Daily Times - Site Edition
Friday, March 07, 2008
Footloose: Greeks in Pukhtunkhwa? —Salman Rashid
Watching from the rooftop that April afternoon many years ago, I could see a clear Greek connection here; a worship of Dionysus. A reading of the DNA test report mentioned last week in this space shows that to be true. While the Kalasha have no Greek strain, many tested Pukhtuns doThe DNA tests I mentioned in my column last week that showed there was no Greek strain in the Kalasha people of Chitral brought up an interesting proposition from correspondent Lubi Uzunovski. She writes that the test does indeed show a total lack of Greek genetic traces among the Kalasha. But has anyone tested them for a possible genetic link with the Macedonians?She goes on that a bulk of modern Greek population is as recent to the region as about one hundred and fifty years and that they were Christian migrants from Asia MinorWhat does one make of this then? Who then were the people who lived in, say, Sparta or Athens over two thousand years ago when the Macedonian prince set out for India? I find Uzunovski’s idea about all modern Greeks being outsiders absurd for that hints at an unpopulated Greece in the classical age. Her suggestion regarding re-testing to establish a Macedonian connection certainly makes sense, however.That having been said, I nevertheless still maintain that history shows us, not even in the vaguest terms, that Alexander never led his army across the great snow-draped ridges of the Hindu Kush Mountains in mid-winter. On the contrary, his itinerary across modern NWFP and the rest of Pakistan is now virtually with any doubt and in it Chitral features nowhere. Historians bent upon ‘proving’ that Alexander was in Chitral hang on to one place name — just one. And that is Nysa which fits nicely with the village of Nisa on the road from Chitral to Mastuj and nearer to the latter.From my memories of 1986, Nisa is a delightfully sylvan spot where huge and luscious peaches, succulent apricots and riotously sweet mulberries and plums abound. And Nisa is where the average landlord will accost you, firmly grasp you by the arm and lead you home to feed you a lavish meal followed by platters of fruit picked straight off his trees. But then, if truth be told, that is what the whole lot of Chitralis are — and not just the well off ones like my good friend Siraj ul Mulk and his charming wife Ghazala. Even the poorest Chitrali will never let a traveller by without feeding him.But I digress; so back to the main story. It is delightful Nisa that tells the charlatan that Alexander was in Chitral because in the context of his Swat campaign, Alexander’s histories do mention a place called Nysa. If anything, that is the flimsiest of grounds to base a whole theory on. A careful reading of the histories show that this Nysa would have been somewhere in the modern district of Dir. But the reference is always vague and one can scarcely assign it a proper location in modern geographical context.So I return to my primary premise that the Greeks (or the Macedonians) did not cross the high ridges into Chitral. We know that a hundred and fifty years after Alexander, another branch of the Greeks who were the progeny of Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander’s generals who inherited Syria and Persian after the passing of the conqueror, invaded Bactria (Balkh), Kabul and eventually overran Taxila. Indeed, their kingdom spread across all of modern Pakistan. Like Alexander, they too were not proper Greeks, but Macedonian. Scattered liberally across this great and wonderful land, they have left behind more than ample archaeological evidence of their long years here. In Chitral we have so far found no evidence of these latter Indo-Greeks.Back in 1999, I was in Bannu with my head full of descriptions of this wonderful, now sadly Talibanised, city left by Chinese pilgrims of the early Middle Ages. My guide, a local government official, initially failed to understand what it was I wanted to see. After several hours of bumbling about and one heated outburst between us, he drove me ten kilometres southwest of town to the village of Bhurt. There above the houses and amidst neatly parcelled farmland loomed a large clayey mound called Akra. I was eventually to learn that this was the remnant of a huge city that thrived from the 3rd century BCE (Indo-Greeks) through the Kushans, Parthians, Ghaznavides and into the time of Iyultimish. That is, this was a living city for a millennium and a half.Later that same evening I saw a spectacle in Bannu city. About sundown, Chowk Bazaar in the city started to fill up with lean-bodied young Pukhtun lads. Soon it was a milling, pressing multitude so my guide and I climbed the roof of a roadside build to witness the proceedings. Here were dancing processions complete with drummers and pipers each led by a beaming, glowing young man bedecked with garlands of marigold and rose with his friends on either side of and behind him. Pukhtuns being what they are, they sported their garlands over one shoulder and below the other crossing their chests with them, just as they would wear their bullet-studded bandoliers.The entire bazaar was virtually choked with such processions and the din of music and the roar of young, jubilant singing and talking was ear-splitting. Though there must have been nearly twenty such processions in that tight little bazaar, there was no harsh word, no scuffling. There was very palpable air of goodwill and merriment. If it got too crowded, arriving processions patiently waited their turn for room to be made before they entered with their own music and dance. And going around all this were copious (that is an understatement!) amounts