"The financial crisis in the US and Europe [Pakistan's most important textile markets] has a spiral impact and Pakistani textile products are no exception to this global issue," the Daily Times reported Federal Textile Commissioner Mohammad Idris as saying.

Exports are being hit despite a more than 30% deprecation of the rupee, what has increased import costs and removed the potential benefits of a 70% decline in the price of oil in the international market. The country’s oil import bill increased by 45% to $5.48 billion during the first five months of the current fiscal year, from $3.8 billion over the same months the previous year, according to the Federal Board of Revenue.

The oil import bill did decline in November, but only on the back of a steep dip in demand from the slowing economy.

The government has given a commitment to the IMF to reduce domestically financed development spending by about 1% of GDP through better prioritization of projects. The government wants a total adjustment of 100 billion rupees by slashing the Public Sector Development Programme, according to Business Recorder.

The Planning Commission of Pakistan has sent a summary of its rationalization proposals to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. In the next phase, projects that require foreign lending will be cut in the face of government difficulties in obtaining loans from international donors, the report said, citing commission sources.

The cuts will come amid forecasts of an average 2% growth in Pakistan's economy by June, with expansion now dependent on the performance of agriculture after the manufacturing sector shrunk 6.5% in the six months through December.

The IMF has forecast real GDP growth of 3.5% in the year through June, down from an average of 6.8% in the past five years and the slowest pace in seven years.

The Taliban get their first wish

2009-02-18T03:01:00.000-08:00

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Many Muslims believe that ancient Khorasan - which covers parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - is the promised land from where they will secure the first victory in the end-of-time battle in which the final round, according to their beliefs, will be fought in Bilad-i-Sham (Palestine-Lebanon-Syria).

The geographical borders of Bilad-i-Sham-Khorasan extend from Samarkand in Uzbekistan to the small Malakand division in the northern fringe of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) that includes the militant-dominated Swat Valley.

On Monday, at a time when United States Central Command chief General David Petraeus was trying to set up a supply route for troops in Afghanistan through Uzbekistan, in this extreme corner of the promised land of Khorasan - Malakand division - militants had every reason to celebrate.

Asif Ali Zardari, the strongly American-backed Pakistani president, and the provincial government of NWFP gave in to the demands of militants and announced a ceasefire, lifted a two-year-old curfew and announced the implementation of Islamic sharia law.

"All un-Islamic laws in the Malakand division of Swat, which is geographically one third of the whole [NWFP] province, have been abolished," the chief minister of NWFP, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, told the media after reaching an agreement with the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi, which is headed by Sufi Mohammad, the symbol of the sharia movement in Malakand division. The Islamic judicial system will be enforced by Islamic judges - qazi.

The accord is a significant victory for the Pakistan Taliban and could end two years of strife in the region which has seen militants pitted against Pakistani security forces.

The peace agreement will be complemented by a compensation package for the families of those killed and injured in the military operations. "[Families] of those who were killed will get 300,000 rupees [US$3,760] and those who were wounded will get 100,000 rupees," Hoti said. "The entire deal, Islamic laws and other packages related to the deal were completely approved by the president of Pakistan," he said.

"We have established a task force which will monitor the implementation of Islamic law, but enforcement will be bound by peace and the writ of the state," said Hoti. "The security forces now [after the signing of the agreement] will be in reactive rather than proactive mode. They will only retaliate if somebody tries to challenge the writ of the state," Hoti said.

The army's Inter-Services Public Relations confirmed that the curfew has been lifted, after two years, in Swat Valley. Militants have also announced a ceasefire for 10 days which is likely to extend for an indefinite period.

The developments in Malakand division coincide with the arrival in Afghanistan of close to 3,000 American soldiers as part of an extra 30,000 to boost the already 30,000 US troops in the country. The new contingent will be deployed in Logar province to secure violent provinces near the capital Kabul. Petraeus must now be thinking of how many more troops he will need to confront the additional Taliban fighters that will come from Malakand.

Taliban's victory: A curtain raiser to the spring battle
A key factor in the Taliban's revival after being driven from power by US-led forces in 2001 was that from 2004 they established a strong network in Pakistan that was coordinated by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

A focal point of this was the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, which was stormed in July 2007 by Pakistani security forces to clear it of militants. The network extended into the Swat Valley, streamed into Bajaur Agency and Mohmand Agency from where militants fed the Afghan insurgency in Kunar and Nooristan provinces.

Other flows of militants into South Waziristan and North Waziristan, Kurram Agency and Khyber Agency respectively fed the Afghan insurgency in the provinces of Paktia, Paktika, Khost and Nangarhar provinces.

By this time, Western intelligence had realized that these developments in Pakistan were a major factor behind the "fireworks" in Afghanistan, and Islamabad was told as much. The Pakistanis were also warned that the militants could also launch a revolution in Pakistan. This was a major turning point in the "war on terror" in the South Asian theater.

For the first time, Islamabad felt a chill up its spine and viewed the situation from a different perspective - not as an American war in which its participation was drawn out of compulsion, but as a war necessary to maintain the status quo of its own system. This system was a blend of the country's deep relationship with the US and the perpetuation of the military oligarchy, combined with a particular brand of Islam that could co-exist with this setup.

The attack on the Lal Masjid was the first shot fired in this battle, and its reverberations soon spread to the Swat Valley, South Waziristan and then Bajaur Agency, in effect turning the whole of NWFP into a war theater. A series of military operations in the tribal areas drove the militants from stand-alone sanctuaries into population centers.

In Malakand, which includes the Swat area, the militants are a part of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban and the vanguard of the Taliban's cause in the region against Western occupation forces in Afghanistan and their ally - Pakistan. They have established their own writ with a parallel system that includes courts, police and even a electric power-distribution network and road construction, and all this is now official in the eyes of Islamabad.

All intelligence indicated that further concentration on military operations in Swat could lead to an expansion of the war theater into Pakistan's non-Pashtun cities, such as Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. The security forces were already stretched and even faced rebellions.

These combined factors culminated in Monday's peace agreement, which is a major defeat for Washington as well as Pakistan, and it could also lead to a major setback for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Afghanistan come spring when hordes of better-trained fighters from Swat pour into Afghanistan.

The Taliban defeat American interests
To tame the militancy, Washington and London devised a plan in 2007, one aspect of which was for the military to take on the militants. At the same time, Pakistan was to move from a military dictatorship under president general Pervez Musharraf to a political government.

This happened in the beginning of last year with the formation of a democratically elected coalition government of secular and liberal parties involving among others the Pakistan People's Party, the Muttehida Quami Movement, the Pashtun sub-nationalist Awami National Party (ANP), the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam and the Pakistan Muslim League-Qaid-i-Azam. It was envisaged that these parties would fully back the US's "war on terror".

Earlier, Washington had brokered a deal between former premier Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf, who was also chief of army staff, under which a National Reconciliation Ordinance was enacted to have all corruption cases against Bhutto and her spouse Asif Ali Zardari dropped. Under this arrangement, later, NWFP was handed over to the ANP, recognized as the most genuine secular political party.

The militants were onto the game. The first shot was the assassination of Bhutto by al-Qaeda in December 2007, which practically turned the whole American plan on its head and created a situation in which Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, an anti-Musharraf party, secured an unprecedented number of seats in parliament, leaving no option but for Musharraf, the most important American ally, to resign. But in time, the secular and liberal political parties in the capital became hostage to the militants.

Another setback for the pro-American forces was the brazen militant attack late last year on Asfandyar Wali, the leader of the ANP, at his home about 20 kilometers from the NWFP capital, Peshawar. He then fled first to Islamabad and later to Europe. Asfandyar had been groomed by the US through many visits to the US.

Asfandyar's departure resulted in half the leadership of the ANP, including the head of their foreign relations committee, Dr Himayun Khan, resigning. Their departure was hastened by dire threats from the Taliban. It was only a matter of time before the ANP's influence in NWFP was severely eroded.

Ironically, the ANP, which sided with the Soviets against the Islamic Afghan resistance in the 1980s and put up fierce resistance to the enactment of Islamic laws in the country, has now become the main engine for the enforcement of sharia in NWFP where it technically rules.

On Tuesday, while Asfandyar has chosen to remain silent, his nephew and the chief minister of the province, Hoti, warned the federal government that any obstruction of the deal with the militants would be unacceptable.

Meanwhile, all schools in Swat, including girls' schools, were opened on Tuesday and thousands of people flocked to a cricket stadium to greet Sufi Mohammad, who will soon travel to Matta, a sub-district of Swat, to visit his son-in-law Mullah Fazlullah to try to persuade him to end the insurgency. For the first time in many months, all members of the provincial and federal parliament will visit the Swat Valley.

Pakistan's failure: How it tackled the militancy
During Musharraf's eight years in power, Pakistan was on board with both the US and Saudi Arabia over the "war on terror". This ensured that Pakistan received a steady supply of all sorts of resources, including deferment on oil payments from Saudi Arabia and special aid packages when Pakistan was badly hit by an earthquake in 2005. Washington mostly looked after Pakistan’s military aid packages and reimbursement of expenses incurred in the "war on terror".

A few steps taken by Zardari, however, crumbled the setup like a house of cards. Immediately after taking over as president last September, in a very high-handed manner, Pakistan withdrew the hunting privileges of two Saudi princes located in the district of Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Punjab. To add salt to the wound, the facility was given to a rival sheikh from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The action was taken at a time when Pakistan badly needed Saudi oil on deferred terms due to soaring prices, and the UAE was in no position to fill the gap. Islamabad now enjoys very good relations with the UAE - which is unable to help Pakistan - due to the family friendship between the Bhutto family and the UAE's rulers. But Pakistan's relations with Saudi Arabia and its two major allies - Qatar and Bahrain - are at an all-time low because of the insult to the Saudi royal family. (The issue of Zardari's Shi'ite background is a secondary factor.)

HNN has learned that the newly installed US envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, was impressed in recent talks with the government to learn that chief of army staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani works fully in coordination with the political government and does not intervene in its affairs. The Swat operation is an example: the military immediately stopped action when the government announced the peace deal with the militants. All the same, the Pentagon will be waiting to receive Kiani in Washington soon to discuss why the Pakistan army failed in Swat.

However, Holbrooke was apparently concerned when he interacted with Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani and members of the cabinet. Gillani expressed his fears that the poor economic situation in Pakistan could hamper its efforts in the "war on terror".

Holbrooke is said to have asked the premier how much money he would need to revive the economy. "As much as we can get," the premier replied, without giving specifics.

The dynamics of the region have changed once again. Nizam-i-Adal Regulation 2009, which proclaims the enforcement of sharia law in Malakand division, is indeed a written document of Pakistan's defeat in the American-inspired war in NWFP.

Obama, an economic unilateralist

2009-02-17T03:23:00.000-08:00

By NEWSCOP

The silliest thing that clever people are saying about the world economic crisis is that the United States will lose its position as the dominant world superpower in consequence. On the contrary: the crisis strengthens the relative position of the United States and exposes the far graver weaknesses of all prospective competitors. It makes the debt of the American government the world's most desirable asset. America may deserve to decline, but as Clint Eastwood said in another context, "deserve's got nothing to do with it". President Barack Obama may turn out to be the most egregious unilateralist in American history.

America's supposed decline dominates the glossy magazines. Last September, Germany's Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck intoned, "One thing seems probable to me. As a result of the crisis, the United States will lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system." The German official is quoted by Professor Richard Florida in the March 2009 Atlantic Monthly, who adds, "You don't have to strain too hard to see the financial crisis as the death knell for a debt-ridden, overconsuming and underproducing American empire - the fall long prophesied by [British historian] Paul Kennedy and others."

And the ubiquitous Professor Niall Ferguson told a Vanity Fair interviewer on January 20 that America would crumble like Great Britain in the 1970s. "It certainly will be extremely painful ... Half the federal debt is held by foreigners. And if the US either defaults on debt or allows the dollar to depreciate, the rest of the world is going to say, 'Wait a second, you just screwed us.' And that's, I think, the moment at which the United States experiences the British experience - when, in the dark days of the 60s and 70s, Britain fundamentally lost its credibility and ceased to be a financial great power."

But is this true? In fact, the rest of the world has queued up to lend America as much money as it might wish to borrow in order to get its consumers to spend again, and buy the manufactures and raw materials of the rest of the world. It won't work, but that is another matter. As I wrote last October, the world isn't flat, contrary to New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman's vision of a level global playing field. It's flattened.

Here's a thought-experiment to gauge the merits of different national markets as a safe haven. Close your eyes and try to imagine what Germany, Japan and China will look like 30 years from now, that is, when a newly-issued long-term bond will mature. Citing Pope Benedict XVI's critique of economics, I argued recently that the market cannot form accurate long-term expectations; it only can imagine future states of the world. (See Benedict XVI is magnificently right, Asia Times Online, December 9, 2008). Let us see what imagination tells us about the world's largest capital markets. The conclusions of this exercise, I will show later, reinforce the founding premises of "supply-side economics", the theory that guided America out of the 1979-1983 mini-depression.

Imagination fails in the case of Europe and Japan. One out of every four Germans today is older than 60, and in 30 years the proportion will rise to two-fifths. Japan is even worse: 30% of Japanese today are above 60, and in 30 years the number will be almost half. What does a national economy look like when the demographics are so skewed to pensioners?

We never have seen anything like this before in all of history. Pension and health costs projected forward will crush these economies a generation from now. Taxes will suffocate the dwindling population of young workers. A straight-line projection of present trends takes us to the cusp of national failure. We do not know whether present trends will continue in a straight line, to be sure. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, as Damon Runyon said, but that's the way to bet.

Children are the wealth of nations, provided that their nations can put tools in their hands and the rule of law at their back. Countries that lack children are poor. Aging Germans do not have young people to whom to lend. That is why they lent their savings to Americans, through the subprime market, and why European banks are if anything worse off than American banks.

Imagination also fails in the case of China, not because extrapolation of present trends is so frightening, but rather because economic growth cannot possibly continue at the pace of the past 10 years. China is a different country than it was 30 years ago, and it will be a different country in another 30 years. It is in the midst of the largest migration of peoples in the history of the world, the fastest rate of urbanization and the greatest economic expansion of which we know. Its political system and social structure will change so radically that it is impossible to form a clear picture of the country in 2040.

Great opportunities are attended by enormous dangers. China has more young people than any other country in the world, more than all of Europe put together, but too many of them are trapped in rural poverty, uneducated and untrained.

That is why Chinese save half their income, more than anyone else in the world. Part of China's steroidal savings rate can be explained by the one-child policy. People whose children will not care for them in old age require financial assets. What economists call precautionary savings, saving for a rainy day, explains a great deal of the Chinese demand for savings. The sun has shone on the Chinese economy for a generation, but when it rains, who is to say how hard it will rain? Extreme uncertainty about the future explains China's savings rate.

But America's future is not hard to visualize in 2040. In fact, America in 1979 was not much different from America in 2009. Minor adjustments await Americans over the next generation compared with the great changes affecting its prospective competitors.

China may offer greater prospective returns than America - a billion Chinese will make the transition from a low-productivity rural environment into a high-productivity urban environment during the next generation - but it also requires a greater appetite for risk. Nothing can compete with the United States as a safe-haven investment for the long term. German petulance about America's domination of world markets rises in inverse proportion to the German birth rate. The German finance minister should know better.

The Chinese have no such illusions. Luo Ping, a director general at the China Bank Regulatory Commission, told an American audience, "We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion ... we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do."

A fearful world is buying trillions of dollars of securities from the US Treasury. Of all the cash flows in the world, nothing is more reliable than the tax revenues of the American state, the longest-lasting government on Earth presiding over the world's largest economy.

During the 1960s, a young Canadian economist, Robert Mundell, argued that an increase in US government debt might represent a true increase in wealth under certain circumstances. It is relatively easy to capitalize corporate income streams through bonds, Mundell observed, but much harder to capitalize household income streams. If the government cuts taxes and issues bonds to replace the lost revenue, the increase in the float of the government bonds outstanding will represent an increase in wealth, provided that the tax increase stimulates growth, and the resulting growth brings in enough taxes to pay the interest on the bonds.

From this insight emerged the economic program of president Ronald Reagan. Drastic tax cuts, reducing the marginal tax rate from 70% to 40%, vastly increased the US budget deficit during the early 1980s. But the increase in revenues from a recovering economy more than paid the interest on the additional bonds, and the increase in government debt represented an increase in wealth. Mundell went on to win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1999, for work in a different area.

America's economic crisis in 2009 bears little resemblance to the mini-depression of 1979. Then, the baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s; now they are in their 50s and 60s. As I wrote in my year-end essay, the Reagan administration made it easier for homeowners and businesses to obtain leverage. Young people need leverage to start families; old people need savings. The medicine that cured the economy in the early 1980s turned into an addiction during the 2000s.

But there is a perverse parallel between the Treasury market of 1979 and 2009. In both cases, the market is willing to absorb an enormous increase in the float of US government securities. Looking into the future, no cash flows in the world are more secure than the tax revenues of the American Treasury.

The greater the uncertainty attached to all other cash flows, the greater the demand for US Treasury securities. America does not have to throw its political weight around to persuade the world to fund between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion of new debt issuance; its political weight stems from the fact that the world needs the United States as a safe haven for its money.

The difference, of course, is that the increased issuance of Treasury securities during the Reagan years represented an absolute increase in wealth, capitalizing the recovery prospects of the US economy. All the other economies of the free world benefited. The Obama administration's multi-trillion dollar borrowing requirement constitutes a shift in relative wealth. Less capital will be available for other economies. The relative position of the United States will strengthen radically, which is to say that the position of many other parts of the world will weaken radically.

Obama isn't entirely to blame for this sorry state of affairs, to be sure, given that these trends were in place before he took office. Still, it is incongruous that the liberal consensus welcomed the multilateralist Obama and bade good riddance to the unilateralist Republicans. A radical shift in economic power in favor of the United States makes Obama the moral equivalent of a unilateralist, to a degree that Reagan never could have imagined.

To overpay unionized construction workers to build bridges, and bail out the bloated budgets of American states, the Obama administration will flood the world with so much Treasury debt that capital will flow out of the poorest countries to buy it. Rather than protest this outrageously unilateralist action, the rest of the world encourages him to do so, hoping that somehow the Obama stimulus package will get American consumers to buy their goods once again.

During the Reagan years, the rest of the world had the right to grumble about the dominance of the American economy. Now that American policy has become a millstone around the necks of most of the world's economies, the rest of the world's leaders flatter Obama while he beats them. No Republican president ever had it so good.

