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Video Report - Joint Press Stakeout by FM of Pakistan Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and German FM Annalena Baerbock

With India Opting For ‘Strategic Autonomy’ The US Is Back To Wooing rival Pakistan – Analysis

By P. K. Balachandran

But commentators suggest that the US should shed its geostrategic approach and adopt a human-centric perspective if it is to succeed in Pakistan.

Since the United States is finding India to be a recalcitrant partner, given New Delhi’s penchant for “strategic autonomy”, Washington has reverted to its old policy of cultivating Pakistan, India’s rival in South Asia.

In the past, Pakistan had its uses for the US, and it could be useful now, but the South Asian nation will pose new challenges to the US that stem from its domestic situation as well as its international links. 

Pakistan is politically unstable and volatile, and is a hotbed of toxic religious schisms and extremism. Its close links with China, manifested in the US$ 62 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), will make it difficult for the US to ride roughshod over it. China has now supplanted the US as Pakistan’s chief external partner, though in bilateral trade, at US$ 5 billion, the US is number one.     

It is for these reasons that commentators on US-Pakistan relations have been advising Washington to reassess old ways and search for new approaches taking into account the changed ground realities.                

The US may be having short and long-term plans. At the moment, Washington’s aim is to convey to New Delhi that it can hit where it hurts the most. Although India has been having a long-standing dispute with China over the border, and a geopolitical rivalry has emerged, it is Pakistan that remains the bee in the Indian bonnet. It is Pakistan, and not China, which has primacy in India’s international and domestic politics. India is hell-bent on isolating Pakistan in the international arena on the issue of cross-border terrorism. In the domestic arena, an anti-Pakistan stand and not an anti-China stand that earns electoral dividends. Therefore, what the US does to Pakistan will have a greater impact on Indian thinking than its moves vis-à-vis China.  

Bilawal’s Visit  

Washington’s lurch towards Pakistan was evident during the recent visit of Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to the US. At a function organized by the Pakistani community, on September 27, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was effusive. Referring to the unprecedented devastation caused by the floods in Pakistan he said: ” We are here for Pakistan just as we’ve been during past natural disasters, both to meet the immediate needs and, as I said, looking ahead to rebuild.” Blinken pointed out that the US has marshaled over US$ 66 million in immediate humanitarian assistance. He also pointed that Pakistani expats and the US business community had together sent US$ 27 million in essential goods and services. 

“We will continue to stand by Pakistan, to stand by its people, today and in the days to come, because that’s what we’ve done for each other in both directions through much of our shared history. And we have worked together to confront global threats. We continue to work closely on counterterrorism issues,” Blinken said. 

However, he appealed to Bilawal to see the “importance of managing a responsible relationship with India.” Recognizing Islamabad’s close links with Beijing, he asked Bilawal to “engage China on some of the important issues of debt relief and restructure so that Pakistan can more quickly recover from the floods.”  

In his reply, Bilawal was equally effusive. “I absolutely agree that the Pakistan-U.S. relationship is not only resilient, we have stood the test of time.  And we’ve proved throughout history that when we work together, we achieve great things.  And I believe that when we don’t work together, then we fumble, then we falter, then things go wrong,” Bilawal said.

Army Chief’s Weeklong Visit

Bilawal’s visit was followed by a week-long visit to the US of the powerful Pakistani army chief, Gen.Javed Bajwa. This is a critical visit as in Pakistan the army is “The Establishment”, and the ultimate arbiter on domestic and international issues. On October 4, Gen.Bajwa met Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in the Pentagon where he was given an “enhanced honor cordon” with the national anthems being played.  

Bajwa was slated to meet the National Intelligence Director Avril D Haines, and CIA Director William J Burns and address think tanks. A meeting with Secretary of State Blinken was also on the cards.  