of confectionary. Among much laughter and joshing, virtually tons of gulab jamun and barfi were forced by friends down each other’s gullets.The heavily flower-bedecked leader of each procession was the soon-to-be groom. For long years it had been tradition that the young groom would celebrate his impending wedding by leading his friends in a musical procession to let the world know that the big day had come for him. As I watched from the rooftop the orgies of gaiety, song, dance and eating, I suddenly saw in them undertones of a Dionysian revel from the distant past when Bannu occupied the now ruined and deserted mound of Akra by the village of Bhurt.When the Greeks were here, they would have indulged in similar revels to please their god Dionysus. Then there would have been bulging wine-skins, not mere cardboard boxes of confectionary. There would have been women also and all and sundry well and properly inebriated. But they all, every single one of them, would have been decked with garlands just as these jubilant Pukhtun lads were in the spring of 1999. Over the years the wine-skins may have given way to pitchers of bhung or perhaps vast quantities of hashish. But with the coming of the hypocritical dictatorship of the late 1970s, the Pukhtuns settled for confectionary — though it is another thing what they would consume in private.Watching from the rooftop that April afternoon many years ago, I could see a clear Greek connection here; a worship of Dionysus. A reading of the DNA test report mentioned last week in this space shows that to be true. While the Kalasha have no Greek strain, many tested Pukhtuns do.Salman Rashid is a travel writer and knows Pakistan like the back of his hand.
GREEKS IN PAKHTUNKHWA
The Frontier Post
Marriage of convenience!!!
M Waqar USA
By observing on going political developments and melo-drama between Nawaz Sharif and Zardari, I hate to say that I don't trust Nawaz, he is the one who did not let BENAZIR BHUTTO to run her government properly, when she was prime minister, Mr. Nawaz is asking for restoration of judges but I am sure that nation has not forgotten that during his rule supreme court was attacked. In politics, yesterday enemies can be today's friends but it seems like Mr. Sharif is already creating problems, differences may split but its too scary and it will be another golden opportunity for any army general in Pakistan to overthrow the govt. Although I am sure he has learned the lessons in exile, After his return from exile, he has displayed restraint, tolerance and maturity in his speeches and actions and it was a great gesture that he went to the hospital when Benazir Bhutto was killed, progressive, liberal and democratic Pakistanis must be happy to see that cronies of Musharraf and religious mullah's parties defeated and they have great expectations from winners of 2008 election but I hope that these politicians don't indulge in dirty politics and dig their n graves. Nawaz Sharif is an autocrat with no relation to democratic norms and traditions. His each tenure in the helm of affairs was more dishonest than the previous one. His malpractices not only swayed away the economic structure of the state but also made the lives of poor disastrous. I am not saying that Mr. Zardari is an Angel but I think if Nawaz Sharif is sincere this time then he should fully cooperate with other politicians and let the new govt finish its job for five years and let the people of Pakistan to decide after five years. Nawaz Sharif is asking a lot from the new winners and his list of demands is growing every time I read a Pakistani newspaper on line. Mr. Zardari or his Prime Minister will have their reservations about some issues and if they fail to satisfy Mr.Sharif. I think there will be another political chaos in Pakistan. As Aitzaz Ahsan has termed the political consensus developed between Asif Ali Zardari and Mian Nawaz Sharif a good omen and has cautioned if both the leaders back out from this consensus people and lawyers will come out on the roads against them and that's what I am afraid of, because Nawaz Sharif will jeopardize this political process. Democracy kicking in now and Pakistanis sees a chance of peace and normal life, people don't want show downs now, Zardari may be a man of compromise and hope Nawaz can be like him too, politics of revenge will derail what the nation achieved through elections, Nawaz Sharif have to compromise, accommodate and not to confront and let the nation's parliament to decide and that will be consensus. We know that Zardari will run the show, Mr Musharraf will expect a Yes Man but that will be a real test and PPP, PML-N, ANP needs to stay strong and together and not let differences of political opinion mess up this new political process, and this all depends on Nawaz to cooperate, but will he??? Although, whenever a GENERAL rules Pakistan, he makes sure to destroy all the institutions of civilians and bring country to total chaos and collapse, therefore the idea of a national government should not be only about sharing power but also sharing responsibility, during past and present military regimes, people of pukhtoonistan and Balochistan suffered heavily, it should be responsibility of new govt to restore confidence among people of these two provinces, provincial autonomy is important issue according to the constitution and it is time to honor this compact, will Nawaz will agree to these issues??? If President Musharraf has any self respect, he must resign now; he can go to TURKEY and should study how ATTA-TURK changed Turkey. Anyhow, I was writing about Nawaz Sharif, I am not going to open can of worms but would love to see what other readers on this forum think???
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=le&nid=345&ad=06-03-200
Dated: Thursday, March 06, 2008, Safar 27, 1429 A.H.
BALKAN INTRIGUES
Source: Pravda.Ru
The latest country to find its place on the map is sending shockwaves around the world.
Kosovo’s declaration of independence 17 February brings the number of statelets born out of the former Yugoslavia, population 23 million, to seven — Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and now Kosovo, which boasts an impressive two million.
Statistics are trotted out to justify independence from Serbia. Ninety per cent of residents are Albanian, it is said, though this excludes 250,000 Serbs who fled when the NATO invaded. Some 120,000 plucky Serbs remained and a brave 18,000 have trickled back in recent years — under armed escort — to hostile neighbourhoods, to reclaim homes seized by Albanian squatters when NATO troops occupied the province. But demographic shifts are no reason to dismember a country.
The province was the heartland of the Serbian Kingdom in the 13th century until conquered by the Ottomans in the 15th century, and only by the end of the 19th century did it have a slight majority of ethnic Albanians for the first time. It suffered mass population transfers of both Serbs and Albanians over the years and finally achieved quasi-state status within the Yugoslav Federation by the 1960s. In the 1970s, the demographic balance was 75-25 Albanian-Serbian. Milosevic owed his rise to the presidency to his defence of Serbs in Kosovo after the death of President Josip Broz Tito in 1980, whose motto was “a weak Serbia means a strong Yugoslavia.” Kosovo’s nationalists were demanding full republican status within the federation by then, and in 1990 its parliament even declared independence (only recognised by, surprise, Albania). This dissolving of the delicately balanced federation would have been suicide and the movement was suppressed, as similar movements have been in Spain, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and many, many other countries, with nary a whisper of protest by the “international community”.
Milosevic’s attempt in the 1990s to resettle Serbian refugees from civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia prompted the formation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1995, a rag-tag rebel group financed by drug, arms and human trafficking, which made it to the US State Department’s prestigious list of international terrorist organisations in 1998 — Osama bin Laden made three visits to Kosovo 1994-96, but which the West nonetheless supported in the “liberation” of Kosovo in 1998-99. The denouement — Milosevic being served up to the International Criminal Court by Serbia’s current prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica — did nothing to reverse what was by now a clear policy by the West to carve a new, compliant state out of the remains of Yugoslavia.
As for who threatened who in the lead-up to the current declaration of independence, the 10,000 casualties of the upheaval of 1998-99 included Serbs, Albanians and Roma, with no one group faring much better than the other, and despite intensive efforts by NATO forces, no proof of mass murder of Albanians — the excuse used to justify the NATO bombing — was ever found. Eerily similar to the aftermath of the US pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. In any case, with the invasion, it was the Serbs who ended up fleeing rather than the Albanians. The last major outbreak of violence was in 2004 and was against the Serbs.
Kostunica argues that the Serbs should not be held to account for Milosevic’s supposed sins, that self-rule for Kosovo within a federation is an acceptable compromise, that creating such a statelet benefits no one, least of all ordinary Kosovars, and merely acts as a dangerous precedent on the world stage, but only Russia, China and a few others appear to be listening. He vowed the nation would never accept this “gross violation of international law” and angrily pointed the finger at the US, which was “ready to violate the international order for its own military interests”. Even pro-Western Serbian President Boris Tadic said, “I will never give up the fight for our Kosovo.” Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin called for the United Nations to annul the move, demanding an emergency meeting of the Security Council 18 February. No resolution on Kosovo’s independence was made, with members China, Russia and Indonesia making it clear this was a stillborn child as far as they were concerned.
