" ... Al-Ghazali is considered to be the greatest Muslim scholar ever. He is called “The Defender of Islam”. He has written around 1,000 books in the Fiqah of The Islamic Human Rights Commission . In his well-renown Book, “The Revival Of The Religious Sciences” Al-Ghazali defines women role:
- She should stay at home and get on with her spinning
- She can go out only in emergencies
- She must not be well-informed nor must she be communicative with her neighbors and only visit them when absolutely necessary
- She should take care of her husband and respect him in his presence and his absence and seek to satisfy him in everything
- She must not leave her house without his permission and if given his permission she must leave secretly
- She should put on old clothes and take deserted streets and alleys, avoid markets, and make sure that a stranger does not hear her voice, her footsteps, smell her or recognize her
- She must not speak to a friend of her husband even in need
- Her sole worry should be her “al bud” (reproductive organs) her home as well as her prayers and her fast (starvation for Allah)
- If a friend of her husband calls when her husband is absent she must not open the door nor reply to him in order to safeguard her “al bud” (vagina)
- She should accept what her husband gives her as sufficient sexual needs at any moment
- She should be clean and ready to satisfy her husband’s sexual needs at any moment
The great theologian then warns all men to be careful of women for their “guile is immense and their mischief is noxious; they are immoral and mean spirited”.Like a true Muslim cleric Ghazali states “It is a fact that all the trials, misfortunes and woes which befall men come from women” [3.2]
In his Book “Counsel for Kings,” Ghazali sums up all that a woman has to endure because of Eve’s misbehavior in the Garden of Eden:
“When Eve ate fruit which He had forbidden to her from the tree in Paradise, the Lord, be He praised, cursed women with eighteen punishments:
- menstruation
- childbirth
- separation from mother and father and marriage to a stranger
- pregnancy
- not having control over her own person
- a lesser share in inheritance; (one half of the male as per the Quran)
- her liability to be divorced and inability to divorce
- its being lawful for men to have four wives, but for a woman to have only one husband
- the fact that she must stay secluded in the house
- the fact that she must keep her head covered inside the house
- the fact that two women’s testimony has to be set against the testimony of one man
- the fact that she must not go out of the house unless accompanied by a near relative
- the fact that men take part in Friday and feast day prayers and funerals while women do
not
- disqualification for leadership and judgeship
- the fact that merit has one thousand components, only one of which is attributable to women, while 999 are attributable to men
- the fact that if women are profligate they will be given twice as much torment as the rest of the community at the Resurrection Day
- the fact that if their husbands die they must observe a waiting period of four months and ten days before remarrying
The idea that a woman’s sole purpose and “duty is to stay at home to satisfy the sexual appetite of her husband” is again summed up in Ghazali’s Book “Proof Of Islam.” Ghazali is still so highly revered amongst the majority of Muslim clerics that that he is called “Proof of Islam”. The most influential thinker of Islam, Ghazali, molded the minds of billions of Muslims with his opinions on women’s character :
“If you relax the woman’s leash a tiny bit, she will take you and bolt wildly….
Their deception is awesome and their wickedness is contagious; bad character and feeble mind are their predominant traits …”
Ghazali also exhorted women: A wife should never refuse her bud (vagina) to her husband even if it is on the saddle of a camel
Al-Gazali urged those men who teach their women to write : “Do not add evil to unhappiness” learning his lessons from his prophet Muhammad and caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab who commanded :“Prevent women from learning to write, adopt positions
opposite those of women. There is great virtue in such opposition.”
As the supreme cleric Ghazali defined marriage for generations of Muslims :
“Marriage is a form of slavery. The woman is man’s slave and her duty therefore is absolute obedience to the husband in all that he asks of her person. A woman, who at the moment of death enjoys the full approval of her husband, will find her place in Paradise.”
“Blessed is the nation that doesn’t need heroes" Goethe. “Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.” Herbert Spencer
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Showing posts with label Taliban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taliban. Show all posts
Monday 14 July 2014
Sunday 18 May 2014
Pakistan's Imran Khan - Hero or Zero
Hero or Zero?
Najam Sethi TFT Issue: 16 May 2014
Once General Pervez Musharraf was Imran Khan’s great hero because he expected to get the top berth from the general. But when Musharraf chose Zafarullah Jamali and then Shaukat Aziz as prime minister, Imran Khan changed Musharraf’s status to a big zero.
Once the Geo/Jang Group was Imran’s great hero because it was supporting him to the hilt before the elections. But after the elections, when Geo became critical of Imran’s policies and positions, it was reduced to a big bloated zero.
Once the former Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was Imran’s great hero for constantly knocking down the PPP. But after Chaudhry didn’t buy into Imran’s election petitions, he was blasted as a big treacherous zero.
Once Chief Election Commissioner Fakhruddin G Ibrahim was Imran’s great hero. But when Ibrahim couldn’t deliver on Imran’s great expectations, he was charged with being a big incompetent zero.
Imran Khan’s blossoming political alliances are also noteworthy. The MQM was once his pet-hate, now his stunning silence is a prelude to a budding alliance for mid-term elections. Much the same sort of bonhomie is beginning to tell between Imran and the Chaudhrys of Gujrat. Once they were allegedly Musharraf’s partners in crime because they refused to give him any electoral leverage in Punjab during the 2002 elections. Now they are comrades-in-arms in the joint struggle to destabilize, weaken and eventually get rid of Nawaz Sharif.