Pakistan and the US have been having close military relations since the Cold War when Pakistan was part of the anti-Soviet, US-led pacts like CENTO and SEATO. The US roped Pakistan into its post-9/11 ‘War or Terror’. But the two sides did not see eye to eye on the way the war was conducted. Pakistan’s plea that the war had made Pakistan a victim was ignored by the US which accused Pakistan of clandestinely supporting the Taliban and Al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden while taking millions of dollars from the US for the war against them. 

However, even when public opinion in Pakistan turned against the US, the Pakistan army kept its links with the Pentagon. When Prime Minister Imran Khan launched a tirade against the US, accusing it of plotting to overthrow him, army chief Gen. Bajwa did not endorse it.              

Washington had recently given Pakistan US$ 460 million to maintain the F-16 fighters it had given earlier. When India protested, State Department spokesman Ned Price said: “These (India and Pakistan) are both partners of ours with different points of emphasis in each,” thus delinking Pakistan and India.

Taking a softer stand on Pakistan’s anti-terrorism cooperation, the US State Department said in August 2022, that Pakistan “has taken some action against militant groups and UN-designated terrorist organizations in accordance with its National Action Plan against terrorism. However, the implementation of UN sanctions against these entities is uneven. The United States continues to urge Pakistan to take decisive action against these groups while seeking opportunities to work together with Pakistan in areas of mutual interest, such as counterterrorism and border security.”

Words of Caution 

Writing in New York Times Madiha Afzal of the Brookings Institution said that the US should “disentangle” itself from the Pakistan military. “While Pakistan’s military is perceived as more efficient than its civilian institutions, it has repeatedly shown that its incentives are not aligned with America’s. Pakistan’s dominant military has kept active the specter of potential conflict with India, and its intelligence services have cultivated relationships with an array of dangerous non-state armed actors,” she pointed out. 

Afzal argued that a “civilian-focused U.S. policy will help Pakistan begin to shift the balance away from its military and will, in the longer term, bolster Pakistan’s democracy. While that certainly won’t guarantee liberalism in Pakistan, it can in time curb approaches favored by the military — including relationships with jihadists — that have proved harmful for the region and Pakistan itself.”

However, Afzal warns that: “There are risks to this approach. The military and intelligence services in Pakistan won’t be thrilled about this downgrade in their status, and they may choose to retaliate by reducing cooperation in areas like intelligence sharing or by limiting access to Pakistani airspace for counterterrorism operations. Disengagement (with the military) also risks pushing Pakistan further into China’s arms, which is not inevitable.” 

In the mater of counter-terrorism cooperation, she pointed out that international watchdogs like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) would be more useful than unilateral US sanctions. FATF’s gray-listing of Pakistan in 2018 had prompted it to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba and other jihadist groups, Afzal pointed out.

Writing in Newslines Dr. Syed Mohammed Ali of Johns Hopkins University said that the US can create a more sustainable relationship with Pakistan if it transcends its “security-dominated bilateral engagements” and focuses on a “more sustainable, human-centric relationship.” The goal should be about “human security” rather more than “geopolitical security”, Dr.Ali said.

China Factor

In an article in Time on May 29, 2022, Oxford scholar Hasan Ali warned that the US would be up against a powerful pro-China factor in Pakistan. He pointed out to Bilawal’s comment: “I am particularly proud that all three generations of my family have been firmly committed to the Pakistan-China friendship.” 

According to Hasan Ali, the consensus across the political spectrum is that the future belongs to China, and with it, Pakistan’s own future. 

https://www.eurasiareview.com/08102022-with-india-opting-for-strategic-autonomy-the-us-is-back-to-wooing-rival-pakistan-analysis/

Renewed Sectarian Tensions Risk Radicalizing Crisis-hit #Pakistan

By Liam Gibson

Radicalization of the historically moderate Barelvi sub-sect and rapid growth of the local Islamic State chapter could trigger a new wave of inter-communal violence.

This year has seen Pakistan racked by political upheaval, a fiscal crisis, and the worst flooding in its history. There is a real risk of state failure and collapse of law and order analogous to the scenes of chaos that gripped Sri Lanka. Amid the current systemic shocks of the moment, a troubling longer-term trend is emerging that must not be ignored: renewed sectarian extremism.

