Pakistan's Noncampaign Against the Taliban

By Bobby Ghosh / Washington Friday, Aug. 28, 2009

Pro-Taliban militants take control of a mosque in Pakistan's tribal area of Mohamand, along Afghanistan's border

Mohammad Zubair / AP

Despite strenuous entreaties by top U.S. officials, Pakistan has abandoned plans to mount a military offensive against the terrorist group responsible for a two-year campaign of suicide bombings across the country. Although the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been in disarray since an Aug. 5 missile strike from a CIA-operated drone killed its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani military has concluded that a ground attack on its strongholds in South Waziristan would be too difficult.

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• Are Taliban Leaders Fighting Among Themselves?

The Pakistani military has choked off main roads leading out of South Waziristan, and the country's fighter jets have been pounding targets from the air (an operation Islamabad insists it will continue). But that falls short of the military campaign the U.S. desires. Instead, Pakistani authorities are hoping to exploit divisions within the TTP to prize away some factions, while counting on the CIA's drones to take out Baitullah's successors. (See pictures of refugees fleeing the fighting in Pakistan's Swat Valley.)

U.S. counterterrorism officials worry that a failure to capitalize on the post-Baitullah confusion within the TTP will allow its new leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, to consolidate his position and reorganize the group. Officials in Washington say special envoy Richard Holbrooke and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal have pressed the Pakistanis to strike while the iron is hot. But after initial promises to launch a ground offensive in South Waziristan, the Pakistanis have backed off.

A top Pakistani general, Nadeem Ahmed, recently said preparation for such an operation could take up to two months. Now there will be no ground assault at all, according to a senior Pakistani politician known to have strong military ties. Instead, the politician tells TIME, the military will try to buy off some TTP factions through peace deals.

This alarms U.S. officials, who point out that terrorist leaders have previously used peace deals to expand their influence. Such deals have been "abject failures that at the end of the day have made the security situation in parts of Pakistan worse," says a U.S. counterterrorism official. "Why the Pakistani government keeps returning to this strategy is a mystery." (See pictures of Pakistan beneath the surface.)

A senior Pakistani military official tells TIME a ground operation in the mountainous wilds of South Waziristan would be too difficult and would risk triggering a "tribal uprising" in a region over which Islamabad has little control.

That assessment is shared by some Pakistan experts in Washington, who say the country's military, despite some success against militants in the Swat Valley, simply doesn't have the ability to confront the TTP head-on. A ground operation would leave the Pakistani army "with its nose bloodied," says Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations. Having "come out of Swat looking reasonably good," Pakistan's generals don't want to risk "taking a morale hit." (Read "Are Pakistan's Taliban Leaders Fighting Among Themselves?")

But the experts — like some U.S. officials — suspect the Pakistani military lacks the desire to eliminate the TTP entirely. Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, who conducted the Obama Administration's review of Afghanistan and Pakistan policy, says the military may simply want "to get the TTP back to where it was two years ago — a malleable force that doesn't attack the Pakistani state, and particularly not the army." A somewhat tame TTP is a useful bogeyman "to keep civilians appreciative of the need for the army to be getting resources and priority attention," Riedel adds.

For the Obama Administration, the Pakistani military's reluctance to take on the TTP doesn't bode well for the pursuit of U.S. interests. Washington would like Islamabad to confront the groups that pose a direct threat to NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan — the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network. But "it's not clear that the Pakistanis are prepared to pay more than lip service to that," says Riedel.

— With reporting by Omar Waraich / Islamabad

The guns of August

By Ahmad Faruqui
Monday, 31 Aug, 2009 | 08:02 AM PST |

No official history of the 1965 war was ever written even though President Ayub wanted one. — File Photo

Pakistan

Pros & cons of incumbency

Some of the writing about the Indo-Pakistan war of September 1965 borders on mythology. It is no surprise that generations of Pakistanis continue to believe that India was the aggressor and that one Pakistani soldier was equal to 10 Indian soldiers.

A few have argued that the war began in August when Pakistan injected guerrillas into the vale of Kashmir to instigate a revolt and grab it before India achieved military dominance in the region. That was Operation Gibraltar.

When it failed to trigger a revolt and drew a sharp Indian riposte along the ceasefire line, Pakistan upped the ante and launched Operation Grand Slam on Sept 1. Infantry units of the army backed by armour overran the Indian outpost in Chamb, crossed the Tawi river and were headed towards Akhnur in order to cut off India’s line of communication with Srinagar.

In the minority view, the Indian response on Sept 6 across the international border at Lahore was a natural counter-response, not an act of aggression.

I asked Sajjad Haider, author of the new book, Flight of the Falcon, to name the aggressor. He retired as an air commodore in the Pakistan Air Force. A fighter pilot to the bone, he does not know how to mince words: ‘Ayub perpetrated the war.’

In April, skirmishes had taken place in the Rann of Kutch region several hundred miles south of Kashmir. In that encounter, the Pakistanis prevailed over the Indians. Haider says that the humiliation suffered by the Indians brought Prime Minister Shastri to the conclusion that the next round would be of India’s choosing.

The Indian army chief prepared for a war that would be fought in the plains of Punjab. Under ‘Operation Ablaze’, it would mount an attack against Lahore, Sialkot and Kasur. Of course, the trigger would have to be pulled by the Pakistanis.

On May 12, says Haider, an Indian Canberra bomber flew over the Pakistan border on a reconnaissance mission. To quote him: ‘The PAF scrambled interceptors which got within shooting range of the intruder. Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s permission was sought to bring down the intruder. He sought clearance from the president on the newly installed direct line but Ayub denied permission fearing Indian reprisal.’ Laments Haider, ‘If this was not an indication of Indian intentions, what else could have been?’

Oblivious to what had just taken place in the skies above Punjab, and failing to anticipate how India was gunning to equalise the score, Ayub gave the green light to Operation Gibraltar on the advice of his foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (later president and prime minister). Bhutto had sought out the opinion about Indian intentions from Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Yi during a meeting at the Karachi airport and concluded from the latter’s body language that India would not respond.

So Ayub gave the green light to send 8,000 infiltrators into Indian-held Kashmir. These, says Haider, were mostly youth from Azad Kashmir who had less than four weeks of training in guerrilla warfare. The entire plan was predicated on a passive Indian response, evoking Gen Von Moltke’s dictum: ‘No war plan survives the first 24 hours of contact with the enemy.’

It is also worth recalling what the kaiser said to the German troops that were heading off to fight the French in August 1914: ‘You will be home before the leaves have fallen off the trees.’ The three-month war turned into the Great War which lasted for four years.

Operation Grand Slam abruptly ground to a halt. An Indian general cited by Haider says in his memoirs: ‘Akhnur was a ripe plum ready to be plucked, but providence came to our rescue.’ The Pakistani GHQ decided to switch divisional commanders in the midst of the operation. The new commander, Maj-Gen Yahya (subsequently army chief and president), claimed later he was not tasked with taking Akhnur.

I asked Haider whether the Pakistani military was prepared for an all-out war with India, a much bigger country with a much bigger military. He said it was the army’s war, since the other services had been kept in the dark. The army was clearly not prepared for an all-out war since a quarter of the soldiers were on leave. They were only recalled as the Indian army crossed the border en route to Lahore, a horrific sight which Haider recalls seeing from the air as he and five of his falcons arrived on the outskirts of Lahore.

