You can't wake a man feigning sleep

Violence without limits and Pakistan�s challenge January 2009

By: A H Nayyar & Zia Mian

ADAM J WEST

The murderous assault on Bombay by Islamist militants, at least some of whom were from Pakistan, has exposed once again the grave danger that radical Islamist movements pose to Pakistan, its neighbours and the world. The urgent challenge now is for Pakistan and its neighbours, together with the international community, to work together to confront the risk of Pakistan spiralling into chaos and collapse.

Ten years ago, the political thinker and activist Eqbal Ahmad wrote that “conditions for revolutionary violence have been gathering in Pakistan since the start in 1980 of the internationally sponsored Jihad in Afghanistan.” He argued that “revolutionary violence in Pakistan is likely to be employed by religious and right‑wing organizations which have not set theoretical or practical limits on their use of violence.” He then warned that Pakistan “is moving perilously toward a critical zone from where it will take the state and society generations to return to a semblance of normal existence. When such a critical point of hard-return is reached, the viability of statehood depends more on external than internal factors.”

Pakistan’s leaders have failed for a decade to heed this warning. Sadly, the recognition of the need to act against the Islamist violence that now imperils Pakistan has come not from the terrible war that jihadi groups have unleashed on state and society, wreaking havoc from remote border areas to the heart of the capital city, targeting both the powerful and the powerless. It has come due to external pressure. The Americans demanded action against the Islamists following the attacks of 11 September 2001. The attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001, and the military crisis that followed, generated new demands for action. The 2005 attacks on London’s underground system and buses triggered further pressure. The list is long. The assault by Islamist militants on the people of Bombay in December 2008 is only the most recent, and is unlikely to be the last. All point in the same direction: Pakistan’s failure is a threat to its neighbours and to the world.

The threat facing Pakistan is broad and deep. There is on the one hand the armed Islamist groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), its parent organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JD), and similar Pakistani groups, many originating in the Punjab, but with a presence in towns and cities across the country. They are radical Islamist nationalists with a goal of turning Pakistan into a fundamentalist Islamic state. They are opposed to the democratic process. Created by the Pakistani state as a proxy army to wage war with India over Kashmir, these groups oppose any peace process with India and seek to heighten the conflict. They see the United States and its allies as a threat to their ambitions.

Then there are the Taliban militants in the tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. These are essentially local religious warlords who have established theocratic rule in their respective areas of influence, with unheard of brutalities and barbarism. While each Pakistani Taliban group has its own base in the respective tribal agency, they have organised themselves into the Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (the Taliban Movement of Pakistan). They are inspired by the Afghan Taliban, who were created by Pakistan in the 1990s as a proxy army to achieve Pakistani military and political ambitions in Afghanistan. These groups have given sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces that fled Afghanistan after the US invasion. They now fight alongside them against the US and its allies in Afghanistan.

These two movements, which Pakistan now needs to confront, are not necessarily separate. They represent two heads of the same monster. Many fighters in both groups were spawned in the madrassas, and have been nurtured and sheltered by Pakistan’s mainstream Islamist political parties and missionary orders. The first generation of these groups – from the key leaders and activists to the model for their organisation, strategy and tactics, their politics and vision of success – were nurtured by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in the war against the Soviet Union. In recent years, the Punjabi groups have taken shelter with and provided training to their Taliban brothers in the tribal areas as well as access to their networks in the towns and cities of Pakistan. Both groups are part of an even larger network that includes the Islamist sectarian militias in the country, hard-line activists in Pakistan’s mainstream Islamist political parties and organisations, and sympathisers in government institutions and across social classes.

Crunch time
Pakistan’s leadership has talked about the danger of the jihadi groups for a long time. As prime minister in 1999, Nawaz Sharif escaped an assassination attempt; Pervez Musharraf survived at least three attacks; Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz survived at least one; Benazir Bhutto was not that fortunate; and, thousands of ordinary people have been killed, their names never reported. Regardless, the jihadi groups have endured and their leaders have flourished.