The new Fallujah: Up Close and ugly

2009-02-15T00:41:00.000-08:00

By Dahr Jamail

Driving through Fallujah, once the most rebellious Sunni city in Iraq, I saw little evidence of any kind of reconstruction underway. At least 70% of that city's structures were destroyed during massive US military assaults in April, and again in November 2004, and more than four years later, in the "new Iraq", the city continues to languish.

The shells of buildings pulverized by US bombs, artillery or mortar fire back then still line Fallujah's main street, or rather, what's left of it. As one of the few visible signs of reconstruction in the city, that street - largely destroyed during the November 2004 siege - is slowly being torn up to be repaved.

Unemployment is rampant, the infrastructure remains largely in ruins, and tens of thousands of residents who fled in 2004 are still refugees. How could it be otherwise, given the amount of effort that went into its destruction and not, subsequently, into rebuilding it? It's a place where a resident must still carry around a US-issued personal biometric ID card, which must also be shown any time you enter or exit the city if you are local. Such a card can only be obtained after US military personnel have scanned your retinas and taken your fingerprints.

The trauma from the 2004 attacks remains visible everywhere. Given the countless still-bullet-pocked walls of restaurants, stores and homes, it is impossible to view the city from any vantage point, or look in any direction, without observing signs of those sieges.

Everything in Fallujah, and everyone there, has been touched to the core by the experience, but not everyone is experiencing the aftermath of the city's devastation in the same way. In fact, for much of my "tour" of Fallujah, I was inside a heavily armored, custom-built, $420,000 BMW with all the accessories needed in 21st century Iraq, including a liquor compartment and bulletproof windows.

One of the last times I had been driven through Fallujah - in April 2004 - I was with a small group of journalists and activists. We had made our way into the city, then under siege, on a rickety bus carrying humanitarian aid supplies. After watching in horror as US F-16s dropped bombs inside Fallujah while we wound our way toward it through rural farmlands, we arrived to find its streets completely empty, save for mujahideen checkpoints.

To say that my newest mode of transportation was an upgrade that left me a bit disoriented would be (mildly put) an understatement. The BMW belonged to Sheik Aifan Sadun, head of the Awakening Council of Fallujah. Thanks to the Awakening movement that began forming in 2006 in al-Anbar province, then the hotbed of the Sunni insurgency - into which American occupation forces quickly poured significant amounts of money, arms and other kinds of support - violence across most of that province is now at an all-time low. This is strikingly evident in Fallujah, once known as the city of resistance, since the fiercest fighting of the American occupation years took place there.

Today, 34-year-old Sheik Aifan may be the richest man in town, thanks to his alliance of self-interest with the US occupation forces. Aifan's good fortune was this: he was the right sheik in the right place at the right time when the Americans, desperate over their failures in Iraq, decided to throw their support behind the reconstitution of a tribal elite in the province where the Sunni insurgency raged with particular fierceness from 2004-2006.

In the 'construction business'
Don't misunderstand. This wasn't a careful, strategically laid, made-in-the-USA plan. It was a seat-of-the-pants, spur-of-the-moment quick fix. After all, by the time US planners decided to throw their weight behind the Awakening Movement, it was already something of a done deal.

In late 2006, roughly speaking, months before George W Bush's "surge" strategy sent 30,000 more American troops into Baghdad and surrounding areas, the US began making downpayments on the cooperation of local al-Anbar tribal sheiks and started funding and arming the Sunni militias they were then organizing. As a result, the number of insurgent attacks quickly began to drop, and so the Americans widened the program to other provinces. It grew to include nearly 100,000 Sunni fighters, most of whom were paid $300 a month - a sizeable income in a devastated city like Fallujah with sky-high unemployment rates.

The program was soon hailed as a success, and the groups were dubbed anything from The Awakening, to Sons of Iraq (al-Sahwa), or as the US military preferred for a time, Concerned Local Citizens. Whatever the name, most of their members were former resistance fighters; many were also former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party; and significant numbers were - and, of course, remain - both.

There was an even deeper history to the path the Americans finally chose to tame the insurgency and the homegrown al-Qaeda-in-Iraq (AQI) groups that had spun off from it. In an interview with David Enders and Richard Rowley, colleagues of mine, in the summer of 2007, Sheikh Aifan laid this out quite clearly: "Saddam Hussein supported some tribes and some sheiks. Some of those sheiks, he used their power in their areas. The first support came by money. He supported them by big projects, by money, and he made them very rich. So you see, they can deal with anyone in Iraq with money. The Americans, they made the same plan with all the sheiks."

The main goal of the Americans was never the reconstruction of devastated al-Anbar province. That was just the label given to a project whose objective - from the US point of view - was to save American lives and to tamp down violence in Iraq before the US presidential election of 2008.

Today, leading sheiks like Aifan will tell you that they are in "the construction business". That's a polite phrase for what they're doing, and the rubric under which a lot of the payouts take place (however modest actual reconstruction work might be). Think of it this way: every dealer needs a front man. The US bought the sheiks off and it was to their immediate advantage to be bought off. They regained a kind of power that had been seeping away, while all the money and arms allowed them to put real muscle into recruiting people in the tribes they controlled and into building the Awakening Movement.

The reasons - and they are indeed plural - why the tribal leaders were so willing to collaborate with the occupiers of their country are, at least in retrospect, relatively clear. Those in al-Anbar who had once supported, and had been supported by, Saddam, and then had initially supported the resistance became far keener to work with occupation forces as they saw their power eroded by al-Qaeda-in-Iraq.

AQI proved a threat to the sheiks, many of whom had initially worked directly with it, when it began to try to embed its own fierce, extremist Sunni ideology in the region - and perhaps even more significantly, when it began to infringe on the cross-border smuggling trade that had kept many tribal sheiks rich. As AQI grew larger and threatened their financial and power bases, they had little choice but to throw in their lot with the Americans.

As a result, these men obtained backing for their private militias, renamed Awakening groups, and in addition, signed "construction" contracts with the Americans who put millions of dollars in their pockets, even if not always into actual construction sites. As early as April 2006, the Rand Corporation released a report, "The Anbar Awakening", identifying America's potential new allies as a group of sheiks who used to control smuggling rings and organized crime in the area.

One striking example was Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who founded the first Awakening groups in al-Anbar and later led the entire movement until he was assassinated in 2007, shortly after he met with president George W Bush. It was well known in the region that Abu Risha was primarily a smuggler defending his business operations by joining the Americans.

Not surprisingly, given the lucrative nature of the cooperative relationship that developed, whenever an Awakening group sheik is assassinated, another is always there to take his place. Abu Risha was, in fact, promptly replaced as "president" of the Anbar Awakening by his brother Sheik Ahmad Abu Risha, also now in the "construction business".

Dreaming of the new Dubai
When Bush visited Iraq in September 2007, my host on my tour of Fallujah, Sheik Aifan, was delighted to meet him. Bush, he claimed, was "very smart and a brother". During the summer of 2008, he would meet Barack Obama as well. When asked what he thought of Obama, he told Richard Rowley, "US foreign policy tends not to change with a new president." A photo of him with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is proudly displayed, among many others, at his home in Fallujah.

To fully understand why tribal leaders like Aifan began working so closely with American forces, you also have to take into account the waves of staggering sectarian violence that were sweeping across Iraq in 2006. As Sunni suicide and car bombings slaughtered Shi'ites, so, too, Shi'ite militias and death squads were murdering Sunnis by the score on a daily basis.

Before the US invasion in 2003, Sunnis had been nearly a majority in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. By 2006, they were a rapidly shrinking minority, largely driven out of the many mixed Sunni-Shi'ite neighborhoods that dotted the city and some purely Sunni ones as well. Hundreds of thousands of them were displaced from homes in Baghdad alone.

At his Informed Comment blog, Juan Cole reports that Sunnis may now make up as little as 10%-15% of the population of the capital. No wonder their tribal leaders, outnumbered and outgunned on all sides, felt the need for some help and, with options limited, found it by reaching out to the most powerful military on the planet. With their finances, livelihoods and even lives threatened, they resorted to a classic tactic of the beleaguered, summed up in the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

The result today? Sheik Aifan is a millionaire many times over. And his dreams are fittingly no longer those of a local smuggler. He wants to "make Anbar the next Dubai", he told two of my colleagues and I as we powered down the battered streets of Fallujah in reference to the glittering city that has grown out of the desert in the United Arab Emirates.

His house is a fittingly massive, heavily guarded mansion complete with its own checkpoint near the street, two guard towers, and even two heavy machine guns emplaced near the door to his office. A bevy of guards surround him at all times and live in the mansion full-time for his protection.

During our first visit to his home, my companions and I ended up spending the night, since we had not completed our interviews by the time the sun began to set. It was just days ahead of the recent provincial elections in which the list of Awakening members of which he was a part would take second place. As we munched on delicious kebabs, he proudly discussed his own campaign that he hoped would land him high in the city council. "I'm running," he insisted, "because if I don't, the bad people will keep their seats. We can't change things if we don't run."

With most Sunni groups boycotting the 2005 election, the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), a heavily religious group, took control of the seats of power in Fallujah. While I was with Aifan, he was visibly anxious and angered by rumors that the IIP was attempting to pressure voters and rig the elections. "We will fight with any means necessary if they win by fraud," he said adamantly - and, as I would soon find out, he was already taking the fight to the IIP.

John Gotti in Iraq
As the night grew late, Aifan suddenly decided that we should accompany him on a quick visit to the provincial capital, Ramadi. He wanted to consult with a compatriot, Sheik Abu Risha, in order to file a joint letter of complaint about the alleged fraud the IIP was conducting in the run-up to the elections. It was interesting to note that, only two years and a few months after the Awakening Movement was formed, the two sheiks feared a Sunni electoral party far more than al-Qaeda-in-Iraq.

En route he proudly showed off the BMW's extras, including its two-inch thick bulletproof windows (so useful if you fear assassination), the handy flip-out whisky compartment that held Johnny Walker and some sodas, and a top-of-the-line music system. As he drove, his cell phone in one hand and a walkie-talkie beside him a constant link to his security guards in SUVs which had us sandwiched front and back, he continued to talk enthusiastically with us. Riding in the front, I couldn't help but be exceedingly aware of the pistol that rested conveniently near him on the seat. In the back on the floor were a shotgun and an AK-47 assault rifle.

Abu Risha's compound in Ramadi was even larger than Sheik Aifan's mansion - and even more heavily guarded. We arrived to find an election official already waiting to take Aifan's written complaint on the rigging charges. The chief of police for the province was in attendance too, a sign of the power and influence of these two men who share a bond of power and money. (Abu Risha even owns a camel farm.)

Once the visit was concluded, we headed back for Fallujah and had a late night snack at Sheik Aifan's place before settling in for a night's sleep as his guest. His daughter, a shy girl of perhaps seven years of age, sat beside him as we ate. At one point, he suddenly peeled a crisp US $100 bill off a wad of bills that would have stunned any movie mafia boss, smiled benevolently, and added that she shouldn't let her mother know about the gift.

The sheik, of course, had $100 bills to spare, as millions of dollars for so-called construction projects have been funneled his way. It's how he pays the roughly 900 men that he estimates make up his private militia. For all of this he can thank the US military, which delivers regular installments of money - shrink-wrapped bricks of those $100 bills - because post-invasion Iraq remains largely a cash-only economy.

Before our journey to Ramadi, a patrol of US Marines had paid Sheik Aifan a visit. As the soldiers climbed the stairs to his meeting room, they took clips of ammunition away from the sheik's security team, and kept them until they left his compound. It was a gentle reminder of who still has the final say in this part of Iraq and of just how far the trust extends between these partners of necessity.

Sheikh Aifan offered a warm greeting to the marine commander, and the two men sat down to talk. Each was visibly distracted, anxiously looking around. Sheik Aifan toyed anxiously with his prayer beads, wiggling his legs like a nervous schoolchild, while telling his guest how well everything was going. The meeting was repeatedly interrupted by cell phone calls for the sheik who, at one point, left briefly to welcome another visitor.

After the meeting, platters of food were brought in and everyone feasted. As they were leaving, I asked one of the marines if meetings like these happened regularly. "This is our job," he replied. "We visit sheiks. And this guy is like John Gotti." (Gotti, labeled the "Teflon Don", ran the Gambino crime family in New York City before being jailed.)

I wasn't eager to stay the night, but the alternatives - at least the safe ones - were nil. Though in luxurious circumstances, we caught something of the newest Iraqi dilemma: we had "security" of a sort, but no freedom.

Outside the gates of Sheik Aifan's well-guarded compound, generators hummed in the night providing electricity in a land where, if you can't pay for a generator of your own or share one with your neighbor, you are in trouble. In Fallujah, like Baghdad, four hours of electricity delivered from the national grid is considered a good day. Generally, a self-imposed curfew kept the streets relatively traffic free after total darkness settled in.

The city in which Sheik Aifan lives, of course, still lies in rubble, its people largely in a state of existential endurance. The Awakening groups have earned the respect of many Iraqis by providing "security", but at what price?

Reconstruction has yet to really begin in Sunni areas and the movement, sheiks and all, only works as long as the US continues funneling "reconstruction funds" to tribal leaders. What happens when that stops, as it surely must with time? Will the people of Fallujah be better served? Or has this process merely laid the groundwork for future bloodshed?

Is Fatima Bhutto dating George Clooney ?

2009-02-11T02:32:00.000-08:00

By Maria Akram

Fatima Bhutto, the fiery poet-journalist niece of slain former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, may be dating Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney.

"Tricky long distance, Pakistan-to-US dating logistics aside, we think the two would make a nice couple. I mean, just look at her CV. She's a far cry from Clooney's last girlfriend... cocktail waitress and 'Fear Factor' contestant, Sara Larson," said a report in American tabloid National Enquirer.

Clooney and Fatima, who lives with her stepmother and half brother in a plush suburb of Karachi, met at an international conference last year.

"He's still out there with his usual assortment of Hollywood eye-candy hanging from his arm. But George insists those days could be coming to an end if Fatima wants to take their relationship to the next level and spend some serious time with him in the US," the report said.

Fatima was recently in the news as she is expected to contest from her late aunt's seat in the next general elections. Sindh National Front chief Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, who is the cousin of late president Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, said that Fatima would run from Larkana constituency.

The seat was won by Benazir Bhutto in all elections between 1988 and 1997 and is now held by president Asif Ali Zardari's sister Faryal Talpur.

Fatima, who has two books to her credit, is now working on a book on the Bhutto clan. She also writes occasional columns criticising the functioning of the government.

Fatima's memoir will explore four generations of her family history, marked by tragedy and division -- including the stories of her grandfather Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, executed in 1979; her uncle Shahnawaz, murdered in 1985; her father Murtaza, murdered in 1996, and her aunt Benazir, assassinated in December 2007.

"Fatima's story challenges the conventional wisdom about Pakistan, about the politics of family, and about the relationship between women and power," UK-based publisher Jonathan Cape said shortly after sealing a deal for the book with Fatima. The book will appear in 2010.

China on the brink

2009-02-11T02:28:00.000-08:00

By Renuka Mitwade

Restaurants in Beijing are fully booked, malls are filled with shoppers. Property prices in the capital are buoyant, defying the historical pattern of a post-Olympic Games slump.

Chinese banks are busy lending to allcomers, in stark contrast to their Western counterparts. Even the Shanghai stock exchange, which lost more than 70% off its peak value last year, has something of a spring in its step - the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has gained 24% this year. On Friday, Wall Street watcher Jim Cramer cited China as number four of his "Top 10 Reasons for Optimism" about the world economy.

So what's going on here? Has China escaped the fate of more mortal economies?

Government spokesmen are cagey, but the unofficial line - for the moment - appears to be that China's system of state-influenced markets has proven itself superior to the more "unregulated" Western model. Cleverly insulated from market turmoil, the claim goes, China is poised to surge ahead as the world's new economic superpower.

Not so fast. The ripples emanating from the global recession may have seemed tiny at first as they traveled across the Pacific, but they are about to hit China with the full force of a tsunami. And there is real concern among the Chinese leadership that the impact may well surpass anything we've seen in the US or Europe. That's because the economic crisis in China is taking on a fundamentally different shape than in the countries where it originated.

The crisis in Western markets began at the top and worked its way down. When the US property bubble burst, it hurt some homeowners, but the real damage it inflicted was to undermine confidence in complex financial instruments and the banks that owned them. It was essentially a financial panic, and the first people to be laid off were Wall Street MBAs working at investment banks and hedge funds.

The effect on the real economy only came later. As big-name banks failed, consumer confidence took a nosedive, and as surviving banks retrenched, credit to consumers and business dried up. Only in the fourth quarter of last year - six to nine months after the first big bank, Bear Stearns, collapsed - did these factors result in significant working-class job losses.

The process unfolding in China is precisely the opposite. The threat comes not from the commanding heights of the economy, but from the grassroots. All along the coast, thousands of small factories that rely entirely on US and European export markets are cutting back production or shutting down. Their margins were thin to begin with, and now their orders are being slashed. The first to be affected aren't the global professionals that populate China's big cities, but the migrant workers that made those factories hum.

Last week, Chinese officials admitted that at least 20 million migrant workers - one out of every six - who journeyed back to their hometowns this lunar new year won't have a job to return to. Compare that to roughly three-and-half million American job losses so far. For the moment, China's army of unemployed seems disheartened rather than angry. Many of them took extended holidays among family back home and only now, out of desperation, are resuming their job hunts in earnest. No one knows how long their patience will last, or how much larger their ranks will grow in coming months.

China's government is keenly aware of the problem and has adopted a three-pronged strategy. First, it has directed state-owned banks to extend generous loans to support struggling exporters. Second, it announced a huge package of big-ticket infrastructure projects to sustain employment. Third, it is adopting a variety of measures to boost domestic consumer demand as an offset to failing exports.

But the hoped-for results may be limited. Infrastructure-focused stimulus will take time to implement and benefits only certain industries, such as steel and construction, leaving textiles and other major sources of employment untouched. Even worse, analysts are underestimating the degree to which domestic Chinese demand is driven by all the remittances sent by migrant workers to their extended families in the interior - income that will now disappear as job losses mount. Contrary to popular belief, domestic demand is in the process of being undercut, not strengthened. All the cheap loans in the world won't replace lost customers, at home and abroad.

