Pages

Monday, August 24, 2009

Turbulent Times in Pakistan: Price of Swat Peace

Radical Islamism & Jihad
18 Apr 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

Turbulent Times in Pakistan: Price of Swat Peace

 

Mr Zardari wants nothing less than a Marshall Plan to bail out Pakistan and stabilise his PPP government. But the US is tying money and weapons to a proper quid pro quo from the army and ISI on the war on terror. But the army and ISI are not ready to accept Mr Zardari’s pro- US prescriptions because of long- held views on regional security and national interest that are not acceptable to Washington. So he is being compelled by the US to turn to Mr Sharif and bring him into the loop because of his popular backing. But Mr Sharif has his own agenda. He has the ear of the Saudis and is using their money and clout to guarantee a passage back to power at the expense of Mr Zardari sooner than later. Which power or actor will ultimately prevail and what will be the fate of Pakistan in these tumultuous times remains to be seen. -- Najam Sethi

---

The state will be punished for having allowed terrorist elements to rule Swat. In the coming days, the Taliban will institutionalise their presence and convert the region adjoining Swat into a satrapy completely insulated from the rest of Pakistan. The consequences of that will be predictably destructive for the state of Pakistan. -- Editorial in Daily Times, Lahore,  Pakistan

URL of this page: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1336 

----------------------

 

Turbulent Times In Pakistan

by Najam Sethi

 

A CLUTCH of important Pakistani leaders visited Saudi Arabia last week — General Tariq Majeed, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Ashfaq Kayani, COAS, and Mr Nawaz Sharif. The latter’s visit to Riyadh has set tongues wagging, given his close links to the Saudi monarchy which is singularly responsible for his rising political fortune. Mr Sharif, interestingly, stopped over in Dubai for a day exactly when President Asif Zardari detoured to the same city for a mysterious stopover and meeting, before turning around and flying off to Japan for the critical moot of the “ Friends of Pakistan” consortium. The FOP is deliberating how much economic assistance to give Pakistan over the next few years and Saudi Arabia may turn out to be the biggest single donor in it.

 

Are these meetings, therefore, all about propping up Mr Zardari’s government and Pakistan’s economy? Is Mr Sharif hoisting the national interest above his party’s political interest by putting in a good word with the Saudis on behalf of Mr Zardari? Is General Kayani also backing up Mr Zardari for the grand sake of democracy? Not at all. None of the political players is doing anything without a core vested interest. Indeed, there is a seamlessness about political developments in Pakistan since that fateful day of March 16 when Mr Zardari was outmanoeuvred by a combination of Army and America, and Mr Sharif was raised as a smart alternative to Mr Zardari who has increasingly come to be perceived in Washington as “ not such a good option” in the prevailing domestic and international crisis facing the country. The fact that visiting American, British and EU bigwigs have probably met Mr Sharif as many times as they have President Zardari, says it all.

 

IN CONSEQUENCE, we have seen their joint handiwork in unmistakable terms. First, it was the restoration of Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry as chief justice of Pakistan, with public thanks to an intervention by General Kayani. Second, and as a consequence of Mr Chaudhry’s intervention, there was the restoration of Mr Shahbaz Sharif as chief minister of Punjab, by a specially constituted bench of the Supreme Court. Third, we saw Mr Zardari’s decision to constitute a bipartisan parliamentary committee to determine how to implement the Charter of Democracy and get rid of the 17th constitutional amendment, which empowers the office of the President and stops Mr Sharif from becoming a prime minister for the third time, so that all major stakeholders, especially Mr Sharif, are satisfied.

 

Surely, this was not done happily and voluntarily. Fourth, the decision by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to invite Mr Sharif’s PMLN to join the federal cabinet and claim a stake in government, thereby diminishing the PPP’s monopoly of power, is not a gratuitous act. It suggests there is pressure from certain quarters to cut President Zardari down to size while getting Mr Sharif to take greater responsibility for certain unpalatable decisions regarding the “war against terror” and belt- tightening the economy. Fifth, Mr Zardari’s decision to place the matter of the Nizam i Adl Regulation in Swat, which cements a dubious peace deal between the local government and the Taliban, before parliament and get it to stamp its approval unanimously, implies that Mr Zardari, who had foot- dragged the issue, finally succumbed to pressure and did it this way because he didn’t want to take sole responsibility in the event of its failure.

