The Sources of Arabs’ Shame: Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
12.01.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/106932-arab_shame-0
By Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar
“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.” (Arthur Miller)
It is now over two weeks since Israel started its vicious assault on Gaza resulting, so far, in close to 600 dead and thousands of injuries mostly civilians. Israel true to its nature is once again ignoring all international laws and conventions. With its usual thirst for blood of the civilians, Israel is continuing its bombing of workshops, administrative buildings, roads, bridges, fuel depots, prisons, schools and mosques; killing and injuring large number of civilians in one of the world’s most impoverished and densely populated areas of the world. The Israelis are following their old method of destroying everything that makes a society a society, the infrastructure. The collective punishment of the Palestinians for what Hamas or Islamic Jihad is supposed to be doing or has done, reminds one of the collective punishments that Nazis meted out in the occupied areas in Eastern Europe during the WWII.
International Red Cross just issued a statement [[1]] condemning Israel for its brutality against civilians. There are several things that seem to have shocked the Red Cross. In one episode after several days of heavy pressure from the Red Cross, several ambulances were allowed to enter a neighbourhood to evacuate the injured civilians. In one house they found 12 bodies all civilians and mostly women and children. They also found four very young children still alive next to their dead mothers, too weak to stand. They have been holed-up in the same house for close to 4 days.
Apparently the whole neighbourhood was full of dead and injured civilians with Israeli forces only 80 meters away. According to the Red Cross the Israeli forces knew of the situation and not only didn’t do anything to help the civilians, but also were stopping Red Cross from providing assistance. Representative of the Norwegian Red Cross’ People’s Action calls this a war crime.
But this is only the tip of the ice berg. The Israeli forces have begun to use civilians as human shields. According to Amnesty International Israeli forces occupy civilian houses and keep the civilians as hostages on the first floor, while they position their soldiers on the second floor; ensuring that any fire on the house (especially with anti-tank or RPG missiles) kills the civilians as well.
In yet another report, the United Nations condemned Israel for targeting civilians. The head of the UN agency in Gaza running the school that was attacked by Israel forces categorically rejected the claim by Israel that Hamas fighters were in or even near the school. Israel bombed the UN run school, killing 43 children and injuring 100. [[2]]
Israel also targets ambulances and humanitarian relief convoys in Gaza. According to UN, at least one Palestinian was killed when UN relief convoy came under fire from Israeli forces. “The attack took place on Thursday as the lorries travelled to the Erez crossing to pick up supplies that were to have been allowed in during a three-hour ceasefire.” [[3]]
The atrocities committed by Israel is a genocide of a conquered people. Gaza is a concentration camp and no amount of PR can reduce the magnitude of this horrible crime against humanity and decency.
But Israel is Israel. She has shown that cruelty is in her nature. Here I am talking about the successive Israeli governments and not Israeli people in general. I am sure there are many in Israel that if became aware of what really is happening would not approve of it. This of course excludes the settlers and the Zionist movement. These groups like the South African white supremacists consider others to be inferior to them; or that they have the god given right to do as they please.
But states seldom are representative of their people. It is the elite and/or the governing class that makes the decisions. The state of Israel is determined to never allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. The maximum that they are willing to allow is some form of Bantustan (South African) or North American reservation (for Native Americans). With carte blanche from US and most of the European powers, Israel has been implementing this policy. Setting-up such a system takes many years. People’s spirit has to be crushed through collective punishment, economic strangulation and above all excessive and continuing violence. This has to continue for many years so the people lose hope of ever achieving anything more than what is on offer.
This of course cannot be done without the approval of other countries. Israel has the approval of the world’s most powerful nation, the United States. In addition, because of her US connections, she has managed to get a nod and a wink from the Europeans as well. So with this carte blanche in hand she has set forth to change the “reality” on the ground in her favour. By systematically settling extremists in the middle of populated Palestinian areas, she has made the creation of a viable Palestinian state almost impossible. A simple look at the map of the Palestinian territories resembles a Swiss cheese, with pockets of densely populated Palestinian areas surrounded by settlements and their protective military garrisons.
The violence both official (state sponsored) and unofficial (settlers) has been incessant. Couple this violence with economic strangulation and you will see the reasons behind the Palestinians’ anger and frustration. Any resistance is automatically branded as an act of terrorism and punished with even more violence, with US and Europeans cheering the Israelis on the side lines.
If you recall when Georgia invaded the Russian protected enclave of Abkhazia, and met Russian counter attack, the whole Western world with US at its head condemned Russia. Pushing for UN action and even sending warships with “humanitarian” supplies. Russians did not commit one thousandth of the Israeli atrocities and we had the Georgian president and other politician talking day and night about the horrible things the Russians were doing. Yet today we have US and European governments sitting silently watching this genocide taking place without doing anything. US even vetoes resolutions condemning Israeli actions, forgetting that no peace is ever made possible by killing so many innocent women and children.
But whenever a power tries to relocate a group of people by force, the Newton’s Third Law of Motion comes into effect. Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that if you try to imprison a person that person will try to break out. If you try to subjugate a people they will resist. This is the underlying causes of most liberation movements. The same applies to the Palestinians. They are resisting. We can agree or disagree with their methods, but theirs is a reaction to actions taken against them; we call this self-defence.
Israel is trying to push Palestinians into submission and in the process forcing many to leave the occupied territories. They are trying to show the Palestinians that they are alone and resistance in the face of an overwhelming force is suicide. Israel has tried this tactics before and has failed. The children that had to stay with their dead mothers for four days will not forget. The starved people of Gaza are not going to forget this barbarity; and neither shall the people of honour and conscious, regardless of their nationality, Israelis included.
But as for one of those who have followed the Israel ’s actions for the past 30 years, I can say that I didn’t expect anything different from Israel. The lies and deceits are all too familiar to fall for again. The current Israeli action in Gaza was not a reaction to the recent event, but planned a year ago. Just read the New York Times article in which among others they interview a senior Israeli military officer [[4]].
Israel is now trying to portray herself as a nation that is defending itself, while the truth is that Israel is a cruel occupying power trying to force a people out of their land. And this is being done with the help of some Arab nations; the very same nations that constantly talk about Arab and Muslim solidarity. These nations are: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan .
The Arab Collaborators
The often asked question, when it comes to the Palestinians, is about the role of Arab countries in the Palestinian struggle for freedom. The people not familiar with the political landscape of the area often see the Middle East as two camps, Arab countries on one side and Israel on the other. The reality is totally different. Israel has seldom been alone. Beside its usual American, French, British and other staunch allies, she has had the hidden backing of several Arab countries.
For close to 30 years now, many Arab countries have been collaborating with Israel; some like Egypt (gained independence: 1922) and Jordan (gained independence: 1946) openly while others like Saudi Arabia (founded: 1932), UAE (founded: 1972) and Kuwait (founded: 1961) from behind the scenes. The reasons for this collaboration vary from country to country but they all have one thing in common: the rulers of these countries are all dictators and need foreign protection from their own people. Some such as Saudi Arabia , Jordan , Kuwait and UAE were put in power by the British. The founder of Saudi Arabia, Abdul-Aziz bin Saud (the kingdom is name after him) was put in power by the British. The same goes for the others, except Egypt which experienced a coup by the army officers in 1952 resulting in the ousting of the monarchy and the accompanying British influence. But the Western influence returned with Anwar Sadat. All these countries are dictatorships and all are under pressure from their people. What they cannot accept is any democratically elected form of government in their mist. They fear that if an Arab government becomes democratic they may have to become one themselves, hence losing power. One of the things that they love about Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is that he won the election not by popular vote but by popular method of rigging the election; something that these Arab leaders understand and respect.
In contrast Hamas really represented the aspiration of the people. Soon, Mahmood Abbas term as president is over and he had to stand for re-election something that he would surely lose. In contrast Hamas really won the municipal elections in 2005 and the Parliamentary election in 2006. The elections were supervised by international observers, many from Europe, and US.
Palestinians were fed-up with the corrupt regime of Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah. They wanted to clean house. But as soon as Hamas took over, the US and the Europeans put an embargo on Hamas, calling it a terrorist organisation and not a peace partner. Israel closed the borders and refused to let anything into Gaza. Egypt also did the same.
What is not mentioned much in the media is that this was done with the complete approval of the Saudi Arabia , Egypt and Jordan . After all, Egypt could have opened its border for transfer of food and fuel. The reasons behind this hostility were and are that Hamas is a truly elected government and worst of all, Hamas is a branch or an off-shoot of Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.
Muslim Brotherhood has a branch or related organisation in Jordan as well. Egypt and Jordan are worried that should Hamas survive and show its resistance, their people may get the idea that they can also resist the tyrannical rule of these despots. One must not forget that Muslim Brotherhood represents the only serious challenge to the Mubarak’s rule in Egypt.
Egypt
The 81 year old Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has been “president” since 1981 (28 years). He has won every election with a comfortable majority. He is much loved by his secret services. Prior to every election he arrests and imprisons all the opposition, ensuring a “clean” election. Torture is so widely used and accepted in Egypt that US outsources torturing of some its prisoners to Egypt . This alone should tell you volumes about the nature of Mubarak’s rule. He is now trying hard to crown his playboy son as his successor. But the Americans are not so sure if the son is capable of keeping the 80 million Egyptians in line and is therefore looking for alternative candidates. The head of the feared main secret service is one of the prime candidates along with some of the top generals. Challenging him is the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, enjoying grass root support from all sections of the Egyptian society including Lawyers, doctors, judges and student associations. Not surprisingly, US and Israel call Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.
