Pakistan Bombs Afghanistan

 

Malala's love for The Hijab

 

Pakistan can’t be Saudi Arabia or Iran. So it’s inching towards Talibanisation

Tragically, the dark days of General Zia’s brutality in Pakistan seem lighter today writes AYESHA SIDDIQA in The Print



A protest by Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) supporters against the top court's verdict on Asiya Bibi  

Thinking about the future of Afghanistan, especially in the last year, has been exhausting. You really begin to wonder what future are we looking at with the Taliban fairly in control of the country and the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other militant groups present in other parts of Afghanistan. The marginally progressive, liberal and comparatively resourceful population has almost all fled the place. The scene of a State and society in tatters gnawed at my heart until I realised that socio-politically, Afghanistan is expanding into Pakistan too. While Islamabad claims the Taliban are inching towards pragmatism, Pakistan is moving towards the original formula of Talibanisation.

I am quite sure this will make the blood of many theoreticians boil, who would quickly point out that it’s flawed to mention Pakistan in the same breath as a failed country because it still has a functional bureaucracy, a strong military institution, and many systems that work. I am sure theoretical nuances wouldn’t have mattered to Priyantha Diyawadana as he was attacked and burned by a roaring crowd of Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP) supporters in Sialkot. The unfortunate man was just doing his duty as a general manager, asking the workers to clean the premises and remove all needless material from the walls that included TLP posters as the company was coming up for a foreign audit. To the jubilant young men, who took selfies with the burning body of the Sri Lankan manager, the State must have appeared like ashes to be stumped under the feet.

Those of us in Pakistan that get horrified at seeing photos of Taliban whipping women or beheading people, it would be educating to go and attend the court hearing in Sialkot to see that the average age of most suspects in the Diyawadana murder case appears to be under 30. Some will argue that though highly unfortunate, such violence happens around the world. This kind of view tends to shy from the reality that these young men (the suspects) are not just random miscreants but imagine themselves as a new force shaping up the face of the State and society. In their minds, they are taking the State in the direction that those who imagined Pakistan like Allama Iqbal, who wanted Islamic republicanism, would like — with a far heavier ideological colour than Pakistan’s national poet may have imagined. After all, didn’t the late TLP leader Khadim Rizvi constantly refer to Iqbal? This is not the story of a single murder but a natural outcome of the direction Pakistan’s identity is taking. 
How religion shapes the State

I remember a conversation with renowned Pakistani scientist and activist Pervez Hoodbhoy during the 2000s when he was hopeful that the military would not let the situation get out of control and would harness the extremists it had produced to fight in Afghanistan and other fronts. Hoodbhoy imagined the military as a pragmatic and somewhat secular force. But the mistake was not only his as many policy wonks around the world had a similar view at the time– equating alcohol–consuming Generals with secularism. Many international observers also made the mistake of ignoring the fact that it was the pragmatism that would eventually kill Diyawadana and the Pakistani society along with him. The consistent use of religion to maximise power has stacked up the odds against any form of normality. Today, there is no one in Pakistan’s civil or military leadership who has the power to condemn the TLP directly. The current Army Chief, Qamar Javed Bajwa, with his controversial background is least capable of taking any action. It was Bajwa who had recently got a group of men together to negotiate a deal for the religious party to back down from its march towards Islamabad.

He was incapable of forcing his choice on the TLP mainly because he thought of the religious party as a useful tool for future purposes but also because many of his own men are tied to the ideological agenda of the issue of finality of the Prophet (Khatme Nabuwat) and blasphemy that TLP parrots. Furthermore, why forget that the TLP was trained in violence and allowed to get away with murders of police officials during their earlier protests against the Nawaz Sharif government. The army, instead of coming to the help of the civilian government, had encouraged and even participated in the violence and paid money to the TLP. In fact, the army played an instrumental role in diverting the urban trader-merchants away from the Deobandis to the Barelvis. Important to note that like the killer (Mumtaz Qadri) of former Punjab governor Salman Taseer was supported and helped by traders of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, sources said that the traders in Sialkot are providing assistance and moral help to lawyers pleading the case of those arrested in the Sri Lankan manager’s murder. In any case, the defence minister tried to downplay the violence as something ordinary.

Allama Iqbal was one leader who did not support the Khilafat movement but wanted an Islamic democracy where religious thought could be developed to shape the future of the State and society. He believed that ijma (consensus amongst religious scholars or community), which is an important source in Islamic jurisprudence, especially the principles that trickle down from companions of the Prophet, are not binding on future generations. The communal thought must be developed. The only problem with this formula was that while all efforts were made by successive Pakistani leaderships to create and emphasise the religious nature of the State, nothing was done to consciously develop the political discourse. As regimes kept developing religious institutions like the Federal Shariat Court, the Council of Islamic Ideology, the blasphemy laws, the Qisas and Diyat laws and much more, the State was allowed to keep using British laws and governance system. Every time a leader wanted to negotiate and bargain for more power, they would use religion as a tool and add to the cultural value of religion and in the process reiterate the significance of traditional ijma.

