Afghanistan forcing a rethink

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Hectic multilateral consultations on Afghanistan are under way in advance of the scheduled withdrawal of American forces, and there are indications that at least some of the players are ready to revise their past approach.

The US pullout, due to begin this year, is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

Indian and Chinese officials are due to meet in Beijing this week to discuss the post-2014 Afghan scenario. This is the first official-level meeting between the two countries on Afghanistan.

The two countries have been holding regular consultations on Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa for some time. However, when China proposed a South Asia dialogue, India baulked, since it did not want to be drawn into discussions on issues such as Kashmir and Tibet.

China explained that it was keen to discuss Afghanistan, where it has investments of more than $3 billion as against India’s $2 billion.  Accordingly, the dialogue theme was narrowed down and talks were scheduled.

China’s concern over Afghanistan’s future is deep. It is in conversation with all those who have a stake in the region. It has been in talks with the United States on the subject. In February, it held trilateral discussions with Russia and India in Moscow. This was followed by another trilateral, this time with Russia and Pakistan, in Beijing.

The only two countries which are not having direct discussions on Afghanistan are India and Pakistan, its immediate neighbours who hold different perspectives. Former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said recently that India had offered to work with Pakistan on projects in Afghanistan but there was no response.  

Given the history of discord and distrust between the two countries, Islamabad’s approach is understandable. Pakistan’s involvement with the Taliban and India’s assistance to the Northern Alliance against Islamic militants in that country are factors with the potential to draw them into the whirlpool of faction fights in Afghanistan.

There is a tendency in both India and Pakistan to view Afghan developments in the limited context of their own prickly bilateral relations. Pakistani fears were stoked when former Defence Secretary Leon Panetta talked of a new US defence policy which hinges upon a strategy which recognises that India has to play a vital role in Afghanistan to ensure peace and stability in the region. His successor Chuck Hagel’s 2011 speech, a recording of which gained much attention recently, has given the Pakistani establishment some comfort. In that speech he said India has always used Afghanistan as a second front against Pakistan.

Afghanistan is important to China from the standpoint of energy security. The China National Petroleum Company is due to begin oil extraction from its wells in the northern part of the country next month. It was the first foreign company to sign an oil contract with Iraq after the war in the country. US analysts believe China will likewise step into Afghanistan to pick up contracts as soon as the Western forces are out. It has already indicated interest in laying gas pipelines from Turkmenistan and Tajikistan through Afghanistan.

China’s interest in Afghanistan is not limited to economic factors. It is very concerned over the possibility of spillover of Islamist terrorism into its Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, which is already experiencing ethnic unrest.

Writing in the government paper Global Times, Zhang Jiadong, associate professor at the Center for American Studies, Fudan University, recently envisaged a situation where China, like the former Soviet Union and the US, may get trapped in Afghanistan. “If China does not intervene, Afghanistan will fall into chaos again and endanger China’s security,” he said, “but if China intervenes China’s interests will be damaged as it gets bogged down in the mountains.”

To avoid the trap, he wanted China to seize the initiative in Afghan affairs. Specifically, he suggested that China should enlist the cooperation of the former occupation forces as well as Afghanistan’s neighbours and bring that country into platforms of regional cooperation.

China’s severest test in Afghanistan may come from Pakistan which is not ready to distance itself from the Afghan Taliban, whose leaders are on its territory. Pakistan did not heed US pleas to allow them to hold talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to reach an internal settlement. The US dealt with the problem posed by ally Pakistan by exercising military options like drone strikes on Taliban sanctuaries. China may have to deal with this ally without being able to exercise such options. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 16, 2013.

'Just War' is just words

RALPH NADER
CommonDreams.org

President Obama, the Afghan war escalator, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, and proceeded to deliver his acceptance speech outlining the three criteria for a "just war" which he himself is violating.

The criteria are in these words: "If it is waged as a last resort or in self-defence; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence."

After 9/11, warmonger George W. Bush could have used the international law doctrine of hot pursuit with a multilateral force of commandos, linguists and bribers to pursue the backers of the attackers. Instead, he blew the country of Afghanistan apart and started occupying it, joined forces with a rump regime and launched a divide-and-rule tribal strategy that set the stage for a low-tiered civil war.

Eight years later, Obama is expanding the war within a graft-ridden government in Kabul, fraudulent elections, an Afghan army of northern tribesmen loathed by the southern and south-eastern tribes of 40 million Pashtuns, an impoverished economy whose largest crop by far is a narcotic, and a devastated population embittered by foreign occupiers and non-existent government services.

President Obama's national security adviser, former Marine General James Jones, said two months ago: "The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."