By all accounts, the Muslim Brotherhood be it in Jordan, Egypt or the occupied territories such as Gaza runs a clean operation, running many charity organisations and providing services to the poor and the needy. As such wherever they are, they pose a threat to the corrupt regimes, since they provide an alternative to the people of that area.
Jordan
King Abdullah II of Jordan, born of a British mother, educated in the West, including the Jesuit Center of Georgetown University, was brought to power by the CIA. His Uncle was a long time crown price, yet after his father died in a US hospital, Madeline Albright, Clinton ’s Secretary of Estate flew to Jordan to inform the Jordanians that the King on his death bed had changed his will and named his son Abdullah as his successor. The new king Abdullah II married the Princeton graduate Lisa Halaby, the daughter of the former head of Pan American Airlines. She is now called Queen Noor; Noor meaning Light in Arabic.
The majority of this Kingdom of 5 million people are Palestinians who are not very friendly to this King. In 1967 there was a Palestinian uprising (led by PLO) against King Hussein (ruled: 1952-1999, the father of the current king), which resulted in heavy casualties among Palestinians. In addition, the Kingdom is currently full of Iraqi refugees who resent the King’s help to the Americans in invasion of their country. On top of all this, we have the Muslim Brotherhood which tries hard to abolish the monarchy. King Abdullah relies heavily on the US support and backing for staying in power. King Abdullah also sees a natural ally in Israel , a country that can come to its aid in case of another uprising.
Saudi Arabia (House of Saud)
I don’t have to tell you much about Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom is run by the 84 year old, ailing Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. His personal wealth is estimated at $21 billion USD. He rules a clan of 8000 princes who in turn rule the country. Saudi Arabia is the centre of corruption in the Arab world. The Saudi rulers corrupt everything with their money. Lacking the necessary mental power or physical courage, they try to stay in power by subterfuge, lies, and deception. They fund the real extremists on the one hand while portraying themselves as the protectors of the Western interest on the other. They preach intolerance and xenophobia to their people decrying the Western decadence, while spending a lot of time enjoying the life in the West. They pay the West for protection against their own people and they pay the extremists to do their fighting elsewhere. Saudi rulers are indeed the worst of them all.
House of Saud is also the financier of the so called “Arab Moderates” and extremism that they cause. House of Saud financed the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. They later financed the Taliban. They also paid the Saddam Hussein to fight Iran . Then they paid the Americans and Egyptians to fight Saddam Hussein. They are the financiers of death and misery. They finance anything, anywhere, as long as this reduces the threat to their illegitimate rule. They are currently financing the civil war in Somalia, bandits in Baluchistan ( Pakistan and Iran ) and god knows what else. They are detested by their own people and neighbours yet loved by Bush, Cheney and the oil companies. As long as they provide the money and oil the US is willing to tolerate them. And guess what? Muslim Brotherhood hates the House of Saud too. This makes them a threat and hence has to be dealt with.
The Collaboration
As can be seen each country has a good reason to eliminate Hamas, but each is restrained by its population. Israel has no such a restrain imposed on it. She not only can wage a terrible war, but also get assistance from Arab countries. Indeed it is the second time (the first was the Lebanon invasion of 2006) that Israel is getting open and solid support from these Arab countries. The invasion of Gaza was discussed in Egypt before its implementation. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are Israel’s active partners.
Egypt is actively involved in stopping all aids from getting to Palestinians in Gaza save a token few trucks. These few trucks are allowed to go through so they can be filmed and shown to Egyptian people. All demonstrations are banned and all Egyptian volunteers for Gaza are either arrested or sent back.
There are hundreds of thousands of volunteers across the Muslim world that are willing to go to the aid of the Palestinians, but the Egyptian authorities don’t allow them passage. Egyptians even stop medical aid from passing through their territories. This is part of a report from Associated Press:
“RAFAH, Egypt : Frustration is mounting at Egypt 's border with the Gaza Strip, where many local and foreign doctors are stuck after Egyptian authorities denied them entry into the coastal area now under an Israeli ground invasion.
Anesthesiologist Dimitrios Mognie from Greece idles his time at a cafe near the border, drinking tea and chatting with other doctors, aid workers and curious Egyptians.
"This is a shame," said Mognie, who decided to use his vacation time to try help Gazans. He thought entering through Egypt , which has a narrow border with the Hamas-ruled strip, was his best bet.
"That in 2009 they have people in need of help from a doctor and we can go to help and they won't let us. This is crazy," he added.” [[5]].
In addition there are many Iranian cargo planes full of food and medicine which have been sitting on the tarmacs in Egypt for days waiting for permission to deliver their cargo. Egyptians even denied the medical aid sent by the son of the Libyan President Qaddafi to land in Egypt [[6]].
One thing is clear: these three countries do not want the Israelis to fail in their mission of totally destroying Gaza. Hosni Mubarak said so himself. The daily Haaretz reported that Hosni Mubarak had told European ministers on a peace mission that Hamas must not be allowed to win the ongoing war in Gaza.
As Egypt physically aids the Israeli military by denying food, fuel and medicine to the civilians, The House of Saud helps Israel by giving her time and diplomatic cover. When Israel started its invasion there was an immediate call for an Arab summit. Saudi Arabia and Jordan (along with Egypt of course) delayed the summit. The Saudis along with the UAE said that they had another meeting to attend to and therefore Palestinian issue had to wait. After a few days when the summit was eventually held, they issued the same old statements. Yet this time same as the Israel ’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, they blamed the victims. In a statement Saudi Arabia blamed Hamas for Israel 's continuing offensive in the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia , after blaming Hamas, declared that it will not even consider an oil embargo on Israel ’s supporters. She then again blamed Hamas.
By this time, the three Arab countries along with Kuwait and UAE began singing the old song: international community is not doing anything about the catastrophe that is taking place in Gaza. It seems that these Arab tyrants have no shame at all. This reminds me of a quote from Marquis De Sade (1740-1814): “One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.”
These Arab leaders (many are indeed too old to blush) are complicit in the murder of so many civilians, especially young children. According to Agence France-Presse, quoting the medics on the ground, fully one third of all people killed have been children [[7]]. How can these Arab leaders justify this to their people?
The answer is that they cannot. Israel knows this and for the second time can show the Arab street that their leaders are nothing but a bunch of old hypocrites. These Arab leaders are now exposed and can do nothing but to cooperate fully with Israel and US. What stand between them and their people’s rage is their army and secret services; which in turn are supported by US.
Israel has cleverly exposed these leaders for what they are: collaborators of the worst kind. These Arab leaders have brought an unimaginable shame to their people. To quote Lucien Bouchard: I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deceit. Our hope is now with the people of these countries to clean this stain from their honour.
Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar
Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar lives in Norway. He is a management consultant and a contributing writer for many online journals. He can be contacted at : Bakhtiarspace-articles@yahoo.no
The Sources of Arabs’ Shame: Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
Bigger role of China in Regional Cooperation
Without any doubt, the past decade was a crucial period for China's reform and opening up. China was confronted with two most severe external economic challenges during this period. One was the Asian financial crisis from 1997-98. The other is the current world financial crisis.
The crises have not only changed China's relations with the rest of Asia, but also greatly boosted the integration of this region. China now has a much bigger role to play in fighting the global economic woes and enhancing regional cooperation.
In the 1990s, as China's fast-paced economic growth and opening up continued, the country was forced to face the challenge brought by the unexpected Asian financial crisis, which also constituted a great shock to Hong Kong's economy, shortly after the region was handed over to China.
At the moment, many people predicted that China might step into the same crisis, following in the footsteps of some Southeast Asian countries and the Republic of Korea. However, thanks to the prudent financial policies the Chinese government took to prevent the financial risks and the decision not to depreciate yuan, the country not only avoided direct financial shocks, but also succeeded in maintaining its fast economic growth, becoming the "engine" to boost the Asian economy.
During the 1997-98 crisis, although the International Monetary Fund (IMF) got heavily involved in the financially troubled economies, Western countries, especially the United States, took no practical bailout measures. Instead, they focused on criticizing the development mode and value system of these Asian countries.
Under such circumstances, some Asian economic leaders called for the search of regional solutions to deal with the crisis. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed wanted to carry out the concept of "East Asia Economic Group" that he had long been promoting, and Japan's economic leaders proposed to set up the "Asian Monetary Fund" (AMF).
In line with the guiding principle of being a "responsible country", and within the framework of the IMF, China, via bilateral channels, provided aid worth more than $4 billion to Thailand and other countries, and credit and free medicine to Indonesia and other countries. To maintain regional stability, China shouldered great pressures and paid a great price by not depreciating its currency. This move had played a decisively important role in stabilizing Asia's financial and monetary market.
Such a responsible behavior laid the foundation for China to improve its relations with some Southeast Asian countries. Gradually, China has become an important driving force for Asian regional integration.
In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, especially after China's accession to the WTO, a large amount of investment from Asia flew into China. China, with an ever-enlarging market, cheap but experienced laborers, favorable economic and labor policies, as well as its US dollar-pegged exchange rate, was very attractive to those export-oriented Asian economies. It could be said it was the Asian financial crisis that made China a "world factory" in its true meaning.