The government of Asif Ali Zardari claims that the war against the jihadis is now Pakistan’s war (and, for Zardari, a personal war), and that it will be waged with all the capacities of the state. But even today, not all in Pakistan seem convinced that confronting the jihadist movement is an urgent need for Pakistan’s survival as a democratic country. For some hardline nationalists, and even some on the left who are concerned more about defying the imperialist agenda, the external pressure to defeat the Islamists should be resisted. Among the more pragmatic, the view is that Pakistan should accommodate the world, but without directly confronting the jihadist groups. There are also the cynical strategists. Only very recently, on a popular TV programme, a former chief of Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI advocated that Pakistan secretly support and protect the Pakistani Taliban to confront NATO forces and counter the increasing Indian presence in Afghanistan. He suggested that Pakistan deny such support in public.

A brutal confidence underlies the continuing commitment to Pakistan’s strategy of waging a war by proxy, the attendant defiant face to the world and the denial of the terrible violence within. It is founded upon two pillars. The first is the belief in the Pakistan Army’s ability to crush any insurgency if it really decides to do so. This is, after all, an army that has ruled the country for half its life, and has warred against its own people more than once and without mercy. This conviction was expressed most clearly in General Musharraf’s statement in 2005 to the insurgents in Balochistan that he would “sort them out,” and that “They won’t know what hit them.” This iron fist was evident in the ferocious army action in Bajaur, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, earlier this year, where the army used artillery and helicopter gunships to turn the town of Loe Sam into what was described as a “heap of grey rubble.” The intense violence in Bajaur forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

The second source of confidence is Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Many in Pakistan’s army and political leadership believe that these weapons protect Pakistan from the outside world. Indian restraint during the 1999 Kargil War, in which Pakistan sent militants and troops into Jammu & Kashmir and during the 2001-2002 stand-off after the militant attack on India’s Parliament, is held up as evidence of the power of Pakistan’s nuclear shield. This was evident again after the Bombay attacks. Many in Pakistan expected and braced themselves for some kind of punitive strike from India on ‘terrorist’ targets, and a possible reaction from Pakistan. Policy analysts were speculating that a military strike on militant training camps would engender an immediate military response from Pakistan, which could lead to heightened tensions and perhaps war. But they were comforting themselves with the belief that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would deter India from an all-out war.

India’s moves to mobilise international demands to force Pakistan to act, rather than launching an attack itself, offers little solace for the Pakistani establishment. The United Nations has placed sanctions against the top leadership of LeT. Pakistan will be obliged to seal Lashkar offices, arrest its leadership and freeze their assets. The UN has also required these actions against the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Pakistan has acted against JD by storming one of its camps, arresting a few leaders, and locking up its offices. But the fact is that LeT, as an organisation, has been banned in Pakistan for some years. The leaders of LeT/JD, including the chief, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, were arrested at the time of the ban, but were later released without charge. The recent arrest of Hafiz Saeed suggests that this pattern will continue. The New York Times described a local Pakistani police commander announcing that Hafiz Saeed was under house arrest, confined to his home and banned from going outside. Journalists report: “Mr. Saeed emerged moments later from the mosque across the street.” The police commander then claimed, “I’m just following instructions.”

Pakistan may be facing the most crucial moment of its existence. But its policymakers even now seem unwilling to fully recognise the dangers and are reluctant to confront them. The struggle becomes more difficult with each delay, every prevarication, and every subterfuge.

To truly confront the threat, the first challenge is for Pakistanis to agree that they want to live in a modern, democratic and plural society. To achieve this goal, the jihadi movement will have to be faced and overcome. The resort to indiscriminate and overwhelming force will not serve, it will make things worse. It will require what Eqbal Ahmad described as “a carefully planned and methodically executed programme of reform aimed at removing the root causes of the proliferation of violence in society, and improvement in the investigative, preventive, and prosecution capabilities of security and intelligence agencies, and the administration of justice.” Put simply, to effectively meet the Islamist challenge, the Pakistani state must finally accept and fully exercise its responsibility to maintain peace, provide justice, foster democracy and participation, and make available in an equitable manner the resources necessary for economic and social development. Pakistan’s neighbours and the world will need to help.

