Tuesday, December 21, 2021
EDITORIAL - #Pakistan - Fight Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan now before it’s too late
Nobody had taken responsibility for the suicide attack on a vehicle carrying ANP workers in Bajaur that killed two people till the time of writing, but it bore the fingerprints of TTP, which is clearly trying to make a statement by attacking soft targets as well as security personnel now that the window for peace is closed. Both Islamabad and Rawalpindi would no doubt remember that this is precisely how TTP began its strikes inside Pakistan last time; hitting something every few days till the attacks built a momentum of their own. Therefore, hopefully nobody would need to be reminded just what is at stake and how every moment that the state uses to consider what to do about its enemies makes them stronger and able to plan better.
The few exchanges that did take place in Kandahar and Khost revealed that the TTP high command was somewhat delusional. Not only did it expect the government to release hundreds of its members in custody, but also that it would implement TTP’s obscure reading of our sacred religion, reverse the FATA/KP merger, and promise to behave itself in future just for good measure. But when it was told that the state and constitution of Pakistan were already keeping with the letter and spirit of Islam, only those prisoners who have been through the deradicalisation process would be released, and all this would be possible only when TTP as a whole promised not to cross any more red lines, the whole thing just fell through.
Even if those within the government who thought these peace talks were a smart idea can feel good because they tried to give peace one more chance, the simple truth is that those that opposed these negotiations right from the beginning have been vindicated. And it’s a crying shame that it has taken the loss of innocent lives for that realisation to sink in.
The state must come to the understanding, once and for all, that it will have to end TTP and all it stands for if the people of Pakistan are to live in peace. And the time to do that is now.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/856981/fight-ttp-now-before-its-too-late/
OP-ED: #Pakistan - Nation in Delusion: A Weakening Writ of Law
Many Pakistanis – rather an overwhelming majority of them – were ashamed of what had happened to Piryantha Kumara. We also hanged our head in shame when Governor Salman Taseer was murdered by his security guard, Mashaal was brutally beaten to death within the premises of his University and a Christian couple set ablaze. We were also ashamed of the brutal killing of two young boys in Sialkot a decade or so ago.
We were also ashamed when a talented daughter of this helpless nation with bright prospects as an artist, painter, and calligrapher – Noor Mukadam – was brutally beheaded. We mourned these deaths, loathed the perpetrators of the crimes, simmered with anger, talked of the hydra-headed monstrosities of class hatred, religiosity, and the inhumanity that has poisoned our society, and toxified the mind of our people.
This helpless mourning continued for some time without spurring us into action to stem this madness and receded into the archives of our bitter reminiscences which no one wants to recall. We moved on to battle the new exacting challenges of life with the torturing awareness that all these brutal murders have taken a heavy toll on our nation tarnishing its image labeling it as an unruly crowd of angry, intolerant, and fanatic people, and depicting the land we live in as the most dangerous place.
We have not come to this pass all of a sudden. This class hatred, this religious fanaticism, this inhumanity existed, somewhat rarely, in the lands that constituted the federal structure of the new country. The rule of law, equality before the law, and stable law and order had secured various segments of the society, maintaining inter-faith harmony and equilibrium between sectarian factions. We inherited these secular laws and followed them for some good years keeping in check the religious bigotry.
We have sunk our country into a cesspool of foreign debts. We borrow and feed the elite and VIP culture.
After the overthrow of the legitimate Bhutto Government, General Zia, in a bid to create a constituency for his unlawful rule, began the haphazard Islamisation of laws of the country; sparking the dormant sectarian hostilities. For the recognition of his dictatorship by the West, he plunged the country into the American jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He mobilised certain religious factions and their seminaries for the recruitment of mujahidin and channelised the massive US and Saudi funds to them along with Afghan rebel leaders. The genie of religiosity once out of the proverbial bottle rapidly overwhelmed the society in his 11-year rule.
This religious laissez-faire attracted certain Muslim countries to fund and arm the sectarian factions promoting or securing their distinct faith. The violent sectarian demonstrations and bloody clashes have since been mocking the state writ and shaking hollow its very foundations. No subsequent civilian or military government has dared cull or cage this hydra-headed monster. Our state presents the picture of what the European countries looked like during the thirty years of the religious war from 1618-48.