During the Asian financial crisis, although China did not give immediate support to the initiative for an AMF, it did actively seek regional resolutions to overcome the financial crisis, namely the formula of "ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea," which later evolved into the well-known 10+3 forum.
Since 1997, China has been an active participant in and a firm supporter of the East Asian cooperation process, with the 10+3 as its main channel. It has been proved this process is laying the foundation for the "East Asian Integration". At the meantime, China has actively taken part in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which took shape even before the financial crisis, and East Asia Summit (EAS), which is something between APEC and 10+3.
One decade after the Asian financial crisis, Asia, including China, is being challenged with another financial crisis, only on a larger scale. Can Asian countries deepen their cooperation to fight back? Can China play a bigger role in Asian cooperation?
China, flanked by Europe and the United States, has chosen three ways to fight the global financial crisis.
The first is the overall "self-relief". When the overseas demand is cut by a very large margin, changing the mode of domestic economic growth by stimulating the domestic demand will ensure the "scientific development." China's continuous economic growth will make crucial contribution to the restoration of world economic growth.
The second is active participation in global cooperation. Against the backdrop of the financial crisis, China hosted the Asia-Europe Summit and participated in the world financial summit held in Washington.
The third is regional cooperation. In addition to self-relief efforts and global cooperation, regional cooperation turned out to be more urgent and more important. China had wasted no time to call for further East Asian cooperation - centered around 10+3 - to cope with the financial crisis.
During the 7th Asia-Europe Summit held in Beijing last October, China convened East Asian leaders to have a deep discussion on how to further regional financial cooperation. Also China has tried to push the China-Japan-South Korea cooperation in the face of the financial crisis. On Dec 13, 2008, leaders from China, Japan and Republic of Korea held the first-ever trilateral summit outside of the "10+3" framework. The trilateral summit had a strong symbolic significance in international cooperation and would inject new impetus into East Asian cooperation.
Stabilizing the worldwide financial market and reforming the existing international financial system are two difficult tasks that can only be done gradually. But regional monetary and financial cooperation is relatively easier. The strengthening of such cooperation will help reform the international financial system.
Regional cooperation could enlarge the roles big Asian powers, China and Japan in particular, can play in international economic institutions. As Germany, UK and France have enhanced their international economic roles via the European Commission, China and Japan can achieve the same goal via the Asian cooperation mechanism, framework and system.
The current economic crisis
The current economic crisis came as a bolt from the blue for most. In the meantime, experts warned in the early 1970s that the world economy was heading for a crisis in the first decades of the 21st century.The current crisis was predicted 30 years ago.
In the 1960s, Western countries concluded that oil-stained beaches, smoggy megalopolises, and heavy pollution of major European rivers were too high a price for the benefits of mass production. In 1968, a group of industrialists, politicians, and scientists set up the Club of Rome in the Italian capital. They had enough money to conduct a series of studies with the participation of prominent scientists, and the use of tested methods.
Computer-predicted disaster
The Club's first report, which had the tell-tale title "Limits to Growth," caused a shock. It was compiled by a group of scientists headed by Dennis L. Medows, who decided to create a cybernetic model of global development. Having focused on five global processes: fast industrialization, population growth, increasing shortage of food, depletion of non-renewable resources, and degradation of the environment, they modeled the future on a computer.
The emotionless machine produced an answer that sounded like a verdict: the human race is in for a disaster. Considering that the population was growing at a rate of over two percent annually at that time, while industry was growing at up to five to seven percent, modern civilization was bound to reach the limits of growth in the first decades of the 21st century. Mineral resources will have been depleted; environmental pollution will have become irreversible; a sudden uncontrolled drop in the population and decline in production will have become inevitable. Millions of people will have died as a result of man-made catastrophes, spontaneous economically motivated social conflicts and unknown pandemics.
To prevent the cataclysm, the authors of the report offered a concept they called "zero growth," under which new purchases should only replace used up items. For example, a new car should be purchased only when the old one has stopped running; there should be universal birth control - no more than two children per family, and they suggested restricting consumption.
The report was a bombshell. It called into doubt the foundations of the Western economies. The zero growth concept contradicted the very logic of industrialized society which rested on the principle of supply-and-demand. The concept did not offer a future for the poor people of the non-capitalist world: a resident of a Soviet communal apartment was bound to live in it until he died, while a Chinese peasant was doomed to heat his hut with manure and dead-wood.
Does the truth begin as heresy?
Needless to say, the report was subjected to severe criticism, primarily because its authors did not offer any solutions. They admitted that their model was far from ideal, but the conclusions of their opponents were no less fallacious. Optimistic scenarios were not limited to only good wishes. The concept of a post-industrial society, for one thing, promised a miraculous salvation. It was very similar to the bright future predicted by communist ideologists.
Unprecedented technical breakthrough was the sine qua non both for building communism in the U.S.S.R. and for post-industrialized society in the West. It was supposed to produce technology which would resolve a number of environmental and socio-economic problems (for instance, let machines do arduous, dirty work).
As a result, the elites of the industrially advanced countries preferred to live with a due account of restrictions, and grow until they reach the natural limits in the hope of a technological leap which would allow them to go beyond the limits.
Global self-deception
The talk of the looming global crisis quickly ground to a halt in the latter half of the 1980s. Optimists were bragging about the resolution of global problems, and many analysts were confident that the bright post-industrial future had already arrived.
They seemed to be right but only at first glance. The majority of the European and U.S. middle class were white collar workers, involved in finances, marketing, and research. But in reality, driven by the market's logic, the leaders of the industrialized countries simply followed the path of least resistance. They switched the dirtiest and most labor-consuming industries to the developing countries, and let guest workers from the same countries take the worst jobs at home because they were cheaper than machines.
However, practice has shown that even a very advanced country cannot resolve global problems alone. Indeed, the once lifeless Czech Vltava or the German Rhine now abound with dozens of fish species, but the environmental crisis which the West has overcome is now looming elsewhere. It became clear that it would go beyond the limits of assembly lines several years ago when the Amur River was covered by a huge benzol spill. Resource restrictions are even more obvious - regardless of where a plant or factory oriented to the world market is located, a certain amount of resources is required to produce a commodity.
Finally, to control the production scattered all over the world, a sophisticated financial system had to be construed. With time, it started taking on a life of its own, produced by a fictitious economy with the profits of financial institutions depending not on real production but on intricate financial transactions.
This resulted in a big number of disproportions in the world economy. Investment in the financial market surpassed corporate capital, while the funds accumulated in the financial bubble exceeded the money in the real economy by many times.
As a result, an attempt to mothball the problem ended in failure. Having reached the limits of growth, the financial system collapsed and triggered the current economic turmoil.
Energy crisis deepens
PAKISTANIS stumbled on to 2009 in the dark, with no gas to keep them warm in the winter. Many are lining up at petrol pumps. This is not how a people should enter a new year. The energy shortage is worsening by the day, in fact by the hour. The average duration of rolling power blackouts has more than doubled to 18 hours a day of late, from eight hours in the summer. This is the situation despite the reduction of 6,000 MW in demand from the summer peak of 17,000 MW. Domestic and industrial consumers in Punjab and the NWFP are facing gas supply cuts due to a widening supply-demand gap. Adding insult to injury, the government has raised gas rates but refuses to reduce oil prices in line with the global trend. No wonder, people are protesting in Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Lahore.
Like all bad things the energy shortage is blamed on the previous government which not only failed to see the oncoming crisis but was also unsuccessful in attracting investment to the power and gas sector for several years. However, the people have every right to ask the incumbent rulers as to what steps they are taking to remedy the situation. Did they see the crisis worsening during the winter? If they didn’t, how could they be any better than their predecessors? If they did, what did they do to augment power and gas supplies? The state, which otherwise has a strong presence in public life, was nowhere to be seen when petrol station owners, expecting a fall in oil prices, stopped buying and supplying fuel to consumers. Now the people are being told that President Asif Zardari has convened a meeting to sort things out. Officials claim that the shortages will be overcome by the end of the current year. But until then, there does not seem to be any light at the end of a very dark tunnel. The problem is aggravated with a lack of visible activity on the part of the government. A sense of helplessness prevails. A decisive remedial step now, however unlikely it may seem under the circumstances, will not only benefit the people, it will give a boost to the government which has drawn flak in recent days over its real or perceived inability to move forward.
The implications of the energy crisis for the economy are huge. The risk of an economic downturn, and consequently of widespread unemployment, will increase if the shortages are allowed to persist for long. That will have serious social and political consequences. It is high time that the government got down to resolving the problem on a fast-track basis rather than appear to wait for the end of 2009.
Teen trained to be suicide bomber feels tricked
Story Highlights
Teen is serving at least 5 years for plot to carry out suicide bombing
He says Muslim radicals at school duped him into becoming a would-be bomber
The thing he misses most about home is his mom and dad: "I miss my parents"
Detention facility is teaching jailed children a moderate interpretation of Islam
By Atia Abawi
CNN
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A 14-year-old who was trained to kill by radicals in the tribal regions of Pakistan now sits in a crowded classroom at a detention facility in Kabul. His only wish is to see his parents again."I miss my parents, my mom and dad," Shakirullah says in soft tones. Like others in tribal regions, he goes by one name.