Not Iran or Saudi Arabia

Over the years, Pakistan has arrived at a point where we are neither like Saudi Arabia nor Iran. The absence of a monarchy makes it difficult for a ruler to impose a certain religious formula or change the direction of society towards less religion. More importantly, it does not have an alternative identity, which in the case of Saudi Arabia is being Arab, to fall back on to secure a sense of nationalism that does not depend on religion. Pakistan’s ruling elite consistently discouraged people from embracing multiple ethnic identities. Even Mohammad Ali Jinnah spoke about the ‘menace of provincialism’. While competing ethnic identities were discouraged, competing sectarian ideologies were encouraged. A religious State and society is the only natural direction but the problem is that, unlike Iran, Pakistan lacks a single faith. The presence of multiple competing sectarian ideologies complicates life. Thus, violence becomes a necessary tool through which various religious groups compete for greater influence. So, like the Taliban, use of force and violence will be used to impress the audience, control their imagination and maximise power.

However, there are the non-religious parties that may not compete in violence but are equally willing to use the popular religious narrative to compete politically. The issues of constituency politics has made the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML–N), or the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) all look alike as far as the religious card is concerned. They parrot the ideological position of Deobandi and now Barelvi religious gangs. Could the PPP — known as liberal and more capable than other parties to build legal/institutional mechanisms (the 18th amendment being a case in point) — provide an answer? Unfortunately, the party leadership has its limitations in the face of constituency politics as visible from its candidate in the Lahore bypolls using religion card as part of his campaign.

Religion as a negotiating and power maximising tool is used across the board – main political parties, ethnic nationalists, and even separatist movements. In Balochistan, for example, the Balochistan Nationalist Party and the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party have joined hands with Maulana Fazlur Rehman to fight their battle for political survival. In another corner of the province in Gwadar, separatist leaders have instructed people to support Maulvi Hidayat-ur Rehman of Jamaat-e-Islami against the mainstream political parties or even Baloch nationalist parties that continue to subscribe to democratic principles for Baloch rights. It is heartening to hear about the progressive women marching for their rights in Gwadar. But a less talked about fact is that different mafias are aiding the maulvi, perhaps even playing to the tune of global China-US rivalry, in supporting Rehman to use the religion card for propaganda against Chinese clubs, wine factories and coastal city development in Gwadar. It is sad to see mullahs becoming the only available tool for locals to protest Chinese expansion. The fact that diverse political groups use the same tool – religion – is less a commentary about them and more a reflection on the nature of the State – it only has room for religion and religious narrative. One would have wanted it to turn into a Sunni Iran but to reiterate an earlier point, in the absence of a singular ideology it will only end up with more violence and chaos.

Tragically, the dark days of General Zia’s brutality seem lighter today. Particularly because a dissident then would land in Attock or Lahore Forts or any other State-run torture chambers. If one survived all of that, the person would get respect from society. Now, the fate of any dissident is as precarious as Diyawadana’s – the society cheers or remains silent to finish the job of the State that has almost made it a habit to feed its opponents to mob violence. It feels worse than Kabul.

West Bengal v Afghanistan

 

Taliban kills Muslims yet many Muslims in India and Pakistan support these jihadis terrorists?

 

Major Gaurav Arya Explains Challenges Pakistan is Going To Face in Coming Days

 

Taliban is behind Kabul bombs

 

Taliban's Islamic emirate is based in Quetta & Pakistani fighters fight alongside : Afrasiab Khattak

 

Who’s to blame for the Afghanistan chaos? Remember the war’s cheerleaders

Today the media are looking for scapegoats, but 20 years ago they helped facilitate the disastrous intervention writes George Monbiot in The Guardian

‘Cheerleading for the war in Afghanistan was almost universal, and dissent was treated as intolerable.’ A US marine with evacuees at Kabul airport. Photograph: U.S. Central Command Public Affairs vis Getty Images
 

Everyone is to blame for the catastrophe in Afghanistan, except the people who started it. Yes, Joe Biden screwed up by rushing out so chaotically. Yes, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab failed to make adequate and timely provisions for the evacuation of vulnerable people. But there is a frantic determination in the media to ensure that none of the blame is attached to those who began this open-ended war without realistic aims or an exit plan, then waged it with little concern for the lives and rights of the Afghan people: the then US president, George W Bush, the British prime minister Tony Blair and their entourages.

Indeed, Blair’s self-exoneration and transfer of blame to Biden last weekend was front-page news, while those who opposed his disastrous war 20 years ago remain cancelled across most of the media. Why? Because to acknowledge the mistakes of the men who prosecuted this war would be to expose the media’s role in facilitating it. 

Any fair reckoning of what went wrong in Afghanistan, Iraq and the other nations swept up in the “war on terror” should include the disastrous performance of the media. Cheerleading for the war in Afghanistan was almost universal, and dissent was treated as intolerable. After the Northern Alliance stormed into Kabul, torturing and castrating its prisoners, raping women and children, the Telegraph urged us to “just rejoice, rejoice”, while the Sun ran a two-page editorial entitled “Shame of the traitors: wrong, wrong, wrong … the fools who said Allies faced disaster”. In the Guardian, Christopher Hitchens, a convert to US hegemony and war, marked the solemnity of the occasion with the words: “Well, ha ha ha, and yah, boo. It was … obvious that defeat was impossible. The Taliban will soon be history.”