A H Nayyar is the executive director of Developments in Literacy, a non-profit group supporting education for the poor in Pakistan.
Zia Mian directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.
http://www.himalmag.com/Violence-without-limits-and-Pakistan%E2%80%99s-challenge_nw2758.html

Scenic Pakistani valley falls to Taliban militants

In a year from today, we will be talking about Lahore and Islamabad in the same vein. Peshawar, Karachi and Quetta 6-8 months from now.

Either the people of Pakistan are blind to what is happening to their country or they have thrown up their hands and given up on Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan's picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region far from the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive.

The deteriorating situation in the former tourist haven comes despite an army offensive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is especially worrisome to Pakistani officials because the valley lies outside the areas where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have traditionally operated and where the military is staging a separate offensive.

"You can't imagine how bad it is," said Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal lawmaker whose home in Swat was attacked by bomb-toting assailants in mid-December, weeks after he left. "It's worse day by day."

The Taliban activity in northwest Pakistan also comes as the country shifts forces east to the Indian border because of tensions over last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, potentially giving insurgents more space to maneuver along the Afghan frontier.

Militants began preying on Swat's lush mountain ranges about two years ago, and it is now too dangerous for foreign and Pakistani journalists to visit. Interviews with residents, lawmakers and officials who have fled the region paint a dire picture.

A suicide blast killed 40 people Sunday at a polling station in Buner, an area bordering Swat that had been relatively peaceful. The attack underscored fears that even so-called "settled" regions presumptively under government control are increasingly unsafe.

The 3,500-square-mile Swat Valley lies less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

A senior government official said he feared there could be a spillover effect if the government lost control of Swat and allowed the insurgency to infect other areas. Like nearly everyone interviewed, the official requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by militants.

Officials estimate that up to a third of Swat's 1.5 million people have left the area. Salah-ud-Din, who oversees relief efforts in Swat for the International Committee of the Red Cross, estimated that 80 percent of the valley is now under Taliban control.

Swat's militants are led by Maulana Fazlullah, a cleric who rose to prominence through radio broadcasts demanding the imposition of a harsh brand of Islamic law. His appeal tapped into widespread frustration with the area's inefficient judicial system.

Most of the insurgents are easy to spot with long hair, beards, rifles, camouflage vests and running shoes. They number at most 2,000, according to people who were interviewed.

In some places, just a handful of insurgents can control a village. They rule by fear: beheading government sympathizers, blowing up bridges and demanding women wear all-encompassing burqas.

They have also set up a parallel administration with courts, taxes, patrols and checkpoints, according to lawmakers and officials. And they are suspected of burning scores of girls' schools.

In mid-December, Taliban fighters killed a young member of a Sufi-influenced Muslim group who had tried to raise a militia against them. The militants later dug up Pir Samiullah's corpse and hung it for two days in a village square — partly to prove to his followers that he was not a superhuman saint, a security official said on condition of anonymity.

A lawmaker and the senior Swat government official said business and landowners had been told to give two-thirds of their income to the militants. Some local media reported last week that the militants have pronounced a ban on female education effective in mid-January.

Several people interviewed said the regional government made a mistake in May when it struck a peace deal with the militants. The agreement fell apart within two months but let the insurgents regroup.

The Swat insurgency also includes Afghan and other fighters from outside the valley, security officials said.

Any movement of Pakistani troops from the Swat Valley and tribal areas to the Indian border will concern the United States and other Western countries, which want Pakistan to focus on the al-Qaida threat near Afghanistan.

On Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials said thousands of troops were being shifted toward the border with India, which blames Pakistani militants for terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month that killed 164 people. But there has been no sign yet of a major buildup near India.

"The terrorists' aim in Mumbai was precisely this — to get the Pakistani army to withdraw from the western border and mount operations on the east," said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author who has written extensively about militancy in the region.