Shakirullah is already a convicted terrorist for planning to carry out a suicide bombing. He says Muslim radicals lied and tricked him into becoming a would-be bomber. "I have been detained for trying to commit a suicide attack," he says.He says his recruiters told him it was his mission as a Muslim to kill British and American soldiers because they were killing Muslims. Watch teen say recruiters "cheated me" They told him that once he blew himself up he wouldn't die because God would save him for being a true Muslim.Asked what he now thinks of Americans and Westerners, Shakirullah is calm, but quick in his response."I don't know. God knows what type of people they are, whether they are good or bad. I don't know them," he says.Shakirullah now passes his hours in a cell block at a juvenile detention facility in Kabul. He is serving at least five years in detention. He is to be transferred to an adult prison in a couple of years, authorities say.He hasn't heard from his family in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. He tried to send them a letter through the International Committee of the Red Cross but is not sure it reached them."I don't know what they are thinking. They have no news of me," he says.
On this day, Shakirullah attends a rehabilitation class, easily lost in the crowd of boys with shaved heads. All of the children are convicted for various crimes, including theft, fighting and even murder.Three boys like Shakirullah are here, all guilty of planning to kill themselves and others after being recruited by terrorist groups.With the increased violence in Afghanistan, international observers say they have seen more and more children being recruited by armed groups and national forces. The Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan with its strict Islamic rule from 1996 to 2001, has regrouped and launched a fierce insurgency."As you see in many places in the world, children are being used in armed conflict. They've been recruited as child soldiers; they've been recruited as armed groups. And the phenomena is now impacting, again, Afghanistan," says Catherine Mbengue, the UNICEF representative in Afghanistan. Watch one boy's struggle begging for food on streets.Inside the detention center, Shakirullah walks up to his cell, his sandals sliding across the tile floor.The cell block is empty and has metal bunk beds lined across the wall and a television set, ready for the times they have electricity. Shakirullah shares this space with 10 other boys. He sits in the center of the room with a blanket draped around him.He barely makes eye contact and looks away as soon as he does. He is shy, but forthright in his words. "I didn't want to do it but he forced me to go," he says of his recruiter.Rubbing his face with his hand, he says he now spends his time dreaming of his life back home in rural Pakistan. His eyes begin to water and his voice becomes softer when he talks about missing his mother.Asked what he misses most about her, he says simply, "A mother is a mother."His was a life of farming and tranquility in Pakistan, he says. It was also a life that took a drastic turn when his father decided to send Shakirullah for studies at a madrassa.He says his dad wanted him to learn more about Islam and the Quran, something he could not do himself. He says his father didn't know radicals ran the school.In the madrassa, Shakirullah learned to recite the Quran in Arabic, not his native language. He relied solely on the fanatical interpretations the mullahs were giving him."When I finished reciting the Quran, a mullah then came to me and told me, 'Now that you have finished the Quran, you need to go and commit a suicide attack.' That I should go to Afghanistan to commit a suicide attack," he says.The teenager wasn't given the chance to say goodbye to his parents or siblings when he was driven to the Pakistan-Afghan border and handed over to strangers.He says he was taken to the southeastern province of Khost, a hotbed for terrorist activity in Afghanistan. Suicide attacks have risen in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion to topple the Taliban began in late 2001, after the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.Shakirullah says that before the police arrested him, he was learning how to drive a car but that he was not sure how he was supposed to carry out his attack.Khost is the province where a suicide car bomb went off near a voter registration site this past Sunday, killing 16 people, 14 of whom were children.At the juvenile detention facility, Shakirullah and the others are now being taught a different interpretation of Islam."The teachers educate them on Islam, and explain to them that the acts that they were doing is not right for them and for others," says Mir Fayaz ah-Din, who works and lives with the boys at the facility, mentoring them and helping them in their rehabilitation."The way you want to kill yourself and someone else -- it in itself is a big offense in Islam."
Shakirullah now says of his recruiters, "They cheated me."
Scenic Pakistani valley falls to Taliban militants
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — 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."
ZARDARI FOR PEACE NOT WAR....
President Asif Ali Zardari has pleaded for dialogue to fight terrorism in South Asia but told India not to push Islamabad too hard for action against extremists one month after the Mumbai attacks. In an emotional speech delivered on Saturday on the first anniversary of the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, he said Pakistan would fight the "cancer" of extremism. His comments came as the United States, Russia and other nations tried to defuse tension between Pakistan and India, which escalated due to statements of Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and even head of Congress Sonia Gandhi. On Friday, officials in Islamabad announced that troops had been moved to the border after the news that there were movements of the Indian army in Rajasthan sector, sending the message loud and clear that Pakistan is ready to meet any eventuality. India has named Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for Mumbai carnage and accused Islamabad of not doing enough to clamp down on it. President Zardari, however, firmly rejected the notion and said: "We have non-state actors. Yes, they are forcing an agenda on us but we shall take action against them because we need it, not because you want it." Earlier, Pranab Mukherjee had demanded of Pakistan "to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and return Indian fugitives hiding in the country. It should fulfill its commitments and must take action against terrorists operating from its soil". He also said that option of unilateral attack was open. Perhaps Indian leadership is under the wrong impression that Pakistan will take it lying down, as Pakistan has not downed any drone despite issuing warnings to NATO. But India is neither a super power nor a partner in war on terror that 'margin' could be given. Nor Pakistan is Afghanistan that any country can do the carpet bombing or surgical strike as demanded by some irresponsible elements in India. In fact the entire thrust of Indian leaders, its think tanks, the US and the West was to bring Pakistan's premier agency into disrepute on the false pretext that it is a state within state. Their real motive is to weaken the ISI and the army, which they consider the main hurdle in their scheme of things and plans for the region. Since allies of the US are not willing to die in Afghanistan, the US is constrained to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But the US was looking for mercenary army, and according to reports India has offered to send 150,000 troops to Afghanistan. In return, the US wants to establish India as a regional and a global power to look after its interests in the region. Mumbai carnage of 26th November appears to be a ploy to pressurize Pakistan to accept India's hegemony over its neighbours especially Pakistan. When they talk of neutralizing Pakistan's nuclear deterrent, their intent is clear. The US, its allies and India are watching Pakistani leadership, and if it shows any weakness they will continue to pressurize Pakistan more and more. Anyhow, they failed in their objective to bring ISI under civilian rule or reduce its importance. Perhaps our leaders have understood that weakening the premier agency means weakening the army and consequently Pakistan. In fact, Indian leadership's posturing has been the result of Pakistan foreign office's defensive approach in the past. After suicide attack on Marriot Hotel, Pakistan did not even mention that RAW could be involved in the incident. And recently an important government functionary said that Pakistani non-state actors were involved in Marriot Hotel Islamabad attack, thus giving the clean chit to India that it was not involved. But after 26th November's Mumbai terrorist attack, there was a coordinated action by leaders of ruling and opposition parties in their media 'blitz' on Pakistan.
Source.Frontier Post
BENAZIR BHUTTO:Nation remembers her...
Even her foes must be missing her woefully at this point in time. Late Benazir Bhutto did have her infirmities; after all, a human being she was, whereas infallibility and perfection are exclusively the divine attributes. But she had political instincts that were sharp and strong; she had a vision that was profound and imaginative; creative and constructive she was in her thinking; and her faculties of intellect were tremendous. For her extensive erudition and intimate knowledge, she was well versed with the intricacies of the global politics, too. And a public figure of world status she also was. She thus had all the intrinsic qualities of leadership to steer the nation out of the crises it presently is enmeshed in so direly domestically and internationally. Blighted by colossal personal tragedies and constantly haunted by scheming establishments, she had had a grueling lifetime. A military dictator hanged her revered father in a judicial murder; and her two loving brothers died unnatural deaths. And a woebegone, grieving mother she had to tend on. All the while, military dictators kept hounding her, slapping on her an unending train of detentions, incarcerations, exiles and what not. And the intriguing establishments cut short her two stints in office in collusion with pliant politicos and kept hounding her. Yet she held on, braving the vicissitudes of her circumstances unyieldingly and defying surrender to the Byzantine machinations of the powers-that-be. She did get suck into the politics of confrontation and vendetta of the 1980s and the 1990s, but not volitionally. And victimized she was; victimizer she was not. Instinctively, she was a compassionate person. And of indomitable will. Though a woman, she was a real man in spirit, grit, determination and resilience. After her father's death, his opponents cried doom of his Pakistan People's Party. Adieu PPP, they gloated. She made them to lick the spit. Together with her mother, a youthful Benazir lifted the party's demoralised and distraught rank and file from the abyss of despondency, rid it of the obstructionist fossils and meticulously nursed its budding young blood to transform the PPP into a formidable, kicking political force of the country. And with this reinvigorated party, she triumphantly rode into office in the 1988 poll to become the first Muslim female, and the youngest, chief executive, not just in this country, but in the entire Muslim world. Recognition as a powerful voice for democracy and against dictatorship flowed in torrentially for her from near and afar. She did draw flak, and lot of it, at home for shaking hands with military ruler General Musharraf. But the fact also stands undeniably that it was this handshake that made for the return of democracy to the country, for the evenly fought fairly transparent and free elections, for the resultant emergence of representative legislatures and governments, and the eventual exit of military dictator General Musharraf who many had thought was there to stay for long times to come. On this sad day a year ago, the accursed terrorist assassin's bullet snuffed her out, imparting this grief on a nation that had reverentially and in great indebtedness celebrated just two days earlier the 131st birthday anniversary of its founder, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, an unparalleled leader and an inimitable visionary, who envisioned Pakistan as a moderate, tolerant and forward-looking polity, in which constitutionalism would prevail and extremism will have no place. The assassin may have eliminated her physically. But her spirit will live on. And she will always be remembered by the people of this country, both by her admirers and critics alike.