Western hypocrisy is so thick it can be cut with a knife: EU officials issued a statement acknowledging Kosovo’s independence declaration without explicitly endorsing it, thanks to Spain’s distaste. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance would respond “swiftly and firmly against anyone who might resort to violence.” US President George W Bush in Tanzania produced his usual inimitable sound-byte: “The Serbian people can know that they have a friend in America.” The US was low-key, calling on all parties to “exercise the utmost restraint and to refrain from any provocative act”, though it provocatively proceeded to recognise the new republic, along with Britain and France.
But then, why bother to toot one’s horn? US Albanian immigrants did that in any case, streaming into Pristina to dance in frenzied jubilation. Beating drums, waving flags, shooting guns in the air and throwing firecrackers, they chanted: “Independence! Independence! We are free at last!” An outpouring of adulation for the US was evident everywhere, in sharp contrast to the despair, anger and disbelief that gripped Serbia and its ethnic enclaves in northern Kosovo.
Europe has been busy in the Balkans since it helped destroy the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Most recently it welcomed Slovenia to its fold in 2004 and promises Croatia membership next year. NATO has been flexing its muscles, too, having swallowed up Slovenia in 2004 and promising Croatia membership this year. The plan is to bribe Serbia into acquiescing to the loss of Kosovo by giving it a nice, wet Euro-kiss. While Serbia is wise to NATO, it is not clear if its wrecked economy and exhausted people will give in to the lure of euros. In addition to the 16,000 NATO troops, the EU has parachuted in 2000 police, judges and administrators into Kosovo, but insisted Kosovo’s independence will be severely circumscribed. A wise move, that, considering the KLA and Kosovo’s reputation for terrorism and all kinds of trafficking, and the new prime minister’s deep mafia connections. In a faux show of magnanimity, the KLA political leader and Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, called on displaced Serbs living outside Kosovo to return, guaranteeing them full rights. Thaci was a founding member in 1993 of the Marxist-Leninist oriented People’s Movement of Kosovo, which advocates Pan-Albanianism; his sister just happens to be married to Sejdija Bajrush, the top Albanian mafioso.
The fallout from this latest chapter of Balkan intrigues is already accelerating. At least three shiny new border posts have been burned down and three bombs exploded near Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe offices in northern Kosovo. Demonstrators there demanded that the Serbian army mobilise to keep their territories, which make up 15 per cent of Kosovo, part of Serbia. The northern part of Kosovo already has parallel institutional structures and does not recognise the authority of the Kosovo government. Misha Glenny, an expert on the Balkans, warns, “Whatever the outcome of Kosovo’s independence, everyone knows we are heading for de facto partition. But no one is willing to admit it.” Serbian police officers have deserted the multi-ethnic Kosovo police force and given their allegiance to Belgrade.
Next door, Serbian separatists in the Muslim-Croat Federation have stepped up their threats to secede from Bosnia. Macedonia, which has the misfortune of bordering Kosovo, Albania and Serbia, and has a substantial restive Albanian minority to boot, will wait for at least 15 EU countries to recognise Kosovo first. Biljana Vankovska from the Institute for Peace and Defence Studies in Skopje said, “the perspectives of the Kosovo market are a cold comfort for Macedonia’s economy.” Serbian President Boris Tadic says that Serbia will recall its ambassadors from countries that recognise an independent Kosovo, which already include the US, UK, Germany and France. Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania are not planning to recognise Kosovo any time soon. Even Poland is having doubts.
Kosovo’s independence will inevitably lead to separatist efforts by other dissatisfied territories around the world. The very day of the declaration, presidents of two Georgian breakaway provinces — Abhazia’s President Sergei Begapsh and South Ossetia’s President Eduard Kokoity — met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and received a commitment for continued support. All residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were granted Russian citizenship after heavy-handed Georgian attempts to cow the independent-minded territories in the 1990s. “We are told all the time: Kosovo is a special case,” Putin said recently. “It is all lies. There is no special case and everybody understands it perfectly well.” After his official meeting with Lavrov, Bagapsh said, “Abkhazia will soon ask the Russian Federal Assembly and the UN Security Council to recognise its independence.”
Despite the tragedy of Chechnya, such enthusiasm to team up with Russia by Muslim border states suggests that religion is really not the issue here at all. There are also Trans-Dniester, sandwiched between Ukraine and Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, the breakaway Armenian district in Azerbaijan, and farther afield, Taiwan, Kurdistan, Baluchistan, the Tamil Tigers, and many, many other would-be countries and terrorist groups all of which have gained a new lease on “independence” from this latest Balkan intrigue.
Eric Walberg For Pravda.ru
DEMOCRACY IS THE BEST REVENGE !!!!!!!!!!!!
Democracy is the best revenge
M Waqar USA
First of all I congratulate all democratic and liberal forces, who were united and voted against the arrogant and illegal regime of Musharraf. It is a great day of joy and relief, Democracy is the best revenge,” the well-said quote of Benazir Bhutto has been reinforced today. In her death, Benazir wreaked even greater havoc on Musharraf and company. On Monday, from her grave, she beat all the cronies and flunkies of Musharraf into oblivion. Her murder and the vow by the PPP to take revenge through democracy, have now been fulfilled. Today the so called champions of democracy and Islam, shoe- lickers of military dictator like, Pervaiz Elahi, Sheikh Rashid, Ejaz-ul-Haq, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain are hiding themselves behind the curtains of power as they have been known to do in when faced with true democracy. MQM, PML(Q), MMA has damaged Pakistan integrity by supporting Musharraf's undemocratic actions. Chaudhry Shujjat is such a cunning person that for winning election he was trying to get Lal Masjid imam Aziz out of prison, these Chaudhries of Punjab have very rude awakening now and I hope they realize that its not worthy to be a puppet of a military dictator. This election has also been a denunciation of agency-sponsored politics. The nation faces innumerable problems and the road ahead is not easy but Pakistan's journey forward would become much easier if Mr. Musharraf sees the writing on the wall and leaves. He must do the decent thing and quit. A silent revolution of the silent majority has struck Pakistan and the otherwise voiceless people have said a big but decisive “No” to the political parties loyal to Musharraf. To be frank, Musharraf has lost, who took power and claimed that he is a liberal, secular and loves ATTA_TURK, he took billions of dollars from USA but also supported militants or did not do anything against those in his Govt and military who were supporters of ignorant Taliban and other militants. I think Musharraf was a double agent, working with the US in the search for Bin Laden and working with Al Qaeda to keep Bin Laden and his company safe. I am sure that Mush knows who killed Benazir, who are responsible for suicide attacks, who is killing innocent Pukhtoons, it seems like his agencies are responsible for suicide attacks, if there were any real groups involve in these crimes against humanity then it would happen during elections too. Musharraf has brought the country to complete destruction and dismemberment. He has destroyed all democratic institutions, he shredded the constitution of the country with power grabbing amendments. he is following the policies of terrorists MQM. It is still time for Mr Musharraf to apologize to Mr. Justice Bhagwan Das and Mr Justice Iftikhar Chowdhry. Musharraf is a cunning untrusty individual who has no moral values and he has later declared martial law on Nov 3, 2007 in order to remove not only the supreme court chief justice but 3 other chief justices including 60 superior court judges. Musharraf needs to step down. He's lost the political capital to be effective. The Pakistani nation today proved to the world that they are a self-decisive and independent nation, they are liberals, they are not pro-talibans. Once Musharraf had said "Last blow will be mine" but he was wrong. The last blow he got today, and this blow was from people power, the power of people can’t be crushed by any strong Army, all those who won this election must prove their credibility. They should reject General culture, extremism, corruption, nepotism, VIP culture and all evils, which the whole nation is dressed in. They should show positive attitude to each other and should prove to the world that they are sensible and serious nation and they deserve to be democratic nation because nation has reached to this success after a very long struggle. Our politicians should not waste this opportunity again, if they loose this opportunity then remember people have other ways to take revenge and that revenge will be revolution and firing squads for failed politicians. Two important things education and getting rid of corruption must be on top of their agenda. Its time to educate people, The trusts and confidence reposed in the politicians by the people now demand from them to behave and behave democratically, move sensibly, focus on the issues positively, shun from politics of revenge and muster all of their efforts for rallying round all segments of the society and taking them together for the resolutions of the burning issues on top priority. I hope politicians like Nawaz and Zardari learned their lessons and they will not repeat the mistakes of past, true essence of democracy is the independence of judiciary, the legislative branch and the executive branch. Army should never be allowed to meddle in civilian affairs. I wonder which general will stage Pakistan's next coup... Democratic elections