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Friday, December 10, 2021
Will Pakistan Be the Next Country to Fall to a Taliban-Style Takeover?
By Hasan Ali
The military’s role in politics has emboldened the religious far right.Last week—in a bewildering display of public violence—a Sri Lankan factory manager, Priyantha Kumara, was lynched and set ablaze by a mob of his own workers in the industrial city of Sialkot, Punjab. Speaking to the media before their arrest, the ringleaders of the mob accused Kumara, 49, of disrespecting the honor of the Prophet Muhammad by tearing down a poster of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP)—a far right political party that was founded in 2015, with the express purpose of defending Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. Though the TLP has existed for only the past five years, the subcontinental tradition of protecting the honor of the Prophet goes at least as far back as 1929, when a young Muslim carpenter called Ilm-ud-din murdered a Hindu bookseller for publishing a satirical pamphlet that was seen as an attack on the character of Muhammad. According to the socialist historian Ammar Ali Jan, “The whole structure of this religious movement is built on the paranoia that the honor of the Prophet is being perpetually threatened, and they [the TLP] invoke this insecurity in order to do their politics.” In 2011, it was this same sense of paranoia that led to the assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who was gunned down by one of his bodyguards for taking up the cause of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman who had been sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy. When Taseer’s assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, was hanged in 2016, the TLP and associated movements turned him into another Ilm-ud-din—a lover of the Prophet martyred for his faith. According to the physicist and liberal commentator Pervez Hoodbhoy, it was at this point that the group was “co-opted” by the military, who used it to destabilize Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) government. In November 2017, the TLP organized a sit-in on the Faizabad interchange, the main highway connecting the cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad and demanded the resignation of then–Law Minister Zahid Hamid, whom the group accused of watering down the religious oath of office. “They were obviously put there by the military, because the military was seen handing out checks to them,” said Hoodbhoy referring to a video that surfaced at the end of the 20-day protest. Ammar Ali Jan echoes this point. “The TLP were part of the strategy and calculus for the silent martial law that we’re witnessing today,” he said. “But though the army believed they were just using them as proxies, they captured a certain pulse and became the fourth largest party in the country and after that they exceeded their mandate by attacking the military.” In December 2018, one of the founders of the group called for an insurrection against the chief of army staff, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, who was accused of belonging to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a religious movement deemed heretical by the Pakistani constitution. The subsequent crackdown on the TLP, in which hundreds of its activists and leaders were jailed, could not, however, be sustained for very long. In October 2021, the group positioned itself on the Grand Trunk Road, demanded the release from custody of its workers and activists, and called for the expulsion of the French ambassador in retaliation for President Macron’s refusal to condemn Charlie Hebdo after the French satirical weekly announced that it was republishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. In the clashes that followed, at least four policemen lost their lives, the main trade route of the Punjab was disrupted, and the authority of the state was challenged day after day until it finally capitulated to the militants’ demands. There is a lesson in all of this—one that should worry both the Pakistani military and its puppet government led by Imran Khan. An illegitimate rulership does not have the power to repel the incursions of the far right, which thrives on the absence of genuine progressive alternatives.During the 10-year rule of his successor, Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistani socialism was suppressed with almost surgical precision. Feminist politician Ismat Shahjahan told The Nation that “the progressive trade union movement was systematically dismantled and thousands of our comrades were killed during this period.” A military dictator with a religious bent, Zia understood that the best way to quell the left-wing activism of the future was to ban the assembly of student unions in universities. In the absence of these nurseries, and through the vilification of “liberals,” a political vacuum was created in which the job of standing up for the rights of ordinary citizens was inherited by groups that derived their authority from religion. It was the late Eqbal Ahmad who made the observation in these pages that in Muslim majority countries, “the power of fundamentalist parties recedes as democratic freedoms are partially or fully restored.” Sadly, in the 74 years since the Partition of British India, Pakistan has been either overtly or covertly ruled by the armed forces. Political parties have