Taliban ban to keep 40,000 girls from schools in Swat
Taliban ban to keep 40,000 girls from schools in Swat
* Locals say they are helpless, have no option but to accede to Taliban pressure
PESHAWAR: The future of around 40,000 girls in Swat is at stake following a Taliban ban on education for female students.
Shah Duran, the deputy of Swat-based Taliban cleric Fazlullah, has warned the administrations of government and private educational institutions to not enrol girls in schools.
The Taliban on Wednesday issued a deadline for January 15 for the ban to be implemented, following which they said they would bomb the buildings of schools allowing girls to study.
The Taliban have blown up more than 100 girls’ schools in Swat in the past 14 months.
Helpless: Locals say they are helpless and have no other option but to accede to the Taliban’s pressure as the government has failed to provide them with securuty.
“This is terrible,” the principal of a private school in Mingora told Daily Times, requesting that the name of his school should not be mentioned as that would risk his life and property.
He said the Taliban decision had proved that the government had lost its writ in the valley. “This is the question of the future of our children. The Taliban decision will throw more than 40,000 girls out of schools,” he said.
He said the school owners in Swat district were planning to convene a meeting and form a committee with the help of elders to have dialogue with the Taliban.
The announcement has stamped the statement of Awami National Party (ANP) Senator Haji Muhammad Adeel who had told a seminar in Peshawar a fortnight ago that the government had lost control over Swat.
A social worker said people had already started migrating from Swat following threats by the Taliban.
“Things are changing dramatically. We cannot say anything because the people and the whole government is helpless before the armed people,” he said.
The man said his three daughters were studying at an English medium school. He had no other option but to shift his family to some other area to educate his children, he added.
Schools are the most vulnerable target since the beginning of trouble in Swat. According to figures provided by a Swat-based non-government organisation, Pakistan Coalitions for Education (PCE), Taliban have destroyed over 100 of the 490 primary schools for girls in Swat so far.
The destruction of schools and recent threats to teachers and students have forced over 50,000 girls out of schools, the PCE figures said.
Pakistan Says Banned Group Helped Plan Attack on Hotel
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Sunni Muslim extremist group believed to have been involved in the 2002 abduction and murder of the journalist Daniel Pearl helped carry out the Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad three months ago that killed more than 50 people, according to a top Pakistani official.
The official, Rehman Malik, the government’s senior interior adviser, said that the group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which was banned by Pakistan in 2001 and classified by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization, helped organize the Sept. 20 bombing, which deeply shook the confidence of Pakistanis by demonstrating that extremists could perpetrate large-scale attacks close to the seat of power in Islamabad, the capital.
Mr. Malik’s comments on the bombing to the Pakistani National Assembly on Monday represented the first time that the government had formally laid blame for the attack with a specific organization. He had previously suggested that Taliban militants operating from Pakistan’s lawless western tribal lands might have been behind the bombing.Mr. Malik also told the legislators that two men from Toba Tek Singh in Punjab Province had been taken into custody and that the investigation was complete.
According to an investigator, a man associated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi drove the truck used in the bombing from the town of Jhang, where it had been loaded with explosives, to Islamabad, where the keys were given to a suicide bomber.
The motive for the attack was hatred for Americans, said the investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy involved in the inquiry. Other officials have speculated that the bombing was in retaliation for airstrikes in Taliban-held western tribal areas by remotely controlled American planes, or for recent Pakistani military operations against militants there.
The driver drove the truck to Islamabad slowly, according to the investigator, making frequent stops to avoid detection. Once in Islamabad, he gave the keys to the suicide bomber, a 22-year-old Afghan named Zakirullah, who drove the truck to the hotel, the investigator said.The militants chose the Marriott as the target because they thought a large number of American marines were staying there, but most of the marines had checked out the day before the attack, the investigator said. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has long had a reputation for carrying out bloody attacks, especially against Shiite Muslims in Pakistan. In 2003, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization, he said that its involvement in the kidnapping and killing of Mr. Pearl, a Wall Street Journal correspondent, in 2002 “has been confirmed.”
Peshawar Schools under attack
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The militants have once more demonstrated that the city of Peshawar is no longer safe. Incidents over the past few months have made it obvious the writ of state has vanished from the city. A spate of kidnappings, murders and attacks on shops selling CDs or video tapes make this obvious. To drive the point home, a band of militants has now attacked three leading private schools, torching buses and attempting to demolish the gate of one with a grenade. The choice of schools – two of them institutes for boys – would suggest the motive was to create panic and target the elite, rather than to shut down schools for girls as has happened across NWFP. Threats to elite schools have been made before, in Lahore, Islamabad and other cities. Nothing can be more terrifying for parents, and indeed other citizens, than the notion that their children are unsafe even at school. All three of the schools picked out by the militants were elite institutions. Four members of the staff were injured at one of the schools, two of them critically, while attempting to prevent the band of some 15 armed militants from entering the premises.
The message to city authorities has been sent out loud and clear. The militants have once more demonstrated an ability to strike at will. Psychologically they have also picked a manner to do so which is most likely to create terror. Security at schools in Lahore was stepped up on Tuesday in response to the terrible incident in Peshawar. Mercifully, no pupil was injured. But there is no guarantee that other attacks will not follow this one. The only way to stop them is to begin an all-out offensive against terrorists of all kinds. Only by doing so can we eradicate the fear that today walks alongside every citizen and now enters school alongside the children who attend these institutions.
Pakistan military on 'red alert'
Tensions between the two neighbours has been high since last month's attacks in Mumbai .
Pakistan media is reporting that the country's military is on high alert over a possible strike by India.Monday's reports come after a ratcheting up of tension between the two countries following attacks in Mumbai last month which killed 163 people.Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Pakistan, said the local media attributed its reports to military sources, who were confirming that the navy, air force and army were on red alert."The Pakistani air force have been seen visibly in a number of locations flying close to the Pakistani-India border in what is being described as an aggressive patrolling mode, following reports that India is planning pre-emptive strikes against locations in Pakistan," Hyder reported.
"Chiefs of the three forces are meeting in what is being described as an emergency meeting in general headquarters in Rawalpindi."Only after the meeting is over will we come to know if it is a red alert or a heightened state of alert."Hyder said that observers are saying that the Congress party in India has lost prestige due to the Mumbai attacks and, therefore, may try a show of strength in Pakistan.
Delayed civilian flights
The Reuters news agency quoted a Pakistan airline official as saying the Pakistani air force had conducted an exercise on Monday causing delays to two civilian flights.
"Two of our flights were delayed for some time because the PAF was conducting some exercises, but now everything is back on normal," Muhammad Latif, a spokesman for Pakistan International Airlines, said.The flights were delayed at the airport in Lahore, near the Indian border, Latif said, while dismissing television reports of a high alert at Pakistani airports. An air force spokesman declined to comment when asked about an exercise, saying only: "In view of the current environment, the PAF has enhanced its vigilance."
Divya Gopalan, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Srinagar, in India-controlled Kashmir, said that the Indian media was looking at Monday's reports with some degree of scepticism.
"They are saying that Pakistan is creating an artificial war hysteria to divert attention from the fact that they are under pressure from the Indian security services to deal with the Mumbai terror attacks."
'No red alerts'
Asad Durrani, the former head of Pakistani intelligence, told Al Jazeera that Pakistan was asked to do more to deal with individuals behind the Mumbai attacks. He dismissed the notion that the two states were on the brink of war.
"I think the media is building up a scenario in which one may get the impression that we are close to war"
Asad Durrani, former head of Pakistani intelligence
"The media is building up a scenario in which one may get the impression that we are close to war.
"This is not the stage that the two forces are going to go on that sort of alert."
But Brigadier-General Naeem Salik, a retired Pakistani military analyst, told Al Jazeera from Islamabad: "There have been very threatening statements [from India] saying that they do not rule out military options, and they have been talking about punishing Pakistan.
"So it is obviously natural for Pakistan to heighten its alert levels and be on guard. We cannot let the Indians have a free-run and it is a response to what is happening across the borders."
Ravi Sawhney, an Indian security analyst, told Al Jazeera: "It is not threatening talk at all. It is talking facts. We have been assaulted. A terror attack was launched on us. And the perpetrators of that attack were Pakistanis.
"So we have have been telling Pakistan very gently, very firmly, to take action against these people, who committed this heinous crime in Bombay.
"There has a been a flip-flop that has lasted about 10 or 15 days, so our government has told the Pakistanis to please take action, otherwise all options are on the table."
'Introspection'
Both Sawhney and Salik said that their countries needed "introspection" to calm the rising tensions.
"Pakistan needs some introspection," Sawhney said. "We have one man who is already in our custody who has given irrefutable evidence that he is Pakistani."
"They should start looking inward and take action against the jihadis and terrorists, not only for our and the international community's sake, but for their own sake."
Salik said: "Talking of introspection, I think it's needed on both sides. There have been incidents of serving Indian military officers involved in the bombing of a Pakistan-bound train in which 68 Pakistanis were killed.
"If we keep blaming others for our own internal problems, then we are going to get nowhere. We both need to talk to each other and co-operate rather than threaten each other."