The fact that China's slowdown is originating from the bottom up, rather than the top down, carries important implications. The first is the visibility of the problem. Today, China's high-income urban areas are experiencing a false dawn as banks churn out easy cash to prop up the economy. But quietly, behind the scenes, Chinese companies are revising their profit estimates downward, by as much as 50% for 2008. The bad news just hasn't hit home yet.

The second difference is the solution. Unlike the West, China does not face a liquidity problem, where financial markets have frozen and the government can thaw them out with easy money. China faces a breakdown in real demand due to an over-reliance on external markets, a core element of its growth model that will require a wrenching structural shift in the economy to correct.

Of greatest immediate concern are the social implications. Job cuts are starting to bite in the US and Europe, but at least there the working stiff had the (somewhat ephemeral) satisfaction of seeing the so-called "masters of the universe" get their comeuppance first. Pain has been felt both high and low.

China's slowdown, in contrast, threatens to drive a wedge between the rural have-nots, who are bearing its entire brunt, and the urban haves, who are still living it up. It's a worrisome vision that is giving top Chinese leaders some long sleepless nights, and ought to have the world's attention.

Exclusive: Take the money and run in Myanmar

2009-02-11T02:26:00.000-08:00

By Seema Shaikh

Recent media reports indicate at least eight ministers and the mayor of the old capital of Yangon will resign their posts as a presage to Myanmar's general elections scheduled for 2010. The list is a veritable who's who of the ruling State Peace and Development Council's (SPDC) top lieutenants and signals the regime's intention to keep its members prominent in the transition towards an elected civilian-led administration.

Several of the outgoing ministers have served especially long tenures for Myanmar's cut-and-thrust politics and are expected to run for office at the upcoming polls under a military-supported political party. The regime has promoted the elections as part of its seven-step road map to democracy; opponents see the promised political transition as a sham to give a veneer of legitimacy to continued military rule. It's unclear where the departing ministers fit into that political future.

Minister of Construction Major General Saw Tun, for instance, has maintained control over the lucrative construction portfolio since 1995, predating the formation of the SPDC. While allegations of rampant corruption have tarnished the reputations of many Myanmar ministers and ministries, Saw Tun's name is usually not mentioned among them. According to a Myanmar businessman who knows the minister, Saw Tun often says that it is better to make a little bit of money over a long time than to make a lot of money quickly. Apart from that temperance, his longevity in the position can also be attributed to his hometown ties to junta leader Senior General Than Shwe, who likewise hails from the Kyaukse township of the country's central Mandalay division.

Another long-serving minister is U Aung Thaung, who has served as Minister of Industry No 1 since the SPDC's formation in 1997. According to businessmen who know both ministers, U Aung Thaung is not as inhibited as Saw Tun. Many Myanmar ministers who have bid to maximize short-term profits from their positions have had their careers ended prematurely on corruption charges. Some say U Aung Thaung has survived in his post because of his close connections to the senior leadership: He is a known favorite of Than Shwe and his son is married to the daughter of Vice Senior General Maung Aye, the junta's second top-ranking official.

Other officials apparently set to trade their military khakis for civilian garb include Minister of Forestry Brigadier General Thein Aung, Minister of Immigration and Population Major General Saw Lwin, Minister of Livestock Breeding and Fisheries Brigadier General Maung Maung Thein, Minister of Transport Major General Thein Swe, Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation Major-General Htay Oo and Minister of Communications, Posts and Telegraphs Brigadier General Thein Zaw. Also mentioned is Yangon mayor Brigadier General Aung Thein Lin.

Some of the departing ministers are believed to be building up financial war chests for the elections or securing preferential deals and concessions for their families' businesses. It's a sometimes predatory process that has increased competition for resources among the ministers and exerted pressure on the country's private business community.

Ministers and their associates have in particular targeted foreign investors, pressuring many of them to renegotiate their existing contracts and business arrangements. Officials have through the discretionary power of their ministries reviewed the documentation of various joint foreign-local ventures for legal loopholes to pressure companies into forfeiting assets, accepting new business partners or receiving lower profit percentages than originally agreed, according to people familiar with the situation.

One of the higher profile victims is Woodlands Travel, a tourism company founded in 1995 by U Win Aung and which lists company addresses both in Yangon and New Jersey in the United States. The company's website lists its investment in two boutique hotels, the Kandawgyi Lodge and Popa Mountain Resort, in line with the government's eco-tourism campaign.

Unstated on the company website, however, is the source of those investments' funding, though local businessmen note that several Singaporeans hold senior company positions. Speculation recently intensified around the Woodlands Travel when its two boutique hotels - among the country's finest upscale resorts - were purchased last November by Htoo Trading Co. The controversial company is headed by Tay Za, a businessman known for his close SPDC connections and who was individually targeted by the US government's new "smart" financial sanctions.

It's not clear whether Tay Za purchased the properties independently or as a nominee in league with junta officials or their family members, despite speculation that the Ministry of Forestry had earlier exerted pressure on the company. According to a source intimately familiar with the deal, Minister of Forestry Thein Aung had previously sought to have Woodlands Travel modify its concession terms to include another local company, which apparently offered little in terms of expertise or capital.

Company officials instead decided to sell the properties outright at below market value rather than face a protracted legal battle over being forced to take on the new business partner and retaining their original contractual rights. That, the source said, would have put the company up against "influential people" and made future business difficult.

Woodlands Travel had originally brokered its deal under the auspices of former intelligence chief and prime minister Khin Nyunt, who was ousted from power on corruption charges in October 2004 and is currently under house arrest. Thein Aung's ministry office declined an Asia Times Online request for a telephone interview to address the allegations.

Expansive family empire
Minister for Industry No 1 U Aung Thaung has come under similar criticism. The controversial minister was paraphrased in a recent media report saying that he would retire only after providing for a comfortable future for his children. Accounts from one well-placed source indicate the long-serving minister has followed up those words with actions.

In recent months, the source says several businesses and hotels in the popular Bagan Nyaung U tourist area have been approached by ministry officials to grant concessions and contracts to U Aung Thaung's family businesses, including the Aung Yee Phyo Co Ltd and IGE Co Ltd companies. Both companies are run by his sons, Nay Aung and Pyi Aung. Given the influence of ministers and ministries in Myanmar's political and economic systems, such approaches would be difficult to reject without fear of repercussions.

A senior advisor to both companies, contacted at their Yangon-based offices, told Asia Times Online that he had "never heard anything" about the allegations and didn't know if they were true. Initially involved in industrial equipment and supplies trading, U Aung Thaung's family businesses have recently expanded into the energy, information technology and tourism sectors, which the senior advisor acknowledged.

The company's bid to move into the tourism sector, currently in a lull but expected to accelerate after the 2010 elections, has been viewed by some in Yangon as an attempt to further diversify the family's business holdings before relinquishing his ministerial post. The ministry's head of office, U Myint Swe, said by telephone that he had "no comment" on whether the ministry was trying to wrest concessions from private businesses in the Bagan area. He said that the minister was away from his office and unavailable to speak by telephone.

There are several allegations of top government officials using their positions to ramp up personal business activities before the 2010 transition towards democracy. One recent Kachin News Group report suggested that the planned move towards civilian rule has served as catalyst for SPDC officials to cash in on their positions in the northern Kachin State, including through the recent establishment of road closures to tax passing motorists.

Corruption is so endemic in Myanmar, which consistently ranks among the global worst in international country graft ratings, that it's difficult to tie any given incident specifically to the 2010 elections. Yet if the reported ministerial changes come to fruition, the departure of some of the junta's longest-serving members will open up to a new generation of soldiers and regime loyalists some of the most lucrative ministerial positions in government.

Ministerial positions are normally given to flag officers and occasionally deputy ministers promoted to the ministerial level. Considering the personal profits that could be accrued in the portfolios reportedly set to be vacated, it is possible that incumbent ministers from less lucrative ministries, such as the Ministry of Culture or Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, could be transferred laterally, as has happened in previous shake-ups.

Their current positions could in turn be filled with flag officers currently serving in operational positions within the Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar armed forces are known. Cabinet reshuffles are common inside the SPDC, an outgrowth of the regime's need to provide cushy advancement opportunities to officers who occupy critical field-grade positions, including command over areas fighting against ethnic insurgent groups.

Often the cabinet reorganizations are timed to ensure a number of brigadier positions open up for colonels graduating from the National Defense College. The frequent ministerial musical chairs among generals and ministers has the psychological effect of promoting loyalty while ensuring that nobody gets too comfortable in their position. Officers often feel a sense of relief and renewed loyalty to the top decision-makers if they still have a job when the music stops.

In private conversations, some senior SPDC officers suggest that the 2010 election date is not etched in stone. Knowing that the 76-year-old Than Shwe intends to hold onto supreme power for as long as possible, they anticipate the democratic transition could be postponed for any number of reasons, including, according to one officer, the simple top-down determination that "the country isn't ready". The prognostications of the junta leader's astrologer, E Thi, could also offer cosmic cause for delay, he suggests.

Until then, Myanmar's citizenry and businesses will likely come under increasing pressure from ministers and other officials preparing for either elections or life outside of public office. All in all, the mounting money grab augurs ill for the political change Than Shwe and his junta has promised democracy will hold.

Exclusive: ON THE MILITANT TRAIL, Part 4

2009-02-09T02:32:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Taliban ideology echoes in the valley
The Swat Valley is a three hour drive from Peshawar, the provincial capital of North-West Frontier Province, and four hours from the capital Islamabad. The valley is effectively under the control of the Taliban, as are many urban areas in NWFP. If the Swat Valley can fall into the hands of the Taliban so easily, what guarantee is there that the Taliban won't do the same in other urban centers such as Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi? In the final article in a four-part series exploring Pakistan's tribal areas, M H Ahssan speaks to Haji Muslim Khan, one of the Taliban's top leaders in the valley and also their spokesman.

Once Pakistan's premier tourist destination, the picturesque Swat Valley is now essentially off-limits. More than 300 tourist resorts and hotels have been closed over the past year and about 20,000 people associated with the tourism industry are jobless.

Pakistan has used the police, paramilitary forces, politically-backed militias and the army itself in an attempt to tame the Taliban in the Swat Valley, without success. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) projects that the situation in the Swat Valley and the tribal areas will deteriorate this year, causing a fresh displacement of up to 625,000 people.

"An analysis indicates that there is a significant likelihood of large-scale clashes and intensified military offensives throughout 2009, and possibly into 2010," the study said. According to the OCHA's "humanitarian response plan", the displacement will exacerbate an "already complex humanitarian situation".

The Swat Valley's transformation from probably the most peaceful place in Pakistan to one of its most militant has been startling, as has the popularity of the Taliban's ideology, which is widely seen as extremist.

In an attempt to get some understanding on these issues, I spoke to Haji Muslim Khan. He speaks many languages, including English and Arabic, as he has spent many years abroad, mostly in Kuwait and the United States. His house was demolished by the Pakistan army and his family is displaced; he now lives in Taliban bunkers in the mountains and traveled specially to a population center to give this interview.

HNN: You are the official chief spokesman of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Swat. Could you tell us about yourself, your childhood, education, and your intellectual journey through various political and religious movements. And what inspired you to align with Mullah Fazlullah and his movement? [Mullah Fazlullah, nicknamed "Radio Mullah", is the leader of the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi - Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, TNSM - and controls the insurgency in the Swat area.]

Muslim Khan: First, I thank you for coming here and meeting with us, without any fear and greed. I thank you for you and your organization allowing us the opportunity to air our view. Regarding your question about my childhood, I belong to a poor family of Swat. My father was a tehsildar [revenue administrative officer] during the time of the Swat [princely] state. I matriculated from Dahrai High School [Swat]. For intermediate [arts], I went to Jahanzeb College, Swat. I could not pass my intermediate from college as I joined the Pakistan People's Party [PPP] and I was sent to jail, where I spent 25 days, and I was expelled from the college.

My father was annoyed at the discontinuation of my education, so later on I passed my intermediate as an external student. By that time, I felt my responsibilities towards my home and family and to acquire further studies I went to Karachi [Pakistani southern port city]. However, God had something else planned for me over there. [Instead of work and studies in Karachi] I went into the sea service.

Meanwhile, from when I was in the eighth grade, I was inspired by the Palestinian al-Fatah movement and was in regular correspondence with their Islamabad office. Then I made contact with Dr Israr Ahmad [a famous orator at state-run Pakistan Television during the late General Zia ul-Haq period, who was also the founder of the Tanzeem-e-Islami organization, which works for the revival of the Islamic caliphate].

However, when the Pakistan People's Party came into power [early 1970s], those were my college days ... and their rhetoric of Islamic socialism in their manifesto ... inspired me as from the beginning only Islam had been my inspiration.

I joined the Pakistan People's Party because Maulana Kausar Niazi [former minister of information in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's cabinet, religious scholar and former leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami] raised the slogan of Islamic socialism.

However, I observed that after the election victory, the leaders of the Pakistan People's Party exploited their power. That was the first election in Pakistan [on the basis of adult franchise], so we could measure what election politics were all about. We found it to be dirty politics. Even today it is like that. Therefore, I gave up the Pakistan People's Party.

Then, to earn my bread, I joined the sea service for three or four years. Then I went to Kuwait, where I spent 14 years. In this period, I continued my association with various religious parties, including the Jamaat-i-Islami and Dr Israr Ahmed [Tanzeem-e-Islami]. At last, while in Kuwait, I was connected with Maulana Sufi Mohammad [the founder of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi and the father-in-law of Mullah Fazlullah].

I found his claims for Islam true. From his first speech I heard, I could measure that this is the right man for the enforcement of Islamic laws and therefore I supported his cause and movement. Everybody knows of this movement and how it passed through different phases in Malakand division [in Pakistan] in the last 17 years.

Then came the last phase when Mullah Fazlullah, who spent 18 months in jail in Dera Ismail Khan [in the NWFP], as he was arrested while coming back from jihad in Afghanistan [after the US invasion in 2001], he launched a movement and we supported it as much as we could.

This was not for his personality but for a cause, that we are Muslims but live under a heretic system ... no Islamic jurists or Islamic scholar can dish out an argument that while living in this system. God would forgive us. This is the sole mission. On this land, that belongs to God, only his laws should be implemented.

HNN: What is your understanding of Islam in the perspective of Pakistan. It is said that Pakistan came into being in the name of Islam. The Objective Resolution [which declares that no law can be formulated against Islamic laws] is part of our constitution, under which several Islamic and political parties claim Pakistan as an Islamic state. Why then is there a need for this movement for the implementation of Islamic laws?

MK: As far as the name Pakistan [Land of the Pure] is concerned, it is good to have this name, but as far as practice is concerned, it is not even 1% [true]. Before us, there were several academics, political parties and intellectuals who strived [for the implementation of sharia law], but as far as governance is concerned, we are responsible, we betrayed God and his religion, and in my opinion we should be tried, as nation, for committing this crime. We established this state of Pakistan under Islamic ideology and under the banner "There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his Messenger," but we did not move an inch forward for this cause. Instead, we retreated from this cause by several miles. The reason is that we are still slaves - our intelligentsia, the rulers and segments of life, politics, education, are slaves. The economy is driven by usury.

HNN: What do you mean by slaves?

MK: It means we are not free in anything. We cannot formulate laws independently ... We cannot make laws by our choice.

HNN: Then by whose choice do we make laws?

MK: From the choice of those from whose rule we got independence [Britain], symbolically, their virus still infests our rulers. Whatever they [rulers] do, first they seek permission from there [the West]. For politics, they go to Dubai [in the United Arab Emirates] to hold meetings. Politics concern this country, but their meetings are held in Dubai and London. Therefore we are not free.

However, there are a few things in which we are free - the nation has freedom in extravaganza, obscenity and spreading nudity. From the ideology for which this country came into being, we have not inched forward. This is the reason the Tehrik-i-Taliban came into being in Swat. Soon, our intelligentsia will realize our cause, that our struggle is not for any rule, but to implement this ideology.

HNN: There are areas in Swat where the Khans were very powerful. Can you shed some light on their role, their character and influence?

MK: There were 360 idols in holy Kaba [in Mecca. These were the icons through which Mecca was ruled by powerful families before Islam]. If I tell you the truth, here in every village there were 360 idols. For the upholding of this system [prevailing in Pakistan], even a cop and SHO [Station House Officer of the police] became god, but the Khan saheb [rich and powerful Pashtun feudals] became the biggest god. They never regarded people as human beings. The poor and the downtrodden had no position as human beings.

In all government departments, God forbid me, officials became god. They never regarded religion nor human values. For Europeans and Westerners, humanity lives in the West, but they never care about the human rights of the people living in Pakistan. In Pakistan, tyranny has crossed all limits, at the hands of the Khans or at the hands of the wadera [feudals from southern Sindh province] and from the police.

However, tyranny emerged in its extremes in Swat when our people, women and children, were targeted with bombs of 30 kilograms and above; shells and mortars. Our Khans were the ones who invited them [the army] to bomb us, provided space to them and approved their attacks. Now, these Khans are now sitting in their bungalows in Islamabad or in Peshawar and the oppressed people are running for their lives to take refuge here and there. Human-rights organizations do not look after those oppressed people, nor do those Khans who once ruled those people.

HNN: Do you have rich people in your movement, or is it only a movement of poor people? Your leader Mullah Fazlullah sailed boats for his earnings by transporting people on the Swat River.

MK: Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him, was an orphan. Our policy is not against the poor, or against the rich. If Islamic laws are implemented in this region, only then will it be realized whether the Taliban launched their movement and their struggle and waged jihad for opposition to rich people. Only once Islamic laws are implemented will it be realized whether we were against the rich people or whether we were against a system which is a remnant of British rule. We only want to implement the Islamic system. Only the Islamic system can give rights and protection to both the rich and the poor. These are only stunts [the accusation that the movement is against rich people].

HNN: Your movement is branded as anti-education and it is alleged that you destroy schools. Especially, you are allegedly against girls' education. But now it is said that you have destroying male and female schools. Is it correct that you are against both men's and women's education?

MK: This is sad, that we are slaves in all sections of our society, even, please don't mind, the media are slaves. Nobody is ready to sit with the Taliban and ask what they want from all this. The education system and the curriculum are both remnants of the British.

We are Muslims. Had there not been an Islamic system of education and curriculum, then it would have been all right to import a system of education belonging to others. But fortunately, Islam provides its own system of education, politics, economics and justice. We often say in Pakistan, even in the schools, especially the intelligentsia, that Islam is a complete code of life. If Islam is a complete code of life, then what is the need to import education from the United Kingdom?