Maj-Gen Sarfraz was the general officer commanding of the No.10 Division which had primary responsibility for the defence of Lahore. Along with other divisional commanders in the region, he had been ordered by GHQ to remove all defensive landmines from the border. None had been taken into confidence about the Kashmir operation. The pleas of these generals to prepare against an Indian invasion were rejected by GHQ with a terse warning: ‘Do not provoke the Indians.’

Haider notes that the gateway to Lahore was defended by the 3rd Baloch contingent of 100 men under the intrepid Major Shafqat Baluch. He says, ‘They fought to the last man till we (No.19 Squadron) arrived to devastate the invading division. There could have been no doubt even in the mind of a hawaldar that an Indian attack would come. But the ostriches at the pulpit had their heads dug in sand up to their necks.’

In the 1965 war, the Pakistani Army repeated the mistakes of the 1947-48 Kashmir war, but on a grander scale. No official history of the 1965 war was ever written even though President Ayub wanted one. Gen Yahya, his new army chief, just sat on the request until Ayub was hounded out of office by centrifugal forces triggered by the war.

Pakistan’s grand strategy was flawed. None of its strategic objectives were achieved. And were it not for the tactical brilliance of many mid-level commanders, the country would have been torn apart by the Indians. Ironically, in Ayub’s autobiography, one would be hard pressed to find any references to the war of 1965. One is reminded of De Gaulle’s history of the French army which makes no reference to the events that took place in Waterloo in 1815.

War, as Clemenceau put it, is too serious a business to be left to the generals.

The writer has authored Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan.
AhmadFaruqui@gmail.com

EDITORIAL: Asking friends to do more

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\08\30\story_30-8-2009_pg3_1

President Asif Ali Zardari called on the British Prime Minister, Mr Gordon Brown, in London on Friday, asking him to “do more” to rescue Pakistan from its economic crisis and to strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to combat militants. Mr Brown has reaffirmed that his government will indeed pay Pakistan $1 billion over four years.

Mr Brown means to spend half his money on the borderlands, mostly in the rehabilitation of the educational infrastructure destroyed by the terrorists. He politely did not refer to the latest education policy announced by Islamabad whose drift is going to promote religious extremism by insulating mainstream pupils from modern, rational education. There was bilateral exchange of views on the problem of extremism in Pakistan, too.

No one knows how Islamabad is going to end extremism, but if extremism comes from the human insulation of the madrassas, not even a beginning has been made in that direction. In fact, the real battle is the military challenge that Pakistan is now offering to the Taliban terrorists. And the good news there is that Pakistan seems to be winning after the Americans killed Baitullah Mehsud.

During the conversation, Mr Zardari also referred to the slight softening of the Indo-Pak equation after Sharm al-Sheikh as that is a major policy pillar of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan in general and the UK and the US in particular. The British message through its foreign minister Mr David Miliband has been steady: you are not threatened by India, your threat is from the inside, and it is from extremism, not so much from the Taliban as from Pakistani society itself.

Indeed, Pakistan continues to be politically unstable and economically unviable. It is politically unstable because its politicians have assumed extremist postures about issues confronting them. Have they the right priority in listing what these issues are? The “friends” would think it is war against terrorism. No, it is the issue of punishing General Pervez Musharraf (retd) for treason and they know the punishment for that is death. In fact the latest scandal about Jinnahpur is considered a distraction from the real aim of going for General Musharraf.

Fighting terrorism and regaining territorial sovereignty is not a priority for politicians and journalists. This trend encourages the clerics and the country’s madrassa infrastructure to challenge the war against terrorism — despite the “national consensus” praised by Mr Brown — and lead marches against America as the “killer of Muslims”. For them, it is not the “emirate” of the Taliban in the tribal areas that violates Pakistan’s territorial integrity but the slavery of America.

That is why the “friends” are worried that the Pakistan Army may simply wind up the operation in South Waziristan and go back to doing what it normally does: defend Pakistan against a possible Indian invasion from the east. That would be an awkward moment because Pakistan is getting all the money — for instance, the IMF facility that has raised its credit rating — on the pledge that it will fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

As it stands now, Pakistan needs all kinds of help to run its economy. It has no money for the army, no money for the IDPs, and no money to pay for essential imports, including 1.55 million tons of edible oil that will be gorged during Ramazan. It has even asked for American help to get rid of its problematic “circular debt”.

As the “friends” are slow in disbursing the amounts they have pledged, it is America which is propping Pakistan up in all sorts of ways. Not fully aware of this, the provinces are making ready to fight over revenues that may actually not exist without foreign assistance.

Internally, Pakistanis agree on hardly anything. And it is not only war against terrorism. They disagree on water issues too, internally between provinces and, externally, with India; but international experts say the country is already running on empty. It is thinking of making electricity from Iranian gas but the province through which it will pass, Balochistan, is facing trouble, which helps the Taliban and Al Qaeda and not the national economy.

So when the interior minister, Rehman Malik, asked the UK to “do more” in helping Pakistan fight extremism and terrorism, he should have been aware that no one can help unless Pakistan is ready and united to help itself. *

Simple perhaps, scary definitely

Simple perhaps, scary definitely
By Cyril Almeida
Friday, 28 Aug, 2009 | 01:04 AM PST
The American or, as the Americans prefer, the international mission in Afghanistan is not going well. Obama has recently labelled it a ‘war of necessity,’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean the Americans are in it to win. -Photo by AP

When contemplating national security issues, I have learned at least one thing: proudly wear your dunce’s cap at all times. There’s a method in this madness, or studied stupidity, if you will — national security is the domain of ‘experts,’ and these experts will readily confuse the unsuspecting and uninitiated.

Military men are the worst. They’ll throw a book’s worth of acronyms and abbreviations at you faster than you can say ABC. Want to talk the mechanics of war with India? DCB, IBG, TNW, OMG, RMA, strike corps 1, two and 21, pivot corps — a slew of seemingly meaningless alphabets and arcane phrases boils down to two things. One, nuclear weapons, everyone seems to agree, are not actually meant to be used. Two, nuclear weapons have all but eliminated the possibility of a full-blown war between Pakistan and India.
‘Limited’ wars and ‘sub-conventional’ conflicts may occur, but nobody seems to know how one side’s armed forces can defeat the other side’s without bringing to an end what’s quaintly referred to as the nation state — that’s you and me and the rest of the people who inhabit this place, in case anyone’s interested.

Don’t bother asking why, then, we still need to primarily counter the Indian military threat and not the insurgents and militants and terrorists because, well, you’ll get another book’s worth of alphabets, phrases and concepts to chew on. I’m not sure yet, but it seems to have something to do with politics lagging behind reality.

Think-tankers are worse yet, followed closely by bureaucrats and diplomats. Like cutting-edge theory in social science or the humanities, a cottage industry of experts talks back and forth and produces prodigious amounts of research and papers and attends important-sounding conferences to discuss our future in complicated-sounding ways.

And yet it all boils down to some very basic things, which, basic though they may be, have an enormous impact on our lives. So with my dunce’s cap snugly on, I have tried to ponder the faltering American project in Afghanistan and what it means for the future of militancy here in Pakistan.

Let me state that there’s no love lost between the militants and me; ceteris paribus, I’d rather someone eliminated them before they eliminate me, or you. But elimination isn’t always an option, or a workable long-term solution, so we need to figure out a future in which there is less killing of everyone involved.

The American or, as the Americans prefer, the international mission in Afghanistan is not going well. Obama has recently labelled it a ‘war of necessity,’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean the Americans are in it to win.