Last week, Pakistan summoned a senior Indian diplomat in Islamabad to protest against recent alleged airspace violations by Indian warplanes.
Indian fighter jets had crossed into Pakistani airspace over Kashmir and Punjab province, the government said on December 13.
Pakistan said its own fighter jets were scrambled to chase off the intruders, but it also played down the incident by describing the violations as "technical" and "inadvertent".India denied any violation of Pakistani airspace.
Deaf and blind
Aren’t we an unfortunate people that we have an elite so deaf and blind? Neither does it hear the rumblings of war cries coming out from across the eastern border so unsettlingly. Nor does it see the horror of the CIA-RAW axis at work in our tribal region and settled areas so terribly. It is blind even to the thuggery of prowling extremists and indoctrinated murderers. Just consider this. There is a loud talk that the Indians may conduct surgical strikes in Azad Kashmir. They may; they may not. But what is happening in Azad Kashmir? The power-aspirants and power-brokers are spiritedly out in the ring, fighting ferociously to flatten one another. That their territory is under great threat doesn’t seem coming any compellingly to any of these blind wrestlers. It is their own lust for power is what they all have in their avaricious sights. Also, just consider this. A feverish speculation is on in India, triggered and fanned no lesser by its ruling political clans’ and its military establishment’s jingoism, that it may carry out special forces commando raids on specific targets in our Punjab. Maybe; maybe not. Yet doesn’t this call imperatively for complete tranquility, calm and unity among the province’s political forces? Instead, aren’t its two top public functionaries vengefully at other’s throats, unseparable, to knock the other to the floor? Consider this, too. Given the worrisome conditions the nation is presently placed in intricately domestically and internationally, isn’t it that complete harmony should prevail between the state’s various institutions, indispensably? Yet, aren’t the legislature and the judiciary being set against each other visibly? With an elite so deaf and blind that we have the big misfortune to have, do we really need any alien enemies to hurt us and destroy us? Come a foreign threat, even deeply divided polities get together, sink their divisions and stand up unitedly to thwart it. Those that do not, they just get trampled under the alien boots and keep reeling for years no end, as has happened to Iraq in these very times. And those where their elites defy giving a bridle to their own vaulting power ambitions and their own political motives, they just kiss demise, as has occurred to Somali that may still be existing on the world map but on the ground it exists not. So this elite of ours has to choose - between the good of the country and its own good. But it must bear one thing in mind. It is, it must know, what it is because of this country. It has its name, its wealth, its opulence and its privileges, all by dint of this country. If it is hurt in any manner, this elite, too, will lose all its name and all its privileges. And in spite of its mountains of wealth and riches, mostly ill-gotten and slush moolah, it will watch only longingly but unattainably power and the spoils of power having just slipped out of its reach. Hence, if for nothing else, for its own vested interest, this elite must give a pause to its political adventures and power plays, and start worrying and working for the country’s good. The Indians are in a sinister mood; and they are being backed, arguably indeed being egged on, by the Americans against Pakistan. Have no illusions about it. We are, in fact, in the throes of a grand conspiracy targeting our very statehood. And those aliens posing as our friends are in reality the wolves in sheep’s clothing. The noose is being tightened around our neck. And if blinded by its own power pulls and political pressures this elite doesn’t see it, it will rue it woefully later. It must put its ears to the war cries emanating from across the border, listen to them attentively and alter its act accordingly. Visibly, all the inimical forces are getting arrayed on the same front behind India against us. That clearly reduces our elite’s affordability of being deaf and blind to just zero. This elite better understand this.
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ed&nid=216&ad=22-12-200
Dated: Monday, December 22, 2008, Zil Hajj 23, 1429 A.H.
Analysis: Pakistan’s four crises —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi
The international community wants to help Pakistan overcome these crises. However, its help will be of no use if Pakistani society and state institutions do not articulate a pluralist and moderate vision of Pakistan domestically and internationally
The Mumbai terror attacks have resulted in several crises for Pakistan, both in its relations with India as well as its domestic context. Pakistan’s response to these crises will go a long way in determining South Asia’s security profile and the future direction of Pakistani state and society.
Within an hour of the Mumbai attacks, the Indian media accused the Pakistani state as well as a Pakistan-based militant group of engineering the attacks. The initial statements of the Indian prime minister and external affairs minister were carefully worded, but they pointed a finger at Pakistan as well.
Most political analysts in Pakistan expected this response because there is an established pattern of Indian reaction to terrorist attacks on its territory, i.e. expression of varying degrees of anger at Pakistan, ranging from troop mobilisation (2001-02) to diplomatic censure to suspension of bilateral dialogue. The post-Mumbai reaction was not very different from the reaction to the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. A massive propaganda campaign against Pakistan was launched following both campaigns, perhaps to justify troop mobilisation and suspension of normal interaction with Pakistan.
The latest crisis raises a fundamental question about the reality of Pakistan-India relations: is there an atmosphere of cordiality and normalisation, as initiated in 2004, or is there a continuation of the traditional hostility and negativity?
Traditionally, the dialogue process has been a victim of such incidents of terrorism, and is either suspended or slowed down. This time, it has been suspended, and official, semi-official and non-official statements have exposed the fragility of the Indo-Pak friendship. The deep-rooted distrust and hostility between both countries has also been highlighted.
Incidents like Mumbai are a product of domestic and external factors in the age of transnational terrorism. However, the Indians have refused to acknowledge that there could be some domestic sources of and support for terrorism in India. Nor have they acknowledged that more people have been killed in Pakistan by terrorists in 2007-08 than in India since December 2001.
Given the enormity of the problem, Pakistan and India cannot cope with religious extremism and terrorism by quarrelling with each other. By venting anger, both countries play into the hands of the extremists who do not want normal interaction between the two countries.
There are many in both India and Pakistan that overplay narrow nationalist political discourses, backed up by the selective use of history, to argue that conflict rather than cooperation is the normal state, and that the two countries cannot be friends as they represent diametrically opposed nationalisms and worldviews. If such political discourses are to be neutralised, leaders on both sides have to show statesmanship and a long-term worldview.
Military brinkmanship will accentuate the problems between India and Pakistan. There are people in India who advocate dangerous ‘surgical airstrikes’ on specific targets in Pakistan, based on the false assumption that Pakistan’s conventional defence, especially air defence, cannot withstand Indian onslaught. Similarly, Indian notions of ‘limited war’ and ‘Cold Start’ are misleading and dangerous courses of action as both countries possess nuclear weapons.
The other side of the present crisis pertains to the domestic situation in Pakistan, with three major sets of problems.
The first domestic crisis is the denial of the threat posed by religious extremism and militancy to internal order and stability. Though most would oppose violence against innocent people, and some would be critical of religious intolerance, they do not always connect this opposition with the activities of militant Islamic groups.
The government’s ability to control religious extremism and militancy is adversely affected by the polarisation between sympathisers of militant groups and those who favour tough action against them. The government is finding it difficult to convince the ordinary people that the punitive measures adopted against some militant groups post-Mumbai are justified and serve Pakistan’s interests. The task of the government becomes more difficult by repeated Indian statements that express dissatisfaction with Pakistani efforts to control militant groups and demand action — a la the United States.
As long as sections of the Pakistani populace, especially Islamist political parties and groups, continue to deny Pakistan’s drift towards extremism and militancy, Pakistani society will continue to face problems rediscovering its tolerant and moderate character. If Pakistan wants to maintain strong links with the international community, it will have to pay heed to what the international community, especially its friends and allies, are advising.
Pakistan does not have the option of defying the United Nations or isolating itself from the international system. Pakistan needs international support to put its economic house in order, as well as to cope with the difficult internal and external security situation.
The lack of consensus among political forces is the second internal crisis. Political forces diverge not only on how to cope with the Taliban challenge in the tribal areas and Swat, but also disagree on a host of domestic political issues. Though leaders of the two major political parties — the PPP and the PMLN — maintain that they would pursue their agendas in a manner that the on-going democratic experiment is not derailed, they periodically engage in dangerous political manoeuvring.
Nawaz Sharif’s strident statement in a TV interview on December 18 indicates that he wants to exploit the government’s predicament caused by international pressure regarding terrorism to force the government to accept his political demands. This is an unusual move, which does not fit into Nawaz Sharif’s known political style. If this becomes his new political profile, Pakistan is likely to drift towards confrontation between the two major parties, which will have a negative impact on the government’s efforts to cope with external pressures.
If the major political parties cannot sustain working relations, the future of the democratic experiment can be jeopardised. The internal political balance will then shift in favour of non-democratic forces.
The third major crisis pertains to the direction of the Pakistani state and society. It is important to develop consensus on the nature and direction of the Pakistani political system. If Pakistan is to become a modern democratic state that believes in equal citizenship for all irrespective of religion, caste or gender, and derives its ethical inspiration from Islam as envisaged by the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, it will have to control the groups that use force to enforce their vision of Islam. It also cannot allow militant groups to pursue their international agendas from Pakistani territory. Their activities force Pakistan into an extremely embarrassing diplomatic situation, raise doubts about the viability of Pakistan as an effective state and a responsible member of the international community.
