Saturday, September 18, 2021
Pakistan braces for more 'Islamization' after Taliban victory - ''Pakistan's 'pro-Taliban' government''
The Taliban's capture of Kabul in 1996 gave impetus to Islamist militant groups across the world, but the country that was most affected by the rise of fundamentalism in Afghanistan was its neighbor, Pakistan. Not only did the victory of the "students" (the Taliban in Arabic) embolden extremist and militant groups in Pakistan, some people in the South Asian country also saw it as a "divine" sign.Fed up with the country's mainstream political parties, who had failed to deliver to the common people, the demand for Shariah law and a Taliban-style government had started echoing across Pakistan.Political Islam, thus, gained tremendous strength in the Muslim-majority country, and the hardline Wahabi version of Islam became even more popular due to the rise of the Taliban. As the country's military establishment was backing the Islamists at the time, experts said the surge in support in Pakistan for the Taliban was a natural outcome of state policies. Twenty years after the US and allied forces toppled the Taliban regime, the fundamentalist group is back in power in Afghanistan. Analysts say that Pakistan is bound to be affected by the Taliban triumph. Deja vu? When the militant group first came to power in Afghanistan, Pakistan saw a sudden spike in jihadist outfits and religious seminaries. Sectarian clashes also increased sharply in the country, with militant Sunni organizations targeting members of the Shiite sect and other minority groups. "Pakistani authorities and Sunni extremist groups are still backing the Taliban, which could fuel sectarian tensions in the country," Ahsan Raza, a Lahore-based political analyst, told DW. Raza says these tensions could escalate in the coming weeks. "The success of their 'ideological brothers' in Afghanistan has given them a boost," referring to Pakistani Islamist groups. The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the subsequent Taliban takeover of the country has also reinvigorated the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TPP), a group banned by Islamabad due to its violent attacks on civilians and security forces. Islamabad has urged the Afghan Taliban to ensure that the TTP does not use Afghan soil to launch attacks inside Pakistan. Despite the Taliban's assurance, the TTP has already intensified its attacks on Pakistani troops. Analyst Said Alam Mehsud said that he believes terrorist attacks are likely to increase not only in northwestern areas of Pakistan but across the country. Renewed demand for Shariah imposition Religious groups are demanding the imposition of Shariah law in Pakistan more vigorously than before. In the late 1990s, religious parties took to the streets to force former premier Nawaz Sharif to introduce more Islamic laws. Experts say that extremist parties could launch a similar campaign to further Islamize the country. Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a former parliamentarian and leader of the religious Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party, told DW the victory of the Afghan Taliban would have a positive impact on Pakistan and the region. "The demand for the imposition of Shariah would gain momentum," he said, adding that the country was created to uphold Islamic values. "There is no harm if Shariah is imposed here as well," he added. Kishwar Zehra, a Pakistani legislator, told DW that some religious groups, spurred by the Taliban triumph, have already started campaigning against liberal groups and women activists. "I think they have the power to pressure Prime Minister Imran Khan's government into passing retrogressive laws," she added. Pakistan's 'pro-Taliban government Khan's center-right government is already facing criticism for cozying up to religious extremists and introducing regressive legislation in parliament.Khan, who has long supported the Taliban, has been severely criticized for his "misogynistic" views. In June, he faced backlash following comments that appear to put the blame for sexual abuse on women."If a woman is wearing very few clothes, it will have an impact on the men, unless they are robots," Khan said during an interview for news website Axios, aired by US broadcaster HBO. He proceeded to say that this was "common sense." Khan had made the comments roughly two months after a similar controversy. During a question and answer briefing with the public, Khan had said that the rise in sexual violence in Pakistan was due to the lack of "pardah," the practice of veiling, in the country. "The civil society is opposing the 'Talibanization' of Pakistan, but unfortunately the state is supporting them. It could result in increased suppression of journalists and NGOs," Asad Butt, vice chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told DW.
In the late 1990s, Pakistan saw a surge in religious extremism when the Taliban came to power in neighboring Afghanistan. Would it be any different this time around?
https://www.dw.com/en/afghanistan-pakistan-braces-for-more-islamization-after-taliban-victory/a-59202595
How the Taliban Used Pakistan
By Kunwar Khuldune Shahid
The Taliban have returned to power in Afghanistan. Far from a victory, that could ultimately be a setback for Pakistan.
Pakistan had already won the Afghanistan war when the Trump administration signed a deal with the Taliban last year. The fall of Kabul has formalized the triumph. Or so the narrative reverberating in Islamabad, and around the world, goes.
The army’s “good Taliban, bad Taliban” strategy has been rooted in distinguishing between jihadist groups that target Pakistan and those that can be controlled to fulfill the geostrategic objectives of the military establishment. The return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan is naturally considered the culmination of two decades of Pakistan providing the group, and its affiliates, with havens to sustain themselves until the departure of the U.S.-led coalition.And yet, the endgame wasn’t bringing the Taliban back to power; it was setting up a radical Islamist regime that would toe Pakistan’s line in the region. Viewed through this lens, Pakistan’s success is less certain.Moments after taking charge in Kabul, the Afghan Taliban released leaders of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), including former deputy chief Faqir Mohammad. The Afghan Taliban have released around 2,300 leaders of the TTP, who have duly felicitated the former for taking over Kabul, after having already pledged allegiance to Hibatullah Akhundzada.
The Taliban are already negotiating with India. They have called the Kashmir issue “internal and bilateral,” clarifying that the jihadist group, at the very least, does not intend to take sides in a conflict that Pakistan has actively Islamized.
Pakistan’s premise of backing Taliban rule in Afghanistan to counter “Hindu India,” conceived almost half a century before the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regime came to power, is unraveling amid uninhibited Islamist-Hindutva engagement.
This, along with the booming alliance of Taliban on both sides of the Af-Pak border, begs the question of whether Pakistan, and its “good Taliban, bad Taliban” strategy, has actually been victorious. Even more ominously, the developments suggest that as much as Pakistan used Taliban for its gains, so too did the Taliban use Pakistan for its gains.
We are witnessing the Taliban’s rendition of a “good/bad” strategy. “Good” Pakistan helped Taliban leaders dodge the U.S.-led forces, while diverting some of the resources taken from the West toward the Taliban. “Bad” Pakistan now believes the Taliban have any geopolitical, or ideological, obligation to reciprocate.
To ensure Talibanization in Afghanistan, and Islamist inertia at home, Pakistan sacrificed over 80,000 of its citizens, which the military establishment has loudly dubbed “collateral damage.” The investment in the project was to such an extent that immediately after the Trump-Taliban deal, Prime Minister Imran Khan began echoing eulogies for Osama bin Laden. This week, Khan touted the Taliban takeover as “breaking shackles of slavery,” prompting demands in the United States to cut aid to Pakistan. The ubiquitous cheerleading for the Taliban’s triumph delineates the extent to which the pro-Taliban Islamist rhetoric has been etched in Pakistan.
While Pakistan’s Islamization was an inevitable corollary of its birth and sustenance as a multiethnic realm, the mullah-military takeover has been the result of both regional and domestic ambitions of the army. This has translated into a political setup in Pakistan where today both the prime minister and the leader of the antigovernment opposition coalition are unflinching Taliban cheerleaders. However, in the decades dedicated to sustaining an Afghanistan that suits the Taliban, the military establishment has also created a Pakistan that suits the Taliban.
The Taliban’s vocal allies, this side of the border, are those that excommunicated the Pakistan Army and launched some of the most brutal attacks in the country to “establish true Islam.” The gory Islamic Sharia might be incorporated in the Pakistan Penal Code, but will be more visibly implemented in Afghanistan. The rhetoric of Medina state might be echoing in Islamabad, but will be more accurately mimicked in Kabul. What, then, is stopping the Taliban from channeling these political narratives, and its jihadist allies, to aspire to align Pakistan with Afghanistan’s strategic interests, and not the other way around?
Pakistan, and the army that runs it, are completely subservient to China, but have failed to reassure Beijing that Islamabad can safeguard the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) from the country’s multipronged militancy. Such has been the fixation with Talibanization in Afghanistan that Islamabad has seemingly been willing to alienate China just to cling on to its duplicitous security policy of picking and choosing jihadist groups, which the establishment believes are its sure-shot bet to dictate matters along the Af-Pak border. What if the Taliban convince Beijing that they can be better orchestrator of these groups?
Already agreeing to facilitate China’s crackdown on Uyghur separatists and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the Taliban have $1 trillion worth of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth to offer Beijing as well. If the group can also become a more convincing guarantor of projects currently affiliated with CPEC, the fulcrum of the $1.9 trillion worth Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), not only can the Taliban forge a stronger alliance with China, the group can also help extend its influence across the Af-Pak frontier, which it doesn’t recognize as a border.
The Pakistani Taliban have duly been making gains in synchrony with the Afghan Taliban’s return to power. And if South Asian jihadist outfits continue to gravitate toward the consolidated Islamic Emirate, they would be more than willing to create turmoil in Pakistan as the Taliban’s strategic assets.
https://thediplomat.com/2021/08/how-the-taliban-used-pakistan/
Pakistan’s Shameful Glee at the Taliban’s Rise
By Mohsin Dawar
An elected representative of North Waziristan urges the Pakistani government to confront the reality of what the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan will mean for Pakistan.
