Pakistan: Neither unwilling nor unable in Tirah Valley

By Zoon Ahmad Khan
SPEARHEAD RESEARCH

Tirah is a belt of valleys providing a convenient passage into Afghanistan, with a population of 1.5 million. Fertile for what Afghanis do best: opium, poppy fields have flourished in the region and the government has been for years trying to curb the epidemic. But the Tirah Valley people are slippery under the quivering thumb of the establishment since colonial times. It was in 2003 that the Pakistan Army entered the valley, that too after 9/11 and escalating Talibanization of the northern region when it was believed that Osama bin Laden could be hiding in one of these self governing regions.

For a month now, since March 2013, Tirah Valley has been making headlines. As over 300 militants have been eliminated and more than 30 army personnel have achieved martyrdom in less than thirty days. Due to fierce resistance, the military operation has gained momentum. Like the Swat operation, where Taliban had allied themselves with the local government promising better law enforcement and good riddance from the sloppy civil courts, in Tirah the emergence of TTP has also been gradual. Owing to poor infrastructure and isolation of the region (a tribal area that avoids foreign interference), news of the hundreds killed while resisting TTPs advancement in to the region, never reached mainstream media sources.

Three militant outfits are operating in the region presently: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Islam (LI), and Ansar ul Islam (AI) . The AI and LI have been battling with each other in the region for more than seven years over sectarian differences. When the LI joined hands with the TTP, AI reached out to the Pakistan army to protect its position against its adversary. It is noteworthy that the AI, a militant organization, has previously been banned for protecting the area from foreign influence (i.e. the government). How this support for the AI is any different from that of the Taliban back in the 1980s is not clear. For Pakistan, at the moment, fighting the Taliban is more crucial. What demons this war gives birth to can be dealt with later perhaps.

The TTP has not taken over the valley overnight, nor without assistance. Since last June, one step at a time the Tirah tribes have been coming under their fold. Even today, as the army marches against the Taliban with bursting force, launching aerial assaults to drive the Taliban out, few know the gravity of the situation. Few realize the dire consequences of this belt coming under full control of anti-state outfits. Thousands of the valley’s inhabitants have migrated out of their homes towards Peshawar. What will become of them and their families knowing the situation of IDPs amidst a fragile economy is another burden we are temporarily ignoring for a false peace of mind.

With three vital entry points: into Peshawar, Orakzai and the Khyber Pass (the main passageway for NATO supplies) the valley is an important stronghold for the TTP. With no road access, the army was initially only relying on aerial assaults. So far with scanty news, all we get a few days later is a death count of militants versus soldiers. Nothing about civilian casualties. Turns out we have an alternative for the drone strikes that have caused much discord between us and the United States. But the problems with an operation where only Pakistani blood is being spilt are manifold.

These quandaries can take the shape of a thought process. Firstly, Tirah was not above the regular drone drill. Rather the area has been a frequent target. Yet the LI joined hands with the Taliban, killed hundreds of civilians while fighting the local AI, took over the entire region over the course of a year. All of this while drone strikes were happening with unhampered discretion. Should this not make us question the effectiveness of drone strikes? The AI , temporary partner of the Government of Pakistan in this operation, is not our friend either. It is these temporary alliances with local militant outfits, and keeping our enemies ‘closer’ that has strengthened them to begin with. Before the Taliban took over completely, Ansar-ul-Islam were adamant that they could handle the situation. But with stiff resistance from TTP backed LI. Eventually the Pakistan army was forced to step in and save the region. The main question that arises from such situations is: why should we trust the security of such volatile and strategically important regions with militias who are not completely supportive of the government?

Initially when the wave of conflict erupted last month, media and ISPR reported that two militant groups were at war with each other and the death toll from both sides was being reported as “militant death toll”. TTP extended full support to LI, and AI was almost driven out of the region and increased TTP influence in the region was becoming evident. It was at this point when civilian casualties escalated and mass migration from the Tirah Valley started that the army stepped in. With General Elections only days away, it would have been catastrophic if hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of the valley had become IDPs. Additionally with Peshawar well within the range of rocket launchers the threat of TTP advancement in to the developed regions of the country had become too real. The AI-Army alliance is strategic and passing. Whether the army death toll includes the AI, or they aren’t dying at all is not certain. It is possible that the militant death include the AI, TTP, and LI, which would quite literally be true.

The new tagline for justifying drone strikes is ‘Unwilling and Unable’. The US claims that Pakistan is both, unwilling and unable to get rid of terrorists, and hence drones, are a final resort to secure their own national interest is justified. How they come up with new justifications for overstepping the boundaries and disrespecting sovereignty is fascinating. But after delegating the responsibility of keeping the terrorists out to anti-state elements, who haven’t pledged any loyalties to the region, what can we say about Pakistan’s sovereignty? Some argue that more than delegating authority the military and political establishments’ apparent absence was more about respecting the existing status quo that has been for centuries.

The expanding terrorism in the Northern areas can be solved not by drone attacks or killing the terrorists alone, rather by better law enforcement and presence of state sponsored security. The operation that Pakistan army troops are sacrificing their lives for concerns the US’ national security as well. After the drone method has proven ineffective and immoral both countries should look into alternatives. The US needs to decide: in or out? If out then they should completely rely on what the Pakistan army executes. But if they believe we are unwilling and unable then they must join in any battle against the Taliban, even if some blood will be spilt. But this would mean allowing US troops into our territory, and that is another breach of our sovereignty. And hence the dearth of solutions. As the army continues to sacrifice lives, while we acknowledge the courage it takes to execute such an operation, we must realize these lives and those of the civilians can be saved if preventive measures are taken. The upcoming government must get all local and foreign stakeholders on board and strategize better governance in the northern areas of Pakistan. The gun is only a temporary solution.

In search for a national terrorism policy

ZoneAsia-Pk

A country can never be fully prepared to meet the challenges that terrorism, be it of any kind or in any shape, brings. In the Information Age, methods and techniques of terrorism are continuously evolving and the danger keeps escalating. Pakistan faces a unique challenge, for it is the battlefield for fighting terrorists which have caused great human losses across the globe. Since 9/11 it has had to deal great pressure from western powers to curb militants who have targeted foreign nationalities and even Pakistanis. With an economy in distress and meager welfare facilities, all of which are plagued with corruption, insecurity and cases of terrorism have stretched thin the allocation of resources. However, policy makers and analysts feel some of this stress can be relieved if Pakistan deals with security crisis in a systemic and organized manner. Twelve years into the War on Terror and Pakistan still lacks a universal narrative on terrorism. The attack on 14 year old Malala Yousafzai on October 9th uncovered the political rifts in the Pakistani government over counter terrorism.

The world hurled its condemnation on the Taliban militants who targeted Malala, an act that symbolizes the existence of an oppressive mindset that violates basic human rights. Pakistani politicians reacted strongly, some calling for the immediate enactment of the North Waziristan Operation to eliminate the militants. MQM expressed great disapproval with Altaf Hussain urging the army to immediately begin the Waziristan operation. Repeated failure of dialogue with the Taliban has convinced him of the need for a military response. Although ANP and MQM do not see eye to eye on all matters, the former’s failure against Taliban in Peshawar caused it to support a military response. The ruling party, PPP, was not far behind in denouncing the attack. Its senior leaders including the PM vowed to root out extremism but they were hoping the Army or the parliament would take the initiate by approving of an operation. However, the Army threw the ball in the government’s court by necessitating its approval for any such action while resistance from opposition parties thwarted a parliamentary endorsement. The government finally decided to play safe by promising that such a decision will be taken if the need arises with the backing of the political and military leadership.

Even though all political parties criticized the attack to some degree or another, some parties chose to disagree with a military reaction against terrorists. The JI and JUI, for instance, urged the government not to misuse this incident to gain some political advantages and support for a military operation. At the same time, various conspiracy theories regarding the role of Malala as a spy and the wider interest of America in exploiting Pakistan sprung up. Significant opposition also came forth from Imran Khan, leader of PTI and the savior of Pakistan according to its rapidly growing supporters. He believed a military action to be premature which if carried out would aggravate the security crisis. Khan suggested a three point strategy: detachment from the American War on Terror, dialogue with the militants and as a last resort, military action. He particularly stressed on the participation of the locals in these decisions so that they did not feel alienated.

PML-N is a step ahead of many parties as they not only differ with other parties but their own members also have conflicting viewpoints. Although they have opposed the government’s plan for a military operation in Waziristan, their leaders haven’t explicitly favored dialogue either. PML-N members claim this to be a political trick to delay elections. Still we have Marvi Memon propagating a forceful response while Zafar Ali Shah, Khurram Dastgir and Saad Rafiq have been open to the option of cooperation as part of a multidimensional approach.

If this wasn’t enough, the matter of a terrorism policy was muddled with pro-Malala and anti-Malala discourses. Phrases like “You are either with the Taliban or against the Taliban” were being used to determines one’s loyalty to the state or the militants. A national terrorism policy cannot be simplified to just the Taliban, the drones or US intervention in Pakistani affairs. In fact they are the constituents of that policy.

A difference in opinion over the Waziristan operation should guide debate and discussion over other issues to eventually reach a state policy against terrorism. This is however only the first part of the process; the policy must then be implemented. Malala’s attack was most unfortunate but when seen in the context of the upcoming elections and worldwide outrage, it may be just the right amount of push needed to ensure that political parties come up with policy agreeable to all and sundry.

Afridi: whistleblower or traitor?

ZoneAsia-Pk

Shakil Afridi once again makes headlines with even more controversial statements. The doctor who headed a fake polio vaccination program was responsible for disclosing the hiding location of OBL to the US forces. The entire incident was a great source of embarrassment for the Pakistani government and especially the army. Rumors about ISI’s involvement with militants grew a spine.

Is Afridi a whistleblower or a traitor? Depends on which side of the fence we choose to stand on. For Pakistan Shakil Afridi is guilty of backstabbing his people. By working as a spy with the CIA, instead of helping Pakistan Army (equally involved, if not more, in the war on terror) Dr. Afridi has betrayed his people and nation on more than one level.

Let’s have a look at the background of this controversial interview conducted by FOX News, a news channel notorious for being biased, uninformed and presumptuous in its broadcasts. The interview, CNN claims, was taken inside Peshawar jail. For a detainee like Shakil Afridi who is ‘heavily guarded’ to have a chance to make such bold statements in the presence of guards is highly unlikely. The entire interview seems like a hoax. There is no audio or video footage available to the public yet. Furthermore, when contacted, prison official were unaware of any such interview.

Or perhaps Afridi, and Western media, are exaggerating the level of isolation imposed on Afridi, for even the most liberal democracies (like USA) have known better than to allow ‘traitors’ such liberties. We have the example of Bradley Manning, who was disallowed any contact with media, family or friends. Manning’s example opens us to a broader debate: where do we draw the line between ‘blowing the whistle’ and ‘backstabbing’ your country’?

The timing of this release is also very interesting. The news was introduced on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 which also happened to be the day when AQIP senior leader’s death in a drone attack was confirmed. A perfect way to exploit public emotions for more viewership, and support.