The international community wants to help Pakistan overcome these crises. However, its help will be of no use if Pakistani society and state institutions do not articulate a pluralist and moderate vision of Pakistan domestically and internationally.(Daily Times)
Obama's Afghan Dilemma
President-elect Barack Obama says that Afghanistan is "the right war." "It's time to heed the call from General [David] McKiernan and others for more troops," Obama said in late October, referring to the US commander in Afghanistan. "That's why I'd send at least two or three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan." He's coupled that with tough talk about hitting Al Qaeda anywhere, including next door in Pakistan. "If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out," Obama said in the second of his three debates with John McCain. "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush Al Qaeda."
Despite such rhetoric, however, nearly two years ago Obama began assembling a cast of experts steeped in the intricacies of South Asian affairs, and they have provided him with a far richer and more sophisticated view of the Afghanistan-Pakistan tangle than emerged in the campaign. "The format of presidential debates does not lend itself to a nuanced discussion," says Bruce Riedel, wryly. A former CIA specialist on South Asia who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and Bush, Riedel led an advisory task force on Afghanistan-Pakistan for Obama. Interviews with Riedel and other Obama advisers--who made it clear they were not speaking for the president-elect--suggest that Obama intends to reorient US policy in the region significantly, and a key plank in that reorientation includes negotiations with the enemy. But assertions by the US command and the Obama team that we can both "surge" and negotiate overlook the glaring reality that sending more troops into the Afghan quagmire and urging the Pakistani government to escalate the war it is fighting against its own people will make the crisis worse, not better.
The outlines of Obama's strategy, which aren't likely to be articulated fully until after the inauguration, include a repudiation of the strident "global war on terror" rhetoric that marked President Bush's years and that only inflamed Muslim attitudes toward the United States. Campaign sloganeering aside, Obama may try to curtail the indiscriminate use of air power in Afghanistan against often ill-defined targets ("just air raiding villages and killing civilians" was how he put it in 2007), though how he'll do that while adding more troops and escalating the war isn't clear. He'll slow down, if not halt, the provocative cross-border attacks into Pakistani tribal areas against insurgent bases, even as he reserves the right to hit bin Laden. The incoming administration will take steps to strengthen the fledgling civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan against the machinations of the Pakistani army and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), which maintains covert ties to a wide range of extremist groups, including the Taliban. And it will support a major boost in economic aid to both countries.
Nearly all of Obama's advisers--along with members of a parallel task force at the Center for American Progress, a think tank likely to be the source of many Obama appointees--insist that a central part of a new US policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan must be to facilitate a peace process between Pakistan and India, its giant neighbor to the east. For decades, Pakistan's military and the ISI have lent covert support to Islamist terrorist groups, in Afghanistan and in the disputed territory of Kashmir, as part of a strategy of asymmetric warfare against India. A Pakistan-India accord would strengthen Pakistan's civilian government and undercut the rationale for the army and ISI's ties to the Taliban, allied Afghan Islamist warlords and Kashmiri Islamist militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, suspected of involvement in the Mumbai terror attack. Wendy Chamberlin, US ambassador to Pakistan on 9/11 and a member of Obama's Pakistan task force, is a strong supporter of efforts to forge a Pakistan-India accord. "I argued for it [in 2002]," she says. And I got dismissed."
Many of Obama's advisers are open to the notion of bringing Iran into the mix, pointing out that Iran was helpful in 2001 in building the original coalition behind Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Iran's role was also highlighted in a September report by a private working group led by Richard Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, and Lee Hamilton, co-chair of the 9/11 Commission. They suggested connecting Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Iran in a regional economic community, concluding, "The U.S. should...reconsider its opposition to the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline project." Tariq Ali, a British-Pakistani scholar and author of The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, has called for creation of a South Asian Union to facilitate a regional economic resurgence.
Even as they favor eventual talks with "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban movement, some of Obama's advisers and Gen. David Petraeus, the Centcom commander, defend their call for a surge by arguing that their first priority is to stabilize Afghanistan militarily. "Trying to divide your enemy is always a smart thing to do," says Riedel. "But until we break the momentum that the Taliban has today, where they feel that they're the winner, I don't see that you have any credible chance of persuading even a small number of Taliban to break. They think they're winning, and if you look at the numbers, you can make a pretty convincing case."
In the first ten months of this year, 255 US and NATO troops were killed in Afghanistan, more than all those who died in the first four years of the war in Afghanistan put together. Entire swaths of southern Afghanistan, in provinces along the Pakistan border south and east of Kabul, are controlled by the Taliban and their allies. Lately they have been able to strike with impunity even within Kabul, the Afghan capital. The CIA has been warning for more than two years that Afghanistan was spinning out of control. A forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate, representing the views of sixteen US intelligence agencies, warns that Afghanistan is in a "downward spiral" and, according to the New York Times, "casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban's influence there." The enemy has also evolved as a fighting force. Already by 2006, according to a report for West Point by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Taliban were fielding battalion-size units of more than 400 fighters. In some provinces the Taliban and their allies are creating a parallel state, appointing governors and provincial officials and establishing Sharia-style courts.
The counterinsurgency is made all the more difficult by the nature of the enemy, an exceedingly complex, multiheaded Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It goes far beyond Mullah Omar's Taliban and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. "Calling it the Taliban is a failure to understand what's going on," says Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan and terrorism at the RAND Corporation. "It's a movement, not an organization," explains Chas Freeman, president of the Middle East Policy Council and a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "What we conveniently have been labeling 'the Taliban' is a phenomenon that includes a lot of people simply on the Islamic right." In all, the US military has identified at least fourteen separate insurgent organizations in Afghanistan, and according to Riedel, there are as many as fifty separate Islamist formations in neighboring Pakistan [see Anand Gopal, page 17, for more on the insurgency].
At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anthony Cordesman, a sober-minded, conservative military analyst, sounded the alarm. "We are running out of time," he wrote. "We currently are losing, and the trends have been consistent since 2004...we face a crisis in the field--right now." The situation, he said, is far more urgent than anything that can be solved by economic aid or nation-building efforts. "At least during 2009-10, priority must be given to warfighting needs." McKiernan, the US commander, has called for at least four more brigades, perhaps as many as 25,000 troops. He warned that the mission in Afghanistan will require a "sustained commitment" lasting many years, and the United States has announced plans to help more than double the size of the Afghan National Army (ANA), to 134,000 troops. "This is a decades-long project," says Ashley Tellis, a former National Security Council specialist on South Asia, who adds that it will take at least ten years before the United States can withdraw and let the ANA fight its own battles. "The transition alone will take a decade, until you can switch to the ANA," he says.
But surging troops into Afghanistan would be akin to sending the fabled 600 into the valley of death. As in Vietnam, tens of thousands more troops will only provide the Taliban with many more targets, sparking Pashtun nationalist resistance and inspiring more recruits for the insurgency. Advocates of sending additional US forces into this maelstrom have yet to articulate exactly how another 25,000 can turn the tide. Tariq Ali says that pacifying the country would require at least 200,000 more troops, beyond the 62,000 US and NATO forces there now, and that it would necessitate laying waste huge parts of Afghanistan. Many Afghan watchers consider the war unwinnable, and they point out that in the 1980s the Soviet Union, with far more troops, had engaged in a brutal nine-year counterinsurgency war--and lost. British Ambassador to Afghanistan Sherard Cowper-Coles has warned against precisely the escalation that Obama and Petraeus advocate. Sending more troops, he says, "would have perverse effects: it would identify us even more strongly as an occupation force and would multiply the targets [for the insurgents]." A top British general, Brig. Mark Carleton-Smith, says, "We're not going to win this war.... It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat."
"What began as a punitive raid aimed at beheading Al Qaeda and chastising its Afghan household staff has somehow morphed--with no real discussion or debate--into a prolonged effort to pacify Afghanistan and transform its society," says Freeman. "This moving of the goal posts gratified neoconservatives and liberal interventionists alike. Our new purpose became giving Afghanistan a centrally directed state--something it had never had. We now fight to exclude reactionary Muslims from a role in governing the new Afghanistan." Freeman suggests that this is an untenable goal, and that it is time to co-opt local authorities and enlist regional allies in search of a settlement.
Those who insist the war is winnable, including US and NATO commanders, also say that it can't be won without taking the war across the border to Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas, an escalation that's already under way. But this poses a whole new set of problems. The situation in Pakistan is only slightly less dire than in Afghanistan. The country emerged this year from nearly a decade under a US-backed military dictatorship and faces a daunting set of challenges. A multipronged insurgency based in the tribal areas is spreading its influence into the neighboring North-West Frontier Province, and it has reached all the way to Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, where assassinations and suicide bombings occur regularly. The new government is weak and divided, with little or no control over the Pakistani army and ISI. And its economy is virtually bankrupt: with inflation at 25 percent and vast unemployment, the country is desperately seeking $10 billion to $15 billion in immediate financial aid.
Yet the fragile Pakistani state is being pushed to the breaking point by the Bush administration. Since August, nearly two dozen CIA Predator missile attacks in tribal areas have inflamed much of the country against the United States. Already, before the spate of attacks, public opinion polls showed that 86 percent of Pakistanis say the goal of the United States is to "weaken and divide the Islamic world," 84 percent say the United States is a greater threat than Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and 89 percent oppose Pakistan's cooperation with the US "war on terror." Many Pakistanis blame the United States for its fifty-year record of propping up military dictators, which makes it hard for the United States to support even its allies, such as President Zardari. "Right now, we're kind of the kiss of death," says Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar at the Middle East Institute who was part of Obama's Pakistan task force.