The Americans acknowledge that things will get worse before they better, but the ‘better’ that they are targeting is all about getting the GIRoA, that’s the Afghan government, to manage things with a semblance of normality so that the Americans can exit militarily and protect their interests from afar.

It would be stupid to count out the Americans already and far from being the ‘graveyard of empires’ and the Americans’ second Vietnam, Afghanistan could yet be put into some sort of governable shape within a few years.

So with the parameters set thus, the question for the army/security establishment here is what sort of influence do we imagine retaining in the Afghanistan of the future? It is an article of faith here that we must have some influence in Afghanistan. While this is frequently couched in the facts that we share a long, porous border with Afghanistan and that there is a Pakhtun population that straddles the border, there is an even more prosaic reason: if we don’t, others will. Iran, Russia, the US, India, China — there are many countries vying for influence in Afghanistan and in a zero-sum game we can’t afford to lose out.

Conventional thinking, or the international media consensus, has it that we still fancy backing the Taliban, and as proof of our diabolical agenda the Quetta shura and Siraj Haqqani are trotted out to whack us with. In truth, though, the army high command has woken up to the reality that Afghanistan cannot revert to the Afghanistan of the ‘90s.

The army hasn’t simply put its militant minions in cold storage, waiting for the propitious moment to unleash them once again on a hapless Afghanistan. Indeed, for those willing to question gospel truths, there is legitimate doubt about whether the security establishment ever really had the degree of control over the Afghan Taliban that everyone seems to accuse it of having.

But, and this is the crucial part, while the security establishment may be amenable to negotiating a different form of influence in Afghanistan in the future, the army is not willing to seriously attempt the dismantling of the Afghan-centric militant networks here.

Why? The army’s response to the American demand is a counter-question: why should we? They aren’t attacking us, we’ve got our hands full with other militants, you guys have pots of money and tens of thousands of troops at your disposal, handle your own problems.

Morally dubious as this may be, a hard-nosed assessment cannot avoid the conclusion that were someone else in the security establishment’s shoes, they would probably do the same thing. Ignoring the fact that we have contributed enormously to the magnificent mess of militancy in the region — difficult as that may be to do — the fact is the very existence of that mess has limited our options today.

So, with one eye on our limited resources to tackle militancy and another on the political and security fallout of opening multiple fronts, no policymaker worth his salt could do everything that the Americans want.

Yet, what should trouble those of us living in Pakistan is another discernible reason for the army’s baulkiness: the army seems institutionally unable to grasp the arc of militancy, to understand the inherent danger of blowback, to realise that today’s ‘not our problem’ is tomorrow’s ‘very much our problem.’

The problem is that the army/security establishment only acts when its own interests are directly, violently, threatened. Thrice we have clamped down on militancy, and all three times the army has acted in what could be termed self-defence.

Post-9/11 we rounded up Al Qaeda militants because of the apocryphal threat of being ‘bombed back into the stone ages.’ Then after Musharraf was attacked twice in December 2003, the security forces launched a second clampdown. Finally, after the first half of 2007 and the Lal Masjid conflagration, the third phase was launched.

Now, with the Americans struggling to control Afghanistan and looking to us for help, we are essentially telling them, the Afghan Taliban aren’t worrying us, so why should we intervene?

The trouble is, the Afghan Taliban are intervening here. Hakimullah Mehsud is the new — temporary? — chief of the TTP and anyone who knows anything about that umbrella organisation will tell you that the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda intervened in the succession issue and brokered a peace between rival factions.

It remains to be seen whether they have done so to reorient the TTP towards the Afghan mission, but the very effort to keep it a cohesive network should be troubling because another Baitullah Mehsud could rise up and decide that the real fight lies in Pakistan after all.

So more than the militants themselves, perhaps what should worry Pakistanis is the possibility that the security establishment apparently continues to believe that a problem isn’t our problem until mayhem is unleashed here. Given what’s transpired in recent years, that is a very scary thought indeed.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Why Pakistan is poised for collapse, explains David Kilcullen

30 Jun 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

Why is an Aussie anthropologist coaching American generals on how to win wars? David Kilcullen, an Australian army reservist and top adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq, has spent years studying insurgencies in countries from Indonesia to Afghanistan, distinguishing hard-core terrorists from "accidental guerrillas" -- and his theories are revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West. Kilcullen spoke with Outlook's Carlos Lozada on why Pakistan is poised for collapse, whether catching Osama bin Laden is really a good idea and how the Enlightenment and Lawrence of Arabia helped Washington shift course in Iraq. Excerpts: David Kilcullen: Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today. URL of this page: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1508 ------------------ A Conversation With David Kilcullen Interview by Carlos Lozada Sunday, March 22, 2009; Washington Post, Page B02 Why is an Aussie anthropologist coaching American generals on how to win wars? David Kilcullen, an Australian army reservist and top adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq, has spent years studying insurgencies in countries from Indonesia to Afghanistan, distinguishing hard-core terrorists from "accidental guerrillas" -- and his theories are revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West. Kilcullen spoke with Outlook's Carlos Lozada on why Pakistan is poised for collapse, whether catching Osama bin Laden is really a good idea and how the Enlightenment and Lawrence of Arabia helped Washington shift course in Iraq. Excerpts: What is the real central front in the war on terror? Pakistan. Hands down. No doubt. Why? Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today. How important is it to kill or capture Osama bin laden? Not very. It depends on who does it. Let me give you two possible scenarios. Scenario one is, American commandos shoot their way into some valley in Pakistan and kill bin Laden. That doesn't end the war on terror; it makes bin Laden a martyr. But here's scenario two: Imagine that a tribal raiding party captures bin Laden, puts him on television and says, "You are a traitor to Islam and you have killed more Muslims than you have killed infidels, and we're now going to deal with you." They could either then try and execute the guy in accordance with their own laws or hand him over to the International Criminal Court. If that happened, that would be the end of the al-Qaeda myth. President Obama has said that he will be "as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in." Is his decision to remove combat forces by August 2010 and leave 50,000 non-combat troops careful or careless? I think it is politically careful. The distinction between combat and non-combat forces in a counterinsurgency environment is largely theoretical. Anyone who is still in Iraq will actually or potentially be engaged in combat. How much longer will the war last? The intervention ends when the locals can handle it. Right now they can't. I think that within three to five years, we can say that the chance that the Iraqis will be able to hold their own against their internal threats is pretty high. So I'd say we have another three to five years of substantial engagement in Iraq. But one other factor here is external interference. What are the Iranians doing, what are the Saudis doing, what are the Jordanians and the Syrians doing? The Iraq part is not the problem, it's the regional security part that is the problem. When history has its say, who will be the real father of the surge? Is it Jack Keane, David Petraeus, Raymond Odierno, Fred Kagan? Someone else? It's Petraeus. If this thing had [expletive] up, everyone would be blaming Petraeus. You wouldn't find Keane and Odierno and Kagan and President Bush and everyone else stepping forward. So I think the true father of the thing was and is Petraeus. You argue in your book, "The Accidental Guerrilla," that if Petraeus had been killed in Iraq, the impact on morale alone could have lost the war. Do you fault President Bush for feeding the cult of Petraeus? Our biggest problem during the surge was a hostile American Congress. They could have killed the thing. There was really nobody except [Senators] McCain and Lieberman arguing for a continued commitment. So I don't fault President Bush for pushing General Petraeus forward. I think what he was trying to do was to find a figure with sufficient credibility to restore hope within Congress and to gain a measure of support for the effort from the U.S. domestic population. What are the lessons of Iraq that most apply to Afghanistan? I would say there are three. The first one is you've got to protect the population. Unless you make people feel safe, they won't be willing to engage in unarmed politics. The second lesson is, once you've made people safe, you've got to focus on getting the population on your side and making them self-defending. And then a third lesson is, you've got to make a long-term commitment. Obama has suggested that it might be possible to reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, along the lines of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq. Would that work? If the Taliban sees that we're negotiating for a stay of execution or to stave off defeat, that's going to harden their resolve. . . . I'm all for negotiating, but I think the chances of achieving a mass wave of people turning against the Taliban are somewhat lower in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq. Did the U.S. military take too long to change course in Iraq? I think it took them a historically standard period of time. In Vietnam it took three to four years to reorient. In Malaya the British took about the same amount of time. In Northern Ireland they took longer. The British in Iraq took longer than the Americans in Iraq. And again, it was Petraeus. . . . He put forward this whole change movement within the military. We were almost like insurgents within the U.S. government. My marker of success is that when I first arrived, we had to talk in whispers about stuff that is now considered commonplace. The conventional wisdom now was totally unorthodox in '04, '05. Does having a medieval scholar as a father affect how you see war? My father is a true believer in the Enlightenment. He always encouraged me to develop an evidence-based approach to whatever you do. But the other thing is, when I was 10 years old, my dad gave me a copy of a book by Robert Graves called "Good-Bye to All That," which is about the first World War. That was where I first encountered T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. And as a child I was steeped in Lawrence's way of thinking about tribes. In tribal warfare you don't go directly to your objectives, you work through a ladder of tribes. You go from one tribe to the next tribe to the next tribe to get to your objective. That's what we tried to do in Iraq. In 2006 you wrote an essay on counterinsurgency called "28 Articles," one-upping Lawrence's "27 Articles." Do you consider yourself a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia? No. I don't think there is a modern equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia. But we can all learn from his thinking about insurgency. The other thing about Lawrence is he understood and worked with the cultures that he dealt with, and he spent the rest of his life advocating policies to support the welfare of those people. He was one the biggest advocates of Arab independence, even when his own nation's policies were against that. © 2009 The Washington Post Company URL of this page: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1508