Imran’s relationship with the “Angels” (Pakistan Army and ISI) is another fascinating subject for research. He has unfailingly whipped up public sentiment in their favour whenever they have been cross with elected civilian governments: on Rehman Malik’s attempt to bring the political wing of the ISI under his boot; on the “objectionable” clauses in the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid to Pakistan bill; on the May 2nd Osama bin Laden debacle; on Memogate; on the “state within the state” accusation by the then prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani; on the blockage of NATO supplies following Salala; and now most vociferously on the Geo/Jang/ISI confrontation (he is silent on the Musharraf case which is a very big concession to them). An Ex-DGISI’s attempt to pressurise assorted politicians to join the PTI in 2012 is well known.
Indeed, it is this dubious relationship that helps to explain the induction of several key politicians into Imran Khan’s fold despite the lofty “lota” credentials of some of them. Sheikh Rashid, who has a ringside seat in the inner circle of IK advisors, is a self-claimed GHQ man who was once Nawaz Sharif’s and then Musharraf’s federal minister. Asad Omar is the son of an army general and hails from an “army family”; Shah Mahmood Qureshi jumped the PPP ship when nudged by the Angels on the Raymond Davis affair; Jehangir Tareen was Musharraf’s blue-eyed boy; Shafqat Mahmood served in Musharraf’s Punjab cabinet in 2000; Khurshid Kasuri was Musharraf’s Foreign Minister; and so on.
More significantly, Imran’s decision to launch a “movement” on May 11 is clearly aimed at destablising the Sharif regime. It has been followed up by a vicious attack on the Geo/Jang Group and a stinging denunciation of the ex-CJP and judiciary. This betrays the perennial objective of the Angels to keep every civilian government in a hunkered down defensive posture vis a vis the military establishment. In 1998 Benazir Bhutto was lumped with President Ishaq Khan and Foreign Minister Sahibzada Yaqub Khan while Aitzaz Ahsan was swiftly cut down to size for being soft on India, later she was sacked. In 1990, Nawaz Sharif was lumped with President Ishaq and Gen Waheed Kakar and shown the door in 1993. In 1997, when Nawaz Sharif got too big for his boots after easing out both President Farooq Leghari and COAS Gen Jehangir Karamat, he was ousted by a military coup. President Asif Zardari was hounded on one pretext or the other by the Angels from 2008-13, in alliance with the media and judiciary. Now Nawaz Sharif is in trouble over his attempt to try Musharraf for treason and to seize control of national security and foreign policy.
Some people say the Angels are planning another Islami Jamhoori Ittehad a la the late 1980s with Imran Khan as their opening batsman like they did with Nawaz Sharif earlier. The problem with this theory is that the Angels had to contend with only one popular force in 1988. Now there will be two, PPP and PMNL, covering both Sindh and Punjab, which will make it very difficult to play such a game. More likely, the Angels are only seeking to rap Nawaz Sharif on the knuckles and teach him to stay in his place on key issues like national security, foreign policy and the “sacred cow” status of the military rather than putting their faith in Imran Khan to lead Pakistan next. In order words, they are “using” Imran Khan for their own political goals just as they have used other politicians in the past. Therefore who will be hero and who will be zero remains to be seen.
Saturday 10 May 2014
University economics teaching isn't an education: it's a £9,000 lobotomy
Economics took a battering after the financial crisis, but faculties are refusing to teach alternative views. It's as if there's only one way to run an economy
"I don't care who writes a nation's laws – or crafts its treatises – if I can write its economics textbooks," said Paul Samuelson. The Nobel prizewinner grasped that what was true of gadgets was also true for economies: he who produces the instruction manual defines how the object will be used, and to what ends.
Samuelson's axiom held good until the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which triggered both an economic crisis and a crisis in economics. In the six years since, the reputations of those high priests of capitalism, academic economists, have taken a battering.
The Queen herself asked why hardly any of them saw the crash coming, while the Bank of England's Andy Haldane has noted how it rendered his colleagues' enchantingly neat models as good as useless: "The economy in crisis behaved more like slime descending a warehouse wall than Newton's pendulum." And this week, economics students from Kolkata to Manchester have gone on the warpath demanding radical changes in what they're taught.
In a manifesto signed by 42 university economics associations from 19 countries, the students decry a "dramatic narrowing of the curriculum" that presents the economy "in a vacuum". The result is that the generation next in line to run our economy, from Whitehall departments or corporate corner-offices, discuss policy without touching on "broader social impacts and moral implications of economic decisions".
The problem is summed up by one of the manifesto's coordinators, Faheem Rokadiya, at the University of Glasgow: "Whenever I sit an economics exam, I have to turn myself into a robot." But he and his fellow reformers aren't seeking to skimp on algebra, or calling for a bonfire of the works of the Chicago school. They simply object to the notion that there is one true way to do economics, especially after that apparently scientific method has been found so badly wanting.
In their battle to open up economics, Rokadiya et al have one hell of a fight on their hands, for the same reason that it has proved so hard to democratise so many aspects of the post-crash order: the forces of conservatism are just too powerful. To see how fiercely the academics fight back, take a look at the University of Manchester.