been persecuted, plurally elected leaders toppled and the media either silenced or kept under duress. All the while, the people have become poorer and the military establishment richer, with the result that the democratic environment has been so brutally curtailed that the most powerful challenge to the establishment—Pakistan’s oversized military—now comes from the only segment of society it is powerless to control. The religious right garnered a combined 5 million votes in the last general election. Those numbers will never be enough to bring them into power democratically, but in Pakistan winning at the ballot box is not the way to gain power. A street strength of a few million fanatics may not be enough to win an election, but it is certainly enough to seize control of the state. This is because the top brass of the military cannot rely on its own soldiers, many of whom come from the same strata of society as the religious right, to put down an insurrection launched in the name of God. For evidence, we need only look at neighboring Afghanistan, where an army four times the size of the Taliban could not be prevailed upon to defend the state. There, as in Pakistan, the country was being ruled by a brazenly corrupt elite that lined its own pockets while the population starved. According to the political scientist Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, during the Musharraf years the top 100 officers of the Pakistan army were worth somewhere in the region of £3.5 billion ($4.63 billion)—a number that is not likely to have come down since. This in a country with a GDP per capita of $1250, double-digit inflation, and an energy crisis that has left people incapable of heating their homes. The current situation is not sustainable and must inevitably lead to some sort of retreat. But for Pakistan’s military establishment, conceding space to the democratic process is not an option, because it amounts to an acceptance of civilian supremacy—a concept that has been anathema to them ever since the country was created. Since they cannot fight both religious and democratic forces at the same time, they have tended to concede space to the former instead of the latter, with the result that they have created a monster that is no longer within their control and one that might eventually send them on their way. The Pakistani Taliban, responsible for the deaths of 70,000 Pakistanis, are once again at the negotiating table with the governing hybrid regime. Now, with the emergence of the TLP, who come from the other major strain of religious extremism, the stage is set for an eventual confrontation with either or both of these pernicious forces. In the long run, a Taliban-style takeover of the country cannot be ruled out.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/pakistan-military-taliban/
China Undermines Biden’s Democracy Summit by Forcing Pakistan Not to Attend
By Paul D. Shinkman
Beijing forced an embarrassing moment at the high-profile virtual summit of global democracies by forcing a consequential ally not to attend, sources say.
Pakistan’s last-minute decision not to attend President Joe Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” this week despite a months-long campaign for an invitation followed intense pressure from China that it back out, U.S. News has learned, amid fears in Beijing that the administration’s attempt to rally world powers undermines some of its most closely held goals.
Chinese officials told their Pakistani counterparts that participating in the two-day virtual summit this week would be detrimental to their increasingly interconnected relations, particularly since Taiwan – which Beijing considers a renegade province of the mainland – was also invited to participate, a source familiar with China’s decision-making says on the condition of anonymity.
Though China has prioritized its economic and military partnership with Pakistan in recent years as a tool to effect its broader plans in Asia, Beijing ultimately considered its influence over Islamabad as the most powerful instrument it could wield to try to undermine Biden’s summit and demonstrate its outrage over it.
“They view this summit as a real poke in the eye to China, meant to try to create two spheres of politics in the world – one meant to be led by America and the rest is anyone else not in the U.S. camp,” the source says. “The invitation to Taiwan, they said, is extremely antagonistic because it is creating this impression that there is an alternative to the People’s Republic of China, and it is effectively one step closer to saying Taiwan is a legitimate nation – not part of the PRC.”
And Taiwan sought to capitalize on the moment. As Digital Minister Audrey Tang said before the virtual assembly, “Although Taiwan is a young democracy, it’s standing firm on the front lines of the global struggle with authoritarianism.”
The list of participating countries itself has spurred global debate, as some de facto democracies that have witnessed autocratic backsliding, such as Russia and Turkey – a NATO ally – were not invited while others, like Pakistan, were.
Though a contentious decision, some inside the White House reportedly saw Pakistan’s participation as a way to mend a broken relationship and pushed in recent months to accept its request for an invitation – a difficult decision following years of suspicion in Washington of Islamabad’s duplicity, particularly with regard to the war in Afghanistan.