The few journalists and public figures who dissented were added to the Telegraph’s daily list of “Osama bin Laden’s useful idiots”, accused of being “anti-American” and “pro-terrorism”, mocked, vilified and de-platformed almost everywhere. In the Independent, David Aaronovitch claimed that if you opposed the ongoing war, you were “indulging yourself in a cosmic whinge”.

Everyone I know in the US and the UK who was attacked in the media for opposing the war received death threats. Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress who voted against granting the Bush government an open licence to use military force, needed round-the-clock bodyguards. Amid this McCarthyite fervour, peace campaigners such as Women in Black were listed as “potential terrorists” by the FBI. The then US secretary of state, Colin Powell, sought to persuade the emir of Qatar to censor Al Jazeera, one of the few outlets that consistently challenged the rush to war. After he failed, the US bombed Al Jazeera’s office in Kabul.

The broadcast media were almost exclusively reserved for those who supported the adventure. The same thing happened before and during the invasion of Iraq, when the war’s opponents received only 2% of BBC airtime on the subject. Attempts to challenge the lies that justified the invasion – such as Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and his supposed refusal to negotiate – were drowned in a surge of patriotic excitement.

So why is so much of the media so bloodthirsty? Why do they love bombs and bullets so much, and diplomacy so little? Why do they take such evident delight in striking a pose atop a heap of bodies, before quietly shuffling away when things go wrong?

An obvious answer is the old adage that “if it bleeds it leads”, so there’s an inbuilt demand for blood. I remember as if it were yesterday the moment I began to hate the industry I work for. In 1987, I was producing a current affairs programme for the BBC World Service. It was a slow news day, and none of the stories gave us a strong lead for the programme. Ten minutes before transmission, the studio door flew open and the editor strode in. He clapped his hands and shouted: “Great! 110 dead in Sri Lanka!” News is spectacle, and nothing delivers spectacle like war.

Another factor in the UK is a continued failure to come to terms with our colonial history. For centuries the interests of the nation have been conflated with the interests of the rich, while the interests of the rich depended to a remarkable degree on colonial loot and the military adventures that supplied it. Supporting overseas wars, however disastrous, became a patriotic duty.

For all the current breastbeating about the catastrophic defeat in Afghanistan, nothing has been learned. The media still regale us with comforting lies about the war and occupation. They airbrush the drone strikes in which civilians were massacred and the corruption permitted and encouraged by the occupying forces. They seek to retrofit justifications to the decision to go to war, chief among them securing the rights of women.

But this issue, crucial as it was and remains, didn’t feature among the original war aims. Nor, for that matter, did overthrowing the Taliban. Bush’s presidency was secured, and his wars promoted, by American ultra-conservative religious fundamentalists who had more in common with the Taliban than with the brave women seeking liberation. In 2001, the newspapers now backcasting themselves as champions of human rights mocked and impeded women at every opportunity. The Sun was running photos of topless teenagers on Page 3; the Daily Mail ruined women’s lives with its Sidebar of Shame; extreme sexism, body shaming and attacks on feminism were endemic.

Those of us who argued against the war possessed no prophetic powers. I asked the following questions in the Guardian not because I had any special information or insight, but because they were bleeding obvious. “At what point do we stop fighting? At what point does withdrawal become either honourable or responsible? Having once engaged its forces, are we then obliged to reduce Afghanistan to a permanent protectorate? Or will we jettison responsibility as soon as military power becomes impossible to sustain?” But even asking such things puts you beyond the pale of acceptable opinion.

You can get away with a lot in the media, but not, in most outlets, with opposing a war waged by your own nation – unless your reasons are solely practical. If your motives are humanitarian, you are marked from that point on as a fanatic. Those who make their arguments with bombs and missiles are “moderates” and “centrists”; those who oppose them with words are “extremists”. The inconvenient fact that the “extremists” were right and the “centrists” were wrong is today being strenuously forgotten.

Ten days that shook the world: The latest Taliban takeover of Afghanistan

Najam Sethi in The Friday Times

The Afghan Taliban talked and fought. They won. The Americans talked and ran. They lost. The end was foretold in 2020 when President Donald Trump announced an exit from Afghanistan without installing a broad-based, inclusive interim government in Kabul. But few – certainly not President Biden who actually gave an unconditional cut-off date in September for full withdrawal but believed that the Afghan National Army could fight on for another year at least — expected the ANA to fold and President Ashraf Ghani to flee in ten days. This followed the last round of talks among the internal and external stakeholders in Doha, August 10-11.