Since last autumn, members of the university's Post-Crash Economics Society have been campaigning for reform of their narrow syllabus. They've put on their own lectures from non-mainstream, heterodox economists, even organising evening classes on bubbles, panics and crashes. You might think academics would be delighted to see such undergraduate engagement, or that economists would be swift to respond to the market.
Not a bit of it. Manchester's economics faculty recently announced that it wouldn't renew the contract of the temporary lecturer of the bubbles course, and that students who wanted to learn about the crash would have to go to the business school.
The most significant economics event of our lifetime isn't being taught in any depth at one of the largest economics faculties in the country. So what exactly is a Russell Group university teaching our future economists? Last month the Post-Crash members published a report on the deficiencies of the teaching they receive. It is thorough and thoughtful, and reports: "Tutorials consist of copying problem sets off the board rather than discussing economic ideas, and 18 out of 48 modules have 50% or more marks given by multiple choice." Students point out that they are trained to digest economic theory and regurgitate it in exams, but never to question the assumptions that underpin it. This isn't an education: it's a nine-grand lobotomy.
The Manchester example is part of a much broader trend in which non-mainstream economists have been evicted from economics faculties and now hole up in geography departments or business schools. "Intellectual talibanisation" is how one renowned economist describes it in private. This isn't just bad for academia: the logical extension of the argument that you can only study economics in one way is that you can only run the economy in one way.
Mainstream economics still has debates, but they tend to be technical in nature. The Nobel prizewinner Paul Krugman has pointed to the recent work of Thomas Piketty as proof that mainstream economics is plenty wide-ranging enough. Yet when Piketty visited the Guardian last week, he complained that economists generate "sophisticated models with very little or no empirical basis … there's a lot of ideology and self-interest".
Like so many other parts of the post-crash order, mainstream economists are liberal in theory but can be authoritarian in practice. The reason for that is brilliantly summed up by that non-economist Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Tuesday 25 March 2014
Wednesday 12 February 2014
Pakistan - The pipe dream of peace
Khaled Ahmed | February 12, 2014
In Pakistan, the Taliban is negotiating in bad faith. Its choice of interlocutors for talks and list of demands confirm this.
The peace pipe Pakistan wished to smoke with the Taliban was turned into a pipe dream after the banned organisation issued, on February 9, the following “to do” list for Islamabad before it could think of a ceasefire: one, stop drone attacks; two, introduce sharia law in courts; three, introduce Islamic system of education in public and private institutions; four, release Pakistani and foreign Taliban prisoners; five, restore property damaged by drone attacks and pay compensation; six, hand over control of tribal areas to local forces; seven, withdraw the army from tribal areas and close down checkposts; eight, drop all criminal charges against the Taliban; nine, release prisoners from both sides; ten, grant equal rights for all, poor and rich; eleven, offer jobs to the families of drone-attack victims; twelve, end interest-based system; thirteen, end support for the US’s “war on terror”; fourteen, replace democratic system of governance with Islamic system; and fifteen, end all relations with the US.
After deciding to talk peace with the Taliban, Pakistan had nominated a four-member “pro-Taliban” negotiating team. The Taliban responded by naming a five-member, equally “pro-Taliban” team, without consultation with them: Maulana Samiul Haq of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Samiul Haq (JUI-S), Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Kifaetullah of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Maulana Abdul Aziz of the Red Mosque of Islamabad and Mohammad Ibrahim of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). None of them is a member of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is a banned organisation. The new Taliban leader, a wanted criminal named Mullah Fazlullah, seemed to thumb his nose at the state of Pakistan by choosing his team from the politico-religious mainstream.
The five members represent a Talibanised section of the country, boasting old connections with the Afghan Taliban and the TTP. The irony was crushing — Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s own team contained people with pro-Taliban and anti-American leanings. The idea was to win the confidence of the Taliban, but Mullah Fazlullah didn’t bite. The talks wouldn’t commit the TTP to anything.
Another irony was that Fazlullah named Imran Khan on his panel, thus creating a situation where the PTI would be talking to itself while pretending to talk to the TTP. Mercifully, Khan begged off from this absurd scenario. After that, Kifaetullah of the JUI-F too bowed out. The JUI-F is more vulnerable to the Taliban because of its location close to North Waziristan than Samiul Haq, whose seminary is close to Peshawar. Fazlur Rehman has escaped attacks from the terrorists, which means North Waziristan thinks him soft on the state of Pakistan.
Maulana Abdul Aziz, frontman of al-Qaeda’s policy of Islamic vigilantism in Islamabad, whom the judiciary is perhaps too scared to convict in scores of cases of terrorism, held a separate press conference in the capital with scary-looking armed guards to say that “nothing short of [the] removal of democracy and [the] constitution itself would be acceptable as a condition for peace.”
His Red Mosque was attacked by commando troops in 2007, after he staged a number of vigilante incidents to force Islamabad to become an Islamic city the way the TTP thinks it should be. He symbolises Pakistan’s trajectory of Islamisation since 1947 and causes the Pakistani mind to split over what should be the next phase of state identity. By voting rightwing in 2013 against the ever-dwindling liberal elements, the people of Pakistan have joined the issue on the side of the Taliban. Intimidation plays the part of a persuader more than is often realised.