Of foreign aid and self-reliance

Reality check

Friday, August 28, 2009
Shafqat Mahmood

The friends of democratic Pakistan meeting in Istanbul has been less than friendly. While all the right noises have been made, not a single rupee is on its way. There is also tardiness regarding the money promised in Tokyo. Some of it will come, principally from the US and UK, but others are less than forthcoming.

One problem is lack of preparedness on our part. Many of these governments are democracies and answerable to their parliaments and the people. They are not going to write a cheque unless they know exactly where their money is going and what results it will achieve. This is where Pakistan has to give them comfort.

This can be done by preparing proper projects with all the costing done, a clear trajectory of cash flows and the specific results expected. Reports are that the Malakand rehabilitation project is likely to receive support because it has been well prepared. It is said to have all the benchmarks that satisfy potential donors.

The same diligence has to be shown in other areas but this is not the only problem. The donors are apprehensive that a large chunk of their money will go into the people's pockets. The Pakistan government will loudly protest and say this is not true. It will claim that it has procedures in place that track the spending of aid money and a robust auditing mechanism, ensuring that everything is done right.

This may be true but the issue here is perception, which is not really positive with regard to this government. Whether it has anything to do with the international image of President Zardari or the alleged wrong doings highlighted by the Pakistani media, the net result is deep apprehension. This is why the money promised in Tokyo is not coming through.

This creates a huge challenge for the government. Not only it has to be more diligent in preparing projects, it also has to improve its image. This is not going to be easy because ingrained perceptions are hard to remove. But, a start can be made if the leaders become visibly transparent and open in all their dealings. There are still too many stories swirling around of less-than-perfect behaviour on their part. And this is putting it mildly.

Secondly, those cabinet members that have acquired a particularly sordid reputation for corruption need to be sacked. We keep hearing that a cabinet reshuffle is coming but it must be an awfully long journey because we can't seem to get there. Most of the aid money is directed towards social sectors and if people with an unsavoury reputation sit there, it is not likely to give comfort to anybody.

It will also help to advertise to the donor community the system of fund monitoring and auditing that the government follows. Reports are that this has improved considerably and probably matches international standards but it may not be generally known. It may be useful for the ministry of finance to have a one-day conference to which all donors are invited and the basics explained. Sometimes we imagine that they know everything, but they may not, or some may and not others. There is no harm in re-emphasising a good point.

It could be argued that this entire debate is demeaning. Whether we are good or bad is not the issue. Seeking aid is no better than going around the world with a begging bowl. This is a good point but if we say no to foreign aid we must be prepared for the consequences. I do not know how exactly to translate the Urdu word 'ghairat' -- honour does not quite convey the meaning. But whatever it is, it comes with a price.

As things stand today, there will be a number of serious consequences if the aid flow stops. For one, we will not be able to service our international debt. This will have consequences for our imports, exports, trade and any matter in which the government has to give a guarantee. There are other difficult long-term ramifications but the point is that it will severely affect our economy.

This would mean that social and economic contradictions already visible in the society could reach chaotic proportions. We see just a glimpse of it in the madness that grips the people when subsidised wheat or foodstuff is being distributed. Inflation combined with reduced incomes has created a desperation that is already threatening to engulf us. Imagine what would happen if this becomes worse.

We take for granted the expenditure incurred by the government in health and education sectors. It is not much by international standards but nevertheless, the hospitals and schools are still running. Some of the space to do this is provided by external assistance. If it stops, schools, and hospitals and other public services will be adversely affected.

Another important statistic is that 80 per cent of our national development programme is funded by aid. This means most of the new roads and ports, and water and drainage projects -- besides new schemes in education and health – have been made possible mostly because of foreign assistance. These will all come to a halt.

This will create more difficulties because not only will much-needed projects stop, it will further slow down the national economy. Government expenditure is always an important stimulus to the economy and if it goes down, it has an across the board impact on trade and jobs, indeed on every aspect of the people's lives. It is for this reason that government's expenditure increases during recession.

One other aspect that must be noted is that if ever a no-foreign-aid situation emerges, we will have to re-order our spending because priorities will change. Money will have to be made available to keep the economy moving and the only other area to cut down on would be defence. In other words, however indirectly, foreign aid creates the fiscal space to spend on defence. If it is reduced or cut off, it will have important consequences for our security.

This is just a brief glimpse of some of the things that can happen if we say no to foreign aid. Of course, over a longer time frame, if we change our habits and try and live within our means, we can overcome this dependence. Self-reliance would mean the proverbial tightening of the belt, which isn't entirely impossible.

At this stage, it would be prudent to keep honour out of it. We are going through a difficult period of not only fighting insurgencies but also severe domestic and global recession. We need help now and should not shy away from it. Other nations also ask for assistance when they need it, as have some of the most developed countries in Europe and Japan in the past.

The only caveat is that we should not see this as temporary and while taking advantage of it, prepare for a future of total self-reliance.



