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OP-ED: #Pakistan - From Army Public School Attack to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Amnesty

Abdul Basit

It has been seven years since the deadliest ever attack against young students in the country by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. On a bright, sunny, winter morning, 147 children were brutally massacred in the Army Public School in Peshawar. At that time, hardly anyone could anticipate that a few years down, the line Osama bin Laden–the founder of Al Qaeda–would be called a martyr by the Prime Minister on the floor of the house, Ehsanullah Ehsan “the mastermind of the APS attack” would mysteriously escape the invincible security, and the TTP would be considered for amnesty while the guardians of the APS victims would keep awaiting justice.

The APS attack on December 16th, 2014, was an attack on civilians, penetrating the security of a state institution, with an intent to massacre as many children as possible. The TTP claimed responsibility for the attack and called it revenge against the operation Zarb-e-Azb started by the military in North Waziristan the same year. Some in Pakistan later accepted the unfortunate incident as collateral damage.

The whole nation mourned the insurmountable loss, emotionally united against the terrorists, and even pledged to educate the children of the enemies. Yet, where it ended up is miserable. Pakistan could certainly do better provided that a comprehensive national action plan was implemented in the letter as well as the spirit.

For TTP, the idea of the state of Pakistan is contrary to Islam.

Since the creation of the TTP in 2007 after the Red Mosque miscalculation by the dictator Pervaiz Musharraf, the organization has launched numerous attacks threatening the national security of Pakistan. They have attacked civilians, politicians, army personnel, police, and even polio workers. For them, the idea of the state of Pakistan is contrary to Islam and hence they wage a terrorist campaign against the state to uproot the government structures. A vile ideology of TTP has fortunately not been able to win support from the masses but Musharraf’s offensive against the Red Mosque provided different extremist sections with glue to unite in the form of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. The cleric who was then found running away from the Red Mosque wearing a burqa was over-joyous at the Afghan Taliban’s conquest of Kabul. Waving the Afghan Taliban flags at the seminaries, he challenged the Pakistani state and dared the policemen to wait and see what the Pakistan Taliban would do to the state when the police went there to remove the flags of an unrecognized element in the capital city. Are individuals more powerful than the state? If the state gives space to extremists and lets them become stronger and gather support from the masses until they become a potential threat to the security only to be crushed by brute force, the chances of the approach becoming successful are minimal. Frankenstein monsters are hard to chain. Creating them for political goals is easy but disposing of them off is a messy thing to do. It is catastrophic. The mistakes must not be repeated.

Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan’s ideology has massive support among the citizenry. Unlike TTP, the TLP is an organic movement with mass support. The party sees itself as the kingmaker in the upcoming elections. As they gather in huge numbers every now and then disrupting the peace in the public spheres, some voices start coming out that force should be used against them as if suppressive measures can choke wide-spread ideas no matter how questionable their legitimacy is. Succumbing to TLP’s demands again and again, calling it out a proscribed organization one day and then embracing it the other day, sending its hereditary leader to prison and then welcoming him by flowers on the release, and showing crocodile tears on the damages done by TLP and then advocation of the same ideology by the office-holders only confuse the citizens and drain the public’s trust on the governance structures.

The radicalization wave that came up with TLP was arguably hitherto unseen by the country. The incidents like a Sri Lankan citizen lynched and burnt by a mob in Sialkot are an expected unfortunate outcome of such ideologies mainstreamed for political purposes.

During the cold war era, Pakistan was an accomplice along with the United States and the Saudi Kingdom in producing the jihadi ideology. That ideology backfired and Pakistan became a living hell suffering from religious extremism. It took years and immense efforts to control that crisis. The terrorist organizations are, however, still operating although Pakistan has seen relative peace in the last few years. But the threat is not all gone. As the Taliban conquered Afghanistan, other religiously motivated groups in the region also gained confidence. There are speculations that Pakistan was hoping that the Taliban in Afghanistan would use their influence in brokering agreements between the state of Pakistan and TTP, but lately, it seems the hopes were mere delusions. TTP has ended the ceasefire and the future talks are uncertain.

Giving amnesty to an organized terrorist network, which has the blood of tens of thousands of Pakistan and who do not believe in the constitution at all, merely on the idealism that they will become inclusive citizens at once, will not be helpful. The country needs serious revision on its policies at handling radicalization. The least it can do is to refrain from creating monsters like the mujahideen in the first place for they cannot be disposed of when the urge arises. They are costly liabilities, not assets. Also, make sure the public does not get hyper radicalized. Radicalization occurs fast while deradicalization takes time and huge efforts. The joint risk of a radicalized population in the form of TLP exerting its muscular Barelvism and a militant blood-thirsty TTP will be a big challenge for the state. For the most part, the state itself is allegedly responsible. Will it handle the forthcoming crisis responsibly to avoid the blame? One can only hope so.

https://dailytimes.com.pk/856305/from-aps-attack-to-the-ttp-amnesty/

US Has Paid A Heavy Price For Condoning The Bangladesh Genocide In 1971 – OpEd

By Arul Louis

American realpolitik has taken a 180-degree turn between 1971 and now, but Washington continues to pay a heavy price for the decision that drove it to virtually condoning the genocide in Bangladesh by Pakistani troops. The US under President Richard Nixon and his then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger tried in 1971 to develop close ties with China with barely veiled hostility to India, but Washington is now trying to build a strategic partnership with India, which it sees as an ally against China.