HNN: This is an ideological and academic debate. You might be right or wrong in your argument. However, the issue is violence. The Taliban are said to have bombed schools and destroyed them. What do you say about that?

MK: Very true. Nobody can prove that we bombed any school building during phase one of the military operations in the Swat Valley. [Sarcastically] Why did the "well-educated" and "very qualified" Pakistan army set up military bunkers in the schools? This is my question.

If the security forces can set up military bunkers in order to fight against us and against the cause of Islamic laws, we also have the right to retaliate and destroy those schools in which they have set up bunkers, or bridges for that matter.

These are the "well educated" and "very qualified" people of our security forces who bombed our villages and destroyed them. We have, therefore, the right to destroy those schools which brought up this generation, sold out to foreigners and sold their own people to foreigners.

On [the basis of] just one phone call, they handed over our air bases to the enemy. We hate this system and this system of education. As far as school buildings are concerned, I can guarantee you that we can rebuild those buildings within a month [once military operations are over] and at the same time I tell you that not a single child was hurt in our attacks. But I ask you, why was the Islamic seminary Jamia Hafsa targeted in Islamabad [in 2007] and to add salt on the wounds, even female students were killed. Why did they do that? That was also conducted by "very well-qualified generals". Why?

HNN: How do people view you? Do you think the Taliban are popular?

MK: People do like the Tehrik-e-Taliban [Taliban movement]. We don't care about individuals. Our people and the Taliban sacrificed a lot for the cause and this should be written in gold in history.

HNN: Are you loyal to the state of Pakistan?

MK: If we are 100% loyal to Pakistan, our leaders and rulers are 200% disloyal to Pakistan and its subjects. They rule us against the ideology and the constitution of the country. When Pakistan came into being in 1947, they did not implement Islamic laws. This was a betrayal against the nation, religion and God. Then in Malakand division, when the government promised us the implementation of Islamic laws - we have the documents to show this - why did they betray us? Why were Islamic laws not implemented? Therefore, our struggle is justified and those who oppose Islamic laws, they are outlaws.

HNN: How can two different systems coexist at the same time? Islamic laws could be enforced in the whole country, and then they would be applied in Malakand. But how can these laws be applied in a particular region when the whole of the country is governed by separate laws?

MK: If the system of panchait [a system of arbitration] can coexist with civil laws in Punjab, if the jirga system [tribal councils]) can coexist in the provincially administered tribal areas [like Malakand] with the civil laws, why can't Islamic laws coexist with civil laws? However, we say that we should not run two system. Being Muslims, we should implement only Islamic laws.

HNN: Your movement is touted as no more than a local movement. Yet it is believed to have connections with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. What is the reality?

MK: Al-Qaeda was the same as the mujahideen and the Taliban only a few years back when they were fighting against the Soviets [1980s] and they were supported by the Americans. Everybody boasted of them as the mujahideen, including the Western media.
My question is how yesterday's mujahideen can became the terrorists of today? Today, they are declared as terrorists only because the way they threw the Russians across the Amu Darya [Oxus River], they are aiming to throw the Americans across the Atlantic Ocean.

Therefore, the jihad is against their interests, and that's why they are against us. They are here to grab the resources of Muslim countries and therefore whether it is the Taliban or al-Qaeda or Muslims, they are against their [the US's] cause. Since they have great influence on our rulers, their cause is justified. Their rulings are ratified by our rulers. Having said all these things, I tell you that our fight is for a change of the system in Malakand. We are branded as Indian RAW [Research and Analysis Wing] proxies. Let me tell you that once Islamic laws are implemented, then you will see our real face. Let us tackle the issues of Palestine, Afghanistan and Kashmir, and then it will be shown whether we are Indian proxies or not.

HNN: The Pakistani establishment has consistently accused your movement of being an Indian proxy. They claim to have arrested men who were Hindus and cannot even speak the local dialects and languages. In some cases, the government claimed to have found men who had not been circumcised, which proved they were non-Muslim.

MK: This just shows the government's weaknesses as well as propaganda. It is baseless. Just present five examples and we will leave the movement.

HNN: You movement is connected with [Pakistani Taliban leader] Baitullah Mehsud, and his command stretches all over. It is said that the movement aims to separate the North-West Frontier Province from Pakistan.

MK: This is an international conspiracy against the Pashtun territories. Pashtuns are very much attached to the religion, whether they live in Pakistan or in Afghanistan or elsewhere. They are always ready to sacrifice their lives for Islam. Some are bad people, but as a whole they serve the religion.

This is just propaganda against us by the Pakistani intelligence agencies and this is also their mental weakness. They are the people who have not been able to liberate Kashmir from India in the past 60 years. They propagate us and mint money from the Americans and the European.

Propaganda against the mujahideen is their source of income. Now, to justify a war against their own people, they propagate such things that we want separation and that we are Indian proxies. Killing the mujahideen and selling them out is a means of earning for our generals. This is also the way to avoid confrontation with American troops. If our forces cannot fight against cowardly Hindus, how come they can face American troops? Whether it is Kargil [the war with India in 1999] or Afghanistan, the mujahideen were used. Is there any Muslim country which can claim to liberate Palestine? No. Maybe God does not want to use these people for his cause because every officer is a pharaoh in his character.

HNN: You mentioned the Pashtuns. The Awami National Party [ANP] in North-West Frontier Province represents Pashtuns. However, the Taliban have killed some ANP members and the noose is tightening around them.

MK: Indeed. I said that the majority of Pashtuns are loyal to the religion. The others are Pashtun by name, but practically they are traitors. They deserve such treatment. They were given government after 40 years, but they did not thank God. If they have said it once, the Taliban have said it 10 times, that killings in this region should be stopped.

We sat with them and held talks. They made many commitments, but they could not fulfill them. Real Pashtuns always fulfill their commitments, but these are Pashtuns who were sitting in the Soviet Union's lap for money and now they are in the American lap. They are the Pashtuns who sell their beliefs and the nation. They are a stain on the name of Pashtuns. They are traitors of the nation and to religion.

HNN: That gun of your's, it's not locally made, and it is not the kind used by the Pakistan army. Where did you get it?

MK: These are the fruits of jihad, which are in the hands of the mujahideen today. This is manufactured in Austria. Those infidels gave them to our army to use against our mujahideen. There is a police station called Dewale in Swat. We snatch them from there from the Pakistani security forces. I am surprised when people ask us from where we get modern weaponry. These are the fruits of jihad. Whoever manufactured this and for whatever cause, now it is in our hands and for our cause.

Apart from this, our army used a spiritual guide [pir], a religious leader, to fight against us. We not only killed that pir, but recovered 20 best-quality light machine guns, besides 20 other guns that had been supplied to that pir by the Pakistan army. Now these guns are in our possession.

HNN: How many Taliban are there?

MK: The more we are oppressed, the more we spread. Yesterday, if they were 10, now there are several times more.

HNN: I thank you Muslim Khan for your time and your efforts to leave your place in the mountains and come to meet me.

MK: It is a pleasure, and thank you for coming all the way to Swat.

PART 1: A battle before a battle
PART 2: Faceless Taliban rule
PART 3: Swat Valley: Whose war is this?

Exclusive: ON THE MILITANT TRAIL, Part 3

2009-02-09T02:25:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Swat Valley: Whose war is this?
Swat is a valley and an administrative district in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) located 160 kilometers from the capital Islamabad. The capital of Swat is Saidu Sharif, but the main town in the Swat Valley is Mingora. With high mountains, green meadows and clear lakes, it is a place of stunning natural beauty, so much so it earned the tag "the Switzerland of Pakistan". All that has changed in the past year; it has now become a hotbed for the Taliban. In the third report in a series of articles exploring Pakistan's tribal areas, M H Ahssan visits the valley to examine the differing natures and strategies of various Taliban groups.

The Afghan national resistance against the Soviets in the 1980s gave birth to various Islamic groups in the Pakistani tribal areas.

The Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM - Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law) was founded in 1994 in Malakand Agency in NWFP, while the Promotion of Virtues and the Prevention of Vices was formed in Bajaur Agency. Different Islamic madrassas (seminaries) were established in the South Waziristan and North Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

Taliban rule in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 ideologically fueled these organizations and seminaries. Nevertheless, neither Pakistan nor the international community took notice of these low-profile developments in the 1990s as people in those areas had been practising Muslims for centuries and such reformist Islamic movements, at the local level, were more or less part of age-old traditions.

In the years after the Taliban were driven out of power by the United States-led invasion in late 2001, these perceptions changed in line with the events that unfolded on both sides of the border.

Initially, the Taliban were scattered and Western intelligence organizations and military establishments estimated their strength at little more than a few thousand fighters with no central command, believing that the foreign forces in Afghanistan would face little resistance.

However, within four years all their estimates were proved wrong. The Taliban regrouped and launched a powerful comeback with their spring offensive in 2006. In southern Afghanistan especially they consolidated their strength and instituted a sound command system.

A key factor in the Taliban's revival was that from 2004 onwards they established a strong network in Pakistan coordinated by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. A focal point of this was the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, which was stormed in July 2007 by Pakistani security forces to clear it of militants.

By this time Western intelligence had realized that this development in Pakistan was a major factor behind the "fireworks" in Afghanistan, and Islamabad was told as much. The Pakistanis were also warned that militants could also launch a revolution in Pakistan.

This was a major turning point in the "war on terror" in the South Asian theater. For the first time, Islamabad felt a chill up its spine and viewed the situation from a different perspective - not as an American war in which its participation was drawn out of compulsion, but as a war necessary to maintain the status quo of its own system. This system was a blend of the country's deep relationship with the US and the perpetuation of the military oligarchy, combined with a particular brand of Islam that could co-exist with this setup.

The attack on the Lal Masjid was the first shot fired in this battle, and its reverberations soon spread to the Swat Valley, South Waziristan and then Bajaur Agency, in effect turning the whole of NWFP into a war theater. A series of military operations in the tribal areas drove the militants from stand-alone sanctuaries into population centers.

In Malakand, which includes the Swat area, the militants are a part of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban and the vanguard of the Taliban's cause in the region against Western occupation forces in Afghanistan and their ally - Pakistan. They have established their own writ with a parallel system that includes courts, police and even a electric power-distribution network and road construction.

The manner in which the militants have established themselves in the Swat Valley is surprising as 65% of the local population - mostly from secular schools - is literate, yet the central government has failed to muster mass support against the militants.

All in the valley they rode ...
Former British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill and the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, were two of the valley's more famous admirers. Jinnah coined the phrase "Switzerland of Pakistan" while Churchill, gazing down the valley from his mountain resort, once commented that all the inhabitants must be poets. He was not far off, Swat is widely known for its poetry recitals.

Poetry still thrives in the valley, but now in the form of jihadi songs promoting jihad and the mujahideen. One, with the cries of a child in the background, narrates the miseries of the children of Swat who have fallen victim to the Pakistan army's indiscriminate shelling of the area.

Nowadays, the army does not have a ground presence in the valley, apart from some manned checkpoints in the mountains and garrisons. Most attacks on militants rain from the skies.

The reason for the collateral damage is clear. Near the place from where Churchill used to gaze in wonder at the valley's beauty - known as Churchill's Picket - stands Chakdara Fort, heavily manned by the Pakistan army. It is mounted with 8mm guns which fire indiscriminately at villages many kilometers away.

These include Tigak, Koza Bandi and Fuchaar. The latter is the headquarters of Mullah Fazlullah, nicknamed "Radio Mullah", the leader of the TNSM who controls the insurgency in the Swat Valley. Koza Bandi and Tigak are also believed to be strongholds of the militants.

These three villages are still well inhabited by common folk as they do not have the resources to go anywhere else, and they have almost by default sided with the militants, even if they don't agree with them ideologically.

In dealing with the militants in the Swat Valley and elsewhere, the Pakistan military had to contend with the fact that it was waging war against countrymen and followers of the same religion.

To justify this to its soldiers, the top brass came up with the explanation that the insurgency was controlled by India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). This has even been repeated by one of the biggest supporters of the Taliban, retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, a former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence, who has said he has no doubt that RAW is behind the unrest.

The Pakistani military repeatedly holds briefings at which its claims that Hindus, launched by India to fuel the insurgency, have been arrested in the Swat Valley. This is clearly nonsense - in such a closed tribal society any stranger would be instantly recognized.

Nevertheless, such claims make soldiers believe they are fighting against Indian proxies whose financiers and handlers are Hindus, and the shells keep on falling. The local population is left with no option but to view the shelling as enemy fire, causing them to side with the militants, who are at least their country cousins, if not their ideological comrades.

There is another reason for the locals supporting the militancy and enabling it to force the troops to vacate more than 90% of the valley over the past one-and-a-half years - incompetent and bad governance.

During my visit, every sub-district and village I passed through told of the alienation caused by bad governance which had allowed a Taliban vigilante force to emerge and flourish.

One of the first things these vigilantes were able to do was wipe out rampant abductions and car theft by criminal gangs. Many of the once-numerous military checkpoints on the way into the valley have been abandoned in the face of the militancy.

On our way in we passed through Engaroberai Dera (Blacksmith Village), where a checkpoint had also been abolished. This area was known for its "Khans" and their cruelty. Khan is originally a Central Asian Turk title for honor, but in NWFP it came to mean rich, feudal, or feudalism.

Engaroberai Dera was also known for its begar camp (bonded labor). The native people of the village used to work in the orchards and fields owned by the Khans. In return, they were given free accommodation and food for themselves and their families, but no cash wages.

The valley is famous for its fruit, such as apples and oranges, which were grown for both local consumption and export. In this environment, the Khans prospered both financially - one Khan was found to own 500 houses - and in terms of political clout.

Once the Taliban established a foothold, they asked the people to present evidence of the Khans' wrongdoings and after investigations the Taliban settled the claims of the people. Significantly, the Taliban never called this a class war, rather, they saw it as a battle between good and bad, oppressor against oppressed.

"It is wrong to say that we are against the Khans in general. There are people who are rich and own vast lands, jungles and mountains here in the Swat Valley who are called Khan, but we never bothered them because they acquired those things from righteous sources," Haji Muslim Khan, a leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Taliban and now the official spokesperson of the Taliban in the Swat Valley, told Asia Times Online.

"However, there are people who are known for their cruelty against the people. Their grandfathers sided with the British during the liberation movement to invade the local population and now they have fled to Islamabad or Peshawar and instigated the government to bomb us. Indeed, they are wanted criminals and we take action against them," Khan said.

Most of the "bad" Khans have left the valley, although Afzal Khan has stayed. He is a leader of the Awami National Party, a secular Pashtun political party with major electoral influence in the Pashtun-dominated areas of NWFP.

Afzal Khan sent a message to the Taliban saying that he was a son of the soil and he would risk being killed by not leaving his land. The Taliban were impressed with the note and allowed him to live and he has now become a main point of communication between the Taliban and the government. However, recently he has fallen out of favor with the Taliban and now lives under heavy security provided by the army.

Traveling with the Taliban
We had just entered Tigak village when two people, one clean-shaven and the other with a long beard, approached us. One was holding an AK-47, the other a wireless radio set. They signaled the car to stop.

"Is it safe to park the car here?" I asked.

"Nobody will touch the car," the armed man answered. "If you find even a scratch, I am the in-charge for security and I will compensate you."

I then followed him into an alley and a house. A jihadi song was playing and I was greeted by three tall, light-skinned men in their early 20s.

One of them - Hussain - greeted me and told me he was familiar with Asia Times Online and my work, which he follows on our Internet site, even while fighting an insurgency. The province is one of the more high-tech in the country.

Hessian has a master of arts in mass communication, while the other two have a post-graduate science degree and a graduate degree. My guide, also from the Swat Valley and a sympathizer of the Taliban movement, is a science graduate and a former national-level field hockey player.

"Is it not odd that all of you are educated in secular schools but still support the Taliban, who blow up schools,?" I asked.

"This is a blatant lie," said Hussain. "The Taliban do not blow up schools. The media do not cover our perspective. We will take you all around. There are several school buildings in the area which we have never touched. The fact is that the military occupied the buildings and established bunkers.

"We attacked their positions, not the schools, but the buildings were damaged or destroyed. The irony is that nobody ever says that the army has occupied the school buildings and prevented children from going to school for months. But when the Taliban attack their positions, they are accused of being the enemy of education," Hussain said.

I talked to another group of Taliban until late in the night. We covered a variety of issues, ranging from the partition of British India in 1947 to the present law-and-order situation in the country.

One issue that unites the men is their abhorrence of the Pakistan military, whether for the events of the breakup of Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 or what they have done against Pashtuns in NWFP.

"But the military has vacated much of the Swat Valley," I commented to Muslim Khan.

"That is a strategic retreat. We hear that they are planning a strategy in which they will use some sort of nerve gases to make us unconscious," Muslim Khan commented. "If they apply such tactics, we will not be able to defend ourselves and we will have to run, but then this war will expand to Islamabad. We will go there and carry out attacks," Muslim Khan said.

"Unfortunately we are fighting with an army which said in 1970 in East Pakistan that the country needed land, not the people. They have the same principle here."

Before I could start to video the interview, the electricity went off. I thought it was loadshedding, which happens in other parts of the country.

Hussain's cell phone rang and after a brief call he said the power would be back on within an hour as there was a fault in the system, according to the executive engineer of the Water and Power Development Authority.

Later, I learned that the Taliban have strictly warned the local power staff not to dare resort to loadshedding in the Swat Valley, and apparently the warning is religiously adhered to.

The Taliban had arranged a separate room with attached bath for me and I missed the first morning prayer call, but woke to the voice of Mullah Fazlullah on the radio giving one of his famous speeches.

One of the Taliban guards was listening; I only heard the last sentence "May Allah guide us to a path where we can sacrifice our lives for his religion." After prayers and a modest breakfast, the Taliban took me in a powerful jeep around the valley.

At many places the houses were damaged by shelling. The Taliban are quick in rescue operations and they provide funds and volunteers to rebuild houses. That's part of the reason they have won mass sympathies, especially as the government is unable to provide such support to victims caught in the crossfire. The government's supplies for the troops are looted by the Taliban so they have to be delivered by helicopter.

In the sub-district Kabal, I saw houses previously occupied by the army. The Taliban have destroyed the police station, but school buildings are intact.

At Sarsanai Kabal, I encountered the first paramilitary checkpoint. I thought they would grill me, but they did not even get out of their cement bunker. The Talib sitting beside me said they never left their bunkers as they were afraid of snipers.