"The terrorists are not going to be sitting still. They are not going to be adhering to any sort of cease-fire while the army takes on the Indian threat. They are going to occupy the vacuum the army will create."

Residents and officials from the Swat Valley were critical of the army offensive there, saying troops appeared to be confined to their posts and often killed civilians when firing artillery at suspected militant targets.

The military has deployed some 100,000 troops through the northwest.

A government official familiar with security issues estimated that some 10,000 paramilitary and army troops had killed 300 to 400 militants in Swat since 2007, while about 130 troops were killed. Authorities have not released details of civilian casualties, and it was unclear if they were even being tallied.

The official, who insisted on anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, disputed assertions that militants had overrun the valley, but said a spotty supply line was hampering operations. He said the army had to man some Swat police stations because the police force there had been decimated by desertions and militant killings.

A Swat militant boasted that "we are doing our activities wherever we want, and the army is confined to their living places."

"They cannot move independently like us," said the man, who was reached over the phone and gave his name as Muzaffarul Haq. He claimed the Swat militants had no al-Qaida or foreign connections, but that they supported all groups that shared the goal of imposing Islamic law.

"With the grace of Allah, there is no dearth of funds, weapons or rations," he said. "Our women are providing cooked food for those who are struggling in Allah's path. Our children are getting prepared for jihad."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081229/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_valley_of_fear

Pakistan's Thinking in their own words.

Takeaways.
1. India has no actionable evidence that the Mumbai attack was planned or backed by terrorists in Pakistan. By blaming Pakistan India is attempting to de-legitimize the Kashmir insurgency.
2. Western support is encouraging Indian hawks to attack Pakistan but as in 2002, Pakistan has a formidable army and air force and can and will retaliate thus assuring mutually assured destruction. (If Pakistan goes down, she will take India with her)
3. The vast majority of Pakistanis believe India is the bigger enemy not the Taliban who have taken over Swat and now surrounded Peshawar.
4. It is naïve for the West to believe that the Pakistan government will forcibly suppress the militant groups which support Kashmir’s liberation struggle at least until Pakistan’s strategic differences with India, including Kashmir, are resolved.
5. The west have little political and economic influence on Pakistan as long as Pakistan can count on support from China.
6. Terrorism and extremism does not pose an existential threat to Pakistan.
7. There is no possibility of an extremist or jihadi government assuming office in Islamabad because neither the Pakistani electorate nor the Pakistan Army would accept this.

Two important points to be re-emphasized.
1. Munir frankly states that Pakistan is using militant groups within Pakistan to influence events in India and will NOT change unless mutual issues are resolved to Pakistan's satisfaction.
2. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban can never take over Pakistan because the army and electorate says so.


OPINION: The India-Pakistan challenge —Munir Akram

Despite Western media prognostication, there is no possibility of an extremist or jihadi government assuming office in Islamabad. Neither the Pakistani electorate nor the Pakistan Army would accept this

The India-Pakistan confrontation following the Mumbai attacks is the fourth such crisis in the last two decades. While India says it has provided enough evidence to Pakistan, Islamabad says what it has been given cannot be taken to a court of law for prosecution. Also, there is still no solid evidence that the Mumbai attacks were planned by a Pakistani group; or that the attackers were all Pakistanis. The audio recording of one of the attackers, available online, includes the use of Hindi words not in the Pakistani lexicon.

There is a strong sense in Pakistan that the Indian government’s allegations are designed to deflect attention away from India’s own security lapses, to safeguard against erosion of electoral support for the ruling party and to utilise the crisis to further de-legitimise the Kashmiri insurgency.

Western support for India’s largely unsubstantiated allegations has encouraged Indian hawks advocating military actions against Pakistan, especially airstrikes against alleged jihadi training camps. They see the continuing US Predator strikes against Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan’s Western frontier as the example and precedent. But India is not the US and drone strikes have a more complex configuration.