A new report from the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group warns that new extremist undercurrents in the country are paving the way for soaring sectarian violence ahead. A fast-growing local chapter of the Islamic State and a new hardline group from the historically moderate Barelvi sub-sect have the potential to destabilize crisis-hit Pakistan further.

Research has linked mass internal displacement to radicalization, with refugee camps too often becoming hubs for recruiting displaced people into extremist groups. Islamabad will need to counter these trends lest recent turmoil sows the seeds of major insurrections in the years ahead, further destabilizing an already volatile region.Although extremist violence in Pakistan had subsided from the carnage of the late 2000s and early 2010s, data shows attacks are on the rise again in the post-pandemic era. Total terrorism-related incidents have already reached 449 so far this year, the highest count since 2017.The country’s internal dynamics are in flux as the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) reconfigure the nature of sectarian militancy in the country.ISKP is a local Salafist chapter of the Islamic State. Like al-Qaida before it, ISKP operates in the rugged mountainous frontier with Afghanistan, eroding state control over the already porous borders. The group does not recognize national borders, “Khorasan,” denoting a symbolic area affiliated with the Messianic figure Mahdi that covers parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and surrounding regions.

The ISKP has stepped up its battle with the Taliban for control of parts of Afghanistan this year and has instigated attacks in the southernmost areas of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In March, ISKP bombed a Shia mosque in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing at least 60 people.

It has spun up a media outlet, al-Azaim Foundation for Media Production, which has rapidly expanded from Arabic and Pashto to generate content in Urdu, Uzbek, Tajik, Hindi, Malayalam, and launched an English-language magazine, Voice of Khorasan (VoK). The propaganda aims to rally global jihadi recruits as ISIS did so effectively in Iraq and Syria.

While ISKP brings the threat of transnational Salafi jihad back to Pakistan, the domestic influence of the radical TLP is potentially more pernicious.

Pakistan’s extremist Sunni groups have historically been based among the orthodox Deobandi sect. Many, such as Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, gained ground during the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s, thriving under former President Zia-ul-Haq’s ultra-orthodox religious reforms. This led to a wave of Sunni-Shia violence in the 1990s and beyond. Over 4,800 Shias were killed in sectarian violence between 2001 and 2018, according to data from South Asia Terrorism Portal. The Barelvis, who differ in certain observances and constitute a thin majority in Pakistan, had served as a peaceful buffer group between Shia and Deobandi.Yet since 2015, the TLP has been carving out political space for a newly-radicalized Barelvi agenda. The group has also taken a strong anti-Shia line but targeted another sect, the Ahmadi, whose controversial claim to Muslim status has been effectively criminalized in Pakistan.The TLP has leveraged the highly-emotive and often subjective issue of blasphemy to justify organized vigilante violence. Blasphemy remains a capital offense in Pakistan, yet extra-judicial deaths often occur regardless of court proceedings. In December last year, a vigilante mob lynched a Sri Lankan factory manager who had been accused of blasphemy. Video footage showed the attackers chanting slogans propagated by the TLP throughout the violence.

The TLP’s rise to prominence in recent years has coincided with a rapid surge in the number of blasphemy cases in the country, with 2020 seeing at least 200 new cases alone. Former Pakistani counterterrorism officials have blamed TLP’s politicization of blasphemy for further spreading extremism among the public.

Pakistan has been battered by a raft of ethnic, regional, and religious divisions since its founding. Islamabad must now reexamine its policy options as renewed sectarianism risks eroding the country’s social fabric further.The Pakistani military strikes may temporarily quash terrorist cells, but such operations fail to counter the extremist ideologies that drive sectarian militancy. In some instances, these counterterrorist ops can result in unintended or unlawful killings which inadvertently generate sympathy for extremist groups, especially among marginalized communities.Islamabad needs more bottom-up initiatives that engage and empower Pakistani civil society to counter the spread of extremism, including those that prioritize education, women’s rights, social mobility, and economic empowerment of underdeveloped regions. This is especially urgent considering the recent tragic floods that have wrought devastation across much of the country.