​The Taliban’s brilliant strategy was based on the basic principles of guerilla warfare — gain Time to capture Space and use Space to erode the Will of the enemy to fight. This theory was first successfully enunciated by Mao Tse Tung in China in the 1930s and then by Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam in the 1960s. For a decade after their rout in 2001, the Taliban regrouped and reorganized on both sides of the Pakistan border, becoming bolder and more aggressive after 2010. But after signing the Agreement with the US in 2020, they dragged Time to forestall any US-selected “inclusive” government in Kabul while focusing on capturing Space in north Afghanistan – ethnically hostile regions led by warlords who had challenged and undermined their power in 1997-2001. Their tactics of talking and fighting on the front lines – “the Americans are leaving, lay down your weapons, surrender and go home, we won’t exact revenge or hurt you” – paid huge dividends. In the last stage, when the Americans began to progressively pull air support, commanders, trainers, contractors, and air supply lines to distant front lines were severely disrupted, the ANA lost critical elements of the war machine manufactured by the Americans, and crumbled. It didn’t help that massive corruption in the Ghani regime, including in the ANA, was a core demotivating factor, no less than the frequent shuffling of military commanders from the Presidency. The Taliban encirclement of Kabul was complete after the provincial garrison towns surrendered one after another and American soldiers caught their last flights home. 

​The biggest strategic mistake Ashraf Ghani made was fighting with Pakistan, a key stakeholder, and flirting with India, a distant spoiler. Pakistan’s stake in Afghanistan, for various reasons right or wrong, is forty years old. If Kabul couldn’t be overtly friendly with Islamabad, it should not have been overly hostile to it. Thus Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban became natural covert allies. The Americans, too, lost sight of the ball when they signed the 2020 Agreement by rejecting the Taliban’s demand to replace Ghani with an acceptable transitional option. What next?

​In America, President Biden – who was banking on popular goodwill for “bringing the boys home” by ending “America’s longest war” – is besieged with a popular backlash at another “Saigon moment”. Approval for his exit strategy has fallen radically among Democrats and Republicans from over 70% to under 50%. This implies that America might scapegoat Pakistan for its defeat. The anti-Pakistan narrative of “safe havens”, “Haqqani network is a veritable arm of the ISI”, “double-crossing”, etc, is already well established. If pushed, it could estrange Islamabad and derail international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan under an inclusive regime with regard for core human rights.

​In Afghanistan, the Taliban 2.0 can be expected to establish only a minimally acceptable inclusive regime with substantive levers of policy and power in their own hands. Initially they will try and run the country with an Amir ul Momineen or Supreme Leader at the helm of a handpicked Council of Ministers along the lines of Iran immediately after the Islamic Revolution. They will also crave international recognition and legitimacy by assuaging the fears of the regional powers – Russia, China, Iran, Central Asian States and Pakistan – by pledging economic cooperation and ending safe havens for regional militants, insurgents and separatists based in Afghanistan. For the international community, they will try to square their idea of human rights in an Islamic regime with Western notions of freedom and democracy.

​These factors are going to make or break the Taliban 2.0 regime. Al-Qaeda, TTP, ETM, IS, Daesh, Baloch separatists, etc., will not be easy to knock out or neutralize quickly. Their ranks have been swelled by the thousands of prisoners who have been released. If they continue to spill over across borders, tensions with neighbours will arise. If any Al-Qaeda attack on US soil is uncovered with footsteps going back to Afghanistan, America will come under pressure to exact revenge again.

​There is also the factor of Afghanistan 2.0. In the last two decades a new generation of Afghans has grown up in the light of secularism, media freedoms, women’s rights and information revolution. If the Taliban try to scuttle these in any brutal or swift manner, there will be a definite reaction at home and abroad with blowback consequences. Afghanistan 2.0’s economy — its financial system, education, administration and infrastructure , forex reserves, etc — are totally dependent on American largesse and aid.

Finally, much will depend on the experience and wisdom of the three top Taliban leaders who will guide Afghanistan into a new age. Their reputations and credentials precede them. The Supreme Leader, Haibatullah Akhunzada, was “an enthusiastic proponent of suicide bombings” who ordered his own son to blow himself up in an attack in Helmand province. He is also the strategist who fashioned the “talk talk, fight fight” strategy which proved so successful in the end. Sirajuddin Haqqani, number two, has been the “most dogged opponent” of the US who concentrated on “complex suicide attacks and targeted assassinations”. Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is the leading Presidential candidate, has served a decade in Pakistani prison on the say-so of the Americans.

​Pakistan is poised to win or lose big time. If Taliban 2.0 neutralize anti-Pakistan elements based in Afghanistan and facilitate the Pak-China CPEC corridor to Central Asia and the Central Asian rail, road, gas and oil corridor to South Asia, it will reap enormous dividends. But if the Taliban victory and American defeat raise the spectre of Islamic radicalism inside Pakistan either by emboldening disgruntled religious elements like the TLP or TTP or by triggering an anti-American populist wave that isolates Pakistan in the international community, the outlook will be bleak. Pakistan’s economy is totally dependent on the goodwill of the West and its civil society is sufficiently developed to resist any radical “Islamist” encroachments on their democratic freedoms.

​If the road to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan has been long and hard and bloody, the road ahead is neither secure nor assured. The predominantly Pashtun Taliban constitute only a small percentage of the 45-50% Pashtuns of Afghanistan. The other Pashtuns and ethnic regions may have surrendered to the Taliban military juggernaut but if they are not made real stakeholders in an inclusive broad based political and administrative state system, tribal revolts and foreign interventionists will start brewing once again in the bowels of Afghanistan.

Let's blame Hindutva for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan

 

The Taliban's Return to Power is due to Afghan Constitution

 

Did Pakistan defeat The Soviet Union and The United States in Afghanistan? Urdu

Afghanistan may hold the key to Kashmir

By Girish Menon

When Pakistan annexed regions like Gilgit-Baltistan, hitherto part of Raja Hari Singh’s kingdom, there wasn’t the kind of shrill shouting in India as witnessed now in Pakistan after India abrogated the temporary Art 370 from its constitution yesterday. What does this act mean for some of the constituents involved in the dispute?

The UN resolution which Pakistan quotes as the basis of dispute resolution states that Pakistan should pull back its troops to the position prior to its invasion of Raja Hari Singh’s territory and then India would conduct a plebiscite in the whole of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan never adhered to the first part of the UN resolution and therefore the plebiscite part of the resolution never came into question despite Pakistan continuously harping on it.

For the Modi government the timing of this move appears helpful because it distracts the public from raising serious questions about the poorly performing economy. The narrative (fickle at most times) had begun to portray the Modi government as socialist, a label which the corporate/electoral bond funded party wishes to avoid by a mile.

For the military regime in Pakistan this Indian action poses a dilemma and an opportunity. The military has been shouting from rooftops that it has shut down the funding of its jihadi outfits in Kashmir. It was this statement that enabled Pakistan to receive the IMF bailout. Will the military now once again release the Hafiz Saeeds to act with impunity while risking a stoppage of the IMF bailout? 

The Pakistan military has promised Donald Trump an ‘honourable’ exit from Afghanistan well before the US presidential elections. The military would facilitate a peace agreement with the Taliban which will enable Trump to deliver on his manifesto promise. In return for this the Pakistan military will receive US funding equivalent to its current spending levels in Afghanistan. This will enable the Pakistan military to avoid the conditionalities of the IMF deal and start funding the jihadi outfits in Kashmir. The risk is the failure of the Pakistan military to deliver an exit strategy congenial to Trump.

So it is up to all those countries opposed to Trump (not the USA) to ensure that the regressive Taliban militants do not come to power in Kabul and enable the Americans to run away just like they did from Vietnam. India may have to take a lead in this matter with Iran, if it does not want hostilities to rise in Kashmir.

In the short term, India may have to deploy more security forces in Kashmir. This will mean larger unplanned expenditure. This will be a big injection of government money into the demand deprived Indian economy and could give a fillip to growth. While the lot of the Indian consumer may not change radically, at least the government can claim that the economy is on the path to reaching the $5 trillion mark.

As for the people of Kashmir they may have to face some more difficult times unless they join the Pandits in an exodus from the valley. The Indian government can ensure that the property rights of all displaced personnel is respected when such people decide to return back to the valley. The government could also open safe havens to these new refugees.

Of course, most conflicts develop a life of their own and these new refugees may find themselves in government camps for a much longer time.

In the rest of India, there is no mood for any settlement with a military dispensation in Pakistan. Moreover, the BJP agenda is to recover the Gilgit-Baltistan regions which was illegally grabbed by the Pakistan militia. 

Currently, a war-like situation suits the rulers in both countries. What the people of Kashmir want is not on the agenda.

No jokes please, we’re Indian

Editorial in The Hindu

Sometimes the reaction is the real joke. The police force in India’s financial capital have sought legal opinion to check if they have grounds to file an FIR against a comedian for a video he recently posted on the messaging application, Snapchat. The Mumbai police were following up on a complaint from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, a political party with a remarkably low threshold for taking offence. And the MNS was not the only party outraged by the post by Tanmay Bhat, a comedian fairly well-known for his “roast videos”, or takedowns of celebrities. Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena, for instance, decided to make it clear that people like Mr. Bhat “should be whipped in public”. Using the “face swap” feature on Snapchat, Mr. Bhat had spoofed Sachin Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar, with jibes about his cricketing ability and her long singing career. It was certainly not polite. It could be argued that locker-room chatter goes with the roast territory, and that it is in the nature of the beast to push the boundary of how much political incorrectness can be deemed passable. The point here is not to applaud his sense of humour — or to condemn it. It is to spotlight the speed with which the system mobilises to shut any expression of mockery targeted at the well-known.

That the effect is to stifle freedom of expression, to force the next person to look over her shoulder before mocking the next public figure, is obvious and intended. To be mocked is the most trying way of being critiqued. One can ignore evenly stated takedowns — not spoofs that make folks laugh. To deal with mockery in a democratic society, one needs to be committed to a public culture of engagement, of openness to questioning. India’s public figures are clearly not. Politicians and celebrities (mainly film and cricket stars) have failed India not just by using the strongest arm of the law to curb expressions of humour aimed at them, thereby forcing self-censorship on what we may laugh about. They have failed it by not enabling sensitisation on what should pass as good humour and what may not. When jokiness is curbed so menacingly — and for all the brave front they may put up, cartoonists and comedians are lonely people against the might of the state — the only response is to rally to defend freedom of expression. In an environment where possibly personal jokes are seen to warrant scrutiny and police action, no space can be available for shared humour, for comedy to evolve sufficiently so that the larger community internalises what is truly, even rockingly, funny and what’s not so progressive.

Imran Khan - Pakistan's Donald Trump

Pervez Hoodbhoy in The Dawn

Even his fellow Republicans have labelled him insane. But, defying the predictions of all soothsayers and political pundits, Donald Trump’s still surging popularity with Republican voters suggests that he could become America’s next president. The first step, now within reach, will be winning the Republican Party’s nomination.

Articulating the ‘mad as hell’ anger felt by many Americans towards Washington’s putatively liberal policies, Trump knows it pays to be outrageous and wickedly racist. He follows the black-hating governor of Alabama in the 1960’s, George Wallace, who would famously shout “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” at rallies. Some of Trump’s claims are breathtaking: Mexican immigrants are mostly criminals and rapists, and President Obama is a foreign-born Muslim.

An American political commentator, John Dean (of Watergate fame), describes Trump as “a near perfect authoritarian leader” with a personality type that is “intimidating and bullying, faintly hedonistic, vengeful, pitiless, exploitive, manipulative, dishonest, cheat to win, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, militant, nationalistic, tell others what they want to hear, take advantage of ‘suckers’, specialise in creating false images to sell self, may or may not be religious.”

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Made of the same stuff but packaged differently, the Trump-Khan duo has thrilled extremists.

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Take away the “faintly” and this neatly fits Trump’s Pakistani counterpart, cricketer Imran Khan, who burst upon Pakistan’s political scene with his mammoth Lahore jalsa of 2011. With a lavish lifestyle and his playboy past neatly tucked away in some closet the reformed Khan promised the moon as he cavorted on the stage, loudly praying towards Makkah for success.

Khan’s support base is diverse: college-educated “burger bachas”, brigades of bejewelled begums, hysterical semi-educated youth, and wild-eyed TTP supporters. Delighting them all, he unleashes from time to time a steady stream of abuse upon his political rivals who threaten to sue him but are ultimately deterred by Pakistan’s labyrinthine court system.

Made of the same stuff but packaged differently, the Trump-Khan duo has thrilled racial and religious extremists. The former leader of the Klu Klux Klan, David Duke, declared that of all presidential candidates, Trump is “the best of the lot”. Khan received still greater appreciation. He was nominated by the TTP as their representative to last year’s (cancelled) peace talks, the reward for leading massive “peace” marches protesting American drones. Resolutely refusing to condemn any Taliban atrocity, Khan would seek to shift the blame on the US.

Worshipful followers love aggressive leaders. Trump, said to be the most abrasive politician in American history, uses barbs and insults while Khan menacingly swings his cricket bat. Use of indecent language invites no penalties. Last month, Trump crudely remarked that Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, who had aggressively confronted him in a CNN interview, had “Blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.” Khan went yet further. From the top of his dharna container, he screamed that a panicking Nawaz Sharif had wetted his shalwar.

Why do such leaders attract followers? First, each can confidently claim that he is his own man, a top-of-his-game type. He can convincingly label political rivals as midgets, corrupt, or incompetent (Khan’s job is easier than Trump’s). The self-made Trump earned a fortune through real-estate business and now owns acres of expensive Manhattan land. His personal worth, though modest on the scale of today’s billionaires, is around $4 billion.

Khan too is self-made. He ranks as one of the world’s best cricket professionals who could bat, bowl, and captain. His cancer hospital is a model of professional management and an important public service, even if his contribution pales before that of Abdus Sattar Edhi.

A second reason: both men are unabashed narcissists. But shouldn’t this turn people off rather than on? In normal life narcissism is considered a personality disorder, but not so in politics. Exceptionally vain and self-absorbed men, who see themselves as deserving attention and power, are often the winners in political contests. Explaining this anomaly is a challenge for those who study group psychology.

A recent issue of Harvard Business Review carries an article intriguingly titled, ‘Why we love narcissists’. The author, Prof Tomas Premuzic of University College London, summarises recent research in psychology that explains how narcissists get ahead in all domains of life. Premuzic distinguishes between “productive narcissists” like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who actually created great new industries, with “charismatic narcissists” who use charm to push personal agendas.

Charismatic narcissists, says Premuzic, are masterful impression managers. They dress to impress, disguise arrogance as confidence, and are superb social networkers. Convinced they are never wrong, they take credit whenever things go well. But when things go awry, they blame colleagues and subordinates. Pre­muzic notes that “It is always easier to fool others when you have already fooled yourself; it is always harder to feel guilty when you think you are innocent.”

Even with wild schemes, the charismatic narcissist can whip up enormous enthusiasm. Trump has vowed to build a wall along the US southern border with Mexico, likening it to the Great Wall of China and has even dubbed it “The Great Wall of Trump”. What he doesn’t know — and doesn’t want to know — is that even the Ming Dynasty’s 13,000-mile wall failed to keep out the Manchurians.

Khan’s ideas make even Trump’s hare-brained schemes look tame. Once I’m in power, Khan declared, I will end corruption in 19 days and terrorism in 90 days. The 19 was subsequently changed to 90; the need for an additional 71 days remained unexplained. But let’s put that aside. It’s now 887 days since Khan’s PTI took over the reins of the KP province. The end of corruption and terrorism should be nigh, right? But don’t hold your breath.

To conclude: charismatic narcissists are much hot air but very little substance. Unfortunately, they can be very dangerous. If running a country they can take it to war, waste resources, and increase internal violence. On the other hand, real leadership requires building high performance teams, emphasising altruism over egotism, and competence over confidence. Until the public understands this, it will continue inviting narcissists to the top while overlooking more reasonable alternatives.

On Pakistan's ability to end terrorism

The discussion is in Urdu

Yes, Pakistanis are united against terrorism. But not on terrorists

Militants who target India will always be good Taliban. So an alleged architect of the Mumbai attack can be released two days after Peshawar

• 
• • Cyril Almeida
  • theguardian.com, Thursday 18 December 2014 20.10 GMT

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, one of the alleged architects of the 2008 Mumbai attack, has been granted bail days after the horror of Peshawar. Photograph: Reuters

On this Pakistan is united: the men who killed 132 children in a Peshawar school are terrorists. On this too Pakistan is – temporarily – united: terrorism must be defeated. After that the trouble begins. With something as seemingly innocuous as who, exactly, is a terrorist. Pakistanis can’t seem to agree.

Neither can the media. A day after the Peshawar carnage, after the Pakistan army had announced that the slaughter in the school had been operationally coordinated by Afghan-based Pakistani militants, an outraged analyst on local TV asked what the world’s response would have been had India been attacked by militants from Pakistan.

India, the analyst claimed indignantly, would be contemplating bombing Pakistan and the Indian army would already have been mobilised on the Pak-India border. The world at large, the analyst continued, would have pounced on Pakistan for its terrible behaviour. But, the analyst lamented, because Pakistan is weak, it could do no more than send its army chief to Afghanistan and politely seek the Afghan government’s cooperation.

For many in Pakistan, the analyst’s anger would have resonated. His fulminations against the international community’s perceived discrimination against Pakistan would have garnered much sympathy. To much of the outside world, the analyst’s comparison would have triggered incredulity.

For exactly that scenario – Pakistanis slipping into India to mercilessly kill civilians in a major city – had infamously already occurred. In Mumbai. In 2008. Had the TV analyst simply forgotten? Surely not.

But there the analyst was, on one of Pakistan’s most popular news channels, suggesting that the world does not share Pakistan’s pain. Unsaid, though not uncommunicated, was a darker theory: Pakistan is a victim of an international conspiracy, an innocent victim of geopolitics, alone and vulnerable in a Hobbesian world full of militant proxies.

Ultimately, Pakistan’s problem with militancy is not denial. It is not even ignorance. It is something quite different. Simply, it is the widespread belief that militants fighting the Indian state, militants fighting to free “Indian-held Kashmir”, militants fighting the Afghan government and militants fighting to “free” Afghanistan are not militants. They are the good guys. The righteous ones brave enough to take on the world in the name of the one true God.

The problem was never denial. The problem is the paradigm. The Afghan Taliban are not militants. Lashkar-e-Taiba – LeT –are not terrorists. And, even more insidiously, there are those within Pakistan who do not believe that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan is in the wrong.

Instead, the belief is that the Pakistani state itself is on the wrong path. A democratic path. A path that keeps it in thrall to American, godless, anti-Islam interests. A path that takes Pakistan far from that of the religion in the name of which it was ostensibly created.

That’s really why it’s possible for Pakistan to stun the outside world – two days after the horror of Peshawar – by granting bail to one of the alleged architects of the Mumbai attack, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi of the officially banned LeT. That’s why it’s possible for Pakistan to confound the world by rejecting global sympathy over the Peshawar attack and embracing LeT instead.

The Lakhvi bail is not a surprise. In truth, it is the inexorable outcome of recent events in Pakistan. Consider just what happened in Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab and the heart of political power in Pakistan, on 4 December.

Imran Khan, the leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had been trying to oust the government of Nawaz Sharif via street protests since August, and threatened to shut down Lahore that day. But within hours of Khan’s announcement on 30 November, the PTI appeared to realise it had made a mistake: the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a hardline Islamist organisation, was holding its annual congress in Lahore on 4 and 5 December. And so the PTI quickly postponed its protest.

Pause on that for a moment. The business of toppling a national, elected government had to take a back seat to the annual Lahore pilgrimage of Hafiz Saeed, the chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. It was perhaps inevitable. With the Narendra Modi government in India taking a hawkish line on Pakistan, pro-Kashmir, anti-India jihadis in Pakistan were always going to take centre stage.

There is though at least one thing that Pakistan remains wilfully blind to. Every single one of the militant groups fighting the Pakistani state today was once at some point in recent history considered to be a good militant/good Taliban. Just like Hafiz Saeed is today.

Pakistan must live in Peshawar

Reem Wasay in The Hindu

Time and again, the country has moved on and forgotten about the dead. But not this time

For the last decade or so, Pakistanis seemed to have lost the ability to be easily moved by news of tragedy and misfortune — so frequent have been the numbers of dead, injured and displaced. However, what transpired on Tuesday, December 16, in Peshawar has shaken this country more than any earthquake, attack or battle ever could. The massacre of 132 children, who must have thought they were safe in the impenetrability of their school, by Taliban militants, has left a gaping wound that continues to splutter the rancid blood of our collective failure to protect the most vulnerable among us.