Since Mr. Obama repeats George W. Bush's reason for going into Afghanistan-to destroy al-Qaeda-why is he sending 30,000 soldiers plus an even greater number of corporate contractors there in the near future at a cost stated by the White House of one million dollars per solider per year? Is this "proportional force"?

Always small in number, al-Qaeda has moved over the border into Pakistan and anywhere its supporters can in the world--- east Africa, north Africa, Indonesia. The gang is a migrant traveller.

Is Obama pouring soldiers into Afghanistan so that they and our inaccurate, civilian-destroying drones can start fighting across the border in Pakistan, as indicated by the New York Times? Beyond the violations of international law and absence of constitutional authorization involved, this could so roil Pakistanis as to make the US experience next door look like a modest struggle.
Obama has emphasized weakening the Taliban as the other objective of our military buildup with its horrible consequence in casualties and other costs.

Who are the Taliban? They include people with different causes, such as protecting their valleys, drug trafficking to live on, fighters against foreign occupiers or, being mostly Pashtuns, protecting their tribal turf against the northern Tajiks and Uzbecks.

How many Taliban fighters are there? The Pentagon estimates around 25,000. Their methods make them unpopular with the villagers. They have no air force, navy, artillery, tanks, missiles, no bases, no central command. They have rifles, grenade launchers, bombs and suiciders. Unlike al-Qaeda, they have only domestic ambitions counteracted by their adversarial tribesmen who make up most of the Afghan army.

Robert Baer, former CIA officer with experience in that part of Asia, asserted: "The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with al-Qaeda. They simply want us gone because we're foreigners, and they're rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters."

To say, as Obama inferred in his Oslo speech, that the greater plunge into Afghanistan is self-defence, with proportional force and sparing civilians from violence is a scale of self-delusion or political cowardliness that is dejecting his liberal base.

For as President Eisenhower stated so eloquently in his 1953 "cross of iron" speech, every dollar spent on munitions and sabre-rattling takes away from building schools, clinics, roads and other necessities of the American people.
The Afghan War and the Iraq war-occupation --- already directly costing a trillion dollars --- are costing the American people every time Washington says there is not enough money for neonatal care, occupational disease prevention, cleaner drinking water systems, safer hospitals, prosecution of corporate criminals, cleaner air or upgrading and repairing key public facilities.

Even the hardiest and earliest supporters of his presidential campaign in 2008 are speaking out. Senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus, such as John Conyers (D-MI) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) have recently criticized the President for not doing enough to help African-Americans weather the hard times.

In a stinging ironic rebuke to the first African-American President, Rep. Waters declared "We can no longer afford for our public policy to be defined by the worldview of Wall Street."

According to Congressman Conyers, an upset Barack Obama called to ask why the Michigan lawmaker was "demeaning" him. Conyers has been increasingly turned off by the President's policies ---among them health care reform, the war in Afghanistan, slippage on Guantanamo and the extension of the Patriot Act's invasive provisions.

The 80-year old Congressman spent most weekends in 2007 and 2008 tirelessly on the campaign trail trying to get Obama elected.

White House aides are not troubled by the rumblings from the moderate Left. They said they have all of 2010 to bring them back into the fold by the November Congressional elections. Besides, where else are they going to go?
Well, they could stay home. Remember 1994 and the Gingrich takeover.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super Wealthy Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.
Courtesy: Countercurrents.org

US 'biggest' threat say Pakistanis

A survey commissioned by Al Jazeera in Pakistan has revealed widespread disenchantment with the United States for interfering with what most people consider internal affairs.

The polling was conducted by Gallup Pakistan - a separate organisation affiliated with the US-based Gallup Inc - and more than 2,600 people took part.
Interviews were conducted across the political spectrum in all four of the country's provinces, and represented men and women of every economic and ethnic background.

When respondents were asked what they consider to be the biggest threat to the nation of Pakistan, 11 per cent of the population identified the Taliban fighters, who have been blamed for scores of deadly bomb attacks across the country in recent years.

Another 18 per cent said that they believe that the greatest threat came from neighbouring India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan since partition in 1947.

But an overwhelming number, 59 per cent of respondents, said the greatest threat to Pakistan right now is, in fact, the US, a donor of considerable amounts of military and development aid.

For the complete poll results, click here.

Pakistan’s future at stake: must find own solution to Taliban problem

HAMID MIR
Commentary
New America Media

Editor's Note: Anti-Taliban sentiments are growing in Pakistan, but this doesn't necessarily push the country into the arms of the United States. Most Pakistanis view the United States as an even bigger threat, writes NAM contributor Hamid Mir. Mir is the only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He is a terrorism expert and security analyst based in Pakistan.

The leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan met with Presudent Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., this week. The three agreed to come up with a joint strategy against the Taliban and al Qaeda. But there is still a major problem.

The majority of Pakistanis does not see Washington as part of the solution. In fact, many Pakistani newspapers, TV channels and political pundits view Washington as part of the problem. They think that the growing militancy in Pakistan is a result of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

U.S. military advisor David Kilcullen admitted that drone attacks have killed about 700 Pakistani civilians and only 14 terrorists. The killing of innocent civilians has infuriated Pakistanis. Many believe that the United States only wants to use Pakistan as a safe supply route for NATO forces in Afghanistan and that it will abandon Pakistan after completing its mission in Afghanistan.

Pakistanis view the United States as an even bigger threat than the Taliban because they fear that the Americans are after their nuclear program. Only the United States, they reason, could conspire to take control of Pakistani nuclear weapons with the help of India and Israel.

Like Americans, Pakistanis want to defeat the Taliban. But they also want to be rid of U.S. influence. After all, U.S. forces have been present in Afghanistan for the last eight years, and there is no peace there.

Pakistan is increasingly looking to Saudi Arabia and Iran as examples of countries that have been more successful at defeating terrorism. Presidents Asif Ali Zardari and Hamid Karzai of Pakistan and Afghanistan, respectively, will meet with Iranian Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinijad in Tehran on May 19 to learn from Iran’s experience of combating terrorism.

The grand cleric of Al-Haram Mosque in Makkah, the most populous province of Saudi Arabia, also plans to visit religious leaders and scholars in Pakistan to declare that suicide bombing is not permitted in Islam. His statement, no doubt, will be more helpful in reducing terrorism than the U.S. dollars that have been pouring into the country.

Meanwhile, anti-Taliban sentiments continue to grow in Pakistan. The peace agreement in Swat province between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad three months ago did not last. The Taliban sabotaged the agreement by kidnapping police officials in the Buner area.

About 600 schools and colleges were closed in Swat three months ago due to conflict between local Taliban and security forces. More than 200 schools were destroyed in the fighting.

In an unprecedented protest, residents of Swat and Buner called on Pakistani forces to take action – and more than a week ago, Pakistan responded with military force against the Taliban.

Thousands of residents of Swat and Buner are migrating to safer places. The fundamentalist group is now finding itself in a panic because the locals are not ready to become their “human shields” in the name of Islam. This is the first defeat for the Taliban.

This time, the majority of locals are not blaming security forces or the government for their problems. They are blaming the Taliban.

This is also the first time since 9/11 that all of the political parties in Pakistan have condemned the group. Indeed, it’s an opportunity to transform a broad-based political consensus into a national counter-terrorism policy.

It is time for Pakistani Pres. Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Gilani to call for a national conference on security. They should invite all of the political leaders and other stakeholders and come to a consensus to override their political differences and to defeat terrorism.

The future of Pakistan is at stake.

The march of the Taliban: lessons from Muslim history

YOGINDER SIKAND

TwoCircles.net

The fall of large swathes of territory in Pakistan’s lawless north-west to the marauding Taliban, who, through an agreement reached with the Pakistani authorities, are now forcibly imposing what they regard as shariah laws in the region, has added a new dimension to the convoluted politics of Pakistan, making that country’s problems even more intractable. At the same time, this worrisome development also highlights the continued and unresolved crisis of traditional Muslim political thought and its fundamental inability to come to terms with the demands of the modern age.

Classical Sunni Muslim political thought, which continues to inspire the bulk of the traditional clerics or ulema, is based on the notion of a pious ruler or amir who rules according to the rules of the shariah. He is to be assisted by a council or shura, consisting of pious men learned in the shariah. However, he is not bound by their advice, for, because of his presumed superiority in terms of piety and knowledge of Islam, he is assumed to know best. It is this fatal assumption that is the Achilles heel of traditional Muslim political theory, for, more often than not, the amir does not turn out to be the saintly personage that he is expected to be. There being no effective check on his powers, by the general public or even by the shura--in contrast to what the Quran would appear to demand--he very often turns into a dictator, who, as Muslim history amply illustrates, can easily twist Islamic injunctions suitably to legitimize acts of tyranny directed at Muslims as well as others. This is precisely why when self-styled champions of Islam like Pakistani Taliban chief and head of the Tehrik-e Nifaz-e Shariah-e Muhammadi, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, set about ruling in the name of the shariah, they inevitably turn into bloodthirsty tyrants. Sunni Muslim tradition, as it developed after the Prophet and began to deviate from his practice, generally acquiesced in tyranny, and leading Sunni ulema even went to the extent of forbidding revolt against a tyrannical Muslim ruler as long as he appeared to respect the shariah. This is one reason why Muslims and others who dare to oppose tyrants like Sufi Muhammad are so easily branded by the mullahs as ‘enemies’ of Islam.