After Imran Khan and the JUI-F opted out, Fazlullah reiterated his disdain towards Islamabad by proposing two replacements: the chief reporter of a leading English-language newspaper, Ansar Abbasi, whose reports read like sermonising opinion pieces; and a serving senior bureaucrat, Oria Maqbul Jan, whose crazy advocacy of the Taliban has upset all kinds of Pakistanis. Both begged off, although their worldview on TV talk shows has presaged the next mutation of the Islamic state.
A debate is raging on TV about sharia. Almost all religious organisations — most of them with street muscle and some clearly aligned with the TTP — are convinced that sharia is not in force, and therefore the Taliban demand for dismantling the modern state is justified. An important presence on the negotiating panel appointed by the Taliban, the Jamaat-e-Islami, has however decided not to support the Taliban’s rejection of the current constitution.
The Jamaat clerics, however, insist that Pakistan’s Islamic constitution is not acted upon. They have in the past rejected the modern state’s punishment of “bad” conduct (munkirat) under a penal code and neglect of “good” conduct (marufat) as pieties enforceable through punitive legislation. Starting in the post-medieval period in Europe, the modern state stopped punishing the lack of piety and concentrated only on punishing crime. The Muslims of the world, free to choose as in Egypt, want it back. Already, Pakistan is fast losing the distinction between sin and crime.
The drive to get the arrested Taliban out of state custody remains on top of the Taliban agenda. So far, they have broken two big jails under the administered jurisdiction of the state and got their killers out — most of them returning piously to their job of killing innocent people. The Shia remain in their crosshairs and don’t mind lying when it suits them to keep the common Pakistani deluded into thinking that the Shia are, in fact, being killed by America and India. They have denied the killing of Shias in a Peshawar restaurant earlier in February.
One reason the TTP has more credibility than the state is the former’s intimidatory hold over the media. Most opinion-makers in Urdu are already on their side because of Urdu’s more unbuttoned ideological message against the modern state. But the English-language newspapers are actually threatened into censoring themselves by removing the more convincing liberal-secular voices from their opinion pages.
The “popular consensus” is thus against the state and in favour of the terrorists. Of course, peace has to prevail, but will the state accept its death that easily? Sharif will have to intervene and say enough is enough at some stage of this unfolding farce.
In the first week of February, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had to go to Dubai to meet the IMF team because the multilateral financial institution is unwilling to come to Islamabad after being painted by the media as an enemy of Islam and as an instrument of America’s diabolical plots against Pakistan. Dar was asking the IMF for another loan of a half a billion dollars while the Taliban had made a billion dollars in 2013 from Karachi alone .
One reason the Taliban can’t think of peace is the money it is making in Pakistan with almost zero loss of manpower, setting itself apart from the terror franchises in Yemen, Somalia and Mali — dying states that don’t have the financial lucre to attract terrorists. Pakistanis wonder who is financing the Taliban, often blaming Saudi Arabia, America and India.
The fact is that the Taliban is in the process of emptying Karachi of its cash after leaching the city of Peshawar dry. Out of the four billion dollars the Afghan Taliban makes from heroin, at least one billion falls to the TTP’s share as the “southern funnel”. Moreover, news of shakedowns from Islamabad and Lahore is being suppressed because the well-heeled victims want to keep it hush-hush.
Sunday 8 December 2013
Mass murder in the Middle East is funded by our friends the Saudis
World View: Everyone knows where al-Qa'ida gets its money, but while the violence is sectarian, the West does nothing
Donors in Saudi Arabia have notoriously played a pivotal role in creating and maintaining Sunni jihadist groups over the past 30 years. But, for all the supposed determination of the United States and its allies since 9/11 to fight "the war on terror", they have showed astonishing restraint when it comes to pressuring Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies to turn off the financial tap that keeps the jihadists in business.
Compare two US pronouncements stressing the significance of these donations and basing their conclusions on the best intelligence available to the US government. The first is in the 9/11 Commission Report which found that Osama bin Laden did not fund al-Qa'ida because from 1994 he had little money of his own but relied on his ties to wealthy Saudi individuals established during the Afghan war in the 1980s. Quoting, among other sources, a CIA analytic report dated 14 November 2002, the commission concluded that "al-Qa'ida appears to have relied on a core group of financial facilitators who raised money from a variety of donors and other fund-raisers primarily in the Gulf countries and particularly in Saudi Arabia".
Seven years pass after the CIA report was written during which the US invades Iraq fighting, among others, the newly established Iraq franchise of al-Qa'ida, and becomes engaged in a bloody war in Afghanistan with the resurgent Taliban. American drones are fired at supposed al-Qa'ida-linked targets located everywhere from Waziristan in north-west Pakistan to the hill villages of Yemen. But during this time Washington can manage no more than a few gentle reproofs to Saudi Arabia on its promotion of fanatical and sectarian Sunni militancy outside its own borders.
Evidence for this is a fascinating telegram on "terrorist finance" from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to US embassies, dated 30 December 2009 and released by WikiLeaks the following year. She says firmly that "donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide". Eight years after 9/11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, Mrs Clinton reiterates in the same message that "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support for al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan] and other terrorist groups". Saudi Arabia was most important in sustaining these groups, but it was not quite alone since "al-Qa'ida and other groups continue to exploit Kuwait both as a source of funds and as a key transit point".
