Tuesday, November 2, 2021
#Pakistan - Editorial: The govt has a lot to answer for regarding its deal with the TLP - Why the secrecy?
In a somber press conference, the government’s negotiator Mufti Muneebur Rehman and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi announced that an agreement had been signed and the situation would return to normal. Since that announcement, TLP workers camped near Wazirabad have begun to pack up but are yet to disperse. There is much in here that should elicit serious concern.
It is inexplicable why the government would want to keep the agreement secret, unless of course it realises whatever it has agreed upon is at its own expense. But there is more at stake here than just the government’s credibility. The citizens have a right to know what concessions have been given in their name to an organisation that has severely damaged the writ of the state and in the process has become responsible for the death of a number of policemen. Every time the TLP has undertaken such a protest march, it has tortured and killed policemen without being held accountable for these crimes. This time too it appears that it will get away with murder — literally.
The TLP issue cannot be brushed under the carpet anymore. The marchers may pack up and go home but they do so by extracting a steep cost from the government. They also do so at the expense of the strength and credibility of the state. Unless the state realises the gravity of the problem and begins to take steps to tackle it, the TLP will keep growing from strength to strength on the basis of its ability to challenge the state, browbeat it and emerge victorious. At this stage, it is imperative that the government make public the agreement it has inked with the TLP and then justify it. The nation has a right to know what has been bartered away in return for the violent crowd to disperse. The government has a lot to answer for.https://www.dawn.com/news/1655449/why-the-secrecy
Pakistan’s TLP Emerges Stronger From Protests
By Umair Jamal
The government of Pakistan has signed yet another agreement with the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) after a two- week-long protest by the group, which killed scores of policemen and caused massive economic losses. It has refused to divulge details of the deal done with the proscribed group. One of the reasons for the government not making public the agreement it signed with the TLP is criticism and pressure it could draw internationally. Apparently, the government has accepted the TLP’s demand that it be allowed to operate as a regular political party. An agreement with the TLP does not come as a surprise. When the protest started, it was anticipated that the government would have to make some sort of deal with the TLP to end the demonstrations.However, the government was not expected to surrender to the group in such a way that it would virtually hand over the state’s writ to the TLP in order to keep it off the streets. Here is what we have learned from the TLP’s latest protest. The Imran Khan government has just concluded a deal with a group that, similar to outfits like al-Qaida and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), was banned under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism laws. The TLP was banned in April this year when it staged violent protests after its leader was arrested. Last week, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry said that the government had “taken a clear policy decision that the banned TLP will now be considered a militant organization.” Within days of that statement, the government thanked the TLP for coming to an agreement with it and described the deal as a win for Islam and Pakistan. The TLP had fairly successfully conveyed a narrative that an elected government was responsible for not honoring an agreement made with the group, and hence should be held responsible for the chaos that occurred during the protests. Mufti Muneebur Rehman, a cleric who facilitated the government-TLP talks said on Monday that some of the government’s ministers had misled the nation to believe that the TLP wanted the expulsion of the French ambassador and the closure of the French embassy in Pakistan. “So how can trust be established when government officials speak lies publicly?” he asked. Last week, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the government had solved all issues with the TLP, except the issue of the French ambassador’s expulsion from Pakistan. During the final phase of the talks, TLP not only managed to get Rashid removed from the government’s negotiating committee but virtually brought the civilian government to its knees. The negotiations progressed and emerged successful only after the