Email: shafqatmd@gmail.com

The future belongs to Jinnah

Thursday, August 27, 2009 Yasser Latif Hamdani Jaswant Singh's 670-page book on Pakistan's founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, has reignited the debate on Partition. From an academic point of view, however, he doesn't seem to have said anything out of the ordinary. Much of this was first stated by Maulana Azad in his "India Wins Freedom". In the intervening years between Azad and Jaswant Singh, several perceptive historians and authors, many from India, also presented a similar view of history, chief amongst them H M Seervai with his classic "Partition of India: Legend and Reality". However, there is a new angle in Singh's biography that is as much an indication of where things are moving in India as much as it is a historical context. Not long ago I wrote a piece called "Jinnah's India" which none of the websites and newspapers I wrote for then published. In that piece I argued that India today with its rising middle-class, secular constitution and a strong capitalist economy was Jinnah's India not Gandhi's or Nehru's, whether Indians cared to admit as much or not. My argument was not a novel one though it seemed so to those who rejected it. Karan Thapar had written as much in an article back in the beginning of this decade. It wasn't a surprise then that Thapar was the first one to interview Jaswant Singh after his book was released. My feeling is that India – with its economic gains and a confident new middle-class -- is looking for an alternative founding father and more appropriately the founding father it lost. In the 1930s and the 1940s, the Hindu bourgeoisie was not nearly as mature – though much more so than its Muslim counterpart -- to look up to a successful and secular barrister from the minority community as its leader. Things are different today though. The new middle-class in India finds itself alienated from its heroes – if only subconsciously. Gandhi just doesn't cut it – his rejection of materialism, his village philosophy, his glorification of poverty and his idealisation of ancient Hindu society, things that made him so popular in his time are exactly what are alienating him from this class. He can be revered but never emulated. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, though secular, has two major drawbacks: he was born to considerable wealth and he was a socialist. For many Nehru represents – despite his secularism and role as a global statesman -- the wrong kind of politician, a politician who has never had to work a day and therefore holds those who do work for a living in contempt. The ironman, Sardar Patel, has been played up as an alternative but he has been appropriated by the Hindu nationalist crowd and the havoc Hindu nationalists wreak on not only minorities but most things western (for example, their opposition to Valentine's Day) automatically distances this new class from Patel. Maulana Azad couldn't possibly be an idol for this class because he was from the clerical Muslim class and represents in the Indian mind all the stereotypes associated with a Muslim. Jinnah stands in contrast to all of the traditional founders of India. He was from the middle-class and was entirely self-made. Through sheer hard work and some luck he reached the top of his game both as a lawyer and a politician. Though a Muslim, he was entirely westernised – perhaps more modern in every sense of the word than most Indians and Pakistanis even today -- and knew the ways of the world. He carved out his space in cosmopolitan Bombay through his own efforts and this is something that most in the Indian bourgeoisie have always admired about him even if they disagreed with his post-1937 politics. He was part of the Congress when Gandhi was still in South Africa and when Nehru was in boarding school in England. His legislative contributions to India are second to none. He might well have been the founding father of an independent India -- as Sarojini Naidu had predicted -- had Gandhi not arrived on the scene and pulled the rug from under him. Jinnah's support for Bhagat Singh is also increasingly underlined. The latter is seen -- despite his Marxism -- as an icon of a new Indian youth. Now free men and finally successful, the Indian middle-class is doing what free men are known to do – questioning officially sanctioned views of history. It is to this class that Jaswant Singh has spoken. This also indicates an internal struggle within the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP has been successful in the past by bringing together the various anti-Congress elements in India. The party itself has two or more distinct groups -- one of which is led by the RSS-inspired Hindutvist ideologues. Their vision of the BJP is that of a party of the Hindu right and this is the wing that champions crazies like Varun Gandhi – ironically a great grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru. The other group consists of those like Jaswant Singh who realise that for the BJP to remain relevant it needs to become a party of the centre or the centre-right. They have correctly analysed that in the 21st-century India it needs to pose an alternative to the Congress that is secular and business-friendly. It is they who want to re-package Pakistan's founding father – hitherto abused, demonised and denigrated as a communal -- as a secular founding-father of India who was lost to bad policies. This is a prospect that needs to be welcomed by all. India is too big a country to have one or two visions alone. That it is now welcoming back into its fold its prodigal son and one of its most successful patriots can mean good things for the future. But where does it leave us Pakistanis? After all Jinnah of Pakistan did happen. And he did create our country. It certainly can't be that we agree with Jaswant Singh's biography and yet hold on to our bankrupt conception of Pakistan and Nazaria-e-Pakistan based on some undefined 'ideology' which our lawmakers take oath on. It is now time to dismantle the lies and build Pakistan on Jinnah's vision. It would require taking back the ground given to those opponents of Jinnah, the maulanas and the ulema of South Asian Islam. The good news is that here too we have a bourgeoisie that is increasingly dictated by the global world and the more they realise the dividend that peace and modernity holds, the more they will underscore the vision given by Mohammad Ali Jinnah on August 11, 1947, and in several other speeches of a Pakistan that is inclusive, tolerant, secular and at peace within and without. There is no other way and the future belongs to Jinnah. The writer is an Islamabad-based lawyer. Email: yasser.hamdani@gmail.com

Our leaders' voluntary submission to colonisation

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Shireen M Mazari

First there has been the threat to the ordinary citizen of an effective occupation of Pakistan by the US, especially for those living in what is becoming a threateningly close proximity to the droves of Americans arriving in form or another. Before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was given orders to the contrary, press reports of August 6 show that its spokesman, Mr Basit, on August 5, at the Karachi Press Club, had already given out the fact of the 1,000 marines coming for the protection of the new, imperial US embassy in Islamabad.

Now we are seeing houses being barricaded for US personnel all across the capital and we know of the 300 plus 'military trainers' already ensconced in Tarbela. In addition we have the notorious Blackwater (now hiding under a new label, Xe Worldwide) and the rather obvious CIA front-company, Creative Associates International Inc (CAII), operating not only in Peshawar but now in Islamabad also it transpires – and a recent reflection of this was the sealing off of the road in Super Market last week right in front of a school! Whatever the US embassy gives out or the terrified Pakistani leadership echoes, the reality is that there is a questionable and increasingly threatening US armed presence in Pakistan and this may be augmented soon with an ISAF/NATO presence. Incidentally, to add to the suspicions of the US presence, reports are coming in of around 3,000 Hummer vehicles, fully loaded, awaiting transportation from Port Qasim.

Will some of these go to the Pentagon's assassination squads, who may take up residence in some off the barricaded Islamabad houses and with whom the present US commander in Afghanistan was directly associated? Ordinary officials at Pakistani airports have also been muttering their concerns over chartered flights flying in Americans whose entry is not recorded – even the flight crews are not checked for visas and so there is now no record-keeping of exactly how many Americans are coning into or going out of Pakistan. Incidentally the CAII's Craig Davis who was deported has now returned to Peshawar! And let us not be fooled by the cry that numbers reflect friendship since we know what numbers meant to Soviet satellites.

Now another threat, in the making for some time, is becoming more overt. Pakistan's precious and fertile agricultural land is up for grabs to the highest foreign bidder. Pakistan is not alone in being targeted thus by rich countries with little or no food resources. The UN has already condemned this purchase of agricultural land as a form of neo-colonialism. Over the past five years in a hardly-noticed wave of investment, rich agricultural land and forests in poor countries are being snapped up by buyers from cash-rich countries. Leading this grab of poor country resources are the rapidly industrialising states and the oil-rich countries who have, between 2006-2009, either directly through governments or through sovereign wealth funds and companies, already grabbed or are in the process of grabbing between 37 to 49 million acres of developing countries' farmland (a July 2009 report by Robert Schubert of Food and Water Watch).