 

Sixth, the release of Maulana Aziz, the firebrand Lal Masjid religious leader, from prison on the orders of the Chaudhry- led Supreme Court, on April 15, against the inclination of the Zardari administration, signals an army/ ISI interest because he might prove an intelligence asset in the three- way tussle for leverage between the army, Taliban and America. Similarly, Mr Sharif’s cooperation suggests a movement towards a “national government” as a prelude to a mid- term election, which remains the PMLN’s most outstanding demand.

 

Still, there are wheels within wheels.

 

And nothing has been stitched up so far because of countervailing pulls and pushes. Washington first put all its eggs in Benazir Bhutto’s basket and handed it to President Pervez Musharraf.

 

WHEN the eggs didn’t hatch because Ms Bhutto was assassinated, the Bush administration put its weight behind Mr Zardari. But President Musharraf didn’t survive the political fallout of the elections. So Washington quickly transferred its affection to General Kayani. However, this move didn’t pay off because General Kayani was angered by the Obama administration’s allegations of “ double dealing” by the ISI and crude attempts to nudge Mr Zardari to cut the secret agency down to size. So it was time to bring Mr Sharif on board, to give the civilian government greater muscle and popular backing. That is where the Saudis come in, right behind Mr Sharif.

 

Mr Zardari has been considerably weakened in the last month or so by a string of bad political decisions which have alienated him from the army and most Pakistanis. Meanwhile, the US is frustrated because it is unable to have its way fully with Islamabad. The recent assertion of “gaps” between Washington and Islamabad, at the behest of the hard-line army, including a refusal to give a blank cheque to Mr Holbrooke, is a measure of the bumps that lie ahead.

 

Mr Zardari wants nothing less than a Marshall Plan to bail out Pakistan and stabilise his PPP government. But the US is tying money and weapons to a proper quid pro quo from the army and ISI on the war on terror. But the army and ISI are not ready to accept Mr Zardari’s pro- US prescriptions because of long- held views on regional security and national interest that are not acceptable to Washington. So he is being compelled by the US to turn to Mr Sharif and bring him into the loop because of his popular backing. But Mr Sharif has his own agenda. He has the ear of the Saudis and is using their money and clout to guarantee a passage back to power at the expense of Mr Zardari sooner than later. Which power or actor will ultimately prevail and what will be the fate of Pakistan in these tumultuous times remains to be seen.

Courtesy: Mail Today, New Delhi

The writer is the editor of The Friday Times, Lahore

---------------------------

 

Price of Swat peace

Editorial in Daily Times Pakistan

 

The NWFP Governor, Mr Owais Ahmed Ghani, signed the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation on Wednesday, formally enforcing what he called Sharia laws in Swat and five other northern districts, and calling the occasion a historic day . President Asif Ali Zardari on the other hand insisted for the nth time that Nizam-e Adl was not sharia and that its enforcement would be reviewed if peace did not come to prevail in the Malakand region. He was in Tokyo, asking a scared Friends of Pakistan group of countries to give Pakistan approximately $6 billion in aid quickly to fight terrorism.