Why did the US and its European allies treat Saudi Arabia with such restraint when the kingdom was so central to al-Qa'ida and other even more sectarian Sunni jihadist organisations? An obvious explanation is that the US, Britain and others did not want to offend a close ally and that the Saudi royal family had judiciously used its money to buy its way into the international ruling class. Unconvincing attempts were made to link Iran and Iraq to al-Qa'ida when the real culprits were in plain sight.
But there is another compelling reason why the Western powers have been so laggard in denouncing Saudi Arabia and the Sunni rulers of the Gulf for spreading bigotry and religious hate. Al-Qa'ida members or al-Qa'ida-influenced groups have always held two very different views about who is their main opponent. For Osama bin Laden the chief enemy was the Americans, but for the great majority of Sunni jihadists, including the al-Qa'ida franchises in Iraq and Syria, the target is the Shia. It is the Shia who have been dying in their thousands in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and even in countries where there are few of them to kill, such as Egypt.
Pakistani papers no longer pay much attention to hundreds of Shia butchered from Quetta to Lahore. In Iraq, most of the 7,000 or more people killed this year are Shia civilians killed by the bombs of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, part of an umbrella organisation called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), which also encompasses Syria. In overwhelmingly Sunni Libya, militants in the eastern town of Derna killed an Iraqi professor who admitted on video to being a Shia before being executed by his captors.
Suppose a hundredth part of this merciless onslaught had been directed against Western targets rather than against Shia Muslims, would the Americans and the British be so accommodating to the Saudis, Kuwaitis and Emiratis? It is this that gives a sense of phoniness to boasts by the vastly expanded security bureaucracies in Washington and London about their success in combating terror justifying vast budgets for themselves and restricted civil liberties for everybody else. All the drones in the world fired into Pashtun villages in Pakistan or their counterparts in Yemen or Somalia are not going to make much difference if the Sunni jihadists in Iraq and Syria ever decide – as Osama bin Laden did before them – that their main enemies are to be found not among the Shia but in the United States and Britain.
Instead of the fumbling amateur efforts of the shoe and underpants bombers, security services would have to face jihadist movements in Iraq, Syria and Libya fielding hundreds of bomb-makers and suicide bombers. Only gradually this year, videos from Syria of non-Sunnis being decapitated for sectarian motives alone have begun to shake the basic indifference of the Western powers to Sunni jihadism so long as it is not directed against themselves.
Saudi Arabia as a government for a long time took a back seat to Qatar in funding rebels in Syria, and it is only since this summer that they have taken over the file. They wish to marginalise the al-Qa'ida franchisees such as Isil and the al-Nusra Front while buying up and arming enough Sunni war-bands to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.
The directors of Saudi policy in Syria – the Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, the head of the Saudi intelligence agency Prince Bandar bin Sultan and the Deputy Defence Minister Prince Salman bin Sultan – plan to spend billions raising a militant Sunni army some 40,000 to 50,000 strong. Already local warlords are uniting to share in Saudi largesse for which their enthusiasm is probably greater than their willingness to fight.
The Saudi initiative is partly fuelled by rage in Riyadh at President Obama's decision not to go to war with Syria after Assad used chemical weapons on 21 August. Nothing but an all-out air attack by the US similar to that of Nato in Libya in 2011 would overthrow Assad, so the US has essentially decided he will stay for the moment. Saudi anger has been further exacerbated by the successful US-led negotiations on an interim deal with Iran over its nuclear programme.
By stepping out of the shadows in Syria, the Saudis are probably making a mistake. Their money will only buy them so much. The artificial unity of rebel groups with their hands out for Saudi money is not going to last. They will be discredited in the eyes of more fanatical jihadis as well as Syrians in general as pawns of Saudi and other intelligence services.
A divided opposition will be even more fragmented. Jordan may accommodate the Saudis and a multitude of foreign intelligence services, but it will not want to be the rallying point for an anti-Assad army.
The Saudi plan looks doomed from the start, though it could get a lot more Syrians killed before it fails. Yazid Sayegh of the Carnegie Middle East Centre highlights succinctly the risks involved in the venture: "Saudi Arabia could find itself replicating its experience in Afghanistan, where it built up disparate mujahedin groups that lacked a unifying political framework. The forces were left unable to govern Kabul once they took it, paving the way for the Taliban to take over. Al-Qa'ida followed, and the blowback subsequently reached Saudi Arabia.
Saturday 16 November 2013
Pakistan - Drone attacks, a convenient explanation
By blaming extremism on only 9/11 and U.S.-led drone attacks, the Pakistani state and society are seeking to externalise an internal issue
The killing of Hakimullah Mehsud, the head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in a recent drone attack in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas has once again brought the debate back centre stage — within Pakistan at the national level, and between the United States and Pakistan at the bilateral level. While “sovereignty” and “spoiling the internal dialogue with the TTP” seem to be the primary slogans within Pakistan, “come what may, we will go after the militants” seems to sum up the American attitude. But are the drone attacks simply about these slogans and attitudes? Or, are there more serious and complicated issues than what is generally discussed at the populist level?
Sharif’s four assertions
During his visit to the U.S. in October, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif put forward four primary theses against the American-led drones programme, forcefully arguing that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) should cease using them. First, there was the general Pakistani perception that the drone attacks have increased extremism within Pakistan, resulting in further militant attacks within the country. Second, it impinged on Pakistan’s sovereignty, as the drones fired from across the Durand Line in Afghanistan fly over Pakistan territory and fire missiles, killing innocent civilians. Even if militants do get killed, the collateral damage is high. Third, as a result of these two, there is a growing anti-American sentiment within Pakistan, affecting Pakistan’s cooperation with the U.S., thereby further impinging on the American war against terrorism. Finally, continuing attacks undermine Pakistan’s efforts towards initiating a dialogue with the Taliban. How true are these perceptions that are widespread within Pakistan?
Undoubtedly, there is an element of truth in these four assertions. And, ironically, within them lies Pakistani duplicity. First, are the drones the primary reason for growing extremism within Pakistan? Or for that matter, 9/11 and the follow-up American invasion into Afghanistan? There is a blinkered perception in Pakistan about the extent of extremism pre- and post-9/11 and the drone attacks. Viewed in historical and sociological perspectives, the growth of extremism within Pakistan, with its roots in the 1980s, grew exponentially during the 1990s. Afghanistan and Kashmir became the much-needed ideological excuses for the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to pursue their “strategic depth” and “thousand cuts” vis-à-vis Afghanistan and India respectively.
Radicalism before 9/11
While the political and sociological environment vitiated by the late Pakistan President Zia-ul-Haq and the failure of governance have already given birth to extremist groups (of the sectarian and jihadi kind) — of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) varieties — the abuse of these actors by the military and the ISI created an ugly internal situation for Pakistan from the 1990s. Extremism and radicalism were well entrenched at the national and provincial levels well before drone attacks and even 9/11.
Any historical analysis of sectarian violence in Punjab, Malakand and the tribal regions will reveal the scope of radical tumult by the late 1990s. Had it not been for this churning within Pakistan, neither would the Taliban have been born, nor the al-Qaeda found the region an ideal refuge and base to prepare for 9/11. Linking extremism within Pakistan only to drones and 9/11 reflects an ostrich-like attitude. It perhaps provides a convenient explanation, worse, an excuse for both the State and society to externalise an internal issue. The radical onslaught today in Pakistan is a direct result of what happened in the 1980-90s, both internally and externally; irrespective of 9/11, the American invasion and the drones, Pakistan would have gone through what it is going through now.
Link with sovereignty
The second major instance of Pakistani duplicity is over linking drones with sovereignty. There has been a tacit understanding between the political and military leadership vis-à-vis the U.S. on the use of drones. Starting from Gen. Musharraf to Gen. Kayani, were they not kept in the picture on the drone programme? Perhaps the CIA may not have shared the operational details, but it certainly should have explained to them the target and focus.
Drones, by nature, are not supersonic and stealth creatures; they fly at low altitude and are visible. If Pakistan had not agreed to their use, what stopped Gen. Musharraf and Gen. Kayani from issuing orders to fire at them? How many times has Pakistan fired at these drones, or its air force chased these drones away from Pakistani airspace? Is Pakistan incapable of firing at the drones, thereby allowing its airspace to be violated?
It is difficult to accept that Pakistan does not have the capacity to fire at drones using missiles, or chase them using fighter aircraft. Hypothetically speaking, if India were to use similar drones in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, will Islamabad and Rawalpindi keep complaining only about violation of airspace? Pakistan’s sovereignty argument does not make any sense.
The sovereignty argument over the use of drones also contradicts Pakistan’s earlier understanding with the U.S. Before the CIA took the drone programme into Afghanistan, across the Durand Line, were not drones being used from the Shamsi base in Balochistan? What was the understanding between the CIA and Pakistan’s military at that time, when the latter allowed the former to use the Shamsi airbase by the U.S.?
These are hard questions that Pakistan should ask its political and military leadership. Unfortunately for the U.S., the anti-American sentiment has greatly clouded the judgment of Pakistan’s civil society on this issue. Perhaps Mr. Nawaz Sharif is correct; drone attacks have increased anti-American sentiments, but the political leadership has allowed this purposefully to happen — to let the Americans take the full blame.
On dialogue
Finally, the issue of drones preventing Pakistan from initiating a dialogue with the Taliban, especially the TTP. True, the killing of Nek Mohammad, a former Taliban fighter, in 2004 did affect the dialogue then between the militants and Pakistan; however, after that, there were multiple dialogues between the military, the ISI and the TTP. Perhaps the drone attacks and the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud is a good omen for Pakistan. The TTP may get destabilised and will provide a better opportunity for Pakistan to negotiate with them — from a position of strength.
Thursday 16 May 2013
How Nawaz Sharif beat Imran Khan .....
The results of the Pakistan elections are in – but how did a former exile win the vote? By promising airports to people who can't afford bicycles, says novelist Mohammed Hanif
Here's a little fairytale from Pakistan. Fourteen years ago a wise man ruled the country. He enjoyed the support of his people. But some of his treacherous generals thought he wasn't that smart. One night he was held at gunpoint, handcuffed, put in a dark dungeon, sentenced to life imprisonment. But then a little miracle happened; he, along with his family and servants, was put on a royal plane and exiled to Saudi Arabia, that fancy retirement home for the world's unwanted Muslim leaders.