come and go but Pakistani generals are always ready to remove inconvenient civilians who have the temerity to think they are in charge, so winner of this election must get their acts together and work for the interests of country, keep in mind, Pakistan’s two neighbors China and India will be super powers by the year 2050, its up to people and politicians what they want to do, make Pakistan a super power or make it a country like Somalia or Kenya or break it in pieces. I salute to the people of great pukhtoonistan, who totally rejected militants, extremists and those mullahs who always support military dictators. I congratulate ANP and agree with the statement of its leader Asfandyar, that the Pashtuns, by electing the ANP, had given a clear message to the establishment and world powers that they were not extremists. “We will also try to give an impression that no one is slave or master but all four provinces are like four brothers in this country, I hope ANP make Pukhtoonistan the most educated, rich and advance place for whole world. Those who are involve in suicide attacks are not pushdowns but are agents of puktoon’s enemies. Media also played important role against the illegal policies of dictator Mush and his cronies. Frontier Post also kept its tradition of challenging dictators and printed news, articles and letters and kept readers well informed. I hope media will continue its positive coverage and new Govt in Islamabad should also remember that its 2008, now there are more media tools then just one govt run TV channel. If the elected politicians follow the path of corruption and arrogance they will never survive more than six month in power, the people are watching you closely if you stray you will be in dumps soon. If Nawaz Sharif and Zadari successfully form a coalition, then Pakistan will, at long last, have turned there corner and embarked on a new era, only if they are sincere this time and National Assembly will not become subzi mundi. Benazir Bhutto had sacrificed her life for paving way for democracy in Pakistan. This golden opportunity should not be wasted by the new leadership who should steer Pakistan from existing troubles and create friendly atmosphere with all countries and not waste money in fighting. The funds can be better utilized for the welfare of poor Pakistanis. All the best for the people of pakistan who had courageously voted in this election. These political parties also needs to have democratic elections within their own ranks and get rid of family owned political parties. Quote: ‘’Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. H L Mencken
PAKISTAN ELECTIONS
Musharraf Powerless, Islamists Defeated
What happened in the Pakistani elections?By Nicholas SchmidlePosted Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2008, at 6:36 PM ET
Heading into Monday's parliamentary elections, Pakistan desperately needed good news. Bombs, protests, and President Pervez Musharraf's authoritarian impulses have made almost daily headlines and created the impression of a country spiraling toward chaos. Last year, Islamic militants detonated, on average, one suicide bomb per week in Pakistan, including the attack that killed more than 140 people at Benazir Bhutto's homecoming in October and the one that assassinated her in December. As the pro-Taliban insurgency gathered strength this winter, a bloody Election Day seemed inevitable. But Monday's poll results, while consistent with Pakistan's recent history in their pure unpredictability, finally gave people a taste of good news. Besides being largely free of violence (two dozen died in isolated skirmishes, but suicide bombers stayed away), voters rejected the two players in Pakistani politics that scare—and confuse—Americans most: Musharraf and the Islamists.
The elections proved nearly everyone—including me—terribly wrong. They also illustrated the complexity and dynamism of Pakistani society. I lived in Pakistan for the last two years and watched the run-up to the elections closely, beginning with the suspension of the chief justice of the supreme court in March 2007, through the state of emergency in November, and the media restrictions that followed. After traveling to every province and speaking to hundreds of people, I grew convinced that a free and fair election was impossible. Musharraf simply couldn't afford to lose. And yet, without an institutional base of support in the army (he officially retired in late November) or a political base in his faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), he knew he would do just that in transparent polls.
The PML (Q) finished third, behind Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and Nawaz Sharif's faction of the PML, making Musharraf effectively appear more powerless than ever. As president, he can still dissolve parliament whenever he wants, but the parliament also has the ability to impeach him. He is in a less than desirable position.
How could Musharraf have let this happen? It wasn't just lesser-known figures in his party who lost their seats; big personalities fell, too. Sheikh Rashid, the mustachioed, cigar-smoking Musharraf confidant who served as both minister of information and minister of railways during the last government, lost in Rawalpindi, the first defeat of his 30-year political career. Similarly, the president of the PML (Q) was defeated. "This election will come down to whether you are for or against Musharraf," a party worker told me at a PPP rally outside Islamabad in December. He couldn't have been more correct.