Wealthy countries like Japan and South Korea are acquiring farmlands abroad for food security while oil-rich countries are seeking cheap water and cultivated crops to be shipped home. The land buyers from the oil-rich arid countries are seeking water as much as land because by buying or leasing land with sufficient water, they can divert their own domestic irrigation water to municipal water supplies.

The foreign land purchases destabilise food security since land given to foreign investors cannot be used to produce food for local communities – the foreign investors' intent being to take the food back to their own food-scarce countries. Many of the land purchases comprise tens of thousands of acres which are then turned into single-crop farms – and these dwarf the small-scale farms common in the developing world, where nearly nine out of ten farms (85 per cent) are less than five acres. Such land grabs have now been recognised as harming the local communities by dislodging smallholder farmers, aggravating rural poverty and food insecurity.

With Gulf countries importing 60 per cent of their food on average, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are leading the investments into Asia and Africa to secure supplies of cereals, meat and vegetables. The rise in demand for food imports for the GCC comes at a time when exportable agricultural surplus worldwide has declined.

How does all this impact Pakistan? Pakistan has rich agricultural land and adequate water although the latter's distribution has been subject to political machinations. There has also been a seemingly deliberate effort by successive ruling elites to undermine the country's agricultural potential and nowhere is this more brazenly evident than at present with power outages preventing crucial water supply through tubewells; and many rich lands being converted into housing colonies! Then we have had artificially created sugar and wheat shortages – 'artificial' because for the last few years our wheat and sugarcane crops have been bountiful. As for the wonderful local fruit, that is also being diverted to feed external populations through exports that are not only depriving the locals of their land's bounty but also raising local prices so only the rich elite can consume what is left.

Now it has come out that we are selling land to the Gulf states, thereby undermining our local agriculture further. Abraaj Capital and other UAE entities have acquired 800,000 acres of farmland in Pakistan (we have learnt no lessons from the sale of the KESC and the PTCL). Qatar Livestock is investing $1 billion in corporate farms in Pakistan. But all this produce will be taken out, so the argument that this foreign investment will bring in new technologies into our agricultural sector does not hold. In any case, one does not have to sell one's land to foreign forces to acquire new technology which is available in the open market and the government can help local farmers acquire it.

Not surprisingly, the Gulf countries are pleased with Pakistan's rulers bending over backwards to accommodate their needs at the expense of the ordinary Pakistani – for none of the food produced on these lands will be available cheaply for Pakistanis; it will go to feed the Gulf populations. Gulf countries are happy because their imported food bill will cost 20-25 per cent less, positively impacting on their present high inflation rate. We may import this food from them for a price, just as our government has now decided to import sugar from the UAE. Of course the UAE itself imports sugar so the absurdity should be abundantly clear to all, including our profiteers!

In the visibly servile mindset of our leaders, instead of offering incentives on a similar scale to local farmers, Islamabad is offering legal and tax concessions, with legislative cover, to foreign investors in the form of specialised agricultural and livestock 'free zones' and may also introduce legislation to exempt such investors from government-imposed tax bans. The most worrisome aspect of such wheeling-dealing is the government's decision to develop a new security force of 100,000 men spread across the four provinces to ensure stability of the Arab investments. This will cost the Pakistani state around $2 billion in terms of training and salaries and the real fear is that this force will be used to forcibly eject local small farmers from their lands. Concerns have been further heightened because no labour laws will be applicable to corporate agricultural companies and there will be no sales tax or customs duties on import of agricultural machinery by these investors. Nor will their dividends be taxed and 100 per cent remittances of capital and profits will be permitted. So where is there even an iota of advantage for the ordinary Pakistani as opposed to the rulers?

With the US increasingly occupying Pakistan with their covert and overt armed presence, and the Gulf states taking over our rich agricultural lands our rulers are voluntarily making us a colony again – as we were under the British who used our men to fight their wars and our cheap labour to ship the finished produce back to Britain! Have we come full circle after 62 years of our creation?



The writer is a defence analyst. Email: callstr@hotmail.com

Nehru, the real founder of Pakistan

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder and the pantomime villain of India’s partition, appears to be more revered in the ‘old country’ than in the one which calls him ‘Quaid-i-Azam [Great Leader].’

A new biography by India’s former foreign minister Jaswant Singh has sought to restore his reputation in the Hindu-majority state by blaming India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru for the split and praising Jinnah as a secular federalist.

Its publication has divided Singh’s Hindu nationalist BJP and he has been expelled by the party for his ‘heresy.’ But it is Pakistan, rather than India, which needs reminding of what Jinnah stood for.

According to Mr Singh, Nehru was the villain of the piece - by undermining proposals for a more federal India, which set out devolved government for the Muslim majority areas now part of Pakistan and Bangladesh, he paved the road to partition on which more than a million people died.

Had Nehru not been so centralist in his outlook, Jinnah would have stayed within a confederal India, and Pakistan, the source of so many terrorist plots around the world today, might never have drawn breath.

The scheme which Jinnah supported as late as 1946 envisaged an India comprised of three groups: One, including the provinces of Pakistan together with a united Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, a united Bengal and Assam as another, and the remainder of Hindu-majority India as the third and largest. Each of the blocks would have powers over all internal matters, with defence and foreign affairs reserved for the centre.

Had it been accepted, the Kashmir dispute which remains one of the greatest sources of instability in the world, would not alarm us today, and the Pakistani Army which has undermined democracy and fuelled the rise of Islamic militancy would be a mere bad dream.

When the deal was undermined by Nehru’s manoeuvring, Jinnah carved out his Pakistan, and laid out a vision which would be a model for the Islamic world’s autocratic and dictatorial governments today.

In his speech to Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly, Jinnah told his new compatriots: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or cast or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”

My late friend, the Parsi National Assemblyman Minoo Bhandara, sought to amend Pakistan’s constitution to include this commitment to a democratic, secular state, but failed. Instead, and in defiance of Jinnah’s wishes, Pakistan’s 1973 Constitution, states: “Islam shall be the state religion of Pakistan.”

Today, this rejection of Jinnah gives comfort and cause to those who torch Christian churches, attack Ahmadi and Shia Muslims and ‘tax’ Hindus and Sikh merchants who chose Pakistan at partition.

The veteran Parsi commentator Ardeshir Cowasjee told me in Karachi last week of his campaign to overturn a scheme to require all prospective buyers in new housing developments to state their religion and even their sect within Islam. He said it was part of a plot to screen out all those not considered ‘true believers.’

It wasn’t what Jinnah had in mind, but then a prophet is rarely recognised in his own land.