 

The world outside has never liked the Swat deal because it thinks it is an instrument of defeat after the failure of the Pakistan army to oust the Taliban from the area. The deal was reached with a man who is the father-in-law of the warlord who has killed a lot of innocent people in Swat and is answerable to the state of Pakistan for having killed its security personnel. Under the Nizam-e Adl law, the Malakand qazi courts would be literally autonomous and appeals against their verdicts would lie within the system dominated by the Taliban, and not the NWFP High Court or the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

 

But all protest from outside Pakistan has been brushed aside by the NWFP Governor who says, This is our problem. Islam is our religion and we are Muslims. The state is responding to the aspirations of the people . But criticism is also coming from within Pakistan, although it is highly politicised and also subject to intimidation that most Pakistani politicians pretend not to admit. The coalition at the centre is divided. The MQM has not voted approval of the Nizam-e Adl in Parliament and has expressed fears about the extension of the pro-Taliban law to Sindh, a fear that is not totally ill-founded. Civil society, heretofore united behind the lawyers movement, is also divided, and the debate over some TV channels became almost abusive on Wednesday night.

 

The patron of the new legal system, Sufi Muhammad, has made it clear that the Nizam-e Adl system is sealed against the higher law in the country and that the Taliban, led by his son-in-law, will be retroactively exempted from its operation. He wants the provincial and federal governments to compensate the people who have been hurt by the disorder of the past two years rebellion but refuses the jurisdiction of the government to set responsibility for the damage done to the people of Swat. What arouses fear among liberal circles inside Pakistan is the nature of the sharia represented by courts supervised by Sufi Muhammad and his executive arm led by the warlord Fazlullah. Soon, it will become clear if the courts can get the women of Swat to retrieve their rights to education and free movement that they had lost under the Taliban.

 

Have the Taliban relented in their menace to the writ of the state? Those who favour the new laws in Swat would be disappointed to discover that the terrorist attack at Charsadda on Wednesday that killed 18 people, including nine policemen, was planned in Malakand-Swat and the terrorists who drove the dynamite-laden vehicles came from that direction. The ANP government of the NWFP and Governor NWFP will have to continue their efforts at improving the capacity of the police to face up to the army of warlord Fazlullah despite the fact that they, with full support of the PPP in Islamabad, have made a peace deal with Sufi Muhammad.

 

Of course, no one can blame the people of Swat for celebrating the enforcement of Nizam-e Adl. After being completely disappointed with the capacity of the state to protect them against the onslaught of the Taliban, their minimalist approach is justified. They have decided to subject themselves to the authority of the Taliban and will restart their lives at the cost of the freedoms they had in the past. Maybe this is an experience they have to go through before they become finally disabused of the dubious memories of the Sharia of the Wali of Swat.

 

But we can be sure of one thing. The state will be punished for having allowed terrorist elements to rule Swat. In the coming days, the Taliban will institutionalise their presence and convert the region adjoining Swat into a satrapy completely insulated from the rest of Pakistan. The consequences of that will be predictably destructive for the state of Pakistan.

URL of this page: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1336

 


Islam and Politics
17 Apr 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

A decisive moment in Kashmiri secessionist politics

 

Sajjad Ghani Lone’s decision to contest the Lok Sabha election

Early last summer, the Hurriyat leaders finally lost hope that an India-Pakistan deal was possible. Desperate, the secessionist coalition’s leadership reached out again to New Delhi. Mirwaiz Farooq signalled that the Hurriyat would not oppose the coming elections, while Mr. Butt called on the National Conference and the PDP to work with the secessionist formation to “mutually work out a joint settlement and present it to India and Pakistan.” For his part, Mr. Lone called for secessionist aspirations to be focussed on the “achievable.” “In between ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’,” Mr. Lone said, “the leadership has to consider ‘something’ as well.” Mr. Lone’s decision to contest the Lok Sabha election marks that first step towards the realisation of this so-far undefined “something”. ... Mirwaiz Farooq and his Hurriyat Conference colleagues will have to carefully consider the ever-shrinking options they are left with. -- Praveen Swami

Photo: Sajjad Ghani Lone

URL of this page: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1335

-----------------------

 

 

Sajjad Lone’s search for ‘something’

 

Praveen Swami

 

Sajjad Ghani Lone’s decision to contest the Lok Sabha election marks a decisive moment in Kashmiri secessionist politics.