While the opposition parties campaigned on the shortcomings of Musharraf's regime (inflation, food shortages, deteriorating law and order), Musharraf's cronies weren't adept enough to recognize that public opinion had turned against them, and they continued to tell poor, hungry, downtrodden Pakistanis of all the good that Musharraf had done for them. According to Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who was in Islamabad observing the elections, Musharraf admitted that "people have spoken, results are clear, and [I am] prepared to abide by and cooperate with whatever the ensuing coalition government comes forth with." That could eventually include a one-way ticket out of Pakistan.
Perhaps the most significant development of the election was the drubbing received by the Islamist parties. In 2002, a six-party coalition known as the Muttahida-Majles-e-Amal, or MMA, won more than 10 percent of the popular vote and grabbed more than 60 seats in the 342 National Assembly. The presence of the Islamists in parliament frightened Western governments, which feared that the mullahs would increase their share of power with each election. Monday's results showed that the MMA's rise was better understood as a political hiccup rather than the vanguard of a mass movement. As of late Tuesday, the MMA had won just five seats. Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the head of the Islamist alliance, lost in his hometown to a thirtysomething law school graduate from the PPP.
Does this mean the end of Islamism in Pakistan? Not quite. In fact, while the defeat of Musharraf's political allies in the PML (Q) signals a new political leadership in Islamabad, the defeat of the MMA could also signal a new political and religious leadership in the troubled areas along the border with Afghanistan. In the North West Frontier Province, where the MMA formed the provincial government last term, the Islamists' vote bank was a combination of die-hards who desired the creation of an Islamic state and those less ideologically driven who were attracted to the MMA's promises of justice, economic renewal, and security. This time around, the latter voted for the Awami National Party. The former, such as Iqbal Khan of the Swat Valley, joined the Taliban.
Last October, Khan invited me to his home for dinner, where he proudly displayed a bookcase full of al-Qaida paraphernalia—letters from Mullah Omar, video messages from Osama Bin Laden, and a backpack that Ayman al-Zawahiri apparently left behind after a visit. He, like all his neighbors in their remote village, voted for the MMA in 2002, hoping the Islamists in parliament would fulfill their pledge to implement sharia law. But when they not only failed to do that but were increasingly viewed as being just as corrupt as their predecessors, Khan and his cohorts withdrew their support from the politicians and shifted their allegiances to the militants.
Though Khan has since been arrested, hundreds of other pro-Taliban militants are still lurking inside the Tribal Areas and in the Swat Valley. On Feb. 6, 2008, the Pakistani government and the Taliban agreed to a cease-fire, which many believe explains the lack of twisted cars, bloody limbs, headless bodies, and other suicide bombing debris on Election Day. But what did the Taliban get in return? Their ambitions are, in many cases, confined to the establishment of Taliban-ruled enclaves. For, unlike in Afghanistan a decade ago, when the Taliban piled into pickup trucks and overran the government in Kabul, the Pakistani Taliban faces a significantly stronger army and state to conquer. Nawaz Sharif already announced that he favors dialogue, rather than confrontation, with the Taliban. None of the other candidates has offered a compelling counterinsurgency strategy.
Monday's election reminded observers that, besides being considered the "world's most dangerous country," Pakistan could also be described as the world's most unpredictable country. It remains to be seen how long it can ride this wave of good news. Nicholas Schmidle, a former fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, lived in Pakistan from 2006 through January 2008. He is writing a book about his experience in Pakistan.
SWAT…..TALIBANIZATION OF PARADISE.
Shaheen Buneri,
THE JERUSALEM POST
MINGORA, Pakistan - Until recently, the Swat Valley was peaceful and beautiful, a land of roses, gushing rivers and Buddhist stupas, an idyllic spot for glorious Pashtun traditions of love, peace and hospitality. Once a paradise on earth - all that is now lost.
"There was a time when women and girls from the valley traveled from Mingora town all the way by foot over the high and legendary Mountains of Elum to the mausoleum of the famous saint Pir Baba in downtown Buner, there to offer prayers for finding a sweetheart or to sing sad songs telling of separation. We were poor but happy then. God only knows who cast an evil eye on our land and turned it into hell," said Shaukat Sharar, a local intellectual from Mingora, capital of the Swat district in northern Pakistan.
TNSM-the first pro-Taliban movementThe Swat Valley, which fell to pro-Taliban fighters in July, was perhaps the most beautiful valley in South Asia. The people were liberal in attitude and in their way of life.