As Kissinger has said, the driving force behind the US failure to condemn the Pakistani atrocities in what was then East Pakistan was Washington trying to build a bridge to Beijing via Islamabad.Kissinger admitted in an Atlantic magazine interview that Pakistan used “extreme violence and gross human rights violations” to put down the Bangladeshi independence movement, but “to condemn these violations publicly would have destroyed the Pakistani channel” to China.

For their pipeline to Beijing, Kissinger, Nixon and the Secretary of State William Rogers disregarded the warnings by Dhaka-based US diplomats in what came to be known as “The Blood Telegram” about the “genocide” in East Pakistan and their denunciation of the US “moral bankruptcy” in failing to condemn the atrocities and the suppression of democracy.

The US went on to intimidate India that was inundated by millions of Bangladeshis fleeing the killing fields of East Pakistan by trying to use its diplomatic muscle and by moving the Seventh Fleet close to India when New Delhi backed Bangladesh’s Mukhti Bahini freedom fighters.

And there were the vulgar insults – revealed decades later – by Nixon aimed at India’s then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

US policy turnaround

For someone hailed as the master of realpolitik, Kissinger has in retrospect worked against the national interests of the US, paving the way for a massive challenge to his country by China, outmanoeuvred by Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and their successors.

As a result of the Nixon-Kissinger folly that made it an accomplice of the Pakistani crimes in Bangladesh, Washington is now facing a formidable rival in China, that built itself economically at the expense of the US and is trying to emerge as the dominant world power and a challenger to the world order, especially in the Indo-Pacific, To counter China’s power the US – under President Joe Biden and before him Donald Trump – is turning to India, a nation reviled by their predecessor, Nixon, as “repulsive” and ridiculed with racist and sexual vulgarities. Decades later as the effects of Kissinger’s China diplomacy haunt the US, Trump had India declared a major defence partner of the US and the bookend with it of democracies in the Indo-Pacific.

Biden has moved the strategic cooperation further making cooperation with India a priority for his administration as it confronts China’s aggressive behaviour from the Himalayas to the South China Sea and beyond. After their meeting in Washington in September, they said that because of the “growing strategic convergence, President Biden and Prime Minister Modi resolved to advance the U.S.-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership.”

A changed world

The world has also changed in other ways.

When the Cold War raged in 1971 with the Soviet Union and the US as the main protagonists, Moscow and Beijing were at loggerheads ideologically and were coming off prolonged border clashes in 1969.

The US was trying to pull China into its orbit to counter the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union’s rift with China was a factor in propelling Moscow towards close ties with India.

India and the Soviet Union had signed the Treaty of Friendship, Peace and Cooperation in 1971, which stopped just short of an overt military pact.

It said that if either of them was attacked they “shall immediately enter into mutual consultations in order to remove such threat and to take appropriate effective measures to ensure peace and the security of their countries.” Moscow was the main provider of arms to New Delhi mostly on concessional terms based on rupee trade for then-foreign exchange starved India. Now China is closer to the Soviet Union’s successor, Russia, drawn by their mutual antipathy towards the US. India, on the other hand, is drawing away from Russia and moving closer to the US and the West, the residual military purchases and joint manufacturing notwithstanding.

Economically, too, India and the US see the benefits from cooperation, while India’s move away from its vaunted pseudo-socialism has paid dividends.

While India pushes its Make In India agenda, the US sees value in diversifying its supply chain on mutually beneficial terms having seen the results of its over-reliance on China during the COVID-19 crisis.

Paying a price

The US has unequivocally backed India during the clashes with China.

The US and India have made several agreements on defence and strategic matters including the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA), Communications, Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), and the Industrial Security Agreement (ISA) and are working towards interoperability of their militaries.

But in the 1970s India’s brand of nonalignment with a pro-Soviet tilt would have made any cooperation with the US unlikely, nor would the US attraction to dictators like Pakistan’s generals. India, too, has paid its own price for the Soviet-branded nonalignment in economic terms, which in turn has impacted its strategic and diplomatic standing. In “The Blood Telegram,” which got its name from the US Consul General Archer Blood who endorsed their stand, the diplomats witnessing the genocide said they “fervently hope that our true and lasting interests here can be defined and our policies redirected in order to salvage our nationʼs position as a moral leader of the free world.”

Fifty years later, Biden may be trying to do just that even as the US pays its price for Kissinger’s realpolitik folly.

https://www.eurasiareview.com/18122021-us-has-paid-a-heavy-price-for-condoning-the-bangladesh-genocide-in-1971-oped/