We have a massive young population without proper education and skills and no hope for the future. The aristocracy– feudal and landed gentry, spiritual leaders and their sajadahnashins, civil and military bureaucracy–succeeded in capturing the state power and resources soon after the demise of the founder of the country and designed governing structures and state laws that helped keep intact their power and privileges and impose self-perpetuating apartheid in every sphere of national life -education, healthcare, neighborhood, travel, policing, court and law chambers and jails, jobs, trade; leaving the poor to bear the miseries of poverty and powerlessness, and the indignities slapped on them by the oppressive state laws and officials every day and every moment with simmering anger and hatred.
This anger is manifested in the hatred of the powerless against the powerful; poor against the rich; the worker against the worked for; the rugged against the well-dressed; the pedestrian against the car owner, the labourer against the manufacturer, and vice versa. One feels as if the whole society is sitting on a powder keg and needs a slight spark to explode. What contribution could we expect from the people faced with such social and economic asphyxia in building a healthy society? Their anger and hatred are exploited by clever religious and political demagogues for their ulterior motives.
The state is fighting its own battle of survival in the face of growing competition among its organs and institutions for more power, privilege, and share in-state resources. They owe their creation, powers, and perks to the aristocratic governing structures and state laws and are inherently against any change in the status quo. The governments find themselves helpless without the support of all the institutions of national power to initiate the long-overdue process of social and economic reforms and equitable distribution of state resources, thereby lifting the poor from the current social and economic asphyxia, reducing the powers and perks of the elite and doing away with the curse of VIP culture.
We have sunk our country into a cesspool of foreign debts. We borrow and feed the elite and VIP culture. We borrow and subsidize sick public sector enterprises. We replenish our foreign exchange reserves with remittances of Pakistani workers or dole-outs by friendly states and let our import bill inflate. We gauge our prosperity by the import of luxury vehicles, costly mobile phones, and the consumption of petrol. We ban the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol, but cannot stop the massive smuggling of luxury liquor by aristocrats. We cannot feed our people, and dare to have any population planning. We talk of Madina state but garland fanatic murders.
We are failing collectively to value our independence. We are failing to live within our means as a nation of honour and dignity. We are failing to rid our society of social, economic, and political contradictions and religious and sectarian extremism. We put up with corruption, hoarding, profiteering as the new normal of life, and tolerate many states within the state. Yet, we have a delusion of survivability.
Taliban recruits flood into Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan as the group works to consolidate control
Pakistan is opening a dangerous Pandora's box with the Taliban
Discourteous remarks about Afghanistan made by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at the recent Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting were an insult to the Afghan nation reeling from the Taliban takeover. In his remarks, Khan described the non-monolithic Taliban group as a predominately ethnic Pashtun movement, implicitly casting millions of Pashtuns as the Taliban’s adherents. The prime minister, meanwhile, said girls’ education is antithetical to Afghan values and went on to discuss “Islamophobia” in the West — an epiphenomenon supposedly linked to the recent refugee influx, which Khan wants to champion as a savior.
For Pakistani leaders, such calculated tirades are no accident. These recurring talking points are indicative of Pakistan’s long-running designs to create a new, false narrative about post-American Afghanistan. With the Taliban’s victory, Pakistan no longer makes secret what it wants in Afghanistan, a country which Islamabad now treats as an extension of Pakistan.
But perceptions matter. For decades, Pakistan has maintained a particular fascination for engagement with violent Islamist movements. The three Ms – mullahs, military and militants – have effectively hijacked the progressive vision of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, turning Pakistan into a de facto Islamic state with religion and military poisoning the state apparatus.
In the 1980s, General Zia-ul-Haq, then-military dictator-turned-president, enabled the Islamization of Pakistan’s military, which continues to this day. In fact, jihad, which forms a foundational element of the Pakistan army’s credo (Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabil Allah or Faith, Piety, Jihad in the path of God) has been a crucial part of state ideology.