 

His hands firmly clamped on the Koran, Sajjad Ghani Lone last year denied that he was secretly supporting the candidates contesting the elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly. “He is a liar, a curse on our nation,” Mr. Lone said of the man who made the allegation — the Islamist patriarch, Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

 

Less than six months later, though, the head of the secessionist People’s Conference has announced he will be contesting the Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency — a dramatic reversal of position for a man who, only in December, insisted that the 2008 elections were a triumph not for democracy but “the Indian gun.” “I will represent Kashmir in New Delhi,” Mr. Lone now says, “not New Delhi in Kashmir.”

 

For Jammu and Kashmir’s crisis-mired secessionist movement, Mr. Lone’s decision poses fateful questions. Should the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference also demonstrate its legitimacy through electoral contest? Will Kashmir’s secessionists be able to forge tactical electoral alliances with pro-India groupings, necessary if they are ever to wield power? And ought secessionists negotiate a settlement with India rather than wait for Pakistan to do so on their behalf?

 

Last summer, Jammu and Kashmir was torn apart by protests against the grant of land-use rights to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. Islamists led by Mr. Geelani claimed that the land-use rights would pave the way for the colonisation of ethnic-Kashmiri lands. Like most secessionists, Mr. Lone came to believe that the protests that followed were a mass uprising against Indian rule and decided to boycott the Assembly elections.

 

But many People’s Conference-linked figures didn’t share that assessment. Among them was his sister, Shabnam Ghani Lone, who contested from Kupwara. Ghulam Qadir Mir, a People’s Conference-backed independent, had lost the seat to the National Conference’s Mir Saifullah by only 132 votes in 2002. Another People’s Conference-backed independent, Ghulam Mohiuddin Sofi, won from Handwara and went on to become the State’s Forest Minister.

 

Shabnam Lone didn’t win — but other People’s Conference leaders did well in an election which saw voters across rural Kashmir defy the secessionist boycott campaign. Abdul Rashid Sheikh, a long-time confidant of Abdul Ghani Lone, used his credentials as a democratic rights campaigner and newspaper columnist to defeat the National Conference’s Sharif-ud-Din Shariq and the People’s Democratic Party’s Mohammad Sultan Pandit in Langate.

 

“People have voted at a wrong time,” Mr. Lone ruefully said at a press conference in December, “but we cannot pretend nothing has happened.” Early in April, the Working Group of the People’s Conference leaders met to discuss the way forward. Leaders who had left the party because of its refusal to participate in the elections were invited to rejoin. Mr. Lone received the party’s support for his decision to contest the elections.

 

Changing discourse

Despite appearances, Mr. Lone’s decision to contest the Lok Sabha election isn’t surprising: indeed, its foundations were carefully built by secessionist leaders in and outside the Hurriyat over the last ten years.

 

Early in 1997, the former head of the Jamaat-e-Islami — the parent orGhanisation of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen — criticised what he described as “gunculture.” In an interview to a Srinagar-based magazine soon after his release from prison, the then Jamaat chief, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, called for “a political dialogue” to end the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir.

 

By the summer of 1999, ideas like these had become increasingly widespread. In April that year, Hurriyat leader Abdul Ghani Butt called for a dialogue between secessionist and pro-India political groups like the Congress and the National Conference. The outcome of this dialogue, he argued, would constitute the will of the people of the State. This could then be communicated to the governments of India and Pakistan — an idea remarkably similar to the dialogue process initiated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005.

 

In 2000, the Hurriyat centrists helped facilitate a unilateral ceasefire declared by dissident Hizb commander Abdul Majid Dar. Fearful that it would be left with no leverage in Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate soon derailed the ceasefire.

 

Fate, though, was not on Islamabad’s side. Pakistan’s long-standing support of the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir became increasingly untenable in a world transfigured by the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Soon after, the hostilities that almost resulted from the Jaish-e-Mohammad’s strike on the Parliament House made clear the potential costs of Pakistan’s war-by-proxy strategy. Pakistan was compelled to cut back its support for the jihadist groups in Jammu and Kashmir.