Brutalisation of society

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=194562

Monday, August 24, 2009 Mohammad A Qadeer Over a span of one week in August, eight Christians were burnt alive in Gojra, a Muslim factory owner and two of his assistants were murdered in Muridke and a Muslim woman in Sanghar fled to the police protection from the gangs baying for her blood. What is common in all these incidents is that these were acts of mob violence prompted by allegations of the desecration of the Quran. Also these incidents happened in small towns where people know each other and supposedly community spirit prevails. In other instances, a traffic accident turns into an orgy of torching vehicles. Petty thieves caught in a heist are burnt alive as a matter of mob justice. In Karachi, a city that takes pride in its urban sophistication, neighbours attack each other to vent ethnic anger. About 330 cases of honour killings, on average, have been reported in each of the past three years. The Taliban and Islamic militants have raised cruelty and violence to a sacred enterprise. They revel in gruesomeness. Beheading prisoners, bombing schools and video stores, stoning women and kidnapping are sanctified as the instruments of their promised order. Yet many among the educated middle classes admire the Taliban for their �purity�. Even in personal matters we are quick to resort to violence. Young lawyers in the Lahore High Court beat up a police inspector and later attacked a journalist for having caught their act on camera. A senior federal officer assaulted a female doctor at a hospital in Islamabad. Parliamentary arguments quickly drift towards mutual threats of physical thrashing. Universities and colleges frequently echo with gunfire and gangs of student toughs run these institutions as the battleground of political parties. Why are we so quick to resort to violence? Yes, mullahs orchestrate mob violence in the name of blasphemy or desecration of the Quran. Yet the question is: why are normally peaceful people so susceptible to the incitement by mullahs? Even in our personal dealings, arguments escalate into challenges to fight. These are not examples of unusual happenings, but are indications of what has become normal in Pakistan. The question is: why has this state of affairs come about? First, the present state of affairs was not always so. During British rule and in the early years of Pakistan, laws against mob violence were strictly enforced. One could not get away with an honour killing. Beating up somebody was prosecuted. Gradually we have lost these restraints. Our current proneness to violence is the result of cumulated frustrations and sense of injustices arising from widening social disparities, breakdown of the rule of law and the increasing irrelevance of laws. People see everyday that the powerful get away, literally and figuratively, with murder. Second, though physically and economically Pakistani society is urbanised, socially and morally the hold of rural and tribal values has increased. Development has vastly expanded the ranks of the army officers, doctors, engineers and lawyers, drawing the newly educated professionals originating from rural areas. They have brought notions of honour, revenge and clan loyalty. These notions have come to define our current moral order. Third, the Islamic discourse in Pakistan has hardened. The liberal viewpoints within the Islamic discourse are repressed with threats of apostasy by the fundamentalists. No alternative viewpoint has been allowed space in the national discourse. Instead of engaging in arguments, the orthodox Islamists are quick to declare someone not agreeing with their views as a kafir or an American or Jewish agent. General Zia�s Hadood Ordinance and the blasphemy laws are a case in point. Their promised harsh punishments have reduced the shock value of violence. Who will cringe now at the thought of torturing an accused thief if chopping his hands is the acceptable punishment! Cruelty has been given the religious sanction. Fourth, the gradual slide in the state�s capabilities of maintaining law and order and protecting citizens from crime has made violence a daily affair. The state maintained strict neutrality in denominational disputes and prosecuted those threatening to disturb harmony and order. The state has lost its capacity to maintain peace and dispense justice. People are relying on jirgas, clans, biradaris, qabza groups and mullahs to seek redress and protection. These mechanisms are partisan and arbitrary. Ultimately they lead to the breakdown of law and order. Fifth, the literature, media and textbooks romanticise war and conquest. History is dished out as a tale of struggle between the sword wielding Muslim conquerors and the perfidious infidels. Gen Zia�s Islamisation of curricula have reinforced the tendency to be intolerant and suspicious of others. People are fed a diet of conspiracy theories and a glorified past. Rational narratives, objective analysis and calm argumentation are not any more a part of the national discourse. How does Pakistan retreat from this state of affairs? The foremost step is the reform of the state and enforcement of peace, order and good government. Freedom of opinion backed by the state�s guarantee of protection is a pre-requisite for peace. One exception should be preaching violence against others or branding others as kafirs. Such pronouncements or fatwas should be prosecuted. Also curricula should be revised and enforceable ethical codes for journalists, priests and teachers should be introduced. The immediate challenge is dealing with the Taliban and other militants in open rebellion. How to do this is another topic, but what needs to be done is not to compromise with their violent agenda. If Pakistan wants to survive as a prosperous and peaceful nation, it has to de-brutalise its society and change the mindset. It should be on the agenda of all political parties. The writer is the author of the book, �Pakistan � social and cultural transformations in a Muslim nation�. Email: mq35 @hotmail.com

The Ballad of East and West

The Ballad of East and West

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side,	5
And he has lifted the Colonel’s mare that is the Colonel’s pride:
He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day,
And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away.
Then up and spoke the Colonel’s son that led a troop of the Guides:
“Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?”	10
Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar,
“If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are.
At dusk he harries the Abazai—at dawn he is into Bonair,
But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare,
So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly,	15
By the favor of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai,
But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then,
For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal’s men.
There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,
And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen.”	20
The Colonel’s son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he,
With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell, and the head of the gallows-tree.
The Colonel’s son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat—
Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat.
He ’s up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly,	25
Till he was aware of his father’s mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai,
Till he was aware of his father’s mare with Kamal upon her back,
And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack.
He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went wide.
“Ye shoot like a soldier,” Kamal said. “Show now if ye can ride.”	30
It ’s up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dust-devils go,
The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe.
The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above,
But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars, as a maiden plays with a glove.
There was rock to the left and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,	35
And thrice he heard a breech-bolt snick tho’ never a man was seen.
They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn,
The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn.
The dun he fell at a water-course—in a woful heap fell he,
And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free.	40
He has knocked the pistol out of his hand—small room was there to strive,
“’T was only by favor of mine,” quoth he, “ye rode so long alive:
There was not a rock for twenty mile, there was not a clump of tree,
But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on his knee.
If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low,	45
The little jackals that flee so fast, were feasting all in a row:
If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high,
The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not fly.”
Lightly answered the Colonel’s son:—“Do good to bird and beast,
But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast.	50
If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away,
Belike the price of a jackal’s meal were more than a thief could pay.
They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain,
The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain.
But if thou thinkest the price be fair,—thy brethren wait to sup,	55
The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn,—howl, dog, and call them up!
And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack,
Give me my father’s mare again, and I ’ll fight my own way back!”
Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet.
“No talk shall be of dogs,” said he, “when wolf and gray wolf meet.	60
May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath;
What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?”
Lightly answered the Colonel’s son: “I hold by the blood of my clan:
Take up the mare for my father’s gift—by God, she has carried a man!”
The red mare ran to the Colonel’s son, and nuzzled against his breast,	65
“We be two strong men,” said Kamal then, “but she loveth the younger best.
So she shall go with a lifter’s dower, my turquoise-studded rein,
My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain.”
The Colonel’s son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end,
“Ye have taken the one from a foe,” said he; “will ye take the mate from a friend?”	70
“A gift for a gift,” said Kamal straight; “a limb for the risk of a limb.
Thy father has sent his son to me, I ’ll send my son to him!”
With that he whistled his only son, that dropped from a mountain-crest—
He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest.
“Now here is thy master,” Kamal said, “who leads a troop of the Guides,	75
And thou must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides.
Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed,
Thy life is his—thy fate it is to guard him with thy head.
So thou must eat the White Queen’s meat, and all her foes are thine,
And thou must harry thy father’s hold for the peace of the border-line.	80
And thou must make a trooper tough and hack thy way to power—
Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur.”
They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they found no fault,
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt:
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh-cut sod,	85
On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Wondrous Names of God.
The Colonel’s son he rides the mare and Kamal’s boy the dun,
And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went forth but one.
And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew clear—
There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the mountaineer.	90
“Ha’ done! ha’ done!” said the Colonel’s son. “Put up the steel at your sides!
Last night ye had struck at a Border thief—to-night ’t is a man of the Guides!”
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,	95
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.