military leadership’s intervention. On Sunday, prominent clerics, including Mufti Muneeb and Bashir Ahmad Farooqi, met military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa to discuss the issue. One of the clerics who met Bajwa attributed the success of the negotiations to the general’s mediation. For many, this was another reminder that the writ of the state in Pakistan is always negotiated between the security elite and clerics, with the elected government playing the role of mere bystanders. The TLP has transformed the Barelvi sect into a group that has the wherewithal, support, and will to take on the state at moment’s notice. Its rise in the political arena has been meteoric. In 2018, the TLP finished third in terms of votes in elections to the Punjab Assembly, surpassing the Pakistan People’s Party. Its votes have only multiplied after every protest and sit-in, and it is possible that the group may perform even better in the next election. For the TLP, the latest protest is another effort aimed at multiplying votes across Pakistan. It is eyeing the upcoming local government elections and eventually the general election. In the coming months, we may see political leaders from Punjab and Sindh joining the TLP to win over the group’s diehard religious vote, which is rising exponentially. The TLP has a violent narrative but perhaps that underlies its rise in Pakistan’s political landscape. Its rise is an outcome of Pakistani ruling elite never taking seriously the widely discussed warnings of a militant culture in Pakistan as a security threat. A culture of militancy is thriving in Pakistan and there is no will or plan to tackle it anytime soon.https://thediplomat.com/2021/11/pakistans-tlp-emerges-stronger-from-protests/
Pakistan’s meek surrender to Tehreek-e-Labbaik was inevitable
By C. Raja Mohan
C Raja Mohan writes: It long deployed religious extremism as a policy tool. But giving too much space to religious and other extra-constitutional forces only weakens the state.
“The writ of the state must run” has been the refrain that radiated out of Islamabad last week as Prime Minister Imran Khan confronted the radical Islamic movement called Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan that was marching towards Islamabad with an impossible set of demands, including the expulsion of the French Ambassador. After much wringing of hands, the Pakistan government threatened to use force against the TLP and ordered the deployment of the paramilitary forces to prevent the march into Islamabad. It also hurled that ultimate charge that can be levelled against any political opponent in Pakistan — accusing the TLP of working for the Indian intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing.
Pakistan’s national security adviser, Moeed Yusuf, thundered in a tweet that no force in Pakistan can challenge the power of the state. Yusuf insisted that the “TLP has crossed the red line and exhausted the state’s patience. They have martyred policemen, destroyed public property, and continue to cause massive public disruption”. He added that the “law will take its course for each one of them and terrorists will be treated like terrorists with no leniency.”
All that bravado, however, lasted barely 48 hours. On Sunday, Islamabad apparently bought peace with the TLP. As in its frequent mobilisations over the last few years, the TLP has once again forced the Pakistani state onto the backfoot and enhanced its own political clout.
A relatively new phenomenon, the TLP, was founded in 2015 by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a firebrand cleric who died in November 2020. It now has a strong following among Pakistan’s Barelvi sect. At the heart of TLP’s ideology is the protection of the Prophet’s honour and a vigorous defence of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. In Pakistan, anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or the Prophet Muhammad can face the death penalty under blasphemy laws.The fierce ideology of the TLP was mobilised by the establishment for political purposes to weaken the Nawaz Sharif government in 2017. Imran Khan, then in opposition, actively supported the TLP’s protests against Sharif. Some in Pakistan suspect that the TLP has been mobilised again to bring Imran Khan down a peg or two. The TLP won enough votes in the 2018 general election, especially in Punjab, to prevent Sharif’s Muslim League from winning its traditional stronghold. Having ousted Sharif, the deep state stitched together a majority for Imran Khan in both the Punjab province as well as the National Assembly.The TLP had no desire to spare the Imran Khan government either. It continued its repeated onslaughts against the government, mounting massive protests in