 

Mr. Lone’s father, Abdul Ghani Lone, sought to use the new strategic landscape to push forward his efforts for a negotiated resolution of the conflict. In mid-April 2002, he travelled to Sharjah for discussions with the powerful Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir leader, Sardar Abdul Qayoom Khan, and the then ISI chief, Lieutenant-General Ehsan-ul-Haq. He is believed to have told both men that the Hurriyat intended to open the way for a direct dialogue with New Delhi.

 

“If the [Indian] government is not ready to allow self-determination,” Abdul Ghani Lone said soon after the meeting, “the alternative is that it should be ready to settle the dispute through a meaningful dialogue involving all parties concerned.”

 

Days after making that statement, Abdul Ghani Lone was assassinated by a Lashkar-e-Taiba hit squad — a blunt message from the ISI to all those contemplating a deal with New Delhi that did not accommodate Pakistan’s interests. In 2004, Hurriyat leaders led by Mirwaiz Farooq met with Union Home Minister L.K. Advani, but their talks were purely formal in nature. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held a fresh round of negotiations with the Hurriyat in 2005, but its leaders never delivered on the promises to come back with detailed proposals for discussions. Finally, in March 2006, APHC leaders promised mediators they would attend Prime Minister Singh’s second round table conference on Jammu and Kashmir but backed off after threats from the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.

 

Secret meetings

New Delhi now focussed its energies on Pakistan — a course of action that it correctly believed would be more productive than talking to the fearful Hurriyat leadership. In secret meetings which began in 2005, Dr. Singh’s envoy, S.K. Lambah, and his Pakistani counterpart, Tariq Aziz, arrived at five points of convergence. First, the two men agreed, there would be no redrawing of the Line of Control. Second, they accepted that there would have to be greater political autonomy on both sides of Jammu and Kashmir. Mr. Lambah and Mr. Aziz also agreed that India would begin troops cuts in response to de-escalation of jihadist violence, co-operatively manage resources like watersheds and glaciers and, finally, open the LoC for travel and trade.

 

“I think the agenda is pretty much set,” Mirwaiz Farooq told an interviewer in April 2007. “It is September, 2007,” he went on, “that India and Pakistan are looking at, in terms of announcing something on Kashmir”.

 

The Hurriyat leaders hoped that the deal would hand them power. By the time Mr. Lambah and Mr. Aziz arrived at their five-point formula, though, Pakistan’s descent into the abyss was well under way. Before he was swept out of office, President Pervez Musharraf asked India to defer the dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir while he consolidated his domestic position. President Asif Ali Zardari later made clear that progress on Jammu and Kashmir was not something he was willing to risk the future of his beleaguered regime on.

 

Early last summer, the Hurriyat leaders finally lost hope that an India-Pakistan deal was possible. Desperate, the secessionist coalition’s leadership reached out again to New Delhi. Mirwaiz Farooq signalled that the Hurriyat would not oppose the coming elections, while Mr. Butt called on the National Conference and the PDP to work with the secessionist formation to “mutually work out a joint settlement and present it to India and Pakistan.” For his part, Mr. Lone called for secessionist aspirations to be focussed on the “achievable.” “In between ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’,” Mr. Lone said, “the leadership has to consider ‘something’ as well.”

 

Mr. Lone’s decision to contest the Lok Sabha election marks that first step towards the realisation of this so-far undefined “something”. Few observers believe the People’s Conference has an even chance of winning the Baramulla Lok Sabha seat, but the campaign will help rebuild the party apparatus and cadre. In time, the People’s Conference could also seek tactical alliances with formations like the PDP.

 

Few in the Hurriyat Conference, unlike Mr. Lone, have a genuine mass constituency that could help propel them to power. Participation in elections will, therefore, be a high-risk exercise. But sitting on the sidelines could lead to political oblivion. Mirwaiz Farooq and his Hurriyat Conference colleagues will have to carefully consider the ever-shrinking options they are left with.

Source: The Hindu, New Delhi

URL of this page: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1335

 

0 comments: