Pakistan: Now or Never?
Perspectives on Pakistan
On U.S.-Taliban talks, look at 2014 and work back
According to Steve Coll in the New Yorker, the United States has begun its first direct talks with the Taliban to see whether it is possible to reach a political settlement to the Afghan war. He writes that after the Sept. 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington the United States rejected direct talks with Taliban leaders, on the grounds that they were as much to blame for terrorism as Al Qaeda. However, last year, he says, a small number of officials in the Obama administration—among them the late Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—argued that it was time to try talking to the Taliban again.
“Holbrooke’s final diplomatic achievement, it turns out, was to see this advice accepted. The Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks with senior Afghan Taliban leaders, several people briefed about the talks told me last week. The discussions are continuing; they are of an exploratory nature and do not yet amount to a peace negotiation.”
I had heard the same thing some time ago — from an official source who follows Afghanistan closely – that the Americans and the Taliban were holding face-to-face talks for the first time. He said the talks were not yet ”at a decision-making level” but involved Taliban representatives who would report back to the leadership. There has been no official confirmation.
And given that the idea of holding talks with the Taliban has been on the diplomatic agenda for a year, you would probably expect to see the various parties involved in the conflict sounding each other out – though diplomats say that in the first half of last year it was hard to get negotiations moving without the direct involvement of the Americans. By the second half of 2010 the Americans had given greater endorsement to talks, leading — according to the source I spoke to — to direct talks beginning towards the end of the year.
Afghanistan: Petraeus, personalities and policy
Buried in the Washington Post story on Marc Grossman taking over as the new U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan are some interesting references to the possible departure of U.S. commander General David Petraeus.
“… virtually the entire U.S. civilian and military leadership in Afghanistan is expected to leave in the coming months, including Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and the embassy’s other four most senior officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S.-led international coalition, and Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, who runs day-to-day military operations there,” it says.
“No final decisions have been made, but military officials said that Petraeus, who took command last July, will rotate out of Afghanistan before the end of the year,” it adds.
Petraeus has been talked about for a while as a possible successor to Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), who is expected to retire in October. Any move would be part of a broader shake-up in the administration, which will also see Defense Secretary Robert Gates retire this year.
@”If Obama really wants to please his base, the voters and the rest of the civilized world, he will do the right and intelligent thing and get out of there. If not, he really is toast in 2012; the people who voted for him want out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The opposition won’t vote for him no matter what he does.” Posted by nocounty
If Obama loses his re-election, it won’t be due to US presence in Af-Pak but if there’s a successful terrorist attack in the US on his watch, he almost certainly will lose. If Obama does not get re-elected, it will primarily be due to the economy & fortunately for him, the economy has been showing signs of revival & expansion over the last couple of quarters. IMO, the key statistic to watch here, is the rate of unemployment. By summer/fall 2012, if unemployment is still hovering around where it curently is (9% +), he’ll lose but if it’s below 8%, he’ll win. Looking at the trajectory of the economy, I believe it will be the latter. Of course, there’s a lot of time left between now & election day and many other variables will factor in but it’s very very pre-mature to write off Obama at this time.
Egypt and Pakistan; something borrowed, something new
The Egyptian uprising contains much that is familiar to Pakistan – the dark warnings of a coup, in Egypt’s case delivered by Vice President Omar Suleiman, the role of political Islam, and a relationship with the United States distorted by U.S. aid and American strategic interests which do not match those of the people.
President Hosni Mubarak cited Pakistan as an example of what happened when a ruler like President Pervez Musharraf – like himself from the military - was forced to make way for democracy. ”He fears that Pakistan is on the brink of falling into the hands of the Taliban, and he puts some of the blame on U.S. insistence on steps that ultimately weakened Musharraf,” a 2009 U.S. embassy cable published by WikiLeaks said.
Comparisons with Pakistan tend to make you somewhat sceptical about the chances of Egypt’s uprising turning out well.
Yet there is something quite new coming out of Egypt that has the potential to be transformative across the Muslim world. And that is the rejection of all forms of old authority, including, significantly, religious authority.
@Arab Youth Revolution
The next one to go down(col Gadhafi is in the different ball game) in the Arab World seems to the yemanese President whowas taking orders from the American Govt. in war against terrorism. American foreign policy is in tatters, two people(Obama and Hillary) with different strategies and now forced by the events which the CA was not in position to imagine. This revolution is like a Bush fire which is developing with such a speed that even the 24hr cable net work cannot catch up. Aljazeera with their massive staff and knowledge of language have beaten all others.
Rex Minor
Separating the Taliban from al Qaeda
The Afghan Taliban would be ready to break with al Qaeda in order to reach a negotiated settlement to the Afghan war, and to ensure Afghanistan is not used as a base for international terrorism, according to a report by Kandahar-based researche rs Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, released by New York University.
It says that the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda was strained both before and after the September 11 2001 attacks, partly because of their very different ideological roots. Al Qaeda grew out of militant Islamism in the Middle East, notably in Egypt, which — when fused with the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan — created its own view of global jihad. Taliban leaders grew up in rural southern Afghanistan, isolated from world events. Many were too young to play a big role in the Afghan jihad, and had no close ties to al Qaeda until after they took power in 1996.
“Many Taliban leaders of the older generation are still potential partners for a negotiated settlement. They are not implacably opposed to the U.S. or West in general but to specific actions or policies in Afghanistan. These figures now understand the position of the international community much better than they did before 2001. They are not seeking a return to the failed interactions between the Taliban and the international community of the 1990s. At present they still represent the movement,” the report concludes.
“Could the older-generation leadership be relied on to keep Afghanistan terror-free? The reaction of the insurgents depends in part on how their opponents choose to engage them. There would be support for a break with al-Qaeda within the senior leadership, but how this is addressed will determine how effective the break is to be. What is highly likely is that engagement on a political level will create opportunities that do not yet exist.”
PS
Sikhs are no longer a separate Nation! So do not give me your crap about ignorance. For me you are a zombie. KP soul is still healthy and though he is also a pladiat and most of the time used to blowing in the air, he is capable or his soul s to wander at night while his body is asleep, to see things whch are going to occur in the next years tocome. I am able to detect when he utters his forecasts. His recommendations are a futile attempt to thwart the events to come. You are nthng mre han a hollowgram, empty, rude and deprived of dignity. No hard feelings, for you kashmiris from Mirpur are not kashmiris.
Rex Minor
Army, Allah and America: on Pakistani pitfalls and the future of Egypt
All countries are unique and comparing two of the world’s most populous Muslim countries, Egypt and Pakistan, is as risky as comparing Britain to France at the time of the French Revolution. But many of the challenges likely to confront Egypt as it emerges from the mass protests against the 30-year-rule of President Hosni Mubarak are similar to those Pakistan has faced in the past, and provide at least a guide on what questions need to be addressed. In Pakistan, they are often summarised as the three A’s — Army, Allah and America.
Both have powerful armies which are seen as the backbone of the country; both have to work out how to accommodate political Islam with democracy, both are allies of America, yet with people who resent American power in propping up unpopular elites.
As my Reuters colleague Alastair Lyon writes, Egypt’s sprawling armed forces — the world’s 10th biggest and more than 468,000-strong — have been at the heart of power since army officers staged the 1952 overthrow of the monarchy. Mubarak’s announcement that he was naming his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as vice-president was seen as a move towards an eventual, military-approved handover of power. And Egyptian protesters have sometimes tried to see the army as their ally — an institution that puts country first before personal gain.
Yet armies, as Pakistan has discovered over its many years of on-again off-again military rule, are not designed for democracy. They are designed to be efficient, and with that comes the hierarchy and obedience to authority that would seem alien to many of those out on the streets of Cairo.
Mortal1: “It’s quite clear that this character, deliberately goes out of his way to ignore the facts which refute his ill-informed preconceived notions & expose his “stomach based” nonsense. He simply does not have the moral courage & integrity to challenge his ignorance & bigotry”
This guy is not alone. Most Pakistanis seem to be of the same mentality – deny, negate anything that does not agree with their vision. Facts or not, what they believe is only correct. The rest can be recited into deaf ears. This is the sign of a society getting walls closed around it. Ignorance will at some point blind them and they will be pushed into doing the wrong thing because of their own built in paranoia and could justify their actions based on it.
Pakistan, blasphemy, and a tale of two women
For all the bad news coming out of Pakistan, you can’t help but admire the courage of two very different women who did what their political leaders failed to do — stood up to the religious right after the killing of Punjab governor Salman Taseer over his call for changes to the country’s blasphemy laws.
One is Sherry Rehman, a politician from the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, who first proposed amendments to the laws. The other is actress Veena Malik, who challenged the clerical establishment for criticising her for appearing on Indian reality show Big Boss. I’m slightly uncomfortable about grouping the two together — the fact that both are Pakistani women does not make them any more similar than say, for example, two Pakistani men living in Rawalpindi or London. Yet at the same time, the idea that Pakistan can produce such different and outspoken women says a lot about the diversity and energy of a country which can be too easily written off as a failing state or bastion of the Islamist religious right.
Sherry Rehman is living as a virtual prisoner in her home in Karachi after being threatened over her support for amendments to the blasphemy laws. She has refused to leave the country for her own safety, nor indeed to accept the position adopted by her party leaders — that now is not the time to amend the laws. Their argument appears to be that trying to amend the laws now would just add more fuel to the fire after religious leaders defended Taseer’s killing and organised huge protests in favour of the current legal provisions.
“There’s never a right time,” Britain’s Guardian newspaper quoted her as saying. “Blasphemy cases are continually popping up, more horror stories from the ground. How do you ignore them?”
Pakistan: “Poor kashmiris!”
Now you understand. That’s good. They will be crushed by the waiting Pakistan if they decide to go on their own.
“On a serious note, have you ever considered writing a book?”
Yep. I am going to write a comedy book with you as the main character in it. am still deciding on the title.
Rex Minor
Pakistan and Mullah Omar: who knows where he is?
The New York Times has an intriguing story about the sourcing for a report that did the rounds last week saying that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) rushed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar to Karachi last week after he suffered a heart attack. (h/t Five Rupees)
To recap, the Washington Post said last week that a private intelligence network, the Eclipse Group, had reported that Mullah Omar had a heart attack on Jan. 7 and was treated for several days in a Karachi hospital with the help of the ISI.
It quoted the Eclipse Group as saying its source was a physician in the Karachi hospital, which was not identified in the report, who said he saw Mullah Omar struggling to recover from an operation to put a stent in his heart. “While I was not personally in the operating theater,” the physician reported, “my evaluation based on what I have heard and seeing the patient in the hospital is that Mullah Omar had a cardiac catheter complication resulting in either bleeding or a small cerebral vascular incident, or both.”
As is the way of these things, the story did the rounds of the Internet, blogosphere and Twitter until the original source of the report — an unnamed doctor in an unnamed Karachi hospital quoted by a private intelligence network — was obscured under the weight of repetition.
Forget Headley, forget Wikkileaks, forget the US court summons, forget all the telephone transcripts provided to Pakistan. Forget Afghan accusations. Indians of course will always lie about the ISI, so don’t even think about them.
Nothing is confirmed. No one has confessed. Everything is overstated. ISI influence is limited. No one has spotted a one eyed man in Quetta or Karachi, so he is not there.
ISI is pure as the driven snow.
QED
Musharraf’s Kashmir deal, mirage or oasis?
The foreign secretaries, or top diplomats, of India and Pakistan are expected to meet on the sidelines of a South Asian summit in Thimpu, Bhutan on Feb 6/7 to try to find a way back into talks which have been stalled since the attack on Mumbai in November 2008. Progress is expected to be limited, perhaps paving the way to a meeting of the foreign ministers, or to deciding how future talks should be structured.
Expectations are running low, all the more so after a meeting between the foreign ministers descended into acrimony last July. And leaders in neither country have the political space to take the kind of risks needed for real peace talks right now. Pakistan is struggling with the fall-out of the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer among many other things, while Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been weakened by a corruption scandal at home.
However, in the interests of establishing a baseline, I asked former president Pervez Musharraf in an interview earlier this week about a roadmap for peace he had agreed with Prime Minister Singh in 2007 before political turmoil forced him out of office. The roadmap brought the two countries to their nearest in years to a peace deal, and during Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign, there was a great deal of hope it could be revived in order to ease tensions between India and Pakistan in turn helping to stabilise Afghanistan. Even after the Mumbai attacks ended chances of an early “Kashmir to Kabul” peace settlement, the idea has lingered on as one of the more promising models. Yet since the agreement was reached in secret, its details have never been officially released.
Diplomats say the agreement hinged on an acceptance by India and Pakistan that there would be no exchange of territory in disputed Kashmir but they would work to make irrelevant the Line of Control which divides the region. There was also supposed to be a “joint mechanism” under which Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris would oversee areas of common interest. No one can agree, however, on far advanced the talks were. Some say the deal was ready for signing; others that there was still a long way to go. In particular, the two countries had yet to agree the nature of the “joint mechanism”, and bring on board their own people and domestic constituencies in accepting the agreement. Here is what Musharraf had to say when I asked him about the sceptics’ view of the draft agreement:
@777
There is only one soul which could tell you whether you are a moron r plain born dumb, and that is you and only you. And if the answer is in negative then we have nothing more to exchange.
Rex Minor
Anyone here been to Pakistan and speaks English?
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden made a rather odd comment during his visit to Pakistan this week. “We want what you want: a strong, stable, democratic Pakistan,” he told a news conference, according to the Washington Post. “We wish your success because it’s in our own interest.”
It was not that he was wrong to deny accusations that the United States is out to destabilise Pakistan – a conspiracy theory fuelled by confusion over U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, which to many Pakistanis seems so irrational that they assume there must be a darker plan behind it. Nor that he was wrong to promote democracy — although the United States has had a track record of backing military rulers in Pakistan when it suits them.
It was more in the choice of language — not necessarily Biden’s strong point. It left you wondering which audience he was appealing to when he said, “we want what you want”.
To popular sentiment, which at the moment is running high? But it is not about the need for democracy, but about defending the honour of the prophet Mohammed against perceived western-driven attempts to amend provisions in the Pakistan Penal Code imposing the death penalty for anyone believed to have insulted him. Religious parties have been able to bring thousands out into the streets to defend Pakistan’s so-called blasphemy laws, after the murder of Punjab governor Salman Taseer by his own security guard over his opposition to these legal provisions.
Myra
” “We want what you want: a strong, stable, democratic Pakistan,” he told a news conference, according to the Washington Post. “We wish your success because it’s in our own interest.”
“It was more in the choice of language — not necessarily Biden’s strong point. It left you wondering which audience he was appealing to when he said, “we want what you want”.
***I think Biden’s handle on language has come handy. I can imagine his big grin after your his analysis of his single sentence. If the guy was serious, he meant USA wants a strong, stable BUT democratic Pakistan. Even if he was clearer, no one would trust him given US support to dictators/PA historically and currently they Kayani gets more respect than a PM or President.
Pakistan and the taboo of secularism
For everyone trying to understand the implications of Salman Taseer’s assassination, this essay from 2007 is good place to start (h/t Abu Muqawama). “The Politics of God” is about why Europe decided, after years of warfare over the correct interpretation of Christianity, to separate church and state. But it is also relevant to Pakistan, where the killing of the Punjab governor over his opposition to the country’s blasphemy laws has shown that what was left of Pakistani secularism, is, if not dead, at least in intensive care.
Read the opening paragraph to understand why it resonates:
“For more than two centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political problems. War and revolution, class and social justice, race and national identity — these were the questions that divided us. Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.”
The point of highlighting this essay is not to argue that Pakistan should emulate the west, nor indeed that secularism is necessarily the answer, but rather to suggest that there is still a debate to be had in a country where even using the word secular is becoming taboo. (And before anyone accuses me of orientalism, the advantage of looking at it through the lens of European history is that it also strips out some of the other factors which contribute to the nature of Pakistani society today — the war in Afghanistan, America’s response to 9/11, the role of the army, its past use of militant proxies, the weakness of its civilian governments, the fragility of the economy etc, etc).
They tried to build a secular society using Islam as a foundation. Using a religion as a basis for founding a secular state is a contradiction in terms….particularly so when it’s an Islamic state that pretends to have secular aspirations. The founders of Pakistan saw what they wanted to see. They saw the secular values that they so cherished in their idealistic view of Islam. Secular moderation was to be found in a supposed moderate faith that always chooses the “middle path”. How wrong they were.
This leaves the Pakistanis confused. They keep trying to find a middle path. They don’t want to be Saudi Arabia. But they don’t want to be the West either. But I really do wonder if compromise is possible at all. I don’t think it is. Pakistan will slowly become another Saudi Arabia (and if the treatment of minorities is an indication, the pretense of even moderate secularism is slipping away). There’s very little chance it will go the way of Turkey and become a secular state with a large Muslim majority.
I know Pakistanis aspire to be Turkey. But the difference is that while there is debate in Turkey about secularism, most Turks understand and accept the necessity of separating mosque and state. In Pakistan, increasingly this is not the case. When the starting point of debate is that you are an Islamic Republic, that leaves very little room for debate.
Moreover, the situation of Pakistanis, ignores context. Pakistan was founded in direct contrast to the view that India would be a Hindu state. As such, Islam is a part of Pakistan’s identity. Even more than that, it’s Pakistan raison d’etre. Pretty hard to turn secular if the founding image of the country is based on the idea that Islam in South Asia was under threat from the Hindu hordes.
I do wonder what the founders of the Pakistani idea would think of the state of affairs today: an increasingly secular India (not perfect but constantly progressing away from sectarianism), sitting next door to a Pakistan that’s breeding more and more religious intolerance and fanaticism. Too bad. Pakistan could have been the Switzerland of South Asia.
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Follow Pakistan: Now or Never?
Mortal1,
Stagflation is indeed the end game for a nation that does not have a capitalist culture. Stagflation will be impossible to explain to the man on the Pakistani streets. Mr. 10% will be demonized even more than he is now. Stagflation will certainly destabilize Pakistan to dangerous levels.
However, Pakistan is at least two quarters away from stagflation, even if the current state of affairs continue.