April against the arrest of its leader Saad Hussain Rizvi, who succeeded his father as the head of the TLP. The TLP then set a deadline of April 20 for the expulsion of the French ambassador over its outrage about an incident of blasphemy in France. In October 2020, Samuel Paty, a French school teacher who had shown cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in a class was beheaded by a young Islamic zealot. French President Emmanuel Macron criticised the Islamists and defended the traditional French principles of secularism. PM Imran Khan denounced Macron’s comments while the TLP organised massive countrywide protests. The Imran government, caught in a cleft stick, could neither say no to the TLP nor accept its demands. After all, France was a major aid donor to Pakistan, Europe’s leading power, and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Imran Khan’s government found a way to fudge the issue, and kick the ball into the court of the National Assembly. As the TLP returned to the streets last month, Imran Khan found himself in a pickle again. Even as it signalled great resolve to put the TLP in its place, the Pakistani government over the weekend quickly turned to the more familiar strategy of accommodation. Saad Rizvi and other leaders of the TLP were brought out of prison to safe houses in Islamabad and the government turned to senior Barelvi clerics to negotiate with them. The terms of the agreement between Islamabad and TLP have not been revealed to the public. Media reports suggest that the government has agreed to release Saad Rizvi and other leaders, withdraw all cases against the TLP cadre, and unfreeze their bank accounts. It is not clear if the TLP has agreed to give up the demand to expel the French ambassador. After decades of promoting and pandering to religious groups of one kind or another, the Pakistani state now finds that its room for manoeuvre has dramatically shrunk in relation to Islamist groups. But while the state has repeatedly bowed to the pressure from right-wing religious groups, it has acted ruthlessly against a secular movement called Pashtun Tahafuz Movement. While the TLP has been a violent force, the PTM, demanding self-respect for Pashtuns, has been utterly peaceful. If Saad Rizvi, who has been convicted of violence by the courts is treated with political deference, Ali Wazir, leader of the PTM and a member of the National Assembly has been jailed just for a speech. Instrumentalising religious groups for political ends at home and abroad has long been a convenient strategy for the Pakistani state. At home, it has used Islam to marginalise the moderate and secular political forces. Abroad, it has nurtured and deployed militant Islamic forces to destabilise its neighbours, especially Afghanistan and India. But today, Pakistan finds the religious took-kit difficult to control. The religious forces have acquired the power to challenge their creator — the Pakistani state. Although Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of the state, visualised a secular future for Pakistan, his successors steadily moved towards leveraging religion for political ends. An occasional call for the “modernisation of Islam” by General Ayub Khan or “enlightened moderation” by Pervez Musharraf has not been able to stop the diminution of the state in relation to religious forces. Pakistan’s meek surrender yet again to the TLP underlines how hard it is for a state to regain the authority that it has ceded to religious forces. Given the power of religion, most states find a way to live with it. But giving too much space to religious or other extra-constitutional forces inevitably weakens the state. For one, there is no end to accommodating such forces. Each concession compels the next. The power of religious groups undermines the much needed social and economic modernisation that most developing societies badly need. It also complicates the state’s pursuit of its national interests on the global stage. Pakistan’s support to the Taliban in Afghanistan and various jihadi groups in Kashmir have long been viewed as successful use of religion for foreign policy ends. Yet the permissive environment Islamabad has created for terror has also spawned violent religious groups that want to fight the Pakistani state. On top of it all, these groups have begun to weaken Pakistan’s ties to long-standing partners in the West — such as the US and Europe — and its neighbours. The deployment of religious extremism as a policy tool has also invited international sanctions and financial constraints. Islamabad’s trajectory is a self-defeating one that is best not taken by others. Sacrificing the state is too high a price for any political formation that wants to rule a nation.