Biden has been touting the need for a democracy summit since the presidential campaign. In a congratulatory tweet immediately following Biden’s election, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said he was looking forward to attending the summit, though Pakistan’s invitation at that time was far from certain. In fact, the two leaders have not spoken since Biden took office – a point of particular irritation for Islamabad.Then this week, Khan surprised many around the world with a snap announcement the day before the summit was supposed to begin on Thursday that he would not participate – nor would any minister from his government. His Foreign Ministry offered few explanations in its statement, saying, “We remain in contact with the U.S. on a range of issues and believe that we can engage on this subject at an opportune time in the future.”
The driving force behind decision-making at this level in Pakistan is often unclear, though several sources confirm in this case it appears Khan pushed the final outcome, not the top officials of the military who often overrule civilian leaders on issues of this consequence.“The army would have preferred to have attended the democracy summit, but they didn’t feel it was important enough to overrule Imran Khan,” a former U.S. diplomat familiar with the current situation in Pakistan says on the condition of anonymity.Chinese influence was important in this decision, the diplomat says, adding that Khan “feels he has been humiliated. Nearly a year in and Biden has not picked up the phone to call him. That’s becoming an issue in Pakistani politics.”
And Pakistan has ostensibly benefited greatly from its bolstered relations with China in recent years. Beijing’s signature Belt and Road infrastructure investments have focused heavily on projects in Pakistan, particularly two key routes that help connect western China to the sea. And Islamabad has benefited from a new intelligence sharing arrangement that U.S. News first reported last year.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., declined to respond to questions about its pressure on Pakistan with regard to the summit. Instead, a spokesman in an emailed statement blasted the very idea of the virtual gathering, saying other international criticism shows “how unpopular the U.S. ‘Summit for Democracy’ is and how much opposition there is in the international community to it.”
“The U.S., based on its own criteria, listed half the countries and regions in the world as democracies and the rest as non-democracies,” spokesman Liu Pengyu said. “This practice in itself runs counter to the spirit of democracy and exposes the U.S.’ true intention of weaponizing democracy, and using it as a tool and cover to advance its geostrategic agenda and repress dissenting voices.”
Pengyu added the summit “will only go down in history as a manipulator and saboteur of democracy.”
The rhetoric matches similar statements from other Chinese officials and a series of articles and op-eds plastered across China’s state news services in recent weeks. And Beijing has sought other measures to push back on the central idea of Biden’s summit – on Friday, it touted Nicaragua’s decision to leave the dwindling group of a dozen or so countries that recognized Taiwan and instead to formalize relations with China, a move Chinese state media lauded as “a 'heavy blow' to secessionists seeking U.S. support.”Despite its own political troubles, Islamabad would have had much to tout during the two-day summit, which offers a platform to rally like-minded countries and for leaders around the world to discuss how they can better improve their governance.
“Though a weak one, Pakistan is one of the most populous democracies in the world, one of a handful of democracies in the Muslim world, and the only nuclear-armed Muslim majority nation,” Uzair Younus, director of the Pakistan Initiative at the Atlantic Council, wrote in an analysis note on Wednesday, shortly after Khan’s announcement. “The Democracy Summit was a perfect opportunity for the country to highlight its own democratic accomplishments, how its people have bravely confronted dictatorship and authoritarianism, and how a consensus-driven process, as flawed as it may have been over the decades, has birthed institutions capable of governing a diverse, multiethnic society.”
“Over the last few years, there has been growing unease in Washington about Pakistan’s deepening ties with China, with some in Washington talking about how growing indebtedness to the Chinese means that Pakistan will be unable to make its own foreign policy choices in an era of strategic competition,” Younus added. “The decision to skip the summit will only reinforce these views, empowering those who think that it is not worthwhile to forge a deeper bilateral relationship with Pakistan.”
And its decision to succumb to Chinese pressure all but dooms any attempts by the U.S. to try to heal fundamental rifts with Islamabad – a particularly consequential notion at a time Washington needs Pakistani cooperation to manage its counter-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan. Instead, Pakistan appears to be among the latest countries that finds itself in an increasingly bipolar world and forced to choose between Washington and Beijing.
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-12-10/china-undermines-bidens-democracy-summit-by-forcing-pakistan-not-to-attend
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