No Pakistan government can acquiesce in such Indian strikes. As the Pakistan army chief has warned, any Indian attack will invite “a befitting response”. During the previous three crises, Pentagon game planners reportedly reached the conclusion that an India-Pakistan conflict is likely to escalate rapidly, including possibly to the nuclear level. Hopefully, as in 2002, the present Indian government will also reach the same conclusion and not allow the hawks to propel it into creating a South Asian catastrophe.

An Indian military strike, and consequent Indo-Pakistan conflict, would also imply the immediate termination of Pakistan’s cooperation with the US and NATO regarding Afghanistan. The use of the Pakistani airbase at Jacobabad; the NATO supply convoys through Pakistan to Afghanistan; intelligence cooperation on Al Qaeda and Taliban operations; the Pakistani military deployments and operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the western frontier, would all end abruptly.

This is all the more likely because Pakistan’s collaboration with the US-NATO “war in Afghanistan” is highly unpopular in Pakistan and seen as the principal cause of the recent terrorist attacks on security and civilian targets within Pakistan.

Nor can President-elect Obama or New York Times editorials convince the vast majority of Pakistanis that the Taliban, not India, is the real enemy.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars. Indian military intervention dismembered Pakistan in 1971. India continues to brutally suppress the Kashmiri freedom movement and tolerates the systemic discrimination and occasional pogroms against its Muslim minority. It has deployed over 70 percent of its huge armed forces against Pakistan (not China) and seeks to establish its strategic dominance over South Asia and beyond. Indian intelligence agencies are supporting, if not organising, violence and terrorism in Balochistan and perhaps even helping some of the Islamist militants in the Frontier.

It is, therefore, naïve for the West to believe that the Pakistan government will forcibly suppress the militant groups which support Kashmir’s liberation struggle at least until Pakistan’s strategic differences with India, including Kashmir, are resolved.

Nor should there be Western expectations that political pressure and economic incentives would persuade any government in Pakistan to compromise on vital national issues, in particular its nuclear and strategic programmes that provide credible deterrence against Indian and any other foreign aggression.

Western discrimination against Pakistan on strategic issues, epitomised by the Indo-US nuclear deal, and the periodic unrealistic demands for the surrender or elimination of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, reinforce the common Pakistani view that the West is conspiring with India to weaken and destabilise, if not dismember Pakistan.

Also, Western chancelleries should not exaggerate their political and economic influence over Pakistan, even with the present government. Pakistan does not need to rely on US or Western military support. The most advanced Western hardware and technology will not be made available to Pakistan. The rest it can get, more reliably and cheaply, from China.

Economically also, a West preoccupied with saving its own broken financial institutions is in no position to provide Pakistan with the magnitude of financial and development assistance it requires for economic stabilisation and rapid growth. Here again, it is China, which has the financial reserves to come to Pakistan’s rescue.

This is not to argue that terrorism and extremism do not pose a threat to Pakistan, to its socio-economic development and its strategic objectives. However, unlike the threat posed by India, the threat of terrorism and extremism is not existential.

Despite Western media prognostication, there is no possibility of an extremist or jihadi government assuming office in Islamabad. Neither the Pakistani electorate nor the Pakistan Army would accept this. Ending extremism and its terrorist tactics, in Pakistan and the region will require a comprehensive and painstaking process of police and intelligence action and cooperation as well as the elimination of the political and economic grievances which create the justification for terrorism.

In this context it should be noted that all four recent India-Pakistan crises — January 1990, June 1999, January-December 2002 and this one — were linked, directly or indirectly, to the Kashmir dispute. Unless this dispute is resolved, such periodic confrontations will continue to erupt. Such a solution must be one that is acceptable, first and foremost, to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Finally, a comprehensive strategy against terrorism in South Asia must also seek to end state terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism and Islamic as well as Hindu extremist violence, including that perpetrated by Hindu fascist organisations like the RSS, against Muslims in India.

The writer is a former ambassador. The article is based on comments prepared for a discussion on the Mumbai attacks at the Asia Society in New York which could not be delivered because the organisers, at the last minute, excluded Ambassador Akram from the panel. The panel included the author Salman Rushdie and two Indian nationals

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\12\29\story_29-12-2008_pg3_5