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/imran-khan-confronts-tehreek-e-labbaik-pakistan-7603189/
آج ملک میں عام آدمی پریشان اور مایوس ہے، چیئرمین پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی بلاول بھٹو زرداری
چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری کا کہنا تھا کہ موجودہ حالات میں صرف جیالے ہی عوام کی آواز بن سکتے ہیں۔ کارکنان کو پورے ملک میں باہر نکلنا پڑے گا۔ کارکنان باہر نکلیں اور ملک کے مزدوروں، کسانوں، نوجوانوں، خواتین، اور طلاب علموں کی آواز بنیں۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ وہ اہلیانِ لاڑکانہ سے وہی رشتہ قائم رکھیں گے، جو قائدِ عوام شہید ذوالفقار علی بھٹو اور شہید محترمہ بینظیر بھٹو کا تھا۔ چیئرمین پی پی پی بلاول بھٹو زرداری یونین کاوئنسل-11 دودائی روڈ گجن پور میں جیالے منیر عباسی کی رہائش گاہ پہنچے۔ یوسی صدر اصغر عباسی اور جنرل سیکریٹری قدیر ڈومکی بھی پارٹی چیئرمین کے ہمراہ تھے۔ چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے دودائی روڈ گجن پور میں جیالوں کے اجلاس کی سربراہی کی، اپنے انتخابی حلقے کی سیاسی صورت حال، مسائل اور ان کے حل پر گفتگو کی۔ دریں اثناء، چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے عبدالمجید گاد سے ان کے والد جبکہ، میر عزیز چنہ سے ان کے چاچا کے انتقال پر تعزیت کی۔
پی پی پی چیئرمین نے علی ڈومکی سے ان کے بھائی، رشید عباسی سے ان کے والد، جبکہ تہمینہ تنیو سے بھی ان کے والد کے انتقال پر اظہار افسوس کیا۔ بعدازاں، چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری یونین کاوَنسل 12 محلہ غلام بھٹو میں پی پی پی لاڑکانہ کے نائب صدر آفتاب بھٹو اور سیکریٹری اطلاعات وقار بھٹو کی رہائش گاہ پہنچے۔ چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے یوسی 12 کے صدر غلام نبی بھٹو اور جنرل سیکریٹری عابد حسین بھٹو کی میزبانی میں ہونے والے کارکنان و عہدیداران کے اجلاس کی سربراہی کی۔ دریں اثناء، چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے راجہ بھٹو سے ان کے والد یاسین بھٹو اور اشرف بھٹو سے ان کے والد حاجی الہی بخش بھٹو کے انتقال پر تعزیت کی۔
چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری کا فدا حسین سانگی اور فوجی گل محمد سانگی سے الگ الگ ان کی والدہ کے انتقال پر اظہار افسوس کیا۔ اس موقعے پر پی پی پی سندھ کے صدر نثار کھوڑو اور سینٹرل ایگزیکٹو کمیٹی کے رکن جمیل سومرو پارٹی چیئرمین کے ہمراہ تھے۔ خورشید احمد جونیجو، ناصر حسین شاہ، سردار شاہ، ضیا عباس شاہ، سہیل انور سیال، نواب وسان، گھنور اسران، لیاقت آسکانی، فرحت سیمی سومرو، خیر محمد شیخ، اعجاز لغاری، سردار صفدر علی مٹھانی، شفقت سومرو، انور لہر، عمران جتوئی، وقار بھٹو، سرفراز کھوکھر، آفتاب بھٹو، کامران احمد اوڈھانو، شیر محمد لغاری، ماجد بروہی عبدالفتاح بھٹو، سردار محمد نواز شیخ، اصغر علی کچھی، عبدالباری عباسی، علی گوہر سانگی، مٹھل سومرو، آمنہ جمالی، شبیرا جوکھیو، ڈاکٹر سکینہ گاد، سفیہ شاہ جیلانی، بینظیر شاہ، شازیہ سومرو، زینیت بھٹو، علی گل ڈومکی، عبدالستار سومرو، حاجی قربان علی کورائی، آغا غلام علی ڈومکی، عاشق علی بروہی، عبدالغفار ملانو، زوار ریاض حسین شیخ، منصف علی بھٹو، مظہر علی بھٹو، رسول بخش سومرو، راحب جتوئی، آفتاب نیک بھٹو، گل محمد میرانی، غلام نبی بھٹو، حافظ محمد نواز بھٹو، اظہر علی بھٹو، اشرف بھٹو و دیگر بھی اس موقعے پر موجود تھے۔
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/25730/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)