Storming the Army Public School (APS) and Degree College premises in a hail of gunfire and explosives-laden suicide vests, the militants did not enter to take hostages and negotiate with power brokers and members of the government; they came to kill and strike a fatal blow to the last remaining vestiges of humanity left in this Pakistan, and they succeeded. Every passing minute, with the death toll rising and red tickers on television screens changing their statistics, left onlookers gasping for air, parents wailing for their trapped angels, newscasters fighting back tears and Special Services Group (SSG) commandos at the ready wondering how things could have gone so horribly, bloodily wrong.

Brave teachers evacuated panicked students and were pumped full of bullets and the principal was burned alive in front of the children to instil maximum terror. Dressed as paramilitary personnel, the militants duped the children to reveal who among them were from army families; they naively shot up their little hands, thinking they were going to be rescued, but were instead shot between the eyes. Others played dead and cowered under desks and behind chairs only to be dragged out and gunned down. More than a dozen explosives rang out during the eight- hour-long siege — say that to yourself again: eight hours of defenceless children ambushed without the protective cover of a mother or father’s undying love, shielding their darlings from any and all harm. There is no greater human tragedy.

Not a ‘blowback’ attack

Running parallel to this calamity was the gloating statement from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claiming responsibility for the carnage, justifying it as revenge for army operations against them and their families. They were talking about Operation Zarb-e-Azb, a Pakistan military offensive being waged in North Waziristan since June this year, after the same militants attacked Karachi International Airport, killing some 36 people.

Such excuses will simply not do now; this is not a ‘blowback’ attack for the deaths of militants’ families in drone attacks and military operations; it is an ideology that must be realised by the entire nation and eliminated.

Some may argue that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam, and that debate will rage on for many more years to come, but what stands as clear as the pools of unblemished blood in the grounds of APS Peshawar is the fact that Islam is being used to destroy this country corner to corner, person to person. These militants did not fly in here overnight nor did they scale the walls of ironclad fortresses committed to the preservation of the Pakistani nation in a surprise attack. No, they have been allowed to fester and rot at the very core of what should have been a National Security Policy, a policy that only resulted in the limp bodies of this nation.

No effective counterterrorism measures have been taken to root out a terror of our own making: a proxy scourge that has penetrated every city, every mind. It is the mindset in Pakistan that is the problem. From shrinking space for moderate voices on every platform to the public outpouring of sympathy we see for the killers of those accused of blasphemy, from minorities and anyone with secular, liberal leanings to the infantile projections of “my sect is bigger than your sect,” Pakistan is not surprised by the horror that unfolded in Peshawar — it has finally been numbed and struck down by the chilling awareness that this is a monster of our own making, the culmination of our Machiavellian pact with the primitive and the poisonous.

We can lay blame on the TTP all we want, but the real criminals are those who apologise for their ideology by footing the blame on “foreign hands”; who seek excuses when they should have sought retribution; who move on when Ahmedis and Shias are ruthlessly burned, beaten, murdered for their faith; who offer media space to orthodox clerics to air their views for public consumption; and who allow the communal gathering of the likes of Jamaat-ud-Dawa Chief Hafiz Saeed riding in on a white stead, like some sort of repugnant messiah of the people, at a symbol of Pakistan’s newly found hope and pride all those years ago (Minar-e-Pakistan) that are to blame.

For too long now, journalists like me have been urged to self-censor, to throw in the towel lest extremist ire is sparked, to tremble at the mere mention of change, repeal or amendment of the current mindset where sectarian differences cancel out universal convergence on humane notions of good and evil.

Why a school was targeted

The school was targeted because it was one where military officers sent their offspring and because it was a symbol of everything the Taliban are opposed to: enlightenment and freedom. Where their lies and propaganda brainwash ignorant minds, schools liberate future generations from their draconian claws. Malala Yousafzai (you either love her or hate her in Pakistan) was shot in the face by the same mentality in 2012 and many here sneered at her, calling her a U.S. agent. Were all 141 fatalities in Peshawar agents and were they 141 reasons to give up our misguided notion of strategic assets and proxy panhandling?

“The school was targeted because it was a symbol of everything the Taliban are opposed to: enlightenment and freedom.”

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on the death penalty the day after the attack, after widespread public backlash and media frenzy demanded that all terrorists on death row be executed immediately. This is a fragile first step; it is a belated response to a plague that runs woefully deeper. Battered, bruised, bleeding and gone are our children — their hands shown grasping their copies and bags in photographs splashed all over social and other media. It is a harrowing vision, but it is necessary. We have, time and again, moved on and forgotten about the dead, swept away the fragments of their bodies by our own apathy and forgetfulness. Not this time Pakistan; do not forget this time. The pestilence of extremism must be purged, we must say this freely now, we must never think twice. Pakistan must live in Peshawar until this war is won.

(Reem Wasay is Op-ed Editor of Daily Times, Pakistan.)

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