Two days ago that same man stood on a balcony in Lahore, thanked Allah and said: Nawaz Sharif forgives them all.
But wait, if it was a real fairytale, Imran Khan would have won the election instead, right? Can't Pakistani voters tell between a world-famous, world cup-winning, charismatic leaderand a mere politician who refers to himself in the third person?
Why didn't Imran Khan win?
Well he has, sort of. But not in the way he would have liked. Visiting foreign journalists have profiled Imran Khan more than they have profiled any living thing in this part of the world. If all the world's magazine editors were allowed to vote for Imran Khan he would be the prime minister of half the English-speaking world. If Imran Khan had contested in west London he would have won hands-down. But since this is Pakistan, he has won in Peshawar and two other cities. His party is set to form a government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, that north-western frontier province of Pakistan which Khan's profile writers never fail to remind us is the province that borders Afghanistan and the tribal areas that the world is so scared of. Or as some others never fail to remind the world: the land of the fierce pathans.
It's true that Khan ran a fierce, bloody-minded campaign, drawing huge crowds. When his campaign culminated in a televised tumble from a stage, during a public rally, the whole nation held its breath. Khan galvanised not only Pakistan's parasitical upper classes but also found support among the country's young men and women of all ages; basically the kind of people who use the words politics and politician as common insults. He inspired drawing-room revolutionaries to go out and stand in the blistering heat for hours on end to vote for him. For a few months he made politics hip in Pakistan. Partly, he was relying on votes from Pakistan's posh locales. He probably forgot that there was a slight problem there: not enough posh locales in Pakistan. There were kids who flew in from Chicago, from Birmingham to vote for him. Again, there are not enough Pakistani kids living and studying in Chicago and Birmingham. He appealed to the educated middle classes but Pakistan's main problem is that there aren't enough educated urban middle-class citizens in the country.
And the masses, it appears, were not really clamouring for a revolution but for electricity.
From the gossip columns of British tabloids to massive political rallies across Pakistan, Khan has been on a meaningful journey. In his campaign speeches, his blatantly Blairite message of New Pakistan did appeal to people but he really tested his supporters' attention span when he started to lecture them about how the Scandinavian welfare state model is borrowed from the early days of the Islamic empire in Arabia. Amateur historians have never fared well in Pakistani politics. Or anywhere else. Khan promised to turn Pakistan into Sweden, Norway or any one of those countries where everyone is blond and pays tax. His opponents promised Dubai – where everyone is either a bonded labourer or a property speculator and no one pays taxes – and won.
It's a bit of a fairytale that Khan, whose message was directed at educated urban voters, has found supporters in the north-western frontier province that profile writers must remind us is largely tribal and the front line of the world's war on terror. Khan has led a popular campaign against drone attacks. He has promised that he will shoot down drones, look Americans in the eye, sit down with the Taliban over a cup of qahwa and sort this mess out.
So we finally have someone who feels at home in Mayfair as well as Peshawar. He finally has the chance to rule Peshawar. Slight problem: as he speaks no Pashto, the language of the Pathans. But his first fight will be against American drones hovering in the sky. And drones speak no Pashto either. If Khan can win this match, he can challenge Nawaz Sharif in the next elections.
Is this Nawaz Sharif man for real?
Hasn't he been tried before? Twice? It seems voters in the largest province of Pakistani Punjab just can't have enough of this guy. At every campaign stop, Sharif reminded his supporters of two of his biggest achievements: I built the motorway, I built the bomb. He did build Pakistan's first motorway. And despite several phone calls from the then American president Bill Clinton and other world leaders and offers of million of dollars in aid, Sharif did go ahead and order six nuclear explosions in response to India's five. And then he thought that now that both countries have the bomb he could go ahead and be friends with India. While he was making history hosting the Indian prime minister in the historic city of Lahore, his generals were busy elsewhere repeating history on the mountains of Kargil. In a misadventure typical of Pakistani generals, they occupied the abandoned posts and then pretended that these were mujahideen fighting India and not regular Pakistan army soldiers.
When India reacted with overwhelming force and a diplomatic offensive, Sharif pleaded ignorance and rushed off to Washington to bail out the army and his own government. President Clinton praised his diplomatic skills and the crisis was resolved briefly. When, months later he tried to fire his handpicked army chief General Pervez Musharraf, the architect of the Kargil fiasco, a bunch of army officers put their guns to Sharif's head. Handcuffed, jailed, sentenced to life imprisonment, in the end Sharif was saved by his powerful friends in Saudi Arabia. A royal jet flew him, his family and his servants to a palace in Saudi Arabia. An exile in Saudi Arabia for Muslim rulers is generally considered a permanent retirement home where you get closer to Allah and atone for past sins. Sharif must be the only politician in exile in Saudi Arabia who not only managed to survive this holy exile but in the process got a hair transplant and managed to hold on to his political base in Pakistan.
Many of his political opponents say that if Sharif wasn't from the dominant province Punjab, where most of the army elite comes from, if he didn't represent the trading and business classes of Punjab, he would still be begging forgiveness for his sins in Saudi. But he returned just before the last elections and has been behaving like a statesman. A very rich statesman.