Last month, Members of the European Parliament visited Pakistan, urging reforms on human rights issues, including the “misuse of blasphemy laws.” This comes as the EU is in the final stages of monitoring Pakistan’s preferential trade access to the EU market under the “GSP+” scheme, which eliminates duties on certain Pakistani products sold in the EU — Pakistan’s largest export market. Pakistan’s current GSP+ status is set to expire at the end of next year after which it will reapply.

What’s more, in June, the international terror financing and money laundering watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decided to keep Pakistan on its “gray list” of countries that need to improve measures to counter money laundering and terrorism financing, and plans to conduct an onsite inspection in Pakistan in October. Islamabad is keen to remove itself from the list and claims it has mostly complied with measures set by the organization. The re-emergence of radicalized groups in the country would be a further setback for Islamabad and attract more scrutiny and oversight from the international community going forward.

This raises the stakes substantially. The country is already edging dangerously close to default and can ill afford to be cut off from international lenders. Effective policy here will not only head off the threat posed by sectarian extremism but safeguard Pakistan’s access to the global markets it needs to pull itself out of its current economic malaise.

https://thediplomat.com/2022/10/renewed-sectarian-tensions-risk-radicalizing-crisis-hit-pakistan/

#Pakistan - Higher food prices fuel weekly inflation

The inflation, measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI), slightly rose 0.29 per cent week-on-week for the period ended on Oct 6 due to an increase in food prices, showed data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday.

On a year-on-year basis, the SPI posted an increase of 29.44pc largely driven by food and the highest-ever energy prices.

Before this, the highest ever year-on-year increase in the SPI was 45.50pc recorded for the week ending on Sept 1 and 44.58pc for the week ending on Aug 25, 42.70pc in the week ending on Sept 8 and 42.31pc in the week ending on Aug 18.The latest data shows that the SPI slightly went up on a week-on-week basis, mainly because of the increase in prices of tomatoes and onions and other vegetables.The average Consumer Price Index (CPI) based inflation will rise to an average of 23pc in FY23 from 12.2pc in FY22 due to higher domestic energy prices, flood disruptions, and the weaker rupee, predicted by World Bank in its October 2022 Pakistan Development Upd­ate: Inflation and the Poor.The SBP has been tightening its monetary policy to contain surging inflation and the rupee’s rapid depreciation. Since September 2021, the central bank has increased the policy rate by a cumulative 800 bps to reach 15pc, the highest rate since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Soaring vegetable prices due to damage to standing crops and a massive hike in electricity rates have also contributed to higher prices. The damage to standing crops will push up the prices of vegetables in the coming weeks.The International Monetary Fund said in its country’s staff report that the average CPI inflation was expected to surge to 20pc in the current financial year, while core inflation would also remain elevated due to higher energy prices and the rupee’s decline.During the week under review, the prices of 17 out of 51 items increased, 14 decreased, and 20 remained stable.In the food items WoW basis, the prices of tomatoes rose 27.40pc, onions 10.22pc, bananas 2.24pc and powdered milk 1.18pc.In the non-food items, electricity declined for Q 1 (64.23pc) and LPG (3.82pc).

On a year-on-year basis, the items whose prices jumped the most included tomatoes (305.60pc), onions (167.80pc), diesel (92.08pc), petrol (76.07pc), pulse gram (70.02pc), pulse masoor (64.65pc), cooking oil 5 litre (61.43pc), mustard oil (61.21pc), washing soap (60.68pc), vegetable ghee 2.5 kg (57.66pc), pulse mash (55.50pc), vegetable ghee 1 kg (55.37pc) and pulse moong (48.34pc).

https://www.dawn.com/news/1714027/higher-food-prices-fuel-weekly-inflation