India Befriends Afghanistan, Irking Pakistan

With $1.2 Billion in Pledged Aid, New Delhi Hopes to Help Build a Country That Is 'Stable, Democratic, Multiethnic'

By PETER WONACOTT

KABUL -- After shunning Afghanistan during the Taliban regime, India has become a major donor and new friend to the country's democratic government -- even if its growing presence here riles archrival Pakistan.

From wells and toilets to power plants and satellite transmitters, India is seeding Afghanistan with a vast array of projects. The $1.2 billion in pledged assistance includes projects both vital to Afghanistan's economy, such as a completed road link to Iran's border, and symbolic of its democratic aspirations, such as the construction of a new parliament building in Kabul. The Indian government is also paying to bring scores of bureaucrats to India, as it cultivates a new generation of Afghan officialdom.

India's aid has elevated it to Afghanistan's top tier of donors. In terms of pledged donations through 2013, India now ranks fifth behind the U.S., U.K., Japan and Canada, according to the Afghanistan government. Pakistan doesn't rank in the top 10.

Afghanistan is now the second-largest recipient of Indian aid after Bhutan. "We are here for the same reason the U.S. and others are here -- to see a stable, democratic, multiethnic Afghanistan," Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Jayant Prasad said in an interview.

Such a future for Afghanistan is hardly assured, as the run-up to Thursday's presidential election shows. On Tuesday, a pair of mortar shells hit near the presidential palace in Kabul while Taliban insurgents attacked polling stations across the country, as part of wave of violence aimed at preventing people from casting ballots in the election.

Despite backing the Taliban in the past, Pakistan doesn't want to see an anarchic Afghanistan, say Pakistani security analysts.

"Pakistan is doing nothing to thwart the elections in Afghanistan and everything to help Afghanistan stabilize and have a truly representative government," says Gen. Jehangir Karamat, Pakistan's former ambassador to the U.S. and a retired army chief.

Yet India's largess has stirred concern in Pakistan, a country situated between Afghanistan and India that has seen its influence in Afghanistan wane following the collapse of the Taliban regime. At the heart of the tensions is the shared fear that Afghanistan could be used by one to destabilize the other.

"We recognize that Afghanistan needs development assistance from every possible source to address the daunting challenges it is facing. We have no issue with that," says Pakistani foreign-ministry spokesman Abdul Basit. "What Pakistan is looking for is strict adherence to the principle of noninterference."

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Reuters

India is seeding Afghanistan with a vast array of projects such as a completed road link to Iran's border and the construction of a new parliament building in Kabul. A view of the city, above.

The two countries have sparred repeatedly about each other's activities in Afghanistan. Indian officials say their Pakistani counterparts have claimed that there are more than the official four Indian consulates in Afghanistan, and that they support an extensive Indian spy network. For years, Pakistan refused to allow overland shipment of fortified wheat biscuits from India to feed two million Afghan schoolchildren. India instead had to ship the biscuits through Iran, driving up costs for the program.

The World Food Program, which administers the shipments, said the Pakistan government gave its approval for overland shipment in 2008 -- six years after the first delivery from India. "Why did it take six years ... is something that WFP cannot answer," a spokesman for the aid organization said. "However, we are indeed thankful to the government of Pakistan for allowing transit for the fortified biscuits."

Mr. Basit, the foreign-ministry spokesman, didn't respond to a question about the Indian food assistance.

India's aid has extended well beyond physical infrastructure to the training of accountants and economists. For a nation devastated by decades of war, these soft skills fill a hole, says Noorullah Delawari, Afghanistan's former central-bank governor and now head of Afghanistan Investment Support Agency, an organization that promotes private enterprise. "The country shut down for 20 years," he said. "We stopped producing educated people to run our businesses and government offices."

Some believe there is room for cooperation between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan since both countries share an abiding interest in its stability. "The opportunity is there," says Gen. Karamat, "if we can get out of the straitjacket of the past."

—Matthew Rosenberg contributed to this article.

Write to Peter Wonacott at peter.wonacott@wsj.com

Most Afghans see Karzai as winnable candidate: survey

By Anwar Iqbal
Monday, 17 Aug, 2009 | 05:05 AM PST |
WASHINGTON: Afghan President Hamid Karzai is most likely to continue to rule his war-ravaged country for next five years as the majority in Afghanistan sees him as a winnable, although not necessarily the best, candidate for Thursday’s election.

Mr Karzai’s alliances with regional power-brokers and his origins as a Pashtun, the biggest Afghan ethnic community, have placed him in a strong position despite widespread public dissatisfaction with the government.

A survey carried out by the US-funded International Republican Institute shows Mr Karzai leading a field of three dozen candidates with 44 per cent, against 26 per cent for his closest rival. If neither wins 50 per cent, a run-off will be needed.

Interestingly, the survey also showed India as the most popular country in Afghanistan, with 24 per cent backing good relations with New Delhi, followed by 19 per cent of the US, 17 per cent for Iran, 12 per cent for Tajikistan and eight per cent for China

The Taliban and Pakistan were the most unpopular, receiving minus 49 and minus 50 per cent support respectively.

President Karzai’s support increased during the campaign period; however, not enough to claim a first-ballot victory. Candidates like Ramazan Bashardost and Ashraf Ghani have experienced an increase in support compared to a similar poll in May.

Former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah’s support increased most dramatically in the July 2009 poll to 26 per cent, a nearly five-fold increase from May.

Fifty-six per cent of respondents believe Mr Karzai deserves re-election, while 38 per cent oppose his re-election bid to the presidency.

When asked opinions on the leadership quality of major political figures, Hamid Karzai rated 64 per cent favourable, Mr Abdullah 48 per cent, and Ashraf Ghani 34 per cent. Those rating most unfavourable were Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq at minus 13 per cent, Abdul Rassul Sayyaf minus 16 per cent and Gen Rashid Dostum minus 26 per cent.

When asked to choose who they viewed most favourably, Mr Karzai ranked first with 39 per cent, followed by Mr Abdullah at 20 per cent, Mr Bashardost at eight per cent and Mr Ghani at five per cent.

When respondents were asked for whom they would vote if the election were held today, 44 per cent said they would vote for Mr Karzai, up from 31 per cent in May but still short of a first-ballot victory.

Mr Abdullah ranked second with 26 per cent up from seven per cent. Mr Bashardost ranked at 10 per cent up from three per cent and Mr Ghani doubled his support to six per cent.

Fifty-seven per cent of respondents are certain in their support for a candidate, while 32 per cent expressed probable support. Eight per cent were uncertain of their choice. Forty-five per cent of respondents thought that regardless of who they supported, Mr Karzai would be re-elected.

Fifty-eight per cent of respondents thought a unified Mr Abdullah and Mr Ghani would be a good option for Afghanistan.

Security, at 30 per cent, ranked as the top priority in issues to be addressed by the next president of Afghanistan, a drop from 42 per cent in the May poll.

The economy and jobs ranked second at 22 per cent, up from 12 per cent in May. The issue of reconstruction and development was at 11 per cent up from seven per cent in the previous poll.

Twenty-seven per cent of respondents rated Mr Karzai’s performance as president very good, up from 12 per cent in May 2009. One-third of respondents classified Mr Karzai’s presidency as good while 18 per cent classified it as poor.

When asked whether Mr Karzai should remain president for the next five years, a small majority of respondents (51 per cent) would give him another chance while 44 per cent were of the opinion that someone new should take the helm.