Pakistan is seeking assurances from the Taliban that Afghanistan’s soil will not be used to export terrorism across the Durand Line and to the rest of the world. The Taliban say Pakistan’s concerns are “justified” and they are trying to reassure Pakistan that Afghanistan will not be used as a global hub for terrorism. Despite these assurances, terrorism and extremism are rearing their ugly heads in Pakistan, with targeted killings and suicide bombings on the rise. The wave of fear and terror that was experienced by the people of Afghanistan when the Taliban seized Kabul on August 15 is now beginning to spillover across the Durand Line into Pakistan, and its first effects are being felt particularly in the bordering areas of of North and South Waziristan. In South Waziristan alone, as many as 15 targeted attacks, including a suicide attack, have been reported since the Taliban took over in Afghanistan. In North Waziristan, eight targeted attacks were reported in the same period; five in Bajaur and one each in Khyber and Bannu. These attacks resulted in a number of civilian and military casualties. On August 27, Noor Islam Dawar, president of Youth of Waziristan, was murdered in Mir Ali, North Waziristan. He has now become the first active political worker with a profile to match to be killed in a targeted attack since Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the 2014 government military offensive against militant outfits. Business and trade in Waziristan, which relies heavily on bilateral ties with Afghanistan, has been severely impacted by the recent chaos; no one wants to invest with such risks involved. It is also being reported that militants have resumed the practice of extortion. Those who do not or cannot meet the demands of extortionists are killed. In Quetta, Balochistan, at least three Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed and 20 wounded in a suicide attack recently. The Tehreek-i-Taliban (TTP), which was supposed to have been wiped out in Operation Zarb-e-Azb a few years ago, claimed this attack. In his first speech after his release from prison in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover, TTP deputy chief Faqir Muhammad said it would be possible to implement Shariah in Pakistan now that it is being enforced in Afghanistan. He also reaffirmed his commitment to the jihadi project in Pakistan. With the Taliban being given an entire state in the form of Afghanistan, the TTP has regained ideological strength and confidence. Today, under the banner of the Islamic Emirate, the TTP believes and propagates that it was part of the historic struggle that resulted in the defeat of global powers in Afghanistan. To them, Pakistan now probably seems like an easier target. On their part, the Afghan Taliban have never disowned or confronted the TTP and vice versa; in fact, the TTP has grown under the umbrella of the Afghan Taliban. In Miranshah, the Haqqani madrassa proudly raised the flag of the Islamic Emirate and the movements of local militants have become much more public. Religious parties who support the Taliban have been celebrating — not just because of the claim that the Taliban have defeated global powers in Afghanistan, but also because they have suddenly regained relevance among their jihadi friends. Policymakers in Islamabad and Rawalpindi should be seriously concerned about these developments, especially because the global political landscape has changed. The War on Terror is no longer a priority for the United States and its allies, and as a result there are likely to be no more Coalition Support Funds running to the billions of dollars to combat terrorism in Pakistan. It is feared that with an economy that is already dwindling (more so in recent years), Pakistan is no longer as equipped to crush the rising menace of militancy in the country. The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan and its implications on foreign and security policies have been discussed in many parliaments around the world, including in the U.K., Australia, as well as in the United Nations and by the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), but it is yet to be discussed in the parliament of Pakistan, which as history has it, will be the first country to face the consequences of the Talibanization of the region. As an elected representative of North Waziristan, I have made calls for a joint session of the parliament to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s takeover and our state’s patronage and support for the Taliban openly. These calls have been ignored as the security establishment and its agencies continue to not only provide the same support to the Taliban that they have always been accused of, but are actively organizing and orchestrating lobbying efforts around the world to get the Taliban’s government recognized. Many in the corridors of power and the mainstream in Pakistan have been celebrating the fall of an elected government in Afghanistan and that country’s descent into chaos as it was handed over to Taliban, something that Pakistan’s state has been working for decades on. The gleeful statements of support for the Taliban by Pakistani officials are beyond shameful as they continue to slaughter Afghans. Afghans continue to leave their country, while those who have remained have begun to come out on the streets to protest against the Taliban. Pakistan has played an active role in creating, facilitating and supporting the Taliban over the decades, a fact that the state has stopped denying. But it has done so at the very heavy cost of the lives of thousands of Pakistanis and hundreds of thousands of Afghans. Pakistan continues to play with fire, and we fear that it will eventually be consumed by the flames.https://thediplomat.com/2021/09/pakistans-shameful-glee-at-the-talibans-rise/
#Pakistan #PPP - Bilawal rejects advance income tax on electricity bills
Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Saturday rejected the imposition of a new tax in electricity bills and said that Prime Minister Imran Khan had made inflation the biggest problem of people of the country. PPP Chairman, in his statement, said that the nation should decide that if it wants to get rid of inflation, the PTI government should be sent packing.Bilawal Bhutto said that new taxes would bring a new storm of inflation which will further increase problems of the common man who are already struggling to make ends meet.On the other hand, Punjab Opposition Leader Hamza Shahbaz has termed the imposition of up to 35% advance income tax on electricity bills as cruel. The PML-N leader said that the government has dropped an electricity bomb on the people. He said that the government was increasing taxes instead of giving relief to the people. Hamza Shahbaz went on to say that the current government had implemented about 59 presidential ordinances in three years.
https://dunyanews.tv/en/Pakistan/620303-Bilawal-rejects-tax-on-electricity-bills
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