Another major flaw of traditional Sunni political theory, and one amply reflected in the case of Sufi Muhammad and his band of followers, is the ardent conviction that people can be compelled to be ‘religious’ by a pious ruler, through the imposition of law and the threat of fierce punishment. This is reflected in the very name of Sufi Muhammad’s outfit, the Tehrik-e Nifaz-e Shariah-e Muhammadi or the ‘Movement for the Imposition of the Muhammadan Shariah’. True to its name, activists of the movement are now going about forcing people to abide by what they regard as the rules of the shariah, not hesitating to even kill them if they resist this imposition. Obviously, that is no way at all to endear even fellow Muslims to their cause, and is also a sure recipe for generating nifaq or hypocrisy—considered a major sin in the Quran—on a massive scale. In the long run, no regime that is based on forcing people to be ‘good’ can survive, as an experiment similar to Sufi Muhammad’s, the Tehrik-e Mujahidin, launched in the same unruly region bordering Afghanistan in the early nineteenth century by Syed Ahmad Barelvi and his deputy Shah Ismail, lionized as ‘Islamic heroes’ by almost all South Asian Sunni ulema, so tragically illustrates. Like Sufi Muhammad, Syed Ahmad, who styled himself as the amir of the Muslims, claimed to be establishing an Islamic system in the Pathan borderlands. Forcibly imposing his brand of the shariah on the unwilling Pathans, his experiment in Islamic utopianism ended in predictable disaster. The restive Pathan tribesmen joined hands with the Sikh rulers of the Punjab and rose up in revolt against Syed Ahmad and his followers, who were massacred in the ill-famed battle of Balakot, a town not far from where Sufi Muhammad today has set up the headquarters of his self-styled Islamic polity.

A third flaw of traditional Sunni political thought, and one strikingly illustrated in the case of Sufi Muhammad’s Tehrik-e Nifaz-e Shariah-e Muhammadi, is the equation of shariah or the divine path with traditional fiqh or jurisprudence as developed by medieval Sunni fuqaha or legal scholars in the centuries after the demise of the Prophet Muhammad. In the name of the shariah it is the rules of medieval fiqh of the Hanafi that Sufi Muhammad and his tribe of devoted followers are seeking to enforce. Of the values of justice, kindness, compassion and beauty, which numerous Sufis and other Islamic scholars regard as the essence of the divine shariah, there is not even the slightest trace in Sufi Muhammad’s frightening vision of the world. Betraying a tendency so marked in authoritarian Islamist thought, Sufi Muhammad’s brand of shariah has been reduced, in effect, to simply a set of harsh punitive laws.

Ironically, some of these laws that Sufi Muhammad and his Taliban followers are now imposing, derived from traditional Hanafi fiqh, actually have no sanction in the Islamic shariah. One such instance concerns the so-called jizya tax that has been imposed on the hapless Sikhs of the territories that have now fallen into Taliban control. In a recent statement denouncing the levying of this tax, a group of prominent Indian Muslim leaders, including numerous notable Sunni ulema, pointed out that ‘The imposition of the so-called jizya is nothing more than extortion by an armed and lawless gang, which does not constitute a sovereign government or state or even an organ thereof.’ Taking note of the fact that the Taliban had demanded that the Sikhs cough up millions of rupees as jizya, the statement added, ‘As regards the huge amounts in millions reported to be demanded, these are arbitrary and exorbitant as the amount of annual jizya paid by non-Muslims in early Islam was merely one to one and a half dinar, which is 4.24 gram to 6.36 grams of gold. Moreover, this tax was payable only at the end of the year and not in advance.’ Hence, the statement concluded, ‘We regard this as an act of injustice incompatible with the letter and spirit of Islam and the international covenants accepted by all Muslim states.’

As this timely statement by important Indian Islamic scholars denouncing the atrocities of the Taliban committed on the Sikhs in the name of the shariah suggests, the shariah, which forms the basis of the vision of an Islamic society and polity, is itself subjected to diverse, indeed often mutually-opposed, interpretations. If for Sufi Muhammad and his tribe it is a harsh penal code that is to be forced down unwilling throats, to drag people to heaven against their will, as it were, to their Muslim critics, such as these Indian scholars, it is quite the contrary. Being open to multiple interpretations, the shariah is thus the object of heated contestation among Muslims themselves, and has been so ever since the demise of the Prophet. The task before socially engaged Muslims is to craft a contextually relevant understanding of this ambiguous concept so as to wrest it from cynical manipulation by the likes of the Taliban. This internal debate has been going on for centuries, but Muslims who wish to rescue their faith from peddlers of terror like Sufi Muhammad need to make their voices heard even louder today.

Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Social Policy at the National Law School, Bangalore

Pakistan not about to fall into Taliban hands, says journalist

VIJI SUNDARAM
News Report
New America Media

Editor's Note: Western analysts are mistaken in believing that Pakistan is falling into the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir. Mir told an audience in Berkeley, Calif. this week. Viji Sundaram is an editor at New America Media.

BERKELEY, Calif. – Pakistan’s arguably most celebrated investigative journalist and editor Hamid Mir said that it is understandable why “Western analysts” mistakenly think that Pakistan is falling into the hands of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, when only 2 percent of the country’s population inhabits the “red area” where the two groups are concentrated.

“When you are sitting in New York, or D.C., or San Francisco and reading the newspapers, you are justified in forming this opinion,” Mir told the gathering in the library of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism on Wednesday, taking a dig at the Western media. But he quickly noted that the West should not undermine the threat posed by that minority population of five million because “even 500 suicide bombers can create hell.”

Mir, 42, is best known as the only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, twice before the 9/11 attacks and once after.

He has put such major political figures as former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the hot seat on Geo TV, Pakistan’s popular TV station, where Mir is executive editor. He is currently writing an authorized biography of Osama bin Laden.

The March 27 suicide bombing of a mosque in the restive Khyber region of Jamrud in Pakistan that claimed the lives of 58 people and injured around 160 more, proved that President Obama was wrong in calling that region a safe haven of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Mir said. Only 12 of the worshippers in the two-story mosque belonged to the Pakistani security force and the country’s intelligence agency.

That border region has also claimed the lives of several of his colleagues who were covering the war, said Mir. Many others have quit journalism, altogether.

“I’m able to share all this information with you due to the sacrifices of my cameraman and my guide,” Mir said.

He said the area is so dangerous because, unlike most of the rest of Pakistan, the government has no control over it.

Located between the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), is governed directly by the federal government through a special set of “draconian” laws called the Frontier Crimes Regulations that were instituted by the British in 1890, according to Mir. Those laws deny basic human rights to the people of FATA and have prevented the region from partaking in the socio- economic development that the rest of Pakistan has experienced. “That area is one of the most underdeveloped areas in the world,” Mir said.

He said that no part of the $11 billion aid given by the Bush administration to Pakistan in the last seven years was spent in developing the FATA region, which has no roads, no hospitals and zero employment, save for those who work in the flourishing opium trade.

“So if an 18-year-old wants employment, he’ll go to the Taliban, and if an 80-year-old wants help, he too will go to the Taliban,” Mir said.

The tipping point at which the tribal people in those border regions turned against the United States came in 2003, when former President George W. Bush began pressuring Musharraf to begin military operations against them, Mir said. And when innocent children were killed in those operations, the Pashtuns were incensed.

“For a Pashtun, if somebody kills my child, I will take revenge,” Mir said. “So bad U.S. policy isolated that area and led to bloody suicide bombings.”

Mir asserted that the stepped-up drone (unmanned aircraft) attacks by the United States – 46 in the last eight months-- are claiming very few Taliban operatives.

“In the 11 drone attacks I covered, only two low-level Taliban men were killed,” he said. “But I saw dozens of women and children killed.”

According to Mir the “most important problem” the two countries face is that there is no proper border between them. The porous border, Mir said, is more than 1,250 miles long and has only two legal entry points. An estimated 13 million Pashtuns live on the Pakistani side of the border and about the same number live in Afghanistan. All Taliban are Pashtuns.

Mir asserted that the Taliban-generated violence could only end:

* If a border were built between Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the fencing a few years ago of the so-called “Line of Control” between India and Pakistan has helped control the violence in the India-controlled region of Kashmir.

* If India and Pakistan begin peace talks to solve the Kashmir dispute.

* If the FATA regions are governed like the rest of Pakistan.

* If some of the $1.5 billion per year in non-military aid for five years the Obama administration has promised Pakistan goes to those regions to build schools, hospitals and roads. “Girls should not be prevented from going to school,” he said.

Talking to the Taliban is “not a bad idea,” either, Mir added.

Asked in a private interview if he knew where bin Laden currently was, Mir laughed and said: “He’s wandering freely in those mountainous regions of Pakistan.”