In his so-called interview, Afridi labored on and on about the brutal torture he had to bear at the hands of the ISI. I am pretty sure a traitor is not given the red carpet treatment anywhere in the world especially in the nation which Afridi loves and respects so much. Guantanamo Bay prison is well known for their techniques too like waterboarding. Just because the US chooses to torture prisoners does not make the methods acceptable. Human right activists have protested against interrogation techniques used by security agencies across the world. But let’s face it traitors are never welcome.

Shakil Afridi also stated that the ISI has links with militants including the Haqqani Network, and instead of taking punitive actions chose to release them. Haqqani Network was only recently placed on the list of foreign terrorist organizations by the US. By linking the Haqqanis to the ISI, Afridi has made a strong statement regarding the motives of our government. This is something that is bound to leave an impact on both Americans and Pakistani. Already a US Senator is propagating to shut down US aid to Pakistan.

Afridi also accused Pakistani government for eliciting US funds under the excuse of fighting in the War of Terror. Pakistan has lost too many lives, displaced millions of its people and suffered financially from this war. Having lost more than 35,000 civilians, 4,000 soldiers in the war, it is true that no other country has suffered more in this war against terror than Pakistan. If the war on terror is in itself disputed, then America’s own motives in this campaign are without doubt questionable.

Afridi’s part in the OBL operation is still fuzzy. He refrained from disclosing his recruitment in the CIA or the vaccination program, claims he was unaware that he was collecting DNA samples of OBL. But at the same time feels proud for helping the CIA “out of love for the US”. So which was it Afridi: Did you know or did you not?

The nation he expresses his love for so ardently could have smuggled him out of Pakistan or even arranged some diplomatic status just like the US did in Raymond Davis’s case. However, they left the “hero” doctor in Pakistan and only protested against his imprisonment. He claims to have helped the CIA against OBL. The bigger question is: was his loyalty to America or the cause of anti-terrorism ? Or just the money that we can assume he was getting for the job. Poor Afridi. Hit by a triple whammy. First used and discarded. Then identified and betrayed to add credibility to the US operation and now ‘ interviewed’ and confirmed as a traitor. Finally in tandem with this as if on cue we have the article by C.Fair in Foreign Policy magazine exhorting the US to declare Pakistan a terrorist supporting state.

Why is it that when US war crimes are leaked the man is reduced to impregnable confinement, for his words threaten ‘national security’ and the lives of millions. Is Pakistan less sovereign than the United States? Perhaps poor nations are only on the wrong side of the fence.

The worst is yet to come

By Brig Asif Haroon Raja

The US in pursuit of its strategic and economic objectives in this part of the world arm twisted Gen Musharraf in September 2001 soon after 9/11 and made him do its bidding. Pakistan forces were pushed into the inferno of war on terror which was not Pakistan’s war. To start with, flames were lit on two extreme flanks resting in Baloch inhabited interior Balochistan and Pashtun inhabited FATA. The course of flames was gradually channeled towards settled areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), then to other cities of KP and subsequently to major cities of Punjab as well as Islamabad. Flames of terrorism were stoked by CIA and FBI outposts established in 2002 with the concurrence of the ruling regime. ISI and other intelligence agencies were asked to take up a backseat and intelligence collection, collation and dissemination was taken over entirely by CIA on the plea that it had superior technological means.

The CIA then brought in RAW and RAAM agents to boost its strength and collectively gave birth to Pakistani Taliban, who later got organized and formed Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP) in December 2007. They were won over by providing them bagfuls of dollars and meeting all their weapons and equipment demands and also promising them that FATA will be made an independent caliphate and submerged with Pashtun belt of Afghanistan. In Balochistan, disgruntled Baloch Sardars of Bugti, Mengal and Marri were cultivated to start insurgency. They were lured by promising them independent Balochistan full of mineral resources and Gwadar Port falling in the path of envisaged energy corridor from Central Asia. About sixty Farari (training) camps were established in interior Balochistan and supply routes both from Afghanistan via Spin Boldak and Shahgarh in India were made operational to meet all their demands. Later on, several terrorist outfits like BLA, BRA and BLF came into being and their leaders were given asylum in Afghanistan and London.

While our intelligence agencies got busy in nabbing terrorists from all over the country and the Army got embroiled in fighting tribesmen in FATA and Balochistan, CIA and FBI helped by MI-6, RAW and RAAM agents got on with their job of destabilizing Pakistan from within. Besides sabotage and subversion by terrorists, drones were also introduced by CIA to further fuel terrorism. Shamsi airbase was used for the purpose. Sold to the idea of enlightened moderation Musharraf accepted the US advice to expand and liberate the media. It was then decisively penetrated by foreign powers to be able to promote their coined themes and to change perceptions of the desired audiences in Pakistan. India promoted its culture through electronic media and also took help of our media to hide its ugly face. All these processes which weakened Pakistan went on unabatedly throughout Musharraf’s stint in power till March 2008 and Pakistan’s sovereignty kept eroding. By that time all institutions of Pakistan including Army, ISI and judiciary stood discredited.

When the US realized that Musharraf had lost his popularity and would not be helpful in changing the perceptions of people from religious conservatism to secularism, and was not in a position to make compromises on joint Pak-US operations in FATA, or opening up nuclear and missile assets and placing them under a joint control mechanism, or reducing Chinese activities in Gwadar Port and Balochistan mineral projects, or shelving Pak-Iran gas pipeline and in curbing anti-Americanism, it decided to bring in Benazir and make a dream team of liberal parties. When Benazir started to act too independent, she was removed from the scene and handpicked puppets were given reins of power. They pursued Musharraf’s policies in letter and spirit and went a step ahead in keeping their patrons appeased. The Army, ISI and the judiciary however made recoveries by recapturing lost spaces and soon were able to re-establish their image and credibility.

The political leaders deeply engrossed in lot and plunder were slapped and humiliated but were also given blandishments and a free hand to milk the country and reduce it to a carcass. Their incompetence to govern and their corrupt practices were acceptable since they obediently served Washington’s interests. In order to cripple Pakistan’s economy and make it dependent upon US aid, rulers were told to put Pakistan’s neck in the stranglehold of IMF and to keep borrowing and keep spending lavishly.

They were told to ignore terrorism and ethnic cleansing of non-locals by Baloch insurgents seeking separation simply because they are seculars and pro-USA and India. Rulers were directed to use full force against militants in northwestern tribal area particularly against those who were anti-American and supporting Jihad in Afghanistan. Haqqani group based in North Waziristan (NW) is their chief foe. Ilyas Kashmiri outfit and Lashkar-e-Taeba are also on US hit list, and to a lesser degree are Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir. Dozens of other militant groups including TTP located in NW which are anti-Pakistan but not involved in Afghanistan do not bother USA.

TTP which has its tentacles in all seven tribal agencies as well as in settled areas of KP, Swat, Malakand, South Punjab, Pashtun belt of Balochistan and its long arm can reach any part of Pakistan is of chief concern for Pakistan. Several foreign agencies are providing massive funds, weapons, equipment, explosives, training facilities, guidance and manpower replenishments from Afghan soil to TTP since they desire this force to possibly defeat or as a minimum contain bulk of Army. But for foreign support in huge quantities, it would not have been possible for the TTP to rebound after its backbone had been broken in the two decisive battles of Bajaur and South Waziristan in 2009. Footprints of foreign hands were clearly seen in all the regions that were recaptured from the militants by security forces. In the Bajaur battle which raged from July 2008 till February 2009, large number of Tajik and Uzbek fighters used to supplement Maulana Faqir’s force. Even now Afghans are involved in Mohmand Agency and in Dir.

While launching of military operations by the Army in Waziristan led to emergence of Pakistani Taliban, two drone attacks in Bajaur Agency in 2006 instilled hatred against the Army particularly when October strike on a seminary killing 80 students was wrongly owned by the Army. Brutal military action against inmates of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafza including women and children in July 2007 triggered recruitment of young Taliban in a big way. It also ignited spate of suicide bombings in cities. Thereon, it became easy for the senior members of TTP like Qari Hussein to motivate young boys aged 12-16 years to become suicide bombers. The schemers then shifted terrorism to major cities particularly Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Lahore. This was made possible after the induction of Blackwater in 2008. Several security companies cropped up in capital cities.

Mumbai attacks on 26/11 were masterminded to deflect attention of the world from the atrocities committed by Indian security forces in Indian occupied Kashmir where the situation had become explosive, and to nail down ISI and to pave way for carrying out surgical strikes in Pakistan similar to drone strikes. New tactics involving double suicide bombers and group attacks were introduced in 2009. Drone attacks were intensified and so were target killings in Balochistan and Karachi.

In order to keep the judiciary subservient, the ruling regime was emphatically told not to restore the sacked judges led by chief justice Iftikhar. Shahbaz Sharif’s Ministry in Punjab which was relatively stable was brought down and Governor Rule imposed on Washington’s direction in early 2009. Restoration of judges and Punjab government was not to the liking of plot makers. After the enactment of Af-Pak policy in March 2009, which heralded the beginning of the final phase against Pakistan’s strategic assets and passage of Kerry-Lugar Bill, large number of under cover CIA operatives mostly belonging to US Special Forces made their way into Pakistan in 2010. Their inflow increased in second half of 2010 as a result of removal of all security checks by ISI and Special Police. Raymond Davis who had earlier on been deported due to his shady activities also managed to sneak back. By end 2010 an effective countrywide CIA-Blackwater network duly connected with militant groups and criminal gangs had become operational. Roadmaps leading to various defence installations and nuclear sites had been prepared.

This network provides the local militants intelligence and intimate guidance of marked target areas. Its ramifications came to light after the arrest of Raymond but also led to intensification of CIA-ISI rivalry and nose-diving of Pak-US relations. Till April, the militants targeted mostly soft targets in cities to create harassment and fear among the public and to accentuate problems of security forces and intelligence agencies. Mosques, worship places and markets were targeted to pitch Islamists against Islamists and defame Islam.

Helicopter assault on 02 May duly assisted by CIA base in Abbottabad was executed to achieve multiple objectives. The foremost was to restore declining popularity of Obama and US military in the eyes of Americans in particular and world in general. Second; lower the image of Army, air force and ISI that had risen high and to discredit the three institutions in the eyes of the public. Former CIA Director Panetta who had crossed swords with Lt Gen Pasha on several occasions had sworn to teach him a lesson. Third; embarrass Pakistan and to put it in a tight corner, leaving it with little space to defy US dictates.

Having created the desired effects through media and Congressmen, US high officials visited Islamabad and further harassed the already hassled leadership by conveying that Pakistan would from now on be judged by its acts and deeds. To give heart to the fainting leaders, the visitors gave a clean chit to them saying that they were not directly involved in hiding OBL but there was a support group inside Pakistan which had protected OBL. This certification was music to the ears of our leaders. Feeling relieved, they readily agreed to let CIA inspect the Abbottabad House compound where OBL lived, hand over the tail of the destroyed Blackhawk helicopter, launch an operation in NW and to conduct joint operations to eliminate terrorists. These concessions were doled out in violation of the spirit of 14 May unanimous resolution of the parliament.