Under Khan today, there is a new school of military thinking in which Pakistani leaders are openly reclaiming the state’s Islamic credentials and are unapologetically buttressing Pakistan’s Islamization agenda. Yet, with extremism resurging in the country, there is a visible gap between the deep state’s ambitions and the willingness of millions of local Pakistanis to accept such an imposed identity.
Similarly, inside Afghanistan, Pakistan’s deep state is on an organized march to transform the Taliban into "Talibanism” — a toxic blend of hybrid Deobandi ideology and a customized set of beliefs glued superficially together by Islamic Sharia. As such, Pakistan has constantly validated the Taliban as a vanguard for Afghanistan’s leadership and has weaponized its false Afghan nationalism, patriotism and suicidal jihadism. This ideology has rendered the Taliban a powerful and unmatched brand in which it offers a sense of belonging to unemployable rural Afghans with the ability and license for direct action.
Make no mistake, Afghanistan’s own distasteful historical past, rooted in the continuing competition between cultural religiosity and modernism, provides Pakistan the space and ammunition to exploit. This dangerous contest has often put the country at a clash with itself.
At present, a broad streak of political Islamism permeates Afghan society. Madrassa education is routine in the formative years across rural Afghanistan. Thousands of madrassas remain unregulated, and most operate under accidental mullahs and reactionary Islamic clerics. Worse, there is an unnatural fascination with martyrdom, which requires an enemy. That’s why the Taliban rulers want Islam as the basis of national politics, Afghan identity and legal framework.
As such, they are re-engineering the principles of Afghan nationalism to align with the Taliban’s ideological characteristics, which involves purifying their ranks and developing a national force that can fight and win.
To be sure, it is difficult to determine whether the Taliban will ever be able to run a non-ideological Afghan state. But by casting it as a Pashtun movement, Pakistan risks sparking Pashtun nationalism in more than 40 million Pashtuns who transcend well beyond Afghan borders into Pakistan.
Without a doubt, the Taliban – admired by Pakistani religious leaders, extremist political parties and militant groups – would increasingly exploit such nationalistic tendencies. As such, Pakistani leaders, who maintain their own India-centric nationalism, would selectively encourage the group to geographically limit such exploitation of nationalism to Afghanistan. In this managed chaos, Pakistan will provide political compensation to Taliban rulers for their concessions.
Nonetheless, the continuing phenomenon of whether there can ever be a constitutionally viable non-ideological Afghan state raises serious questions. The Taliban clerics are “originalists” in nature who seem to function under their own constitution, known as dastur, which describes the emirate as a desired state endorsed by the clerical council and the supreme court. To these clerics, the ultimate recognition comes from their own followers and fighters, not outsiders.
For Pakistan, and the Taliban’s pragmatists, this would ultimately create a challenge, who for now appears less concerned about cross-border terrorism and more about an unmanageable Taliban in bed with anti-Pakistani groups.
What’s more, there are internal concerns about radicalization within Pakistan’s own military ranks. For example, in Pakistan’s Punjab province, which provides the top-most recruits to Pakistan's army followed by Pashtuns, there are growing overlaps in recruitment drives between the army and militant groups in the province, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Even if the new military recruits are not extremist leaning, they hail from conservative families or areas where extremist groups pervade.
Meanwhile, the income discrepancy between the couple hundred Pakistani general officers and thousands of mid-rank officers is another source of internal tensions. As an established practice, Pakistan’s army provides subsidized housing and other benefits to those at or above the brigadier general level. Not only has it left scores of mid-rank officers, including colonels and majors, dissatisfied, but it has also reportedly raised alarms inside Pakistan’s military about the dangers of the so-called “colonels’ coup.”
With its politically-borne Islamic tendencies, Pakistan appears to be headed in the wrong direction. As the Taliban’s whisperers, Pakistani leaders may have calculated that the Taliban is an expensive enemy, but a cheaper partner. But by invoking Pashtun nationalism, which is rooted in the Taliban’s ideology, Pakistan is opening a dangerous Pandora’s box that would be hard to manage.