A sign at the checkpoint read "Alone person is not allowed to pass". In Swat, an "alone person" in a car is a possible suicide bomber. With several people in our car, we were able to continue.

Both lanes of the road leading to Saidu Sharif airport were blocked with stones and barbed wire so we took an alternative route. After a while we came across a crowd gathered around a man with long hair and long beard.

The man was commander Hamud Khan, said to have recently destroyed four al-Khalid army tanks. He was the owner of a laboratory and pharmacy in Swat, but due to his association with the Taliban movement the army destroyed these.

The day before, Hamud Khan had lashed three thieves. He said I could get a video of the event from a Taliban studio. For technical reasons I could not see the video, but I got a chance to talk to the head of the media center, Mohammad Shoaib.

"In Islamic law, the hands of thieves are cut off. Why did you only lash them?" I asked.

"Such punishment can only be executed by the Islamic state. We don't have one. Nevertheless, we need to put in place a system of justice that will prevent wrongdoing," said Mohammad Shoaib.

"The biggest problem is that our system, including politicians and police, encourages crimes. They provide protection to the criminals and suggest that this is the only way to live and progress.

"When we caught these thieves and our court announced the punishment, we kept them with us for a week. We were affectionate and sympathetic towards them because they were poor and had committed the crime out of compulsion.

"Nevertheless, we made it very clear that once they had committed the crime they had to face the punishment. Even if they skipped punishment in this world, in the hereafter they would have to face painful punishment for their crimes. They were regretful of their crime and willingly faced the punishment, and afterwards they promised not to commit the crime again," Mohammed Shoaib said.

Militancy unchecked
Over the past year and a half, Islamabad has without success tried various means to check the militancy in the Swat Valley.

Initially, local police and paramilitary forces were used, but they failed. Then the army directly intervened, with a similar result.

After elections early last year when the Awami National Party's (ANP's) rule was established in NWFP, its leaders offered an olive branch, but the militants refused to lay down their weapons.

Local militias were then formed through ANP structures to fight against the Taliban. The result was a disaster. Dozens of ANP workers, leaders and members of the provincial assembly lost their lives and property and now the party has been wiped out in the valley. Some ANP members resigned and announced in a local newspaper their support for the enforcement of Islamic sharia law.

The military operation that began in the valley 18 months ago to break the network of militants supporting the Afghan insurgency has turned much of NWFP into a war theater, and given the militants valuable training in fighting.

The Swat area is not situated on the Afghanistan border, but the Americans view it as the most dangerous theater as it feeds into the Taliban in Afghanistan and has the potential to dampen Pakistan's support in the "war on terror".

Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani visited Swat this week, apparently ahead of another push to crush the militants. The way things have gone to date, there is not much likelihood of this happening.

NEXT: Defending the ideology of militancy

Part 1: A battle before a battle
Part 2: Faceless Taliban rule

Exclusive: ON THE MILITANT TRAIL, Part 2

2009-02-09T02:17:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Faceless Taliban rule
In the second report in a series of articles exploring Pakistan's tribal areas, HNN's M H Ahssan visits Malakand Agency to examine the differing natures and strategies of various Taliban groups. Malakand Agency is a region in North-West Frontier Province and covers one third of the total area of the province. The region is further divided into several districts - Chitral, Dir, Swat, Buner, Shangla and agencies like Malakand and Mohmand.

Malakand Agency: Dear Mr Doctor ... ENT specialist
May Allah bless you. The mercy on the people, created by God, rains blessings by the creator. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan is the name of an organization which aims to establish a welfare society based on justice and confront all evil forces which try to obstruct in this great objective. May Allah heal you from all physical and spiritual ailments.

We don't have any personal grudge with anybody. If we stop anybody from wrongdoings or motivate for righteous things, our purpose is simply to attain God's blessings and to express affection from its creation - the masses.

You are our brother. If you are hurt from our behavior, we apologize. We only did that for the reform of your behavior. Prophet Mohammad - Peace Be Upon Him - said a sweet and good talking to somebody is charity. Therefore, we advise you to take care of your patients. Don't charge too much because several people cannot afford that. May Allah reward you the best and may He guide us all for good deeds. Blessings ...
Ameer-i-Taliban Pakistan (Malakand) Qari Jabbar.

This is a translation (at right) of a letter written on the Taliban's letterhead and delivered through the post on January 22, 2009, to an ear, nose and throat specialist at a hospital in Batkaila in Malakand Agency.

Earlier, the names of five doctors were broadcast on the Taliban's local FM radio station, saying that based on public complaints, the Taliban had made some investigations and found that the five doctors had behaved arrogantly towards their patients.

The Taliban said that the doctors did not have any sympathy for their patients and that they just tried to make as much money as they could. Further, they were hand-in-glove with the pharmaceutical companies and prescribed very costly medicine.

The Taliban warned the doctors that they must "reform" their behavior, otherwise stringent actions would be taken against them. The doctors did change their behavior, and then each of them received a letter of "clearance", as above.

Welcome to Malakand Agency, where one can freely roam around and yet not see a single Taliban vigilante, even though they rule the roost.

In Pakistan, "Taliban" is the generic name for those groups that pledge their allegiance to Mullah Mohammad Omar and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but in different areas they have different manifestations.

In some places they aim to enforce strict sharia law. In others, the Taliban want to establish bases from which to work in support of the resistance against foreign forces in Afghanistan.

In yet other areas, the purpose is simply to create chaos and anarchy so that militants can engage the Pakistani armed forces and deter them from supporting the global "war on terror".

However, the ultimate mission of the groups is steadily harmonizing, that is, to support the regional war and then the global war against Western hegemony; this is the concept driving the neo-Taliban.

In Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and surrounding areas such as Muttani, Shabkadar, Darra Adam Khail and Khyber Agency, the Taliban have never tried to implement sharia. Their presence is more strategic and several groups operate independently under various commanders.

Their purpose is to sever North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supply lines that pass through Pakistan and to eliminate the writ of the central government so that it will not be able to provide protection to the supply convoys.

In the South Waziristan, North Waziristan and Bajaur tribal agencies, the Taliban aim to establish strategic bases with al-Qaeda to provide support to the Afghan resistance. In Malakand Agency and the Swat Valley, the struggle is focussed on enforcing sharia and in cleansing society of unscrupulous elements.

Increasingly, though, as mentioned, these differing goals, as a result of Pakistan's military operations, are coming together as a broad struggle to defeat the Western powers in the region and their ally - Pakistan.

In much of the tribal areas and the Swat Valley, the state of Pakistan has lost its control, but the situation in Malakand Agency is somewhat more complex.

In early 2008, the Taliban flexed their muscles all around NWFP, especially in the the area between the Swat Valley and Peshawar, and Mardan became a hotbed of militancy.

However, the Taliban realized that without local support and only with fighters from different regions of the province, they would never be able to defeat the state forces. Therefore, they resolved to establish their influence over the urban centers in this area, hoping eventually to wrest NWFP completely from Islamabad's control. Similarly, Balochistan province, which also borders Afghanistan, is destined to become "Taliban territory".

The remaining two provinces of Pakistan, Punjab and Sindh, do not figure in this plan. Any attacks here would add additional pressure, but there is no urge for the Talibanization of these areas.

At present, in areas such as Malakand, the Taliban use radio to expose government incompetence and corruption and then ask the people to submit their complaints to the Taliban. Only then do they act.

Recently, after having received complaints in the form of dozens of letters, the Taliban announced on radio that they would investigate the matter of brothels in the Malakand region. The result: several brothels were blown up.

As seen with the medical community, a similar approach was adopted. In the same vein, a local gangster, Shoaib Khan, who was said to have received backing from politicians and the police, was forced to flee.

People in the area call this "creeping Talibanization" and say it is taking root because of corrupt and bad governance. It's not only guns that win over hearts and minds.

NEXT: Swat Valley - whose war is this?

PART 1: A battle before a battle

Exclusive: ON THE MILITANT TRAIL, Part 1

2009-02-09T02:06:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

A battle before a battle
Peshawar - the High Fort - is the capital of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the administrative center for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. It was one of the main trading centers on the ancient Silk Road and was a major crossroads for various cultures between South and Central Asia and the Middle East.

Located on the edge of the Khyber Pass near the Afghan border, Peshawar, with a population of several million, is the commercial, economic, political and cultural capital of the Pashtuns in Pakistan.

Peshawar and its surrounds are also now the epicenter for the Taliban and other militants in their struggle not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan but also in their bid to establish a base from which to wage an "end-of-time battle" that would stretch all the way to the Arab heartlands of Damascus and Palestine.

In a series of articles exploring the region that will examine the differing natures and strategies of various Taliban groups, HNN's Editor in Chief M H Ahssan begins his journey in Peshawar.

Restive North-West Frontier Province is not the destination of choice these days. Those who travel there go for business or family reasons, and the flight I took from the southern port city of Karachi to Peshawar was half empty; clearly, the region is no longer on the tourist map.

After touring the city for an afternoon and speaking to a variety of people, I was struck by its eerie similarity to Baghdad when I visited that capital soon after the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 - it has the distinct atmosphere of impending chaos.

That evening I chatted with a senior al-Qaeda member who told me that the group considered NWFP and southwestern Balochistan province as already wiped off the map of Pakistani as they were now militant country. Although not entirely accurate, it portends a chilling turn in the "war on terror" in which Washington will be more concerned over the stability and security of Pakistan rather than that of Afghanistan.

The indications are that a major battle will be fought in Pakistan before the annual spring offensive even begins in Afghanistan this year.

Last December, the US Defense Department pushed for Pakistan to be given US$2.64 billion to buy better weapons and to provide more training for its police and Frontier Corps, which are at the vanguard of the battle against militants in the tribal regions.

The new administration of US President Barack Obama has appointed veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan, a newly created position, so that he and Hillary Clinton - in her role as secretary of state - can work closely to try to get Kabul and Islamabad to join forces in the fight against the resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda militant groups, especially those located in Pakistan.

A deceptive calm
On the surface, life appears normal in Peshawar. Shops, public offices, banks and schools are all open, but they disguise disturbing events that are happening with increased regularity.

Heavily armed militants have begun attacking container terminals for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supply trucks on their way to Afghanistan, destroying dozens of them, and there have been a series of high-profile abductions, including those of Afghan and Iranian diplomats.

Pushto stage and drama artist Alamzeb Mujahid was seized from Peshawar's Hayatabad area this month, while the beheaded body of a faith healer was found last week with a warning note attached saying that those involved in the business of faith-healing would meet the same fate.

According to militant sources, five dozen people have been abducted in the past 30 days, including Shi'ites and ex-army men and their relatives. Some were released after a ransom was paid, a few were killed and the remainder are still being held hostage by the militants.

Most of these incidents have involved militants claiming to be Taliban. However, criminal gangs have also jumped onto the bandwagon to abduct traders for ransom. Different traders' organizations have grouped together to display black banners in the city urging the government to stem the abduction of traders.

In the face of this, security arrangements in Peshawar are extraordinarily tight. In the upscale neighborhood of University Road, which houses several international non-government organizations, United Nations offices, residences and the American Club, every nook and cranny is manned by either the police or by intelligence sleuths in civilian dress.

This has created an atmosphere of fear among people, who believe that a major showdown between militants and the security forces is imminent.

The situation was a blessing in disguise for me as I easily found a very comfortable, well-equipped room at a 20-room guest house with high-speed wireless Internet at a much cheaper price than I paid on my previous visit last year. When I checked in, I was the only guest.

Later, I spoke to Mehmood Afridi, the editor and owner of the English daily the Frontier Post. "I chose to set up my office in a bungalow because at least I can watch over the threat compared to any office in a building downtown, but still I have to spend a huge amount on armed guards."

It took almost one-and-a-half years for the US and NATO to realize the real dangers of the lawlessness in Pakistan. In 2007, Western decision-makers watched the instability in Pakistan with a smile.

Militant ideologues based in the tribal areas, such as Tahir Yuldashev, chief of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and Shiekh Essa, were emphasizing their aim to topple the then-government of president General Pervez Musharraf before taking on NATO in Afghanistan.

A tide of insurgency swept from Afghanistan into Pakistan, but Western leaders were not too concerned as they thought this would make it easier for them in Afghanistan and that the militants would be defeated in Pakistan.

This did not prove to be the case in regard to both countries. The insurgency in Afghanistan had its most successful year in 2008, and militants have grown in strength in Pakistan. In February 2008, suicide attacks in Pakistan outnumbered Iraqi suicide attacks and strong enclaves of militants have been established in Pakistan where they never before existed.

For instance, in the strategic Khyber Agency, through which 80% of NATO's supplies pass on the way to landlocked Afghanistan, militants have gained a foothold. In Mohmand and in Bajaur tribal agencies, which cover the whole of a strategic corridor into Afghanistan which goes all the way to the capital Kabul through Kunar, Nooristan and Kapisa provinces, militants have established a presence.

An insurgency in the hitherto peaceful Swat Valley prompted Pakistan to carry out military operations, but this only turned the whole valley into hostile territory for the Pakistan army and a new nursery for the Afghan resistance.

Never before had so many well-trained and battle-hardened militants swarmed from the Swat Valley, Bajaur and Mohmand into Afghanistan, and they are preparing to do so again this year. NATO has had to seek an alternative and much more expensive supply routes through Central Asia.

As a result, the US, where strategic journals and think-thanks had been selling the idea of Pakistan's disintegration up to 2007, and promoted the concept of a united Pashtun land, is now completely geared to take all measures to protect the unity of Pakistan.

It is now believed that if Pakistan goes down, it will take its neighbors with it, with ramifications all the way to Europe and America.

Apart from a few divisive incidents, such as the Pakistan-linked terror attack on Mumbai in India last November, this realization is keeping all players, including Pakistan, the US, Britain and even India at closer levels of coordination. However, this has happened late in the game, perhaps too late.

The rise and rise of militancy
Following the ousting of the Taliban from Afghanistan by US-led forces in late 2001, militancy in the region only began to grow at a phenomenal pace over the past few years.

In 2005, a major regrouping of the Taliban began, leading the next year to meetings in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area and an agreement to fight against NATO under the command of Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani.

In April 2006, the militants verbally agreed on a ceasefire with Pakistan and then signed a formal document in September the same year. In early 2007, they broke the ceasefire, but at the same time faced a serious leadership crisis.

However, the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) operation in July 2007 in which the radical mosque in Islamabad was stormed by security forces helped the Pakistani Taliban to regroup under the umbrella of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban. The organization initially went through many difficulties due to differences over leadership, but ultimately they agreed on Baitullah Mehsud as head.

In December 2007, former premier Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden installed an amir-e-khuruj (leader for revolt) in Pakistan, and since then the militancy has gone from strength to strength.

Against this backdrop, three significant and interlinked developments occurred:
Pakistan lost a significant amount of territory in NWFP to militants.

Al-Qaeda and Pakistani militants devised a scheme in late 2008 to cut off NATO's supply lines passing through Pakistan. The move has been highly successful.

The Taliban are gaining ground in Afghanistan. According to an influential British think-tank, the Senlis Council - now renamed the International Council on Security and Development - in 2007, 54% of Afghanistan was under the control of the Taliban. In 2008, the same think-tank said that 72% was controlled by the Taliban.

In the past few months, the US has stepped up Predator drone attacks on specific targets inside Pakistan. While these have aided the militant cause in that at times civilians have been killed, several key militant leaders have also died.

A meeting with al-Qaeda
I received a call on my cell phone from a number I did not recognize, but the voice was familiar.

"It is not possible to visit you at your guest house. You have to move away from the area," the man said, and then mentioned a famous landmark in the city where I had met the same person last year. I will call him Mohammad.

I was delayed leaving the guest house and had to walk about 20 minutes to the meeting place. As I approached, Mohammad crossed the road and joined me. I followed him until we reached a waiting motorbike and rider at a crowded bus stop.

Mohammad sat behind the driver and I squeezed on behind him. We must have been a sight. The front two had very long beards and robes, looking like prayer leaders, while I was wearing modern trousers and a coat. We drove for 10 minutes before reaching a big park.

"You almost put us in serious difficulties," Mohammad chided me as soon as we got off the motorbike.

"How?" I asked, surprised.

"There is an extraordinary high alert in and around the University Road area. In the past month, dozens of our fellows have been arrested in the area. Of course, we keep an eye on our targets, which are in abundance in this part of Peshawar, and intelligence and police keep an eye on us. I was waiting for you for about 40 minutes, it is just not advisable for us to stay around for so long," Mohammad explained.

"After losing ground all over, the security forces are preparing for decisive action against us. Everybody is at risk, we, our families ... I change my cell numbers on an almost daily basis, so next time you will not be able to trace me. I have changed my residence twice in the past two months and my residence is not known to anybody. At this moment, the security forces are calling the shots [in the city], but soon we will retaliate."

I questioned Mohammad on a reported split among militants which has caused Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah to remain quiet. Abdul Wali, alias Omar Khalid, Moulvi Faqir and others who were previously with Baitullah, who is ill, have now parted with him. The drone attacks have wiped out sizeable numbers of al-Qaeda members, although the word is the Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are alive.

"The news of a split is true, but it will never benefit the government," said Mohammad. "All it has done is weaken Baitullah's command. Believe you me, it will further sharpen the armed opposition against the government. The militant groups will carry out attacks with multiple strategies. Abdul Wali is still fighting against the government." (Abdul Wali had earlier been reported killed in Mohmand Agency in a military strike.)

"Al-Qaeda members have melted into various like-minded groups. Recently, Qari Ziaur Rahman led a group comprising 600, mostly Afghans and al-Qaeda members, to ransack a Pakistani security post in Mohmand Agency," Mohammad said.

"Tomorrow, when you travel to the Swat Valley, you will find that except for a few towns like Mardan, Sawabi and Charsada, all the towns are now under the Taliban. In places like Mengora and Swat, the security forces are not the ones who enforce the curfew, but the Taliban. The Taliban move freely on the streets and the security forces hide inside their sanctuaries," Mohammad said.

The Taliban's and al-Qaeda's influence is indeed multi-faceted, like their groupings. There are places like Swat and the tribal areas where the Taliban's control is a fact of life and they operate in broad daylight. In other places like Peshawar they are present, but this can only be felt, not seen.

Malakand Agency was on my itinerary, and I had been told that here there is not a single Taliban on the ground, but through fear they impose their writ.

NEXT: Faceless rule

Analysis: Who are the Taliban?