It has yet to be proven whether eight years of exile in Saudi Arabia can make anyone wiser but it has never made anybody poorer. Sharif was rich before he got into politics, then he became fabulously rich. Even in exile the Saudis gave him a palace and, on his return, a fleet of bulletproof limousines. His campaign proved that poor people don't really vote for somebody who understands poverty, or wants to do anything about it. People have voted him in because he talks money, talks about spending money, talks about opening a bank on every village street and who doesn't like that? He has promised motorway connections and airports to towns so small that they still don't have a proper bus station. Poor people, who couldn't afford a bicycle at the time of the elections, like to be promised an airport. You never know when you might need it.
In his five years' rule in Punjab, Sharif's party has had one policy about the Pakistani Taliban who have been wreaking havoc in parts of Pakistan: please go and do your business elsewhere. And they have generally obliged. But now that he is set to rule all of Pakistan, what's he going to tell them?
Have we defeated the Taliban or sent them a friend request?
When Pakistan decided to throw itself an election party, the first ones to arrive were the Taliban. They weren't really interested in the party because they keep reminding us that elections are un-Islamic and a major sin on a par with educating girls. But they were interested in watching what party games were played and who got to play them. They decided that the three political parties that had ruled Pakistan for the past five years and taken a clear stand against the Taliban would be targeted. And the Taliban started their own campaign, targeting candidates and their supporters with bomb attacks and drive-by shootings. In one case, a candidate in Karachi was shot as he came out of a mosque. Along with his six-year-old son. The election campaign across Pakistan looked like this: some parties held huge rallies, in a carnival-type atmosphere with live tigers and massive music systems. Other candidates sneaked from one little corner meeting to another trying to remind people of their heroic stand against the Taliban. Many of the candidates were never seen in public. Many journalists refused to visit them because they were sitting targets. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the public face of the ruling People's party, could only deliver a couple of video messages from Dubai.
The other parties, the ones who were allowed to campaign freely, were grateful in their silence. When we look at the election results we must not forget that while the Pakistani Taliban didn't contest the elections as a political party, they did see themselves as kingmakers. In Pakistan's liberal media the Taliban are often described as brutes with an endless bloodlust. But by making allies and choosing partners they have demonstrated that they are at least as canny as the average campaigning politician.
But in the end the Taliban failed to deliver the kind of devastation they had promised. They managed to kill about 130 people in eight weeks. In the past they have achieved that kind of number in a single day. Also, 60% of Pakistanis who came out to vote seem to be politely disagreeing with the Taliban by saying that there is nothing un-Islamic about standing in a queue and stamping a ballot paper.
The Taliban's real success is that they bet on the winners. They promised not to attack Khan and Sharif's parties. And these parties will be in power. But the Taliban have never contested an election before. And they are soon to find out that politicians never keep the promises they make during the heat of the campaign.
Why does this election mean nothing for Farzana Majeed?
Three weeks before the elections, a 27-year-old biochemistry graduate stood outside Karachi Press club. Farzana Majeed and a couple of dozen young people carried pictures of Zakir Majeed, a literature student who was abducted by Pakistan's military intelligence four years ago and since then has become one of the hundreds of missing Baloch people, mostly young, political activists. Their mutilated, tortured bodies turn up on the roadsidewith sickening regularity. The Pakistani media, otherwise quite noisy about every subject under the sun, stay quiet. None of the political parties campaigning in recent elections uttered a word about Zakir Majeed or hundreds of other people languishing in military-run dungeons. Why? Because it's a security issue. A militant separatist movement in parts of Balochistan means that the rest of Pakistan sees it as an enemy. The protesters distributed pamphlets encouraging the fellow Balochs not to participate in the elections. The voter turn out in Baloch areas in Balochistan has been less than 10%. No political party in the country had the heart to go and ask Farzana Majeed or thousands of other families to vote. Farzana is a polite, articulate person but mention the word elections and she is likely to wave her missing brother's picture in front of you. And just like Pakistan's last political government, the new one also doesn't want to see this picture.
So what happens to the federation?
Who needs a federation when you can have so much more fun doing things your own way. So in the post-election Pakistan, Khan will rule the north and shoot down American drones while discussing Scandinavian social welfare models with the Taliban. Sharif will rule in Punjab and the centre, try to do business with India and build more motorways all the while looking over his shoulder for generals looking at him. In the south, Bhutto's decimated People's party will keep ruling and keep saying that folks up north are stealing its water, destroying its social welfare programmes and secular legacy. And, in Balochistan, Farzana Majeed will keep waving her missing brother's picture.
Do these bits add up to a country? They do, if you are sitting in Islamabad and showing off your nuclear weapons to the world or planning a motorway to central Asia. But if you are an old woman waiting for her 2,000-rupee welfare cheque or a student activist in a military dungeon waiting for your next interrogation session, you are not likely to dream of motorways and new airports.
Pakistan as a federation has gone through its first rite of passage: handover of power from one elected civilian setup to another. It took Pakistan 67 years to get here. Let us not forget that the reasons that caused this delay haven't disappeared.
Mohammed Hanif is BBC Urdu's special correspondent based in Karachi. He is the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes and Our Lady of Alice Bhatti
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