Since 9/11, Pakistan has received more than $11 billion in US aid, but almost all of it has flowed into the coffers of Pakistan's army and ISI, with little or no oversight. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, between 2002 and 2007 only 10 percent of US aid was devoted to development and humanitarian assistance. That avalanche of cash to the military has allowed the ISI free rein to support its network of Islamist extremists, which it has built up systematically since the 1980s. As long as ISI helped nab an occasional Al Qaeda bigwig, even as it tolerated or supported the Afghan Taliban and other Islamist radicals, the United States went along. "We've got to put an end to this dirty game, where Pakistan uses surrogate terrorist groups," says Chamberlin.
Even those fighting the war have difficulty distinguishing friends from enemies. Michael Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflicts, who oversees a Pentagon anti-terrorism force, isn't sure. Asked if ISI is on our side or not, he pauses. "It's complicated. I'll put it that way," he says finally. "It's not black and white." Last summer Zardari attempted to bring ISI under the control of the civilian-run Interior Ministry, but the idea was quickly shot down. "That lasted eight hours," says Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars, a book about the CIA and Afghanistan that Obama was recently seen carrying. "Somebody told the ISI about the announcement, and they said, 'No, that won't be happening.'" Then, in the fall, Pakistan's army chief of staff installed a new set of generals atop the ISI, though there was widespread skepticism that the move reflected a real policy change by the army.
Yet Pakistani attitudes are slowly changing, even inside the military, analysts say. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto a year ago and the massive bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad in September alarmed many generals about the threat to Pakistan from its Islamist creations. "Pakistan has had a tolerance and a see-no-evil attitude toward the Taliban," says Riedel. "But the Afghan Taliban has also created a Pakistani Taliban, which is a Frankenstein the Pakistani army can't control. So it still has relations with parent Taliban, but the infant Taliban is now increasingly a threat to the cohesion of the Pakistan state, and it's a physical threat to the Pakistani army and even to the ISI. This is the classic case of a covert action program getting out of control."
As a result, of late the army is scrambling to control a crisis of its own making, without much success. It has launched a three-pronged military offensive in the tribal areas and nearby districts, but--having spent a half-century preparing for a tank war with India--the Pakistani army is not well equipped to fight a counterinsurgency war. And in the tribal areas the Pakistani army, which is mostly Punjabi, is seen as a foreign force by local Pashtuns, while many Pakistani officers and enlisted men are loath to fight against their compatriots in what they see as America's war. Both the military and the Pakistan government have tried to build tribal militias to combat the Taliban, but so far this effort hasn't paid off. And the government has tried to encourage the holding of tribal jirgas, or councils, to generate grassroots opposition to the dominance of Taliban-like elements in and around the tribal areas. That, too, hasn't worked well, since the Taliban have engaged in murderous counterattacks, including gruesome killings and suicide bomb attacks aimed at the jirgas. Many in Pakistan are operating under outdated assumptions about the tribes in the northwest, says Christine Fair, an independent expert on South Asia who took part in the Center for American Progress study. "The jirgas used to be made up of secular tribal leaders," she says. "Now, they meet in mosques and madrassas." Since the US-backed anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, madrassas, or religious schools, have become factories and recruiting areas for militant Islamists.
Part of the solution, stressed by all of Obama's aides, is more economic support to both countries, targeted toward building infrastructure, improving agriculture, providing microcredit for small business and constructing schools and clinics. One member of Obama's task force on Pakistan is Jonah Blank, a senior staff member at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is a key aide to Vice President-elect Joe Biden. Blank was a driving force behind the Biden-Lugar-Obama bill to provide $1.5 billion a year for ten years in economic support to Pakistan. A parallel effort for Afghanistan, including what Obama calls a Marshall Plan-style mobilization, is also under way. "Call it a democracy dividend," says Blank. "The civilians can say, 'See? We deliver.'"
But economic development takes a long time to be felt, and the crisis is now. If the wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan aren't going to be resolved militarily--and they won't be--the solution to both crises, now inextricably linked, must be a diplomatic one: first, negotiations with many of the forces opposing the two governments and the US presence in the region, and, second, progress toward a Pakistan-India accord.
In Pakistan, the Zardari government and the Parliament have strongly endorsed talks with the Taliban, better organized than the faltering accords announced in 2004 and 2006. In Afghanistan, Karzai declared in mid-November that he is open to direct talks with Mullah Omar. And in late October, tribal elders and dozens of Pakistani and Afghan officials convened a two-day "mini-jirga" intended to be the start of a dialogue with the Taliban. Owais Ghani, governor of the North-West Frontier Province and a leader of the secular, nationalist ANP party, said at the mini-jirga: "We will sit, we will talk to them, they will listen to us, and we will come to some sort of solution."
Karzai's offer to Mullah Omar, which was unprecedented, followed two years of quiet discussions in South Asia, Europe and the Middle East among Pakistani and Afghan officials, former leaders of the Taliban and members of Saudi Arabia's royal family, including King Abdullah. Among the participants: Karzai's brother and Nawaz Sharif, a Pakistani politician with close ties to the religious establishment who spent years in exile in Saudi Arabia. According to news reports, London and Paris provided logistical and diplomatic support for the contacts. The Pakistani daily Dawn reported that French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner is supporting talks between Karzai and "moderates within the Taliban," and he has invited Iran and Pakistan to Paris to participate in talks on Afghanistan.
So far, Mullah Omar has rejected Karzai's offer of direct talks, and the Taliban continues to insist on the withdrawal of US and NATO forces before any deal. A deal with the Islamist insurgency, or at least enough of it to make it stick, is an exceedingly difficult undertaking, and most of Obama's advisers are skeptical that it can work. India, Iran and Russia, which supported the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in the decade before 9/11, won't look with favor on a US-Saudi effort to allow the Taliban back in power, so their concerns will have to be taken into account. The fragmented nature of the Taliban movment makes it hard to figure out whom, exactly, to negotiate with. And though parts of the movement may be pragmatic enough to strike a deal, other parts are likely to fight to the bitter end.
The Obama team is far more supportive of an urgent diplomatic initiative to bring Pakistan and India toward an accord. But after the Mumbai attack, with its potential to bring the two countries back to the brink of war, that is a task that has just become far more difficult. "This requires great subtlety and a degree of sophistication that, I have to say, is not the norm in American diplomacy," says Riedel. "It calls for a stretch. I think the way to start is with very, very quiet conversations between the United States and India, and I think that the new relationship that we have with India gives us a better platform than ever before." India, Riedel says, is worried that the United States will seek a deal with Pakistan at India's expense. But closer US-India ties, cemented by a recent deal over India's nuclear program, give Washington new credibility to assure New Delhi that its interests in Kashmir and Afghanistan, where India is worried about a Taliban resurgence, will be protected.
India is deeply involved in Afghanistan now, and its role there is causing a degree of paranoia in Pakistan. India, along with Iran and Russia, helped oust the Pakistan-backed Taliban in 2001. India has provided $1.2 billion in aid to Afghanistan since then, and it has opened consulates in four Afghan cities that, Pakistan fears, could be bases for Indian intelligence. It is against that threat, historically, that Pakistan has supported right-wing Islamists. But India is a power with global ambitions, a thriving economy and powerful armed forces, and it is becoming clear in Pakistan that it can no longer compete with India, which is causing an outbreak of realism inside the Pakistani army. Ashley Tellis, now of the Carnegie Endowment, has had extensive contacts with Pakistan's military. "The mainstream of the Pakistani army no longer sees India as the main threat," he says. "There may be some of the far right, among the Islamists, who believe that India is the central danger." But Tellis says they are a minority. "To protect their institutional interests, they know that they must have a rapprochement with India."
The opportunity for a dialogue with elements of the Taliban and the possibility of a peace process between Pakistan and India constitute the true exit strategy for the United States in Afghanistan. But to nail down a deal with the insurgents, the United States will have to offer them what they most want, namely, a timetable for the withdrawal of US and NATO forces.
"What the insurgents do seem to agree about is that foreigners shouldn't run their country, and that the country should be run according to the principles of Islam," says Chas Freeman.
"We need to recall the reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place," he says. "Our purpose was...to deny the use of Afghan territory to terrorists with global reach. That was and is an attainable objective. It is a limited objective that can be achieved at reasonable cost. We must return to a ruthless focus on this objective. We cannot afford to pursue goals, however worthy, that contradict or undermine it. The reform of Afghan politics, society and mores must wait."
Meanwhile, the stage is set. The governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan want peace talks with Islamist insurgents and the Taliban. Outside powers, led by Saudi Arabia and quietly supported by Britain and France, are facilitating behind-the-scenes contacts between the Taliban and key Afghan and Pakistani leaders. Neighboring states, including India, Russia and Iran, while hardly enamored of the Taliban, might underwrite a truce. And the possibility of a regional economic pact linking Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India could tie it all together.
Al Qaeda, pushed into remote redoubts in Pakistan's mountains, is most certainly still plotting against the United States. But many, perhaps most, of its fair-weather allies on the Islamic right, including the Taliban, might very well be persuaded to make a final break with Osama bin Laden and his like if they can get a better deal, including a share of power in Kabul. Will President Obama seize the moment? Will he have the courage to offer an end to US occupation of Afghanistan if the Taliban-led movement abandons its ties to Al Qaeda?