2009-02-09T02:02:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

The world first became aware of the Taleban in 1994 when they were appointed by Islamabad to protect a convoy trying to open up a trade route between Pakistan and Central Asia.

The group - comprised of Afghans trained in religious schools in Pakistan along with former Islamic fighters or mujahedin - proved effective bodyguards, driving off other mujahedin groups who attacked and looted the convoy.

They went on to take the nearby city of Kandahar, beginning a remarkable advance which led to their capture of the capital, Kabul, in September 1996.

Anti-corruption
The Taleban's popularity with many Afghans initially surprised the country's warring mujahedin factions.

As ethnic Pashtuns, a large part of their support came from Afghanistan's Pashtun community, disillusioned with existing ethnic Tajik and Uzbek leaders.

But it was not purely a question of ethnicity. Ordinary Afghans, weary of the prevailing lawlessness in many parts of the country, were often delighted by Taleban successes in stamping out corruption, restoring peace and allowing commerce to flourish again.

Their refusal to deal with the existing warlords whose rivalries had caused so much killing and destruction also earned them respect.

Islamic state
The Taleban said their aim was to set up the world's most pure Islamic state, banning frivolities like television, music and cinema.

Their attempts to eradicate crime have been reinforced by the introduction of Islamic law including public executions and amputations.

A flurry of regulations forbidding girls from going to school and women from working quickly brought them into conflict with the international community.

Such issues, along with restrictions on women's access to health care, have also caused some resentment among ordinary Afghans.

Extending control

The Taleban now control all but the far north of the country, which is the last stronghold of the ethnic Tajik commander Ahmed Shah Masood.

With 90% of the country under their control, the Taleban have continued to press claims for international recognition.

But the Afghan seat at the United Nations continues to be held by former President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The UN sanctions which have now been imposed on the country make it even less likely that the Taleban will gain that recognition.

The sanctions are intended to force the Taleban to hand over the Saudi-born militant Osama Bin Laden, who is accused by the United States of plotting the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 250 people.

The Taleban say that Osama Bin Laden is a guest in their country, and they will not take action against him.

Afghanistan has suffered 20 years of war, and this year has brought the worst drought in decades.

There is little sign that sanctions will change the Taleban's policies, or weaken their position within the country.

Countering Pakistani Terrorists’ Anti-India Propaganda

2009-01-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

For almost two decades now, self-styled jihadist outfits based in Pakistan have been engaged in a war against India in Kashmir. This war of theirs has no sanction in Islam, which does not allow for proxy war, and that too one declared by non-state actors. It is an explicit violation of all Islamic principles. These outfits, which have considerable support inside Pakistan, see the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir as a religious struggle, and they wrongly describe it as a jihad. They regard their role in Kashmir as but the first step in a grand, though completely fanciful, plan to annex India into Pakistan and convert it into what they style as dar- ul-islam, the Abode of Islam. But what they finally dream of establishing, or so they boast, is Muslim hegemony throughout the entire world.

I have used the term ‘hegemony’ here deliberately, for radical Muslim groups in Pakistan and in the Arab world have been indelibly influenced and shaped by the hegemonic designs of European colonialism in the past and Western imperialism today, and, in some senses, are a reaction to this hegemonic project. They seek to counter Western political supremacy and replace it by what they conceive of as Islamic political supremacy.

In my view, this approach is in sharp contradistinction to Islamic teachings. The term ghalba-e islam, the establishment of the supremacy of Islam, used in the context of the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet (Hadith), refers not to any political project of Muslim domination, but, rather, to the establishment of the superiority of Islam’s ideological and spiritual message. This, in fact, was the basic crux of the mission of the Prophet Muhammad. However, the term has been distorted at the hands of the self-styled jihadists, who present it as a project to establish Muslim or Islamic political domination over the entire world.

War against India
Today, as the case of the Pakistani self-styled jihadists so tragically illustrates, many of those who claim to be struggling in the cause of Islam themselves work against Islamic teachings by deliberately or otherwise misinterpreting them. This is the case with their misuse of the term jihad in the context of Kashmir in order to win mass support for themselves. Needless to add, this is a major cause for growing anti-Islamic sentiments among many non-Muslims.

The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir has been lingering for more than half a century. A major hurdle in the resolution of this conflict is the self-styled jihadists based in Pakistan, who insist that the conflict over Kashmir is an Islamic jihad and that, therefore, war is the only solution. They claim that participation in this so-called jihad has become a farz-e ayn, a duty binding on all Muslims, and some of them, most prominently the dreaded Lashkar-e Tayyeba, even go so far as to claim that the war in Kashmir is nothing but the ghazwat ul-hind, the ‘war against India’ which is mentioned in a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. By this they want to suggest that waging war against India is an Islamic duty, something prophesied by the Prophet Muhammad himself.

What is the actual meaning and implication of the statement attributed to the Prophet regarding the ghazwat ul-hind, which the Pakistan-based self-styled jihadists regularly refer to, and grossly misinterpret, in order to whip up anti-Indian sentiments and seek what they wrongly claim is Islamic sanction for their deadly terror attacks against India, in Kashmir and beyond? Before I discuss that, I must point out that the statement attributed to the Prophet regarding the ghazwat ul-hind is found in only one of the sihah sitta, the six collections of Hadith reports of the Sunni Muslims—in the collection by al-Nasai. This statement was narrated by Abu Hurairah, a companion of the Prophet. According to him, the Prophet prophesied a battle against India.

If he (Abu Hurairah) got the chance to participate in this battle, Abu Hurairah said, he would do so, sacrificing his wealth and life. If he died in this battle, he said, he would be counted among the exalted martyrs. According to another narration, related by the Prophet’s freed slave Thoban, the Prophet once declared that there were two groups among the Muslims whom God had saved from the fires of Hell. The first would be a group that invaded India. The other group would be those Muslims who accompanied Jesus (after he returned to the world). A similar narration is contained in the collections of Hadith by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Baihaqi and Tabrani.

Explanation
Because this hadith about the ghazwat ul-hind mentions India, and is marshaled by self-styled Pakistan-based jihadists active in Kashmir, it marks the Kashmir conflict out as clearly distinct from other conflicts elsewhere in the world between Muslims and others. These self-styled jihadists regularly invoke this hadith, trapping people in their net by claiming that if they were to die fighting the Indians in Kashmir they would be saved from hell and would earn a place in heaven. This claim, false though it is, is regularly and constantly repeated, as is evident from a host of Pakistani websites and periodicals.

Let me quote a revealing instance in this regard. Recently, I came across the August 2003 issue of ‘Muhaddith’, an Urdu magazine published from Lahore, Pakistan. It contains a 20-page article on the ghazwat ul-hind, written by a certain Dr. Asmatullah, Assistant Professor at the Islamic Research Academy of the International Islamic University, Islamabad. The article represents a pathetic effort to project the ongoing conflict in Kashmir as precisely the same ghazwat ul-hind that the Prophet is said to have predicted. And it is on the basis of this reported hadith of the Prophet that ultra-radical Islamists in Pakistan talk about unleashing a so-called jihad, extending out of Kashmir and to consume the whole of India. This is no longer limited to just fiery rhetoric alone, but, in fact, is also now accompanied by deadly terror attacks in different parts of India, which Pakistan-based radicals wrongly style as a jihad or even as the ghawzat ul-hind reportedly prophesied by the Prophet.

It is striking to note in this connection that in the above-mentioned article, the editors of ‘Muhadith’ disagree with the views of the author, expressing their differences in the form of a footnote. Yet, this counter-view, as expressed by the editors of the magazine, is hardly ever discussed or even referred to in Pakistani so-called jihadist literature, indicating, therefore, that the rhetoric of the self-styled jihadists is based less on proper scholarly analysis of the Islamic textual tradition than on strident, heated emotionalism and a deep-rooted hatred and feeling of revenge. This applies not just in the Pakistani case. Rather, is a phenomenon common to almost all so-called jihadist movements throughout the rest of the world.

The Pakistani self-styled jihadists, it would appear, have made the hadith about the ghazwat ul-hind into a plaything in their hands in order to entrap innocent people. It is quite possible that the Pakistani youth who were involved in the recent deadly terrorist attack on Mumbai were fed on this sort of poisonous propaganda and led into believing that they might go straight to heaven if they waged war against India. In India, the banned Students Islamic Movement of India appeared to have backed the same wholly erroneous and unwarranted interpretation of the hadith about the ghazwat ul-hind, following in the footsteps of Pakistani radical groups. Mercifully, as far as I know, no other Indian Muslim group or scholar worthy of mention has adopted the ‘Pakistani interpretation’ of this particular hadith report.

Tragically, the concept of jihad has been subjected to considerable abuse and made to serve extremist ends by self-styled jihadists. This started in the very first century of Islam itself, when intra-Muslim wars were sought to be christened by competing groups as jihads. And because of the distorted understanding of jihad championed by many Muslims themselves, they labeled any and every controversy and conflict with non-Muslims, even if it had nothing at all to do with religion but everything to do with politics, as a jihad, as the case of Kashmir well exemplifies. Another facet of the distorted understanding of jihad by some Muslims are suicide-bombings, in which innocent civilians are killed. Yet another is proxy war by non-state actors, such as armed self-styled jihadist groups, which actually has no legitimacy in Islam at all.

Scrutiny
Coming back to the question of the hadith about the ghazwat ul-hind, some aspects of the report deserve particular scrutiny. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, this report is mentioned only in the collection of al-Nasai from among the six collections of Hadith which most Sunnis regard, to varying degrees, as canonical. However, considering the merits or rewards of the ghazwat ul-hind that it talks about, it ought, one might think, to have been narrated by many more companions of the Prophet. But that, as it curiously happens, is not the case.

Secondly, and this follows from above, it is possible that this hadith report is not genuine and that it might have been manufactured in the period of the Ummayad Caliphs to suit and justify their own political purposes and expansionist deigns. On the other hand, if this hadith report is indeed genuine—which it might well be—in my view, the battle against India that it predicted was fulfilled in the early Islamic period itself, and is not something that will happen in the future. This, in fact, is the opinion of the majority of the ulema, qualified Islamic scholars. And this view accords with reason as well. It is quite likely that the ghazwat ul-hind that this report predicted took the form of the attack by an Arab Muslim force on Thana and Bharuch, in coastal western India, in the 15th year of the Islamic calendar in the reign of the Caliph Umar.

Equally possibly, it could have been fulfilled in the form of the missionary efforts of some of the Prophet’s companions soon after, in the reign of the Caliphs Uthman and Ali, in Sindh and Gujarat. Some other ulema consider this hadith to have been fulfilled in the form of the attack and occupation of Sindh by Arab Muslims led by Muhammad bin Qasim in the 93rd year of the Islamic calendar, which then facilitated the spread of Islam in the country. This might well be the case, for the hadith report about the ghazwat ul-hind contained in the Masnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, a well-known collection of Hadith narratives attributed to the Prophet, mentions that the Muslim army that would attack India would be sent in the direction of Sindh and Hind.

Thirdly, this hadith mentions only a single or particular battle (ghazwa), and not a series of continuing battles, unlike what the author of the article in the ‘Muhaddith’, referred to above, echoing the arguments of Pakistani self-styled jihadists, claims.

Fourthly, one must raise the very pertinent question of how it is at possible that, in the face of the numerous attacks on India by Arab and other Muslims over the last one thousand years, the more than six hundred rule of Muslim dynasties that controlled most of India and the rapid spread of Islam in the country in the period when they ruled, any scope could be left to consider India a target of jihad in the future. Furthermore, today India and Pakistan have diplomatic relations and are bound by treaty relations. Hence, the proxy war engaged in by Kashmir by powerful forces in Pakistan in the guise of a so-called jihad is nothing but deceit, which is a complete contravention of, indeed a revolt against, accepted Islamic teachings.

Fifthly, it must be remembered that it would have been very easy for Muslim conquerors of India in the past, men like Mahmud of Ghazni, Shihabuddin Ghori, Timur, Nadir Shah and so on, to present the hadith about the ghazwat ul-hind and wield it as a weapon to justify their attacks on the country. The corrupt ulema associated with their courts could well have suggested this to them had they wished. However, no such mention is made about this in history books. In the eighteenth century, the well-known Islamic scholar Shah Waliullah of Delhi invited the Afghan warlord Ahmad Shah Abdali to invade India and dispel the Marathas, which he accepted, but yet Shah Waliullah, too, did not use this hadith as a pretext for this.

Indian ulema
It is also pertinent to examine how some well-known contemporary Indian ulema look at this hadith report. Maulana Abdul Hamid Numani, a leading figure of the Jamiat ul-Ulema-i Hind, opines that this hadith was fulfilled at the time of the ‘Four Righteous Caliphs’ of the Sunnis, soon after the demise of the Prophet Muhammad, when several companions of the Prophet came to India, mainly in order to spread Islam. Mufti Sajid Qasmi, who teaches at the Dar ul-Uloom in Deoband, is also of the same opinion, although he believes that it might also refer to the invasion of Sindh by the Arabs under Muhammad bin Qasim in the eighth century. On the other hand, Maulana Mufti Mushtaq Tijarvi of the Jamaat-i Islami Hind believes that it is possible that this hadith report is not genuine at all and that it might have been fabricated at the time of Muhammad bin Qasim’s invasion of Sindh in order to justify it.

Whatever the case might be, the misuse by radical groups of this hadith report to spearhead war in Kashmir in the name of so-called jihad and to foment conflict between India and Pakistan is tragic, to say the least. It is nothing sort of a crime against God and the Prophet. In their worldviews and in their actions as well, the self-styled jihadist outfits seem to have gone the way of the Khawarij, a group that emerged in the early period of Islam and who were rejected by other Muslims.

The Khawarij believed that they alone were Muslims and that all others, including those who called themselves Muslims, were infidels and fit to be killed. With reference to the Khawarij, the Prophet predicted that they would depart from Islam in the same way as an arrow flies out of a bow. About the Khawarij the Caliph Ali mentioned that they take the word of truth and turn it into falsehood (kalimatu haqqin urida beha al-batil). This he said in the context of the Khawarij misinterpreting the Quran and claiming that Ali and his followers were infidels who deserved to be killed.

It is imperative, and extremely urgent, for Muslim scholars, particularly the ulema, to take strict notice of, and stridently oppose the radical self-styled jihadists, who are distorting and misunderstandings Islamic teachings, following in the footsteps of the Khawarij of the past, and spreading death and destruction in the name of Islam. Jihad, properly understood, is a struggle to put an end to strife and conflict, not to create or foment it, as is being done today.

The general public, particularly Muslims themselves, should be made aware of the dangerous deviation of the self-styled jihadists and the horrendous implications of their acts and views. In this regard, a major responsibility rests with the ulema of India and Pakistan. These days, ulema groups in India are very actively involved in organizing conferences and holding rallies seeking to defend themselves and Islam from the charges terrorism leveled against them. This is a very welcome thing. However, they must also stridently speak out against and clearly and unambiguously expose and denounce the self-styled soldiers of Islam who are promoting terrorism in the name of Islam.

At the same time, it is also urgent to promote re-thinking of some medieval notions of jihad, such as that of offensive jihad, which does not actually have any Islamic legitimacy. This is essential for Muslims to live in today’s times and to come to terms with democracy and pluralism. Simply verbally defending Muslims and Islam from the charges of terrorism is, clearly, not enough. Nor is it adequate to simply condemn terrorism in very general terms. The truth is, and this cannot be disputed, that today there is also a pressing need to unleash a ‘jihad’ against the self-styled jihadist outfits themselves. And in this jihad, undoubtedly, the ulema and Muslim intellectuals have a central role to play and a major responsibility to shoulder.

Editorial: A Fresh Tack

2009-01-23T02:50:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Obama approach hits a nerve in Pakistan. Going by defiant statements from Islamabad that it will review its options vis-a-vis Washington if the Obama administration doesn’t adopt a positive policy towards it, it has clearly been rattled by the Obama administration’s plans to rejig American policy towards Pakistan and Afghanistan. Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has gone to the extent of flashing a China card against India and the United States by asserting that Beijing would come to its aid if necessary.

The new US approach includes inducting 30,000 more American troops into Afghanistan, building an alternative route to supply them that passes through Russia and Central Asia instead of Pakistan, and pouring in non-military aid to Pakistan which will be tied to better performance in the war against terror. It’s hard to see what’s objectionable about this package. If the Americans are pouring in billions of dollars into Pakistan, it’s legitimate to expect that Pakistan should, in return, cease to provide sanctuary to armed militants who cross the border into Afghanistan and attack NATO and Afghan troops there, not to mention terror groups which have targets all over the world. Neither has Islamabad done a good job of keeping the supply route that passes through western Pakistan open, as hundreds of NATO trucks have been burnt along this route. If the US doubles its troops in Afghanistan, it can’t be expected to keep their sole supply route hostage to closure by the Taliban.

What may seem disconcerting from Islamabad’s point of view is the shift from previous US approaches to Pakistan, which had their origins in US-Pakistan collaboration during the jihad against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Coordinating the jihad was outsourced, in large part, to the ISI by the US and other western powers. When the Bush administration focused on Iraq and took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan this approach was, to some extent, replicated and not too many questions were asked about how effectively Islamabad was conducting its war on terror. That may have led some elements in Pakistan to revive the old dream of strategic depth, whereby the West would eventually tire of Taliban attacks launched from safe sanctuaries in Pakistan, withdraw its troops and leave the Taliban free to reassert control in Afghanistan.

But alarm bells rang as Taliban began making deep forays into Afghanistan while asserting control over large swathes of Pakistani territory itself. That caused the Bush administration to change tack in the last few months to authorise missile and drone strikes on Taliban-held Pakistani territory. Now the Obama administration promises to tie aid to results in the war on terror. This may have its risks. But previous approaches have failed to stem the Taliban, which is making headway in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Lashkar-e-Taiba uses Pakistani territory to launch terror attacks on India. It’s time for a fresh global approach to stabilising Pakistan.

A salad-bowl America

2009-01-22T00:07:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

With one simple sentence, Barack Hussein Obama, America's first Afro-American president, redefined the past, present and future of his country and the rest of the world. He said: "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers." Quite apart from the fact that Hindus figure prominently -- probably for the first time in a president's inaugural address -- Obama's statement commits America to look at itself not as a melting pot Christian nation, but a salad bowl of peoples whose religious and racial identities may remain distinct for a long time to come.

The statement essentially says what we in India have been saying for ages without actually meaning it: unity in diversity. It contains a message for the whole world that pluralism, diversity, and multi-culturism are vital for the survival of nations.