Mehran Naval Base attack was executed on 22 May to dishearten the navy, to shatter the confidence of the people in armed forces and to completely demoralize the nation. Among several hypotheses, one of the assumptions was an attack conducted by Ilyas Kashmiri group. If so, he has been reportedly killed on 04 May fearing that he may spill the beans. Apparently 02 May and 22 May incidents were also intended to create divisions within forces by suggesting that there were sympathizers and supporters of al-Qaeda and Taliban in each service and intelligence agency and that there was an urgent need to purge such undesirable elements. Mehran Base attack is a prelude to many more suchlike attacks since it seems that the conspirators have now started the final destructive stage to hit hardened military installations including nuclear sites.

In continuation of ISI bashing, Human Rights Watch and western media has come out with another wacky story that the ISI was behind the unfortunate murder of eminent and bold journalist Syed Salim Shehzad. Had it been so, he would have been taken to KP or FATA and not towards Sarai Alamgir? It seems to be a clear cut case of Blackwater which is ever ready to exploit a situation whenever any person makes several enemies and becomes prominent. ISI’s plate is already full to the brim and would be mad if it buys another headache for itself. The situation assumes greater curiosity and mystification after expression of deep concern by high US officials like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton on his death.

While the people have not come out of the shock of two attacks in May, the foreign and local media is adding to their apprehensions by floating rumor balloons of despondency and trying to undermine the capabilities of armed forces. An impression is being created that the military is incapable of safeguarding our vital interests. There is a very small segment that still talks good of USA otherwise great majority distrusts USA and suspect that it will again strike Pakistan to denuclearize it. They are not convinced with John Kerry assurances that the US is not interested in Pak nukes particularly after NATO Secretary General’s statement that it is the collective responsibility of international community to secure nuclear assets of Pakistan.

Stories of our nukes falling into wrong hands have begun to reappear in western media. Despite multi-layered system of security evolved by Pakistan which is second to none, doubts are still being aired by vested interests that Pakistan’s nuclear program is unsafe and needs to be secured. Pakistan Army managed to get out of the deathtrap laid by its adversaries in Swat and SW. They have now prepared another deadly deathtrap in NW and are once again trying to lure in Pak Army with a hope that this time it will get trapped. It is only when major portion of our combat divisions get embroiled in the war in northwest that India will make its Cold Start doctrine operational on the weakened eastern front. Coming months are fraught with extreme dangers but our rulers are naively thinking that after John Kerry and Hillary Clinton’s visit worst is over. In my view the worst is yet to come.

While I am quite confident that our security forces would be able to thwart all hostile attempts made on our nuclear arsenal and delivery means and will also be able to safeguard the frontiers against foreign aggression, what I am worried is that we have still not identified our foes and taken preventive measures. Unless we guard against the designs of our foes pretending to be friends, we will not be able to confront the worst threat which is staring into our eyes and has got closer to our vital ground.

The worst is yet to come

By Brig Asif Haroon Raja

The US in pursuit of its strategic and economic objectives in this part of the world arm twisted Gen Musharraf in September 2001 soon after 9/11 and made him do its bidding. Pakistan forces were pushed into the inferno of war on terror which was not Pakistan’s war. To start with, flames were lit on two extreme flanks resting in Baloch inhabited interior Balochistan and Pashtun inhabited FATA. The course of flames was gradually channeled towards settled areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), then to other cities of KP and subsequently to major cities of Punjab as well as Islamabad. Flames of terrorism were stoked by CIA and FBI outposts established in 2002 with the concurrence of the ruling regime. ISI and other intelligence agencies were asked to take up a backseat and intelligence collection, collation and dissemination was taken over entirely by CIA on the plea that it had superior technological means.

The CIA then brought in RAW and RAAM agents to boost its strength and collectively gave birth to Pakistani Taliban, who later got organized and formed Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP) in December 2007. They were won over by providing them bagfuls of dollars and meeting all their weapons and equipment demands and also promising them that FATA will be made an independent caliphate and submerged with Pashtun belt of Afghanistan. In Balochistan, disgruntled Baloch Sardars of Bugti, Mengal and Marri were cultivated to start insurgency. They were lured by promising them independent Balochistan full of mineral resources and Gwadar Port falling in the path of envisaged energy corridor from Central Asia. About sixty Farari (training) camps were established in interior Balochistan and supply routes both from Afghanistan via Spin Boldak and Shahgarh in India were made operational to meet all their demands. Later on, several terrorist outfits like BLA, BRA and BLF came into being and their leaders were given asylum in Afghanistan and London.

While our intelligence agencies got busy in nabbing terrorists from all over the country and the Army got embroiled in fighting tribesmen in FATA and Balochistan, CIA and FBI helped by MI-6, RAW and RAAM agents got on with their job of destabilizing Pakistan from within. Besides sabotage and subversion by terrorists, drones were also introduced by CIA to further fuel terrorism. Shamsi airbase was used for the purpose. Sold to the idea of enlightened moderation Musharraf accepted the US advice to expand and liberate the media. It was then decisively penetrated by foreign powers to be able to promote their coined themes and to change perceptions of the desired audiences in Pakistan. India promoted its culture through electronic media and also took help of our media to hide its ugly face. All these processes which weakened Pakistan went on unabatedly throughout Musharraf’s stint in power till March 2008 and Pakistan’s sovereignty kept eroding. By that time all institutions of Pakistan including Army, ISI and judiciary stood discredited.

When the US realized that Musharraf had lost his popularity and would not be helpful in changing the perceptions of people from religious conservatism to secularism, and was not in a position to make compromises on joint Pak-US operations in FATA, or opening up nuclear and missile assets and placing them under a joint control mechanism, or reducing Chinese activities in Gwadar Port and Balochistan mineral projects, or shelving Pak-Iran gas pipeline and in curbing anti-Americanism, it decided to bring in Benazir and make a dream team of liberal parties. When Benazir started to act too independent, she was removed from the scene and handpicked puppets were given reins of power. They pursued Musharraf’s policies in letter and spirit and went a step ahead in keeping their patrons appeased. The Army, ISI and the judiciary however made recoveries by recapturing lost spaces and soon were able to re-establish their image and credibility.

The political leaders deeply engrossed in lot and plunder were slapped and humiliated but were also given blandishments and a free hand to milk the country and reduce it to a carcass. Their incompetence to govern and their corrupt practices were acceptable since they obediently served Washington’s interests. In order to cripple Pakistan’s economy and make it dependent upon US aid, rulers were told to put Pakistan’s neck in the stranglehold of IMF and to keep borrowing and keep spending lavishly.

They were told to ignore terrorism and ethnic cleansing of non-locals by Baloch insurgents seeking separation simply because they are seculars and pro-USA and India. Rulers were directed to use full force against militants in northwestern tribal area particularly against those who were anti-American and supporting Jihad in Afghanistan. Haqqani group based in North Waziristan (NW) is their chief foe. Ilyas Kashmiri outfit and Lashkar-e-Taeba are also on US hit list, and to a lesser degree are Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir. Dozens of other militant groups including TTP located in NW which are anti-Pakistan but not involved in Afghanistan do not bother USA.

TTP which has its tentacles in all seven tribal agencies as well as in settled areas of KP, Swat, Malakand, South Punjab, Pashtun belt of Balochistan and its long arm can reach any part of Pakistan is of chief concern for Pakistan. Several foreign agencies are providing massive funds, weapons, equipment, explosives, training facilities, guidance and manpower replenishments from Afghan soil to TTP since they desire this force to possibly defeat or as a minimum contain bulk of Army. But for foreign support in huge quantities, it would not have been possible for the TTP to rebound after its backbone had been broken in the two decisive battles of Bajaur and South Waziristan in 2009. Footprints of foreign hands were clearly seen in all the regions that were recaptured from the militants by security forces. In the Bajaur battle which raged from July 2008 till February 2009, large number of Tajik and Uzbek fighters used to supplement Maulana Faqir’s force. Even now Afghans are involved in Mohmand Agency and in Dir.

While launching of military operations by the Army in Waziristan led to emergence of Pakistani Taliban, two drone attacks in Bajaur Agency in 2006 instilled hatred against the Army particularly when October strike on a seminary killing 80 students was wrongly owned by the Army. Brutal military action against inmates of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafza including women and children in July 2007 triggered recruitment of young Taliban in a big way. It also ignited spate of suicide bombings in cities. Thereon, it became easy for the senior members of TTP like Qari Hussein to motivate young boys aged 12-16 years to become suicide bombers. The schemers then shifted terrorism to major cities particularly Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Lahore. This was made possible after the induction of Blackwater in 2008. Several security companies cropped up in capital cities.

Mumbai attacks on 26/11 were masterminded to deflect attention of the world from the atrocities committed by Indian security forces in Indian occupied Kashmir where the situation had become explosive, and to nail down ISI and to pave way for carrying out surgical strikes in Pakistan similar to drone strikes. New tactics involving double suicide bombers and group attacks were introduced in 2009. Drone attacks were intensified and so were target killings in Balochistan and Karachi.

In order to keep the judiciary subservient, the ruling regime was emphatically told not to restore the sacked judges led by chief justice Iftikhar. Shahbaz Sharif’s Ministry in Punjab which was relatively stable was brought down and Governor Rule imposed on Washington’s direction in early 2009. Restoration of judges and Punjab government was not to the liking of plot makers. After the enactment of Af-Pak policy in March 2009, which heralded the beginning of the final phase against Pakistan’s strategic assets and passage of Kerry-Lugar Bill, large number of under cover CIA operatives mostly belonging to US Special Forces made their way into Pakistan in 2010. Their inflow increased in second half of 2010 as a result of removal of all security checks by ISI and Special Police. Raymond Davis who had earlier on been deported due to his shady activities also managed to sneak back. By end 2010 an effective countrywide CIA-Blackwater network duly connected with militant groups and criminal gangs had become operational. Roadmaps leading to various defence installations and nuclear sites had been prepared.

This network provides the local militants intelligence and intimate guidance of marked target areas. Its ramifications came to light after the arrest of Raymond but also led to intensification of CIA-ISI rivalry and nose-diving of Pak-US relations. Till April, the militants targeted mostly soft targets in cities to create harassment and fear among the public and to accentuate problems of security forces and intelligence agencies. Mosques, worship places and markets were targeted to pitch Islamists against Islamists and defame Islam.

Helicopter assault on 02 May duly assisted by CIA base in Abbottabad was executed to achieve multiple objectives. The foremost was to restore declining popularity of Obama and US military in the eyes of Americans in particular and world in general. Second; lower the image of Army, air force and ISI that had risen high and to discredit the three institutions in the eyes of the public. Former CIA Director Panetta who had crossed swords with Lt Gen Pasha on several occasions had sworn to teach him a lesson. Third; embarrass Pakistan and to put it in a tight corner, leaving it with little space to defy US dictates.

Having created the desired effects through media and Congressmen, US high officials visited Islamabad and further harassed the already hassled leadership by conveying that Pakistan would from now on be judged by its acts and deeds. To give heart to the fainting leaders, the visitors gave a clean chit to them saying that they were not directly involved in hiding OBL but there was a support group inside Pakistan which had protected OBL. This certification was music to the ears of our leaders. Feeling relieved, they readily agreed to let CIA inspect the Abbottabad House compound where OBL lived, hand over the tail of the destroyed Blackhawk helicopter, launch an operation in NW and to conduct joint operations to eliminate terrorists. These concessions were doled out in violation of the spirit of 14 May unanimous resolution of the parliament.

Mehran Naval Base attack was executed on 22 May to dishearten the navy, to shatter the confidence of the people in armed forces and to completely demoralize the nation. Among several hypotheses, one of the assumptions was an attack conducted by Ilyas Kashmiri group. If so, he has been reportedly killed on 04 May fearing that he may spill the beans. Apparently 02 May and 22 May incidents were also intended to create divisions within forces by suggesting that there were sympathizers and supporters of al-Qaeda and Taliban in each service and intelligence agency and that there was an urgent need to purge such undesirable elements. Mehran Base attack is a prelude to many more suchlike attacks since it seems that the conspirators have now started the final destructive stage to hit hardened military installations including nuclear sites.

In continuation of ISI bashing, Human Rights Watch and western media has come out with another wacky story that the ISI was behind the unfortunate murder of eminent and bold journalist Syed Salim Shehzad. Had it been so, he would have been taken to KP or FATA and not towards Sarai Alamgir? It seems to be a clear cut case of Blackwater which is ever ready to exploit a situation whenever any person makes several enemies and becomes prominent. ISI’s plate is already full to the brim and would be mad if it buys another headache for itself. The situation assumes greater curiosity and mystification after expression of deep concern by high US officials like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton on his death.

While the people have not come out of the shock of two attacks in May, the foreign and local media is adding to their apprehensions by floating rumor balloons of despondency and trying to undermine the capabilities of armed forces. An impression is being created that the military is incapable of safeguarding our vital interests. There is a very small segment that still talks good of USA otherwise great majority distrusts USA and suspect that it will again strike Pakistan to denuclearize it. They are not convinced with John Kerry assurances that the US is not interested in Pak nukes particularly after NATO Secretary General’s statement that it is the collective responsibility of international community to secure nuclear assets of Pakistan.

Stories of our nukes falling into wrong hands have begun to reappear in western media. Despite multi-layered system of security evolved by Pakistan which is second to none, doubts are still being aired by vested interests that Pakistan’s nuclear program is unsafe and needs to be secured. Pakistan Army managed to get out of the deathtrap laid by its adversaries in Swat and SW. They have now prepared another deadly deathtrap in NW and are once again trying to lure in Pak Army with a hope that this time it will get trapped. It is only when major portion of our combat divisions get embroiled in the war in northwest that India will make its Cold Start doctrine operational on the weakened eastern front. Coming months are fraught with extreme dangers but our rulers are naively thinking that after John Kerry and Hillary Clinton’s visit worst is over. In my view the worst is yet to come.

While I am quite confident that our security forces would be able to thwart all hostile attempts made on our nuclear arsenal and delivery means and will also be able to safeguard the frontiers against foreign aggression, what I am worried is that we have still not identified our foes and taken preventive measures. Unless we guard against the designs of our foes pretending to be friends, we will not be able to confront the worst threat which is staring into our eyes and has got closer to our vital ground.

Territorial solidarity for Kashmir

Daily Times

For years now, people in Pakistan celebrate Kashmir Solidarity Day on February 5 in a bid to reflect their continuing commitment to the people of Kashmir. But if truth be told, it has become more of a ritual than anything effective. Every year, our leaders and people go through the usual motions without realising that they are not helping the Kashmir cause much with their rhetoric, not to mention that most of this ‘solidarity drive’ is confined by and large to Azad Kashmir, the northern areas and Punjab. The rest of Pakistan – Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – have little interest in this cause. The reason is that people in these parts of Pakistan are themselves fighting for their own rights. It was a bit disconcerting to see President Asif Ali Zardari asking India to give up the disputed territory of Kashmir. With due respect to the president, this is not realistic. Dialogue with India on Kashmir, among other issues, is the right thing to do, but to envisage India giving up Kashmir is a pipedream.

The problem with both Pakistan and India’s approach to the Kashmir issue is discounting the most important factor, i.e. the Kashmiris themselves. When it is convenient, both India and Pakistan play the UN Resolutions card. Those resolutions though restrict the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination through a plebiscite for “accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan”. There is no third option there – a circumscribing of the right to independence. Neither Pakistan nor India are willing to contemplate an independent Kashmir as it would mean that Pakistan would have to give up Azad Kashmir and possibly Gilgit-Baltistan while India would have to bid adieu to Indian-held Kashmir (IHK).

In the early 80s, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) asked for independence but later there was a split in the party after its leader Yasin Malik gave up the armed struggle in 1994. On the other hand, Pakistan-based jihadi groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen weakened the genuine case of the Kashmiris due to their terrorist activities during the 80s and the 90s, particularly after the 1989 uprising in IHK triggered off by rigged elections. Jihadist groups not only drove out the Kashmiri Pundits from Jammu but also alienated many Kashmiri Muslims. A recent example of this is the murder of two teenage sisters by the LeT militants in Sopore as a result of ‘moral policing’. After 9/11, our military had its hands full. The Kashmir militancy was put on the backburner. General (retd) Pervez Musharraf’s plan of demilitarisation on both sides of Kashmir was something that did not go down well with the militants who carried on with their activities, albeit irregular, without overt support of Pakistan’s military establishment.

Last summer there was an indigenous uprising in Kashmir against the brutalities of the Indian army, demanding demilitarisation and just rights. Deaths of innocent Kashmiris at the hands of the Indian army go unchecked to date. Even though the Indian government has, on the face of it, tried to neutralise the situation by sending in a team of independent interlocutors but that too seemed like a face-saving exercise and did not bear any fruit. The Kashmiris on the other side of the border want a repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) and less military presence on their soil.

Neither the people of Azad Kashmir nor those in IHK are happy with their situation. It is time for both Pakistan and India to understand that the independence of Kashmir is an idea that has increasingly found resonance in the streets and mountains of Kashmir.

Death of the ‘Imam’

By Shemrez Nauman Afzal
ZoneAsia-Pk

Amir Sultan Tarar AKA Colonel Imam

Brigadier Retired Amir Sultan Tarar is suspected to have died in Taliban captivity, presumably because of cardiac arrest, but suspicions and conspiracy theories indicate that his captors, the Taliban, may have murdered him because of non-payment of ransom by his family. However, the official quarters including Military sources as well as the Frontier Corps are finding it hard to verify the reports saying they have no confirmed information in this regard.

“We have been told that his dead body has been seen near Danday Darpa Khel area in North Waziristan Agency, but the news could not be confirmed nor could we get any picture of the dead body of Colonel Imam”, a senior Army official told this scribe when contacted. Similar remarks were offered by the FC sources.

Read Complete Article Here: Death of the ‘Imam’

Young Russians in search of faith are turning to Islam

By Will Englund
Washington Post Foreign Service

ALMETYEVSK, RUSSIA Rustam Sarachev should have had a hangover the first time he set foot in the central mosque here. He had wanted to throw a raucous party the night before, a send-off for himself on his way to Islam. But the guys he was with had mocked him for even thinking about the mosque, and had gone off drinking on their own.

In the Russian heartland, young people are discovering spiritual fulfillment by turning to Islam, the religion of their Tatar ancestors.

So here he was, regretfully clearheaded in the daylight, 500 rubles unspent on vodka and still in his pocket, heading up the steps of the big salmon-colored mosque that dominates one end of this minor oil city east of the Volga.

It was late September 2006, the beginning of Ramadan. As he looks back on it now, he remembers that he wasn’t sure why he had decided to come, or what to expect. He was 17, at loose ends, a self-described hooligan, a troublemaker, starting to get hardened by a life that was heading for the verges of the law, yet still vulnerable to the insults and disdain that seek out young men with no future here.

When he walked through the great double door of the mosque, he was taking his first steps toward joining an intense Islamic revival here in the Muslim heartland of Russia that is drawing particular strength from its young people.

Sarachev was 2 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed, 5 when the first war in Chechnya broke out, 12 on 9/11. His whole life has been an era of cataclysms, of an old world being torn apart, of war against Muslims, at home and abroad. Old identities, old certainties, have proved empty. And now he was joining others here of his own generation who are finding, in religion, an alternate authority. They are joining a global community, and at a time when great passions are stirring that community.

They learn at the mosque that Allah is punishing Iraqis for their heresies. They learn that 9/11 was carried out by American agents, or maybe agents from somewhere else, to provoke a war against Muslims. But they learn, too, that those who want to go and join the fight in Afghanistan, or Pakistan – and young men who aimed to do precisely that have passed through Almetyevsk – are in error. This is not the time. Islam needs them here, in Russia.

Their faith, in any case, is not ignited by politics. If it were, the Russian authorities would have cracked down on the mosque long ago. Sarachev came up those steps, on that day four years ago, not out of anger but in search of a way out of the pointlessness of his own life.

Built in the 1990s with Saudi backing, the mosque makes a strong physical statement. Inside, it features intricate woodwork, handsome red and green carpets and painstakingly assembled blue tile mosaics. On holidays, believers pack its services. During afternoon prayers, as they face to the southwest, toward Mecca, a window to their right might give them glimpses of a glorious pearly pink sky, otherworldly almost, even as the setting sun glints off the five golden domes of the Orthodox church across the way.

“I was shocked,” remembers Sarachev. “I couldn’t understand where I was. There were only young people, all around. They treated me so well. I’d never been welcomed like that before.”

He saw familiar faces. Almas Tikhonov, who had been a big partier and a roughneck, and then had dropped from sight, was there, praying. Sarachev was impressed by the way Almas looked; there was a compelling serenity about him.

In the days that followed, that picture lingered in Sarachev’s mind. He decided to go back to the mosque, and then again, and again. He had to endure the jibes of his old friends, and that was hard – but maybe it stiffened his resolve, too. As he began to see them in a new light, it made it simpler to give up the drinking, the hanging out on street corners, the sneaking off to a village where they could party all night, away from parents’ eyes. Sarachev eventually came to understand that the world is full of devils, and that the duty of a good Muslim is to overcome those devils.

And somewhere here, he knows, though he’s still working it through in his own mind, lies the meaning of jihad. “It’s a struggle against those who don’t believe,” he says. “It’s not a test. Jihad is a war.”

Sarachev is a Tatar. His ancestors converted to Islam in the 9th century, when Tatarstan was a powerful state in its own right. For the past 450 years, the Tatars have lived under Russian domination; proud of their heritage, they consider themselves the natural leaders of Russia’s 30 million Muslims.

But Sarachev’s forebears didn’t practice Islam the way he understands it today. Over a millennium, Tatars had developed a rich and complicated theology, comfortable with rational thought and mindful of the need to coexist with the Christian Russians. In Kazan, Tatarstan’s capital, the religious establishment endeavors to carry on that tradition today.

But Soviet hostility to religion left most Tatars with only a perfunctory sense of their own Muslim inheritance. Growing up, Sarachev remembers, religion meant grandparents and holidays, and little else. Yet even then, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arab proselytizers had come to Tatarstan, and they were preaching a different sort of Islam – starker, simpler, more puritanical. It has taken root here, and it appeals powerfully to young people who, like Sarachev, are drawn to its order and rules, and to its purity.

Slow acceptance

Almetyevsk, a city of 150,000 with no history to speak of – it was founded in 1955 – lies among low brown ridges, a four-hour drive east of Kazan. It’s not material poverty here that drives young Tatars to Islam, because oil and gas have brought prosperity, but a spiritual poverty in a country where every institution, from schools to hospitals to the police, is riddled with cynicism and corruption.

Sarachev’s parents divorced when he was young. His mother works at a pipe factory; Sarachev has a job there now, too, operating a hydraulic press. He still lives at his mother’s apartment.

When he embraced Islam he learned that everyone is born with an inner faith, “and it is the parents who turn a person away from religion.” Not necessarily one’s literal parents, he adds; it could be a metaphor for society. But it’s little wonder that his own mother and father were unhappy with his religious awakening and rejection of the culture they lived in.

“They didn’t understand,” he says. “There were fights and quarrels. But of course they had been very mad at me when I was getting home late and drunk.” So when they saw that that stopped, they started, slowly, to come around. Now, he says, if his mother sees him praying at home, she’ll close the door and won’t interfere. (She adamantly refused to be interviewed for this article.)

This year, for the first time, they gave him the money to buy a sacrificial sheep.

Nov. 16 was the day Muslims honored Ibrahim, who intended to slit his son Ismail’s throat but sacrificed a ram instead. After an early-morning service at the mosque, a large crowd moved outdoors to a parking area for buses. Now it was filled with farmers’ trucks, each carrying a dozen or so restless sheep. Under a damp sky, the chief imam, in a gray hat made from fetal lamb’s skin, presided. With him stood the head of the city administration, the veterinary officer, and plainclothes leaders from the security services.

The sheep – more than 600 of them, each hobbled with three feet tied together – were carried to wooden pallets laid out on the ground, where their jugular veins were slashed. Blood flowed down gutters that ran the length of each pallet. At times a butcher would have to sit on an animal for a minute or more after its head was half severed, as it kicked and heaved.

Then the carcasses were skinned and cut into three equal parts: one for the purchaser, one for his relatives, and one for the poor.

“Those who cut a Muslim into three parts are much worse than those who cut a sheep into three parts,” said the imam, Nail bin Ahmad Sakhibzyanov.

Sarachev went home happy, proud in the profession of his faith. The imam went home happy, too. It was the biggest slaughter yet in Almetyevsk.

Striving for faith

Sakhibzyanov, 53, studied to be an imam in what was then Soviet Uzbekistan. He says he dealt with the KGB agents who infiltrated religious schools in those days by telling them what they wanted to hear. What a man says, he suggests, is not necessarily what’s in his heart.

Today, this is what Sakhibzyanov says: that his goal is to help Tatars regain their traditional religion. Yes, he studied in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and yes, the school he runs uses a Saudi curriculum. But naturally he subscribes to the Tatars’ traditional Hanafi branch of Islam, he says; if he didn’t, his school would lose its license. He only wants to help the wayward Tatars, buffeted by centuries of Russian and Soviet rule, find their way.

His opponents in Kazan say his Islam is Hanafi in name only, that it otherwise bears the hallmarks of its Arab – or Salafi – origins. They say its focus on Islamic purity is the flip side of intolerance toward other Muslims, and narrow-minded zeal.

“Almetyevsk is the center of Islamic radicalism in Russia,” says Rafik Mukhametshin, rector of the Russian Islamic University in Kazan. “They’re trying to return to a mythical Islam. And they’re unpredictable because they refuse to learn from history.”

Almetyevsk, he says, is the most dangerous spot in Russia.

And yet part of Islam’s appeal for Sarachev was its promise of simple domestic happiness.

“I had a choice,” he says. “Either the street – alcohol and cigarettes and all that stuff – or a very pleasant atmosphere and pleasant people.”

Now, instead of partying, he plays on an all-Muslim rugby team. He drinks coffee instead of vodka, and where once he danced, now he likes to take walks. The job is just a job, but the pay allows him to spend convivial hours at the banya – the Russian sauna.

His new friends at the mosque have married, and they have jobs and kids and cars. Sarachev’s aim is to live the good, respectable life. He sees Islam as the way to achieve it.

That’s not exactly radical. But he knows, uneasily, that there’s more to his Islam than that. Faith is difficult and much is demanded. Islam has powerful enemies, not only the non-believers who wage war on Muslims but also the devil that lives in everyone. Error is widespread, and Sarachev is keen to avoid it, if he can only be sure how.

Sakhibzyanov tells his followers that the struggle is between the soul and the brain – between faith, in other words, and thought. The Muslim must strive for faith.

If that’s true, his detractors argue, it’s no wonder the imam’s Islam has such a strong appeal for those who learned their values on the street, in the with-us-or-against-us world at the margins of society.

But not every young worshiper here has that background. Guzel Sharipova, 23, was everything as a student that Sarachev was not; she studied chemistry on a full scholarship in Kazan, and graduated with highest honors. It was in Kazan that Islam found her, thanks to an Arab boyfriend. She was living with her great-aunt, Galima Abdullina, a retired schoolteacher, and began asking her about the prayers she recited. Eventually, she put on a veil.

“She was a girl who loved life, and suddenly she became so religious,” says Enzhe Anisimova, Abdullina’s daughter. “We watched her as a baby, and she was so beautiful, and spreading light. Now she’s so serious. Islam is very close to me, but that doesn’t mean that I accept everything. Something in it really attracts Guzel. But what is it? If she has found answers to the questions she was trying to find answers to, maybe that solved something for her.”

Sharipova says, “Everyone has a time to come to Islam.” She draws deep satisfaction from the rules it imposes. That frees up so much. She works now as a chemist – with her brain – but she gives her attention to her soul.

And where Sarachev hopes Islam will bring him modest comforts, Sharipova treasures the way it allows her to discard life’s vanities. “I’m trying to spend time on only necessary things,” she says.

New expectations

Rustam Sarachev came to the mosque knowing almost nothing about Islam. Now he knows that praying to ancestors, or saints, is the worst imaginable sin. He knows that being Muslim is more important than being a Tatar. He knows that the Russian special services don’t like Islam because the alcohol and tobacco Muslims reject are big businesses. He knows those same special services dread the day when all people turn to Islam.

His ancestors, in centuries past, drank beer and mead at weddings and often sought the intercession of their forebears in prayer. Would Sarachev consider them Muslims if he met them today – or devils? In his earnest way, he’s only beginning to deal with the difficult questions. He’s happy that Islam is helping him find the answers.

“Everyone eventually asks, ‘Why am I here? Why will I die? What will happen after I die?’ You gradually start to understand who you are and why you were created.”

It is, he says, to live a pure Muslim’s life. And, through Islam, all is spelled out. “The prophet showed people everything – from how to go to the toilet to how to run a state.” But there’s still so much to get straight in his own mind.

Last year, Sarachev got to know some young men who wanted to pick up guns and go fight abroad. They weren’t from the mosque. He thinks they had taught themselves Islam on the Internet. Sometimes, when they met on the street, they’d start urging him to go off and fight against Americans.

He says he was troubled by it, and as he describes it he still looks troubled by it. He’s struggling to understand even now what’s expected of him by his religion. He went to the mosque and asked the imams for advice.

They explained to him, he says, that these young men were mistaken. “Those people who say they want to fight, they’re like foam on water. There’s a lot of foam, but it’s useless.”

Eventually they went away, he doesn’t know where. Sarachev, yearning to dig deeper into Islam, is still uncertain about jihad, and the fight against devils. “It’s very complicated. I don’t want to be wrong.”

Sakhibzyanov knew about the would-be fighters. All Muslims, he says, know they are part of a larger community that must defend itself. But leaving Tatarstan to fight elsewhere is, he says, the wrong choice. “They are needed here.”

The imam is a savvy navigator in a potentially hostile culture. Islam, he says, is a peaceful religion, violence is a sin and the task for Rustam Sarachev and other young Muslims is to keep studying and deepening their certainty in its purity and oneness. And then more will follow, and then more.

Young Russians in search of faith are turning to Islam

By Will Englund
Washington Post Foreign Service

ALMETYEVSK, RUSSIA Rustam Sarachev should have had a hangover the first time he set foot in the central mosque here. He had wanted to throw a raucous party the night before, a send-off for himself on his way to Islam. But the guys he was with had mocked him for even thinking about the mosque, and had gone off drinking on their own.

In the Russian heartland, young people are discovering spiritual fulfillment by turning to Islam, the religion of their Tatar ancestors.

So here he was, regretfully clearheaded in the daylight, 500 rubles unspent on vodka and still in his pocket, heading up the steps of the big salmon-colored mosque that dominates one end of this minor oil city east of the Volga.

It was late September 2006, the beginning of Ramadan. As he looks back on it now, he remembers that he wasn’t sure why he had decided to come, or what to expect. He was 17, at loose ends, a self-described hooligan, a troublemaker, starting to get hardened by a life that was heading for the verges of the law, yet still vulnerable to the insults and disdain that seek out young men with no future here.

When he walked through the great double door of the mosque, he was taking his first steps toward joining an intense Islamic revival here in the Muslim heartland of Russia that is drawing particular strength from its young people.

Sarachev was 2 years old when the Soviet Union collapsed, 5 when the first war in Chechnya broke out, 12 on 9/11. His whole life has been an era of cataclysms, of an old world being torn apart, of war against Muslims, at home and abroad. Old identities, old certainties, have proved empty. And now he was joining others here of his own generation who are finding, in religion, an alternate authority. They are joining a global community, and at a time when great passions are stirring that community.

They learn at the mosque that Allah is punishing Iraqis for their heresies. They learn that 9/11 was carried out by American agents, or maybe agents from somewhere else, to provoke a war against Muslims. But they learn, too, that those who want to go and join the fight in Afghanistan, or Pakistan – and young men who aimed to do precisely that have passed through Almetyevsk – are in error. This is not the time. Islam needs them here, in Russia.

Their faith, in any case, is not ignited by politics. If it were, the Russian authorities would have cracked down on the mosque long ago. Sarachev came up those steps, on that day four years ago, not out of anger but in search of a way out of the pointlessness of his own life.

Built in the 1990s with Saudi backing, the mosque makes a strong physical statement. Inside, it features intricate woodwork, handsome red and green carpets and painstakingly assembled blue tile mosaics. On holidays, believers pack its services. During afternoon prayers, as they face to the southwest, toward Mecca, a window to their right might give them glimpses of a glorious pearly pink sky, otherworldly almost, even as the setting sun glints off the five golden domes of the Orthodox church across the way.

“I was shocked,” remembers Sarachev. “I couldn’t understand where I was. There were only young people, all around. They treated me so well. I’d never been welcomed like that before.”

He saw familiar faces. Almas Tikhonov, who had been a big partier and a roughneck, and then had dropped from sight, was there, praying. Sarachev was impressed by the way Almas looked; there was a compelling serenity about him.

In the days that followed, that picture lingered in Sarachev’s mind. He decided to go back to the mosque, and then again, and again. He had to endure the jibes of his old friends, and that was hard – but maybe it stiffened his resolve, too. As he began to see them in a new light, it made it simpler to give up the drinking, the hanging out on street corners, the sneaking off to a village where they could party all night, away from parents’ eyes. Sarachev eventually came to understand that the world is full of devils, and that the duty of a good Muslim is to overcome those devils.

And somewhere here, he knows, though he’s still working it through in his own mind, lies the meaning of jihad. “It’s a struggle against those who don’t believe,” he says. “It’s not a test. Jihad is a war.”

Sarachev is a Tatar. His ancestors converted to Islam in the 9th century, when Tatarstan was a powerful state in its own right. For the past 450 years, the Tatars have lived under Russian domination; proud of their heritage, they consider themselves the natural leaders of Russia’s 30 million Muslims.

But Sarachev’s forebears didn’t practice Islam the way he understands it today. Over a millennium, Tatars had developed a rich and complicated theology, comfortable with rational thought and mindful of the need to coexist with the Christian Russians. In Kazan, Tatarstan’s capital, the religious establishment endeavors to carry on that tradition today.

But Soviet hostility to religion left most Tatars with only a perfunctory sense of their own Muslim inheritance. Growing up, Sarachev remembers, religion meant grandparents and holidays, and little else. Yet even then, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arab proselytizers had come to Tatarstan, and they were preaching a different sort of Islam – starker, simpler, more puritanical. It has taken root here, and it appeals powerfully to young people who, like Sarachev, are drawn to its order and rules, and to its purity.

Slow acceptance

Almetyevsk, a city of 150,000 with no history to speak of – it was founded in 1955 – lies among low brown ridges, a four-hour drive east of Kazan. It’s not material poverty here that drives young Tatars to Islam, because oil and gas have brought prosperity, but a spiritual poverty in a country where every institution, from schools to hospitals to the police, is riddled with cynicism and corruption.

Sarachev’s parents divorced when he was young. His mother works at a pipe factory; Sarachev has a job there now, too, operating a hydraulic press. He still lives at his mother’s apartment.

When he embraced Islam he learned that everyone is born with an inner faith, “and it is the parents who turn a person away from religion.” Not necessarily one’s literal parents, he adds; it could be a metaphor for society. But it’s little wonder that his own mother and father were unhappy with his religious awakening and rejection of the culture they lived in.

“They didn’t understand,” he says. “There were fights and quarrels. But of course they had been very mad at me when I was getting home late and drunk.” So when they saw that that stopped, they started, slowly, to come around. Now, he says, if his mother sees him praying at home, she’ll close the door and won’t interfere. (She adamantly refused to be interviewed for this article.)

This year, for the first time, they gave him the money to buy a sacrificial sheep.

Nov. 16 was the day Muslims honored Ibrahim, who intended to slit his son Ismail’s throat but sacrificed a ram instead. After an early-morning service at the mosque, a large crowd moved outdoors to a parking area for buses. Now it was filled with farmers’ trucks, each carrying a dozen or so restless sheep. Under a damp sky, the chief imam, in a gray hat made from fetal lamb’s skin, presided. With him stood the head of the city administration, the veterinary officer, and plainclothes leaders from the security services.

The sheep – more than 600 of them, each hobbled with three feet tied together – were carried to wooden pallets laid out on the ground, where their jugular veins were slashed. Blood flowed down gutters that ran the length of each pallet. At times a butcher would have to sit on an animal for a minute or more after its head was half severed, as it kicked and heaved.

Then the carcasses were skinned and cut into three equal parts: one for the purchaser, one for his relatives, and one for the poor.

“Those who cut a Muslim into three parts are much worse than those who cut a sheep into three parts,” said the imam, Nail bin Ahmad Sakhibzyanov.

Sarachev went home happy, proud in the profession of his faith. The imam went home happy, too. It was the biggest slaughter yet in Almetyevsk.

Striving for faith

Sakhibzyanov, 53, studied to be an imam in what was then Soviet Uzbekistan. He says he dealt with the KGB agents who infiltrated religious schools in those days by telling them what they wanted to hear. What a man says, he suggests, is not necessarily what’s in his heart.

Today, this is what Sakhibzyanov says: that his goal is to help Tatars regain their traditional religion. Yes, he studied in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and yes, the school he runs uses a Saudi curriculum. But naturally he subscribes to the Tatars’ traditional Hanafi branch of Islam, he says; if he didn’t, his school would lose its license. He only wants to help the wayward Tatars, buffeted by centuries of Russian and Soviet rule, find their way.

His opponents in Kazan say his Islam is Hanafi in name only, that it otherwise bears the hallmarks of its Arab – or Salafi – origins. They say its focus on Islamic purity is the flip side of intolerance toward other Muslims, and narrow-minded zeal.

“Almetyevsk is the center of Islamic radicalism in Russia,” says Rafik Mukhametshin, rector of the Russian Islamic University in Kazan. “They’re trying to return to a mythical Islam. And they’re unpredictable because they refuse to learn from history.”

Almetyevsk, he says, is the most dangerous spot in Russia.

And yet part of Islam’s appeal for Sarachev was its promise of simple domestic happiness.

“I had a choice,” he says. “Either the street – alcohol and cigarettes and all that stuff – or a very pleasant atmosphere and pleasant people.”

Now, instead of partying, he plays on an all-Muslim rugby team. He drinks coffee instead of vodka, and where once he danced, now he likes to take walks. The job is just a job, but the pay allows him to spend convivial hours at the banya – the Russian sauna.

His new friends at the mosque have married, and they have jobs and kids and cars. Sarachev’s aim is to live the good, respectable life. He sees Islam as the way to achieve it.

That’s not exactly radical. But he knows, uneasily, that there’s more to his Islam than that. Faith is difficult and much is demanded. Islam has powerful enemies, not only the non-believers who wage war on Muslims but also the devil that lives in everyone. Error is widespread, and Sarachev is keen to avoid it, if he can only be sure how.

Sakhibzyanov tells his followers that the struggle is between the soul and the brain – between faith, in other words, and thought. The Muslim must strive for faith.

If that’s true, his detractors argue, it’s no wonder the imam’s Islam has such a strong appeal for those who learned their values on the street, in the with-us-or-against-us world at the margins of society.

But not every young worshiper here has that background. Guzel Sharipova, 23, was everything as a student that Sarachev was not; she studied chemistry on a full scholarship in Kazan, and graduated with highest honors. It was in Kazan that Islam found her, thanks to an Arab boyfriend. She was living with her great-aunt, Galima Abdullina, a retired schoolteacher, and began asking her about the prayers she recited. Eventually, she put on a veil.

“She was a girl who loved life, and suddenly she became so religious,” says Enzhe Anisimova, Abdullina’s daughter. “We watched her as a baby, and she was so beautiful, and spreading light. Now she’s so serious. Islam is very close to me, but that doesn’t mean that I accept everything. Something in it really attracts Guzel. But what is it? If she has found answers to the questions she was trying to find answers to, maybe that solved something for her.”

Sharipova says, “Everyone has a time to come to Islam.” She draws deep satisfaction from the rules it imposes. That frees up so much. She works now as a chemist – with her brain – but she gives her attention to her soul.

And where Sarachev hopes Islam will bring him modest comforts, Sharipova treasures the way it allows her to discard life’s vanities. “I’m trying to spend time on only necessary things,” she says.

New expectations

Rustam Sarachev came to the mosque knowing almost nothing about Islam. Now he knows that praying to ancestors, or saints, is the worst imaginable sin. He knows that being Muslim is more important than being a Tatar. He knows that the Russian special services don’t like Islam because the alcohol and tobacco Muslims reject are big businesses. He knows those same special services dread the day when all people turn to Islam.

His ancestors, in centuries past, drank beer and mead at weddings and often sought the intercession of their forebears in prayer. Would Sarachev consider them Muslims if he met them today – or devils? In his earnest way, he’s only beginning to deal with the difficult questions. He’s happy that Islam is helping him find the answers.

“Everyone eventually asks, ‘Why am I here? Why will I die? What will happen after I die?’ You gradually start to understand who you are and why you were created.”

It is, he says, to live a pure Muslim’s life. And, through Islam, all is spelled out. “The prophet showed people everything – from how to go to the toilet to how to run a state.” But there’s still so much to get straight in his own mind.

Last year, Sarachev got to know some young men who wanted to pick up guns and go fight abroad. They weren’t from the mosque. He thinks they had taught themselves Islam on the Internet. Sometimes, when they met on the street, they’d start urging him to go off and fight against Americans.

He says he was troubled by it, and as he describes it he still looks troubled by it. He’s struggling to understand even now what’s expected of him by his religion. He went to the mosque and asked the imams for advice.

They explained to him, he says, that these young men were mistaken. “Those people who say they want to fight, they’re like foam on water. There’s a lot of foam, but it’s useless.”

Eventually they went away, he doesn’t know where. Sarachev, yearning to dig deeper into Islam, is still uncertain about jihad, and the fight against devils. “It’s very complicated. I don’t want to be wrong.”

Sakhibzyanov knew about the would-be fighters. All Muslims, he says, know they are part of a larger community that must defend itself. But leaving Tatarstan to fight elsewhere is, he says, the wrong choice. “They are needed here.”

The imam is a savvy navigator in a potentially hostile culture. Islam, he says, is a peaceful religion, violence is a sin and the task for Rustam Sarachev and other young Muslims is to keep studying and deepening their certainty in its purity and oneness. And then more will follow, and then more.

How Pakistanis See US Afghan Strategy

By Stratfor

The White House on Thursday released an overview of the much awaited Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review ordered by U.S. President Barack Obama last year as a National Security Staff (NSS)-led assessment of the war effort. Perhaps the most significant (and expected) aspect of the report is the extent to which the success of the American strategy relies on cooperation from Pakistan. The report acknowledges recent improvement in U.S.-Pakistani coordination in the efforts to bring closure to the longest war in U.S. history, but also points out there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of Pakistani assistance.

Indeed, this is an issue that has been at the heart of the tensions between the two allies since the beginning of the war. However, the United States – now more than ever before – needs Pakistan to offer its best, given that Washington has deployed the maximum amount of human and material resources to the war effort that it can feasibly allocate. To what extent such assistance will be forthcoming is a function of how Islamabad is looking at the war.

From the Pakistani point of view, this war has been extremely disastrous. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 to deny al Qaeda its main sanctuary led to the spillover of the war into Pakistan. Al Qaedas relocation east of the Durand Line forced Islamabad to side with Washington against the Afghan Taliban and laid the foundation for the Talibanization of Pakistan.

Any Pakistani effort to effectively counter this threat is dependent upon the U.S. strategy on the other side of the border. Just as the United States is dealing with a very difficult situation where it has no good options, Pakistan is also caught in a dilemma. There are two broad and opposing views among the Pakistani stakeholders in regard to what the United States should do that, in turn, would also serve Pakistani interests.

On one hand are those who argue that the longer U.S. and NATO forces remain in Pakistan’s western neighbor the longer the wars will continue to rage on both sides of the border. The thinking is that since there is no military solution, Western forces should seek a negotiated settlement and exit as soon as possible. Once a settlement takes place in Afghanistan, Pakistan will be in a better position to neutralize its own Taliban rebellion and restore security on its side of the border.

Yet there are those who – while they accept that a continued presence of foreign occupation forces in Afghanistan will continue to fuel the jihadist fire – are more concerned about the ramifications of a premature withdrawal of Western forces. The fear is that a Taliban comeback in Afghanistan will only galvanize jihadists on the Pakistani side. At a time when it is struggling to re-establish its writ on its side of the border, Islamabad is certainly not in a position to exert the kind of influence in Afghanistan it once was able to in the pre-9/11 years.

In other words, an exit of foreign forces from Afghanistan will not restore the old arrangement. Islamabad is therefore in uncharted waters. What the Pakistanis hope for is some form of negotiated settlement that will help restore some semblance of security on their western periphery and allow for some measure of influence in a post-NATO Afghanistan. How to get from the current situation to that endgame state is quite opaque and what lies beyond is fraught with uncertainty, given the destabilization that has taken place in the last five years. What makes this situation even more problematic for the Pakistanis is that they feel that they are not the only ones who are without options. Their benefactor, the United States, is in the same boat.

US Diplomats Escaping Pakistan?

US bully diplomacy in Pakistan and blunders in neighboring Afghanistan have placed unbearable pressures on American diplomats.

SPECIAL REPORT | Saturday | 11 December 2010 | DailyMailNews.com
WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

PESHAWAR, Pakistan-The policies of the United States in Pakistan have rendered the lives of American diplomats unbearable in this country. Out of hundreds of foreign diplomats posted at embassies and consulates all over this nation of 180 million people, only US diplomats face major threats. This is a country where CIA-run drones have killed hundreds of innocent Pakistani men, women and children, and where major terror attacks fueled by America’s war in Afghanistan have killed more than 5,000 Pakistanis.

US diplomats are also under pressure because of growing resentment among Pakistanis toward blunt US meddling in Pakistani politics.

The latest victim of her country’s lopsided policies is Elizabeth Rood, Consul General of the US in Peshawar. Only two months into her job, Ms. Rood left Pakistan yesterday back to Washington where she expects to be reassigned to a station other than Pakistan.

According to a report by The Daily Mail of Pakistan, which quoted sources in the government of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, ‘Miss Rood, a native of Carolina in US, had previously tendered her resignation but it was not accepted by the US Government. Apparently, the reason behind her quitting her duties in the volatile region was life threats from the Taliban.’

Another report in The Nation quoted a spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad as saying Mr. Rood ‘has not resigned from her service, rather, she was called back to the States.’

Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, who led the US diplomatic mission in Islamabad after 9/11, became the highest-ranking US diplomat in Pakistan to abort her assignment and return home in 2002 just nine months into her job because of the sense of constant pressure. Since then, US State Department’s Islamabad station has seen one of the largest numbers of requests to move out elsewhere.

Ambassador Anne Patterson, who completed her term last month and left Pakistan, saw US diplomats bunker inside the embassy during her tenure. Patterson was roundly criticized for introducing a culture of fear and almost ending physical contacts between US diplomats and the Pakistani public. One of the highlights of her period is the introduction of a new service: calling up ordinary American citizens who plan to visit Pakistan for business or pleasure and warn them not to come.

Ambassadors of other western countries do not face similar difficulties in Pakistan, confirming that US policies generate hostility more than anything else.

Pakistanis are shocked at the level of US meddling in Pakistan, further confirmed by the release of secret US diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks website.

These insights have stunned even western observers who never expected Pakistani rulers to have allowed Washington unbridled access.

Encountering Anguish and Anxiety Across America

By JOE KLEIN

On a blistering evening in Phoenix recently, a group of prominent civic leaders met to talk about America. It didn’t take long for the conversation to get around to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. That’s what happens when smart Americans get to talking about politics these days. Topic A is the growing sense that our best days as a nation are behind us, that our kids won’t live as well as we did, that China is in the driver’s seat.

Peter van Agtmael for TIME / Magnum

This is a popular, perhaps even dominant, theme in the U.S. this season – but it doesn’t begin to describe the anguish that dominated every conversation about politics I witnessed during a four-week trip across the country. With a month to go before a crucial election and campaign ads cluttering the TV, people were in a heightened state of political awareness. I’ve covered more than a few midterm campaigns, but this one seems particularly fraught.

I talked to dozens of politicians running for office and hundreds of voters. The voters were, with few exceptions, more eloquent and unpredictable – and, of course, candid – than the politicians. They tended to be extremely frustrated with the national conversation as presented by the news media. They tended to be more anxious than angry – although the infuriated, fist-shaking third of the electorate, the Tea Party cohort, seemed a far more powerful and immediate presence in people’s minds than the President of the United States or his party. Republicans seemed more talkative than Democrats, and more precise about their solutions: lower taxes and less spending. “People say to me, ‘I don’t like the Democrats because I don’t know what they stand for,’ ” said Lisa Urias, a Latina businesswoman in Phoenix. “I tell them, ‘I hate the Republicans because I know exactly what they stand for.’ “

I found the same themes dominant everywhere – a rethinking of basic assumptions, a moment of national introspection. There was a unanimous sense that Washington was broken beyond repair. But the disgraceful behavior of the financial community, and its debilitating effects on the American economy over the past 30 years, was the issue that raised the most passion, by far, in the middle of the country. Many Americans also were confused and frustrated by the constant state of war since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. But for every occasion they raised Afghanistan, they mentioned China 25 times; economics completely trumped terrorism as a matter of concern.

Road trips are nourishment for the mind and the soul, if not the body (given the quality of roadside food); from Huckleberry Finn to The Hangover, they have been a classic American pastime. The trip exploded my personal Beltway Bubble, which turns out to be more a state of mind and a set of habits than an actual place. Driving 6,782 miles in four weeks, I was forcibly weaned from my usual engorgement of newspapers, magazines, blogs and books. I watched no more than 15 minutes of cable news per day but listened to music obsessively. I was cleansed and transformed, a news junkie freed from junk news, and able to experience Americans as they are – rowdy and proud, ignorant and wise.

If Pakistani Govt. Orders Our Surrender, Will The Military Comply?

By SHIREEN M. MAZARI – The Nation

9/11: The War To Cripple Pakistan

1. Sovereign Guarantees’ vs. Sovereignty
2. Will the Pakistani military exercise self-defense and respond to NATO attack?
3. NATO has no mandate in Afghanistan, only ISAF does

How far is the Pakistani state prepared to go to undermining its national sovereignty and the safety of the lives of its citizens? Since 2004 mainly innocent Pakistani citizens have been killed by US drone strikes inside Pakistan. This is beyond the list of those Pakistanis handed over to the US in renditions by the Musharraf government, the most high profile being Dr. Aafia. The claim that she was not handed over but was whisked away by US covert operatives reflects even more badly on that state of our security establishment – that they cannot protect their own citizens in their own country from being kidnapped by foreign agencies!

Coming back to the drones, the advent of Obama to the Presidency led to an immediate upsurge of drone attacks, and as the US has always maintained, these attacks have the permission and cooperation of the Pakistan civilian leadership and its military. As a result, despite a national consensus against these drones, they continue to kill Pakistanis and the government continues with its lies to the people on this issue. This month, September, has seen the highest number of drone attacks for any month since the attacks began in 2004, with 20 strikes recorded so far and the month is not yet over.

Accompanying the drone attacks has been the growing presence of US overt and covert operatives across the length and breadth of Pakistan. This includes not only US Special Forces personnel, but also CIA, FBI operatives and the worse of the lot – the private contractors DynCorp and Xe (formerly Blackwater) aided and abetted by Pakistani mercenaries. And, not a squeak of protest from Pakistani officialdom. It is as if the whole state machinery has become an amalgam of mercenaries selling out Pakistan and its people.

The argument from the present political government is that they are merely implementing the sovereign guarantees given by the Musharraf regime to the US, but this is not plausible because the same government has also been claiming it is undoing the dictatorial legacies of the Musharraf government. In any case, how can this democratically elected government abide by sovereign guarantees to allow the killing of its own people? This is not to deny the presence of militants and even terrorists but they must be dealt with by our own people and under the law of the land. The state and government cannot abdicate their own responsibility towards its citizens – especially not a democratic government that has come to power – as they never tire of telling us these days – by a mandate from the people.

Worse still is, killing someone simply on suspicion of being a potential militant. But then the President’s remarks on the collateral damage being done by drones, as cited in Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, says it all for the current political dispensation.

PAKISTANI MILITARY’S ROLE

As for the military, its justification of not protecting its citizens and territory against attacks by the US military in the form of drone attacks is even more absurd – that they are simply following orders of the civilian government. What instructions were they following in Musharraf’s times? In any case, this country sacrifices a lot to sustain a heavy defense budget so that its armed forces are given the best of everything. But in return they expect this military to defend its borders and its citizens from external military attacks – not to support them and turn on its own people under external diktat.

The armed forces may argue that they act on the directions of the federal government as directed under Article 245 of the Constitution which states: “The armed forces shall, under the directions of the federal government, defend Pakistan against external aggression or threat of war …”

So the questions that arise for us citizens are:

1. If the federal government tells the armed forces to allow foreign aggression against the country, will the armed forces comply? Is that what is happening right now?
2. Can the federal government legally take such a step? If so, who will defend the country against foreign aggression in the final analysis?

Incidentally, while many of us naively assumed the armed forces took an oath to defend Pakistan and its territory from its enemies and so on, when one sees the actual oath of the armed forces in Schedule III of the Constitution, it says nothing of the sort at all – they take an oath to defend the Constitution of Pakistan and not to indulge in any political activity – but nowhere are the words defense of territory or people in the oath!

Frankly, after examining Article 245 and the armed forces oath, as a citizen of Pakistan I do not feel as secure as I thought I was because tomorrow if the federal government orders the military to hand over our defense to an external power and even our nuclear assets, where will we be?

These issues are critical now, because with the complicity of the Pakistani state, the US drone attacks are not the only external aggression we are now facing. NATO has decided to target Pakistanis in our own territory and their helicopter gunships have been having an open season on the FATA people. Some whimpering from the Pakistani state has been heard but we still have to wait and see whether our defense forces will defend our borders against this expansion of external military aggression against Pakistan and its people.

Ironically, NATO has defended its forays into Pakistan as “right of self-defense”, while the Pakistanis seem to have no such right on their own territory!

To confuse the issue, NATO is using the reference of ISAF and a UN mandate, when we all know that ISAF is not NATO and that NATO forcibly grabbed the ISAF UN mandate. The question of its legitimacy in the context of Afghanistan is critical because it has been expanding its mandate and operational milieu ever since the end of bipolarity.

So, why should there be an issue of its legitimacy within the context of Afghanistan? Because it is an out-of-area operation. NATO still remains, in legal terms, a collective defense organization in terms of its legitimacy through the UN system – under Chapter VIII, Articles 52 and 53, as well as Chapter VII’s notion of collective self-defense as embodied in Article 51, which provides a very clear and limited framework for collective defense organizations. Regional collective defense organizations need to operate in the specific region of their membership since decision-making is restricted to this membership. Given the continuing European-Atlantic membership of NATO, it is somewhat disturbing to see NATO transforming itself from a collective defense organization (Article 5 of the NATO Charter is surely in the context of collective defense?) to a collective security organization to serve the interests of its membership or perhaps future “coalitions of the willing”. There is no legitimacy for any collective security organization other than the UN with its universal membership.

Even within the context of regional organizations, actions have to have a UN mandate and this is where the case of Afghanistan is unclear. Post-9/11, the UN Security Council, through Resolution 1386 (December 2001), sanctioned the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan. As stipulated in the Bonn Agreement of December 2001, the progressive expansion of the ISAF to other urban centers and other areas beyond Kabul was duly approved through follow-on UNSC resolutions.
So, where did NATO get into ISAF? Did the UNSC initiate NATO’s involvement or did NATO present a fait accompli to the UN Secretary General?

What is available on record is that NATO informed the UN Secretary General, through a letter dated October 2, 2003, from its Secretary General that on August 11, 2003, NATO had assumed “strategic command, control and coordination of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).” This was followed by another letter from the NATO Secretary General to the UN SG informing the latter of the North Atlantic Council’s agreement on a “longer-term strategy for NATO in its International Assistance Force (ISAF) role in Afghanistan.”

Both these letters were sent to the President of the UNSC by the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on October 7 with the request that they be brought to the attention of the UNSC. So, effectively NATO presented the UNSC with a fait accompli – which is why its presence in Afghanistan is legally questionable.

Meanwhile, for Pakistan the basic question that its civil and military leaders must answer is: How far will the state compromise the safety of its people and its own sovereignty to fulfill the so-called “sovereign guarantees” to the US?

No method to the madness

By Yousuf Nazar

More than one trillion dollars and nine years later the alleged and self-confessed master mind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has not been convicted. Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zahwari, and Mullah Omar have not been caught, dead or alive; the Talibans instead of being eliminated are set to take over Kabul again, and Pakistan which hardly had a Taliban presence on September 11, 2001 has been rocked by bomb blasts and has had its worst year of violence since 2001. And Americans still cannot see what the problem is?

But then if their policies had a bit of wisdom, we never would have had Vietnam, Cambodia would not have been ruined, Shah of Iran would never have been allowed to suppress dissent, Afghanistan would not have been abandoned after 1989, and a just settlement of the Palestine conflict would have been achieved. It is easy to forget lessons of history in the confusion and noise of day-to-day reporting and in the age of 30 second sound bites of electronic media.

And it is ok for much over-rated Newsweek and its editor to declare Pakistan as the most dangerous country and the home of Al Qaeda and confess, without much regret or shame, three years later that Al Qaeda is not really that deadly a threat.

I would like to believe this sensational bit of journalism had little to do with the fact that Newsweek magazine had been making losses for years. As of 2003, worldwide circulation was more than 4 million, including 2.7 million in the U.S; however as of 2010 it is down to 1.5 million. The financial results for 2009 as reported by the Washington Post showed that advertising revenue for Newsweek was down 37% in 2009 and the magazine division reported an operating loss for 2009 of $29.3 million compared to a loss of $16 million in 2008. During the magazine’s first quarter of 2010, it lost nearly $11 million. By May 2010, Newsweek was said to be up for sale. The magazine was sold to audio pioneer Sidney Harman for just $1 on August 2, 2010.

Fareed Zakaria, then a Newsweek columnist and editor of Newsweek International, attended a secret meeting on November 29, 2001 with a dozen policy makers, Middle East experts and members of influential policy research organizations to produce a report for President George W. Bush and his cabinet outlining a strategy for dealing with Afghanistan and the Middle East in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. The meeting was held at the request of Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense. The unusual presence of journalists at such a strategy meeting was revealed in Bob Woodward’s 2006 book State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III.

In the May 9, 2005, issue of Newsweek, an article by reporter Michael Isikoff stated that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay “in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur’an down a toilet. The magazine later revealed that the anonymous source behind the allegation could not confirm that the book-flushing was actually under investigation, and retracted the story under heavy criticism. But the damage had been done.

Yet, some make so much of the trash that is published in magazines like Newsweek and ignore the counsel of experienced and mature hands like Dr. Brzezinski.

The U.S. military and intelligence budgets have crossed all decent and reasonable limits. The intelligence budget alone has gone up by more than 250% since 2001 to $75 billion and the defenders of U.S. madness in Afghanistan and Pakistan do not see the irony of a mad campaign that has not achieved anything and destroyed much, including American credibility and standing in the world.

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the foremost foreign policy experts in the U.S., who started the American involvement in Afghanistan in 1978-1979 as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, warned the U.S. government about the potentially disastrous consequences of its foreign policy in a testimony before the U.S. senate foreign relations committee on February 1, 2007. “If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”

He dismissed the fears about Al Qaeda saying: “A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD’s in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the “decisive ideological struggle” of our time.”

Dr. Brzezinski warned: ” Vague and inflammatory talk about “a new strategic context” which is based on “clarity” and which prompts “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world.”

He added: “One should note here also that practically no country in the world shares the Manichean delusions that the Administration so passionately articulates. The result is growing political isolation of, and pervasive popular antagonism toward the U.S. global posture. “

One consequence of the bloody military and covert operations is that the control of many aspects slips out of the hands of the politicians and away from Congressional oversight. Guantanamo Bay is one such example. Dozens were kept under detention without any trial and then released without much explanation. Abdullah Mahsud was one.. captured in December 2001 and released in May 2004.

Dissent was stifled with the neo-fascist rhetoric of “either you are with us or against us”, and thus giving the press little choice but to accept the official story line without much questioning or reasoning. The psychology of fear was used to pursue a Middle East policy that had everything to do with oil and little to do with terrorism as has been acknowledged by eminent figures such as General (rtd) Wesley Clarke, former supreme commander of NATO, Bill Clinton’s economic adviser Jeff Sachs, and the former FED chairman Alan Greenspan.

The latest casualty of the U.S. military and intelligence establishment’s what Brzezinski called a “mythical narrative” is Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. She may or may not have been involved with Al Qaeda. I do not know. No court ever charged her with any terrorist act. So all that noise is irrelevant in so far it relates to her sentencing by a U.S. court for 86 years on charges of committing a crime in Afghanistan as a Pakistani citizen. If the U.S. defense and intelligence establishment wanted to delay the case and avoid provocation, which it knew it would cause in Pakistan, it could have easily delayed the trial as it did in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for reasons that remain obscure.

I won’t speculate on the motives for carrying on this trial at this time lest some naïve or biased readers accuse me of a conspiracy theory but the repercussions are obvious. It is a clear provocation even if that was not the intent. It is mystifying that while on one hand, the U.S. gives $405 million for aid for the floods; but it increases the frequency of drone strikes which for sure are going to destroy any good will it would have hoped to generate. Are they so stupid? But then even $10 billion is a small sum in the big power games when the total cost of the War on Terror is coming to over a trillion dollars according to the official figures and more than $2 trillion according to independent U.S. economists.

I quoted Dr. Brzezinski at length to make the points that some of us make but are dismissed as anti-Americanism. I worked for an American bank for 20 years. I have nothing against Americans. But their establishment’s Middle East and Central Asian policies are wrong, short-sighted, counter-productive and ultimately self-defeating. There is no method to their madness but only one way to prevent more harm than they have already caused, belated though it might be. They should get the hell out of Afghanistan and Pakistan and stop supporting or manipulating their puppets, be it in civvies or muftis. The world would be a better place if President Obama can focus on the ailing U.S. economy, which is not only in a long term decline but is not recovering well, and put an end to all costly overt and covert misadventures overseas.

Let’s stop playing into bin Laden’s hands

By Ted Koppel

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned. This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power. Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap.

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams.

It did not have to be this way. The Bush administration’s initial response was just about right. The calibrated combination of CIA operatives, special forces and air power broke the Taliban in Afghanistan and sent bin Laden and the remnants of al-Qaeda scurrying across the border into Pakistan. The American reaction was quick, powerful and effective — a clear warning to any organization contemplating another terrorist attack against the United States. This is the point at which President George W. Bush should have declared “mission accomplished,” with the caveat that unspecified U.S. agencies and branches of the military would continue the hunt for al-Qaeda’s leader. The world would have understood, and most Americans would probably have been satisfied.

But the insidious thing about terrorism is that there is no such thing as absolute security. Each incident provokes the contemplation of something worse to come. The Bush administration convinced itself that the minds that conspired to turn passenger jets into ballistic missiles might discover the means to arm such “missiles” with chemical, biological or nuclear payloads. This became the existential nightmare that led, in short order, to a progression of unsubstantiated assumptions: that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons; that there was a connection between the Iraqi leader and al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden had nothing to do with fostering these misconceptions. None of this had any real connection to 9/11. There was no group known as “al-Qaeda in Iraq” at that time. But the political climate of the moment overcame whatever flaccid opposition there was to invading Iraq, and the United States marched into a second theater of war, one that would prove far more intractable and painful and draining than its supporters had envisioned.

While President Obama has recently declared America’s combat role in Iraq over, he glossed over the likelihood that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will have to remain there, possibly for several years to come, because Iraq lacks the military capability to protect itself against external (read: Iranian) aggression. The ultimate irony is that Hussein, to keep his neighbors in check, allowed them and the rest of the world to believe that he might have weapons of mass destruction. He thereby brought about his own destruction, as well as the need now for U.S. forces to fill the void that he and his menacing presence once provided.

As for the 100,000 U.S. troops in or headed for Afghanistan, many of them will be there for years to come, too — not because of America’s commitment to a functioning democracy there; even less because of what would happen to Afghan girls and women if the Taliban were to regain control. The reason is nuclear weapons. Pakistan has an arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear warheads. Were any of those to fall into the hands of al-Qaeda’s fundamentalist allies in Pakistan, there is no telling what the consequences might be.

Again, this dilemma is partly of our own making. America’s war on terrorism is widely perceived throughout Pakistan as a war on Islam. A muscular Islamic fundamentalism is gaining ground there and threatening the stability of the government, upon which we depend to guarantee the security of those nuclear weapons. Since a robust U.S. military presence in Pakistan is untenable for the government in Islamabad, however, tens of thousands of U.S. troops are likely to remain parked next door in Afghanistan for some time.

Perhaps bin Laden foresaw some of these outcomes when he launched his 9/11 operation from Taliban-secured bases in Afghanistan. Since nations targeted by terrorist groups routinely abandon some of their cherished principles, he may also have foreseen something along the lines of Abu Ghraib, “black sites,” extraordinary rendition and even the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But in these and many other developments, bin Laden needed our unwitting collaboration, and we have provided it — more than $1 trillion spent on two wars, more than 5,000 of our troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead. Our military is so overstretched that defense contracting — for everything from interrogation to security to the gathering of intelligence — is one of our few growth industries.

We have raced to Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently to Yemen and Somalia; we have created a swollen national security apparatus; and we are so absorbed in our own fury and so oblivious to our enemy’s intentions that we inflate the building of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan into a national debate and watch, helpless, while a minister in Florida outrages even our friends in the Islamic world by threatening to burn copies of the Koran.

If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. “All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda’ in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses.”

Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald’s. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?

Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos? It is past time to reflect on what our enemy sought, and still seeks, to accomplish — and how we have accommodated him.

Ted Koppel, who was managing editor of ABC’s “Nightline” from 1980 to 2005, is a contributing analyst for BBC World News America.