The western idea of nationhood has always been that of a melting pot -- where the original ingredients forget their past and instead congeal into a new identity. Today's global reality is that of a salad bowl -- where individual ingredients retain their distinct identities even while collectively constituting a salad bowl.

Hinduism is a salad bowl of castes, religious beliefs and languages; India is a salad bowl comprising many other salads. It is a super salad bowl. We are a nation of minorities, where even Hindus do not have a singular identity -- which is what is driving the votaries of Hindutva nuts. It is best if they realised that Hinduism, and much less India, cannot be melted together into a singular identity. Our strength lies in our salad bowl character, not our homogeneity.

This is gradually becoming true of the rest of the world, too. Only Obama has had the courage -- for a US president, that is -- to say that America's is a "patchwork heritage". Driven so far by a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (Wasp) consensus, the vast majority of Americans have willy-nilly acknowledged a broad Christian identity for themselves, never mind that the US constitution specifically forbids a role for the state in religion. It is suicide for presidential nominees to forswear a belief in god -- leave alone embrace atheism or agnosticism. Hence, the significance of Obama's stress on "non-believers".

Americans had come to believe that nations are welded together by language, religious and cultural traditions, a Judeo-Christian ethos, as posited by Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations. Even as wave after wave of immigrants poured into America, over time they merged into an American identity that was essentially Wasp.

If America has been a melting pot rather than a salad bowl for so long, it is an accident of history. It just happened that the bulk of the early immigrants were the religious types, trying to escape the European enlightenment and the rising tide of rationalism. They went to the new world with the idea of building a god-fearing nation driven by Christian values. In reality, they were a divided Christian nation and the constitutional clause separating church from state was inserted because the various Christian groups feared that their rivals may declare their own versions of Christianity as the official creed. They sought constitutional neutrality to keep the others out, and not necessarily because they believed in secularism. True belief in secularism developed after the rise of modern industries in the north, which needed cheap labour from the deeply-religious (and racially-oriented) south.

Look closely, even the old America was not truly a melting pot. At least two ingredients, black and white, did not mix. But over the last 50 years, continuous immigration from Latin America and Asia has converted America into a truer salad bowl. Demographers say that Hispanics will soon overtake Afro-Americans as the largest ethnic group, even as the Chinese and Indians become financially powerful like the Jews.

While India has always been a salad bowl, the rest of the world has been wedded to the idea of melting pot homogeneity. Obama's statement makes it clear that the idea is outdated. All large nations -- from Britain to France to Germany to India to Russia -- are salad bowls, and have to evolve policies that promote diversity at the micro level and unity at the broader level. You can have uniformity only in very tiny nations (Iceland, Norway, Finland), or very authoritarian ones (China), and that too only if you discriminate against outsiders (Japan).

But migrations are a reality for most countries. India can never avoid the huge influx from Bangladesh or Nepal or Sri Lanka; America can't avoid the Latin influx, nor can Europe avoid the African deluge.

Equally clear is what you cannot do in salad bowl nations. You cannot weld them together by force. Consider the failures: Yugoslavia, the former USSR. Soft states like India seem to be able to hold together better than the hard ones. Despite 50 years of brutal repression and forced assimilation efforts, Tibet remains China's worst worry. Ditto for the Uighur minority in Xinjiang.

Good Morning, Mr President

2009-01-20T22:55:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

Barack Hussein Obama is now in charge of America’s fortunes. With Barack Obama taking oath yesterday as America’s 44th — and first African-American — president, the United States turned a page and closed a chapter. Obama’s spectacular success story is packed with poignant, and powerful, symbolism. If he accepted the Democratic nomination last August on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, his inauguration follows the American holiday in memory of King. It is the culmination of an extraordinary story and a new beginning.

Obama rode on a ticket for change. A country left bitter, fearful and divided by eight years of George W Bush’s presidency, welcomed him with relief and expectation. The world, which had viewed America with growing alarm during these years, tuned in to Obama as well. He represented hope that America would manage its own house responsibly and favour consensus and cooperation while dealing with the world. But as enormous as his moment in history are the challenges Obama will face from day one.

Undoubtedly, the gloomy economy will consume much of the new president’s energies and he has so far shown signs of clear thinking on how to get America up on its feet again. Equally tough are the assortment of challenges that will present themselves on Obama’s foreign policy plate. One war needs to be wound down responsibly while America’s attention has to shift to the real battleground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama cannot afford to engage Pakistan only to tackle al-Qaeda and the Taliban. To continue the world’s war against terror, he will have to pursue the other extremist outfits — like Lashkar-e-Taiba and its front organisations — which export violence from that country. They have had a generally free run despite Pakistan’s claims to the contrary. For the sake of the world’s security, Obama must press Islamabad to clamp down on these groups and close down their bases, something that the Bush administration failed to do for most of its run. And then there is the Middle East mess. Trying to achieve a degree of resolution there will require fresh commitment and thinking from Washington.

It is evident that Obama will have to hit the ground running. There are soaring expectations which cannot be all fulfilled. But he has a good base of credibility to start from. Opinion polls show he enjoys close to 80 per cent approval ratings as he picks up the keys to the White House and that the American people, across political divides, are willing to give him a chance and their time. His commitment to consultative governance while being firmly in charge, and the A-list team he has picked, would hopefully serve America and the world well.

Obama’s inauguration party — which has seen millions of Americans pour onto the streets to have a blast — is a fine celebration of democratic ideals and values. Democracy’s enabling promises are why Americans — and those who share similar values elsewhere — are raising a toast as they welcome President Barack Hussein Obama.

Afghanistan caught in friendly fire

2009-01-20T03:15:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan

The Barack Obama era is commencing on a combative note in Afghanistan. The Afghan bazaar is buzzing with rumors that the equations between Washington and Kabul have become uncertain. Senior Afghan figures have been quoted as concluding that "the new US administration and the current Afghan administration will not be speaking the same language".

This followed a controversial visit to the Afghan capital Kabul last week by United States vice president-elect Joseph Biden. As the chairman of the powerful US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden is not a novice to foreign affairs and diplomacy, or to Afghanistan. Yet, during his visit, Biden apparently pulled up Afghan President Hamid Karzai for not giving a good account of himself as a ruler.

Again, Afghan Foreign Minister Dadfar Spanta has objected to US secretary of state-designate Hillary's Clinton's use of the term "narco state" to describe Afghanistan in her Senate testimony last Tuesday on her nomination. He called in the Associated Press specifically to rebut that Clinton's characterization was "absolutely wrong". Nerves are getting frayed at the edges.

NATO chief chips in
Alas, the Obama presidency is starting on a false note when close coordination between Washington and Kabul ought to be the hallmark of relations. As if taking a cue from the irate Americans, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, tore into the Karzai government in an unprecedented opinion piece in The Washington Post on Sunday, alleging among other things that "the basic problem in Afghanistan is not too much Taliban; it's too little good governance".

Scheffer is a consummate diplomat in the best traditions of the Atlantic alliance and is known to be always at Washington's bidding. He wrote, "We have paid enough, in blood and treasure, to demand that the Afghan government take more concrete and vigorous action to root out corruption and increase efficiency, even where that means difficult political choices."

Kabul didn't even wait for a full working day before Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Baheen plainly told Scheffer where to get off. He accused that the Afghan government was being undermined as the "international community, including some powerful NATO member countries, has their own favorite warlords" who they back against the Karzai government. Baheen, in turn, accused Western aid groups of corruption and the coalition forces for condoning opium production.

Biden leaks confidential talk
The curious part is that details of Biden's sensitive conversation in the Afghan presidential palace have found their way into the media and, inevitably, to the noisy Kabul bazaar. Afghans cannot resist coming up with conspiracy theories.

Karzai's spokesman Humayun Hamizada neither confirmed nor denied the reports that Biden had delivered a tough message to Karzai. He merely said the conversation was "frank but cordial and friendly". In diplomatic idiom, that usually means Biden and Karzai politely agreed to disagree. Or, more to the point in this case, Karzai, being the weaker of the two, held his ground.

Hamizada hinted that the differences were mainly over the war's strategy. He recalled Karzai had time and again stressed the "need to review the war on terrorism ... need to review our strategy, the way we fight terrorism and where we fight terrorism".

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL), Biden played "an aggressive foreign-policy role" in Kabul and delivered a "strong message" to Karzai. American officials have been cited as saying Biden "encouraged the Afghan leader to rid his government of corruption and temper his public statements regarding civilian casualties caused by NATO forces in Afghanistan".

Biden seems to have taken a particularly dim view of Karzai's growing criticism regarding the excessive use of military force by US troops against Afghan civilians. He reportedly warned Karzai that Washington "will view future statements as posturing for the presidential elections set to take place in Afghanistan later this year". American sources added that Biden "included no mention of the end of Karzai's presidential run, over which the United States in any case has no say".

Afghan bazaar speculates regime change
Meanwhile, the Kabul bazaar is full of rumors that Biden flatly told Karzai he was on his way out and that the US vice-president elect's mission might have been an effort to find a suitable replacement. Unsurprisingly, Biden's call on Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar led to further speculation that the British-educated Afghan official, who, according to RFERL, "is widely considered one of the most effective managers in Karzai's administration", might just be the suitable replacement that Washington is looking for as the next president of Afghanistan.

A spate of articles has appeared in the Western media during the past six months portraying Karzai as presiding over a corrupt, inefficient, ineffectual government that is confined to Kabul and its environs. This has generated a negative impression about Karzai in Western opinion, apart from making it very obvious that things are not going smoothly between the Afghan government and the international community.

Karzai holds his ground
What probably put the Americans' back up was an outspoken interview that Karzai gave to The Chicago Tribune last month. For the first time, Karzai reacted to Obama's harsh remark while on the campaign trail that the Afghan president had not yet "gotten out of the bunker and helped to organize Afghanistan".

Karzai loudly wondered: "Bunker? We are in a trench, and our allies are with us in the trench. We were on a high hill with glorious success in 2002, backed fully by the Afghan people ... We must now look back and find out as to why are we in a trench, or if you'd like to describe it, a bunker. Why are we in a bunker?"

They seem to have duly taken note in Washington, and did not like the assertive remark, deciding they might as well make it plain that someone they put in power, they could just as well remove from power. What is overlooked, however, is the substance of Karzai's criticism.

Which is a pity, since Obama can only benefit from reading and re-reading the transcript of Karzai's hour-long interview. Most expert commentators would share Karzai's views, though they might constitute an open indictment of the American military commanders and their chief in the Pentagon.

Karzai had a strong point when he said, "The international community should correct their behavior ... the [US-led] coalition went around the Afghan villages, burst into people's homes and committed extra-judicial killings in our country ... And if this behavior continues, we will be in a deeper trench than we are today. And the war against terrorism will end in disgraceful defeat."

Again, Karzai was spot on when he said, "If they [US-led forces] go to the Afghan homes and burst in and arrest or kill, does that leave the Afghan people with the feeling that they have a government? No. That is actually the destruction of the Afghan government. If Afghanistan is a sovereign country, if Afghanistan has a constitution, if Afghanistan has laws, and if there is the slogan of strengthening Afghan democracy and institutions, then Afghan sovereignty and Afghan laws must be respected, and not violated in such an extreme manner as is being done today."

He stressed that the war strategy reportedly being conceived in the Pentagon to arm Pashtun tribes and set them against each other would have catastrophic consequences: "If we create militias again, we will be ruining this country further." True, the new US war strategy is unrealistic insofar as it simplifies what are in fact multi-layered structures of violence in Afghanistan. The strategy overlooks the enormous variety of local violence. A policy similar to the "awakening" of Sunni tribes in Iraq cannot be the answer to Afghan violence.

Equally, Karzai was critical of the so-called "surge" policy that is the brainwave of Central Command chief General David Petraeus from his Iraq campaign. He felt any additional US troops should be deployed to man the Afghan-Pakistan border rather than intensify military operations in the southeastern provinces as the Pentagon is contemplating. To this end, the US plans to double the number of its troops in the country, from about 30,000 to 60,000. Karzai anticipates that the proposed "surge" will only accelerate the bloodbath, which in turn will make his position extremely precarious politically and generate more local support for the Taliban fighters who are increasingly being seen by the people as a genuine resistance to the marauding Western forces.

Who isn't corrupt?
The US criticism about rampant corruption in Afghanistan has basis. But, then, what do we expect out of a long sunset when a country slowly bleeds to death and foreign military occupation strips it of national honor and self-confidence? Putting things into perspective, it was former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld who introduced the US policy of dispatching planeloads of green bucks to the Hindu Kush in a cynical move to encourage Afghan "warlords" to take on al-Qaeda so that Americans didn't have to do the fighting.

Most of these "warlords" who worked for the US special forces today ostentatiously display their ill-gotten wealth. Many are deeply involved in prostitution, bootlegging and drug trafficking. They are openly buying and selling sinecure positions. Their palatial mansions in Kabul came up right under the nose of the US Embassy. Again, it was the Pentagon's obstinacy that the drug problem was not their business which allowed the situation to develop into its current scale, eating into the vitals of the Afghan state.

When the occupiers themselves are the fountainhead of venality - like the Spanish Conquistadors who introduced "European diseases" in the Western hemisphere in the 16th century - how can the blame be apportioned to Karzai's regime or family members? In a devastating essay recently, noted American aid worker and author Ann Jones lifted the veil of silence over the spectrum of corruption that the George W Bush administration introduced in Afghanistan. (See The Afghan reconstruction boondoggle Asia Times Online, January 13.)

The US not only skimped on aid but ploughed the big bucks into the coffers of well-connected American military contractors and profiteers and the whole retinue of parasites who generally go under the rubric of experts and consultants. Jones called it "a form of well-organized routine graft that leaves the corruption of Karzai's government in the shade and will undoubtedly continue unremarked upon in the Obama years. Those multi-millions that will continue to be poured down the Afghan drain really represent promises made to a people whose country and culture we have devastated more than once."

Browbeating, damning or dumping Karzai will not end the stalemate in the war. Actually, the best thing would be to allow the Afghan people to genuinely choose Karzai as their president in the upcoming election and if they indeed do so, to let him select his team. It may not be an English-speaking team, but that is the best way the Afghan political process can hope to gain traction, if at all, in the current gloomy scenario when it looks difficult to rescue the seven-year US enterprise.

Karzai is still the best choice America has got in Kabul. Biden's visit was a mistake because in political terms, he seems to have mortally wounded Karzai, even if Washington's his intention was merely to do some plain speaking before the Obama era commenced, about salvaging the US's efforts.

Biden's tough talk leaps out of a classic Graham Greene novel set in Indo-China in the 1950s. It dampens the residual hopes of a clean break from the overbearing US war strategy in Afghanistan, which Karzai resents and the Taliban exploit.

Special Report: Old bottles will test Obama's vintage

2009-01-20T03:12:00.000-08:00

By M H Ahssan & Sarah Williams

"Change has come to America" US president-elect Barack Obama called out to hundreds of thousands in Chicago's Grant Park on election night, and to hundreds of millions watching on TV sets around the world, but just what does that mean?

For Mike Steinberger, wine columnist for the online magazine Slate.com, the change he hopes is coming to America is a better getting-wasted experience for those attending official White House state dinners.

"The White House needs a new wine policy ... During the [George W] Bush era, wine service at the executive mansion has been hostage to a profoundly misguided strategy that has turned this most civilized of beverages into an unnecessarily crude instrument of statecraft ... As with so much else, the Bush administration has given Obama the opening he needs to act swiftly and boldly on the wine front ... the White House currently stocks around 500-600 bottles. That is pathetic and another example of how America's infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate. "

Some critics say that the infrastructure spending in the upcoming stimulus bill will be just thinly disguised appropriations to support congressional members' re-election efforts, pejoratively called pork. This will obviously not be the case here, this is the chardonnay to be served with the pork.

It is now a fairly commonplace assertion that during the past eight years the Bush administration has denigrated diplomacy in favor of neo-conservative swagger and braggadocio, but, according to Steinberger, the problem is less Paul Wolfowitz, more putrid wine.

Both the US Air Force and US wine force are said to have become far too enamored with shock and awe, with wines that Steinberger dismisses as "slam dunks" ( an obvious reference to former Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet's pre-Iraq War assertion that it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam Hussein was armed with weapons of mass destruction) and "bruisers".

At a state dinner for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a cabernet sauvignon was served that, according to Steinberger, tasted "like sucking on tree bark - it was obnoxiously oaky".

When I was in graduate school, I knew people who were studying for the US Department of State's Foreign Service Officer exam. Bet this foreign relations advice from Steinberger wasn't one of the questions.

"Diplomacy is a subtle art, and when it is conducted [at the table], it requires subtle libations. Mellow wines promote conviviality, encourage reflection, and create goodwill - the very things state dinners are presumably meant to foster. A hulking cabernet that assaults the senses and flattens any food that gets in its way hardly lubricates the path to world peace. Indeed, serving such a wine might even be construed as a sign of hostile intent: Tonight we smash your palate; tomorrow your palace."

During the campaign, Obama rivals such as Senator Hillary Clinton charged that the Illinois senator was insufficiently detailed about his plans for changing the country. Not Steinberger - he's very detailed on what must be done in this time of crisis.

"So, what must Obama do? He can start by replenishing the White House cellar. He's pledged to create or save 3 million jobs over the next two years; he should set a goal of having 3,000 bottles laid away by the end of his first term. An executive branch buying spree will once again give the presidency a wine stash worthy of the office while also making a small but meaningful contribution to the ailing economy. "

You should not think that all Americans have on their minds at this historic time is the subprime merlot crisis. Over the past few weeks, on a call-in radio program whose host and callers are usually very supportive of the new president, spirited and heated criticisms were voiced on an issue now at the front of the nation's attention.

Was Obama being raked over the coals for keeping Bush holdover Robert Gates on as secretary of defense, or for trying to placate the Republican minority in Congress by making tax cuts the single-largest line item in the upcoming stimulus plan?

Not a chance, because few Americans actually care, or even know, about these controversies. What's got America really interested and engaged these days is what kind of puppy, coming from where, will soon be residing at the White House.

At his Grant Park victory speech, Obama endeared himself to the hundreds of millions of Americans who wouldn't know Tier 1 Capital from teardrop in-ground swimming pools by promising his daughters Sasha and Malia a new puppy for going through the travails of the campaign.

Instantly, the nation became obsessed with this issue; "Obama" and "puppy" return 11.5 million hits on a Google web search, 12 times more than "Obama" and "economic plan". But, as the Roman emperor Commodus' sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) said in the year 2000 movie Gladiator, "The mob is fickle, brother." Lately, the new US president has been feeling its sting.

Due to Malia's allergies, the Obamas are said to be seeking a pure-bred pup, not an abandoned mutt from one of the country's animal shelters. This immediately raised hackles from the nation's animal welfare and rights advocates, who said that, what with over half the dogs in shelters eventually being euthanized, the new first family should just let their oldest daughter sneeze and sniffle through her residence at the White House to set a good example.

On a bulletin board, a poster elaborated the argument: "Even with a child with allergies, there are plenty of pure-breed dogs (including poodles and other breeds that are non-allergenic) waiting in shelters. Hundreds of thousand (maybe more???) perfectly adoptable cats and dogs get euthanized (killed) each year because there is no where to place them."

But that was not the end of the contribution by this poster, self-identified as "maidawg", to the public policy debate. As the first family's house was getting a dog, the nation should use this historic moment to ensure that all houses, or, in maidawg's case, all South Florida condominium owners, have the right to have a dog as well.

The Obama family choice to get a dog also reflects the current culture in which 63% of US households have at least one companion animal. This younger overall culture is in conflict with the average resident of the 55+ housing complexes where no pets are allowed. What I am trying to say is that the whole country is moving toward acceptance of pets and our time will come when pets are allowed everywhere… Citizens FOR Pets in Condos www.petsincondos.org is a 501-c3 tax exempt private operating foundation dedicated to increasing acceptance of companion animals in condos and other types of association-run housing. We educate the public about the health benefits of having animal companions and also advocate for responsible pet ownership/guardianship. Our motto: "creating a win-win situation for both people and pets" ... Citizens for Pets in Condos insists that pet owners/guardians must be responsible and must do all they can to keep their animals from being a true nuisance to others living in their communities!

As Obama prepares to take the oath of office as America's 44th president, 300 million Americans are filled with hope and anticipation, hoping that he can restore the legendary American dream. That would be hard enough, but what really makes the job tough is the fact that there is no single, unified American dream actually still left - just 300 million individual American dreams, apparently spanning the spectrum from beaujolais to beagles, all looking for Washington for fulfillment.

Unlike most, I didn't age into cynicism; people said I was a cynic when I still was in my teens. Still, even with my long years of scoff and sneer coloring my view of everything from politics to pizza, it's hard not to be impressed, even exhilarated, at the feelings of rebirth and regeneration now sweeping across America. Everybody I see, from the blowsy, logorreic Manhattan intellectuals blabbing on into the wee hours of the night on the Public Broadcasting System's Charlie Rose Show to the guy who changes my motor oil, seems to be now hopeful and optimistic about the future.

Part of this is the extraordinarily dignified and admirable manner that Obama carried himself during the campaign and its aftermath, but a lot more of it is just the complete and utter revulsion with which Bush is now viewed by the country. Early on, Bush fell under the Mephistophelean influence of his political advisor Karl Rove, who advised that the country's political structure should be trifurcated into a Democratic Party base, which at best should be ignored, at worst sent for internment at Guantanamo; a middle ground which could be placated with bread and circuses such as real-estate speculation and Fox TV's American Idol, and a conservative, fundamentalist base, whose every quirk and whim was to be immediately satisfied with the full force of government.

After eight years, Bush's record low approval ratings and two successive Republican Party electoral drubbings prove that things haven't gone quite the way Rove, whom Fox News still admiringly calls "The Architect" (well, maybe it's still true, since it was his folly that drove almost 70 million people to vote for Obama), had planned.

The uninvolved middle got fed up and threw their lot in with the Democratic left; even much of the Republican base, what with its members being foreclosed out of their McMansions and their children coming back from Iraq in flag-draped coffins, eventually turned against Bush. Indeed, to an extent I can never recall, Bush has united the country - from Maine to California, from the northern border with Canada on the 49th parallel to the border with Mexico on the Rio Grande river, America couldn't wait to see him go back to Texas.

Of course, the first issue that must be addressed is the pathetic state of the US economy, digging a deeper and deeper hole, from severe recession towards depression, with each successive worse-than-expected economic report.

For most of the time from his victories in the Super Tuesday primaries last February 4 to election day, Obama carried between a 6% and 12% lead in the opinion polls, eventually winning by 7.2%, or 9.5 million votes. Still, it was the rapid and shocking decline in the economy following on the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15 (see Silences say it all Asia Times Online, September 16, 2008) that rendered the vicious Republican attacks of the autumn, on issues such as former 1960s' radical Bill Ayres, the incendiary Reverend Jeremiah Wright and every other irrelevancy they could find, impotent. Previous Democratic nominees Michael Dukakis in 1988, Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, who all came out of their nominating conventions with substantial polling leads that soon evaporated in the face of the gales of Republican smear, were not so fortunate.

Obama's immense current popularity is changing the political calculus for the fiscal spending stimulus package that will be introduced to counter the downturn.

With 41 votes in the Senate (once Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty stops holding his breath until his face turns blue and allows Al Franken to be seated) the opposition Republicans in the US Senate have, if their party stays unified, enough votes to prevent passage of any legislation not to their liking. That was the strategy that worked well in the first two years of Bill Clinton's administration from 1993-94, when the Republicans were also still in the minority before their electoral landslide in 1994.

Then, the Republicans stopped any and all legislation that Clinton and the Democrats could possibly take credit for; maybe bills commemorating the victors in Little League baseball could get through, not much else. The Republicans reverted to much the same strategy after the Democrats re-took the Senate in 2006, but this time they were not rewarded with an electoral victory in the next election, but with a drubbing, losing eight seats.

The country now wants action, not talk.

This presents the Republicans in the Senate with a huge dilemma (in the House of Representatives, anything that speaker Nancy Pelosi wants is going to get passed, with her Democratic Party sitting on top of a huge, 79-seat majority), especially considering Obama's recent extraordinary magnanimity in reaching across the aisle to try to establish bi-partisan consensus and comity.

Obviously, whatever their protestations about only wanting "what's best for the country", what the Republicans really want is for the new president's tenure to collapse in a fantabulous fanfare of failure. Still, with Obama's popularity, they have become hesitant about the re-employment of the no-never-negative strategy used with so much success against Bill Clinton. They have learned the lesson that Hamas is only painfully learning against Israel in the rubble of Gaza - you can't directly attack a vastly more powerful foe.

But the Republicans also don't want to go along with Obama's near trillion-dollar big-government stimulus program; they're desperately hoping to recapture their brand identity as the small government party after eight years of Bush's fiscal profligacy. Also, with the next election, the mid-term contests of 2010, still 22 months away, they don't want to be relegated to being irrelevant and ignored for the next two years.

In other words, they want a place at the adults' table where the big issues are being determined, but a place near enough to the door so they can still exit quickly and blame the Democrats if, as they hope, the stimulus doesn't work and the economy is still in tatters by the time of the 2010 mid-term Congressional or 2012 presidential elections.

It is now apparently the question of tax cuts that will decide the issue. Two weeks ago, Democrats and left-wing bloggers were surprised to read reports that the Obama administration was planning to have a significant amount of the stimulus package, some say up to 40%, in the form of tax cuts, the Republicans' preferred policy prescription from everything from recession to rectal itch.

This did not please many in the Democratic base, for it implied a continuation of the core conservative ideology that the best thing that the government can do for the nation is for it to give the people their taxes back. In the January 15 Financial Times, Joseph Stiglitz, a former Clinton economic advisor and 2001 winner of the Nobel prize in economics, had this to say on the issue:

What is clear is that tax cuts will not help much. When Barack Obama, president-elect, last week proposed to use nearly 40% of the stimulus for tax cuts, he was rightly told this would be less effective than, say, spending on infrastructure. It has been surprising, then, to see President George W Bush's former economic advisers, including Greg Mankiw, argue that tax cuts are the way forward. Tax breaks for business may prove to be a sink-hole as bad as the troubled assets relief programme. Particularly worrisome are rumors that companies will be allowed to set off their losses against profits made in the past five years to get tax rebates - a big gift to those who mismanaged risk, including banks such as Citibank.

Still, middle-class tax cuts were a key part of the Obama electoral platform, and the tax cuts being proposed, targeted overwhelmingly to working and middle-class taxpayers, are far different than the usual Republican tax cuts overwhelmingly directed towards the indolent rich, the so-called "Paris Hilton tax cuts". Also, tax cuts of any nature would get now desperately needed money into the economy much faster than the other main focus of the stimulus program, infrastructure spending, with its potential multi-year implementation lag times.

Like everything else in Congress, this matter will probably come down to a matter of negotiation. A preliminary stimulus bill draft released last week from the liberal House Appropriations Committee called for one-third, US$275 billion, of tax cuts from as part of a total $825 billion package. This will essentially become the lowball point in the negotiations with the Senate; in that chamber, majority leader Harry Reid will have to agree to something closer to 40% of the package being tax cuts in order to forestall a Republican filibuster, and to also placate Obama's desire to have the stimulus package pass the upper chamber with 70 votes or more. This would be the fulfillment of Obama's pledge to unite the nation and turn a page on the bitter, polarized political battles of the past.

That is, unless the Republicans, seeing Obama quickly agree to 40% of the package being tax cuts, decide to not take "yes" for an answer and move the goalposts further back. This they could do by demanding what they know Obama and the congressional Democrats would never accept, such as tax cuts as more than 40% of the total package, or insisting on tax cuts more directed towards their patrons among the rich, maybe even pushing the envelope to see if Obama was willing to gut or totally scrap the infrastructure stimulus part of the proposal in the name of unity.

How much of his principles is Obama willing to trade away for those nebulous Republican votes in the Senate? Is it possible that, in the final analysis, getting the economy moving and bi-partisan consensus are two, mutually exclusive goals, and that he'll eventually have to choose one over the other?

Perhaps most importantly, are there fangs behind the smile, a hard fist under the velvet glove?

The Republicans dilemma is how to say "no" when they're getting a lot of what they want - how much can they sign onto this and still credibly say they were not involved if it goes badly?

The Democrats in Congress are behaving very similar to how the party reacted to the first two years of Bill Clinton's tenure, and that could be a major problem for Obama. Just like 16 years ago, party leaders in both chambers are slowing the legislative process to a crawl, haughtily insisting that the new president genuflect to the legislative body's perpetually preening petty potentates and pokey processes. The American people elected Obama on a platform of change; getting Congress to put the people's welfare as a priority above its own self-defined institutional privilege would be considered a fine start to the polity's metamorphosis.

Originally, Obama had hoped to have the stimulus bill passed and ready for signing as he came back from the inauguration; now, some commentators are claiming that he'll be lucky if he sees it by St Patrick's Day on March 17. The equity markets, currently seeing the stimulus package as the only sign of hope in an economic landscape of now unforgiving bleakness, would take that very badly, selling off, shearing away much of Obama's now substantial popularity; that would only then embolden the Senate Republicans to enhanced recalcitrance.

For the sake of both the economy and his presidency, Obama must get the stimulus package out of Congress much quicker than the Congress is prepared to let it go. He can do that by using his high levels of popularity to light a fire under both the Democrats and Republicans in the Congress.

How can he keep the country madly in love with him? Well, adopting a cute puppy that America falls in love with, then having the new president photographed walking it, playing Frisbee with it, maybe helping his daughters give it a bath, would help maintain and bolster his popularity with the public, pressure the Congress to do his (Obama's, not the dog's) bidding, and, in doing so, give immeasurable near-term assistance to the world economy.

Back in December, Obama said that, after New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson withdrew his name from consideration under an ethics cloud, a new puppy was proving harder to find than a new commerce secretary. Considering how much more important the puppy choice is proving to be for the new administration than that of commerce secretary, perhaps the relative difficulties in the two staffing decisions is nothing but a real illustration of the current state of the government's relationship to the governed.

But allow just a bit more from the cynic.

Early in the campaign, Republicans produced TV advertisements that called Obama "the Messiah", an obvious attempt to link the then still mostly unknown candidate to the hayseed backwoods millenarianism of the "Left Behind" theology, which, among other things, prophesized that the Antichrist would one day walk the Earth proclaiming ( "oh no! how evil! ") a message of peace.

In a certain manner, Americans are treating Obama as the Messiah, albeit as a secular, benevolent savior. Millions seem to think that all they have to do is vote for him, maybe watch him dance with his wife at the inaugural ball, perhaps even pick up a cheap commemorative inaugural dish towel holder, and all will be right with the nation.

It won't. America's problems are now far too grave to think that the country can be healed with how those under 40 years of age believe social action should be undertaken, through consumer products' choices.

In other words, you can't right America's wrongs just through the purchase of an Obama mug at Starbucks.

Fixing America will require an equal amount or more of the dedication and purpose that was displayed by Obama's vast army of volunteers. If not, control of the government will invariably soon revert to the big-money special-interest lobbyists who were given a free run of the kingdom under Bush. After all, by 2008, even Bush's most faithful allies in the Christian fundamentalist movement came to realize that all the pious bromides they liked hearing the president utter were just the elevator Muzak being played to cover up the sound of Bush's big money corporate and financial benefactors picking the middle classes' pockets.

So enjoy the inauguration pageant as a glorious symbol of a nation attempting a resurrection from a very dark time. My wife has promised me that I'll get my fingers broken should I try to change the channel to CNBC to see how the financial markets are reacting to the inaugural address, so I'll be right there with the rest of the world, in front of the TV.

Afterward, since the inauguration will be commencing at 9am US West Coast time, it'll be a bit early for me to raise a glass to fete the new president. That will happen later. With apologies to Slate.com wine columnist Mike Steinberger, my libation of choice will be a finely aged 2008 Budweiser, imbibed, to best appreciate its delicately impudent pastiche and bouquet, straight out of its long-necked bottle.

Challenges facing the new US President in Middle East

2009-01-20T02:44:00.000-08:00

By Javid Hassan

Barack Obama, who became the 44th President of the United States today, enters the White House with a plateful of problems. He inherits the Presidency at a time when the US image has been severely battered and its credibility is at an all-time low, thanks to the disastrous policies of his predecessor George W. Bush during whose eight-year tenure the US invaded and occupied two countries in the war on terror.

Today, the world is less secure than it was on September 11, 2001. US policies of deceit and ramming its point of view down unwilling throats, whether in Afghanistan or in Iraq, torturing victims to extract “Confessions Made in Guantanamo Bay” flout the provisions of the Geneva Convention for a just and fair trial.

Above all, the unilateral declaration of ceasefire by the Israelis after killing more than 1,200 Palestinians in Gaza Strip and injuring thousands others in the merciless bombardment from the air and on the ground heralds a tragic saga in the annals of the Middle East history as President Barack Obama takes over from George W. Bush.

The US government will, of course, will continue to be HMV (His Master’s Voice) dancing to the tune of Tel Aviv. The latest tune belted out by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipora "Tzipi" Livni puts a new spin on what one would normally describe the dance of death and destruction in Gaza, its premeditated killing of the Palestinian people for trying to break the siege imposed on them by the Israeli occupation force.

But Livni redefines the liberation struggle with a new twist. She calls it a ‘battle between the extremists and the moderates”—a term that is freely bandied about in the Middle East in the religious context. In the process, she is trying to project Israel as a victim of Palestinian extremists who killed 11 Israelis, all of them soldiers. The international community, led by the US, goes by its version and condemns the loss of innocent life on the Israeli side, never mind the totally asymmetric nature of the war.

Meanwhile, reeling under the impact of the Israeli siege, Gazans have been forced to survive on wild grass that grows along the streets of Gaza. The only luxury they can afford is to have one meal a day consisting of khubz only. Approximately half the population of the Gaza Strip, or 800,000 people to be precise, have been without running water for two weeks.

The water utility in Gaza, which normally pumps 220,000 cubic meters of water per day, is now producing only 100,000 cubic meters per day as a result of the Israeli bombardment. There is a serious risk that earth retention walls of several wastewater lagoons will break, inundating the surrounding communities with an estimated three million cubic meters of wastewater.

In this context, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah in a move, characteristic of the Kingdom’s humanitarian role, has announced that his country will donate $1 billion to help rebuild the Gaza Strip after the devastating Israeli offensive. He also told Israel that an Arab peace initiative will not remain on the table forever.

"Israel has to understand that the choice between war and peace will not always stay open and that the Arab peace initiative that is on the table today will not stay on the table," said the Saudi monarch during a speech.

The initiative, which was first proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and relaunched in March 2007, offers Israel collective Arab recognition in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the territory it occupied in the 1967 war, the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution for the problem of Palestinian refugees.

Israel initially rejected the initiative in 2002, but in the past year has said it could be a starting point for discussion. "The position of the Israeli government is that the Arab peace initiative remains a basis for dialogue between Israel and the Arab world," said Israeli spokesman Mark Regev. "And we continue to be willing to negotiate with all of our neighbors on the basis of that initiative."

However, Syrian President Bashar Assad describes the offer as already dead and has proposed that the Arab summit adopt a resolution declaring Israel a "terrorist entity." The Arab world has struggled to come up with a unified response to the Gaza crisis — with strong Hamas supporters like Iran and Syria facing off against U.S. allies like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

It is this internal rift within the Arab ranks that Israel has exploited to the hilt by striking at the Palestinian targets at will. In fact, all available indications show that the Gaza campaign had been planned six months in advance, while Hamas’ missile attacks to end the siege of their territory only served as an excuse to cover up the Israeli game. The whole purpose of its military thrust was to cock a snook at the Palestinians that they, as the vanquished party, could always be subjected to attacks, irrespective of the noise made by the international community.

For this reason, Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire, because it does not consider Hamas to be its equal. It had adopted the same stance in Lebanon early last year during the war against Hezbollah by ending the hostilities unilaterally. Even during the previous negotiations with Palestine under Yasser Arafat and subsequently under Abu Mazen, Israel backed off on the ground that it could not hold talks with a party that lacked international legitimacy. And the world backed Israel’s “principled stand.”

It is against this background that President Barrack Obama ushers in his four-year term in the White House. He might take a different route by trying to get the Syrians and Iranians on board. But it is doubtful if they will swallow the bait in any deal with Israel except on its own terms. In short, it will be premature to expect any breakthrough on the Middle East track, be it Palestine or Iraq. Afghanistan continues to remain a political back hole in which everything gets sucked in. Whether he may try to produce result on the Kashmir front is also a doubtful proposition, as it has defied a solution during the last six decades. Are we, then, moving around in circles?