The people worked their orchards and rice fields, reaping enough corn and cash to live with honor, dignity and hope. There was Music Street, where beautiful Swati girls once danced to the tune of artistically rich Pashto music, to the delight of visitors. Even the former wali (ruler) of Swat State married a famous dancer to bless her community with respect for traditional Pashtun society.
Then in 1992, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, an extremist cleric, launched the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi Movement (Movement for the Enforcement of the Islamic Legal System, or TNSM) in the Malakand region.
His followers occupied government buildings and schools to pressure the government to accept their demands, blocked the main Peshawar-Mingora highway and killed a member of the provincial assembly and scores of people in adjoining districts.
In 1994, then-Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto's government curbed the movement, but to appease its followers, introduced the Nizam-e-Adal Regulation (an Islamic judicial system) in Malakand. However, TNSM leaders, suspicious of the government, persisted in their struggle to introduce "a true Islamic order" to the region.
On September 6, 1998, the TNSM threatened to attack American property and to abduct American citizens in Pakistan unless the United States apologized to the Muslim world for the August 1998 missile strikes on Afghanistan.
"When the US attacked the Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan in 2001 the hardline clerics in the TNSM leadership started recruiting people for jihad against the infidels [the US and its allies] on Afghan soil. Some 10,000 people with old fashioned guns in their hands were taken to the border to fight the hi-tech war planes of the United States," recalled Shah Dauran, a local resident.
Qazi Ihsanullah, a TNSM spokesperson, said in Bajaur on October 27, 2001: "We will resist if the authorities try to stop us. The jihad will start here... Initially [Taliban leader] Mullah [Muhammad] Omar advised us to wait and come to Afghanistan only when necessary, but we have told them that we will stay in Afghanistan as a reserve force."
Muhammad Iqbal, a 40-year old leader of the movement, said that when Maulana Sufi Muhammad gave the call, supporters collected 60 truck-loads of food and clothes and 1.7 million rupees to give to senior Taliban commanders in Qandahar, Afghanistan.
But Sufi Muhammad's fighters were untrained and ignorant in the ways of modern warfare and most of them were killed or arrested by the Northern Alliance forces. With some other TNSM leaders, Maulana Sufi Muhammad was arrested by Pakistan security forces on January 15, 2002, and sent to jail. After seven years in prison he was released recently by the government and admitted to hospital in Peshawar for treatment of diabetes.
President Pervez Musharraf's government has also banned the movement, which it defines as a terrorist organization. Though TNSM has been dormant for the past seven years, its leadership formed another armed movement under the leadership of Maulana Fazlullah, Maulana Sufi Muhammad's son-in-law, who is a strong opponent of Western sociopolitical ideals.
From tourism to terrorismFollowing the arrest of his spiritual leader and father-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, 31, gave the movement new impetus in a novel and effective manner. He launched a network of illegal FM radio channels throughout the Swat Valley and began broadcasting fiery speeches denouncing education for girls, prophylactic anti-polio drops, music shops, and the pro-American policies of Musharraf. In a June 2007 interview, the firebrand cleric told me that following his advice people had burned TV sets, VCRs and computers worth a million rupees. "This was the first blow to the region's liberal values and the first step toward obscurantism," Khurhsid Khan, coordinator of a local NGO, said.
The radio broadcasts gradually spread to a radius of 40 kilometers and thousands of people used to listen to it with great veneration after their night prayers. Harnessing the air waves like this brought change. Parents stopped sending their girls to school. The illiterate women of the region, who saw Maulana Fazlullah as a true leader of Islam, donated their gold jewelry to build Imam Dheri a religious seminary on the bank of the River Swat. The use of anti-polio vaccine for children was also accused of being "un-Islamic" by Maulana Fazlullah.
In October 2006, Pakistan's air strike on a religious seminary in Bajaur Tribal agency, which the locals believed was carried out by US forces, killed 82 people including its administrator Maulvi Liaqat Ali. Laiqat Ali was very close to Maulana Fazlullah. After the incident, Maulana Fazlullah embarked on a campaign arousing the people to join him fight the invading US forces.
"We will teach them a lesson. We will avenge them for killing our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan and Bajaur Agency," he said in one of his broadcasts straight after the incident.
In July 2007, when the Pakistan government launched Operation Silence against the Hafsa Seminary in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, Maulana Fazlullah seized it as an opportunity to strengthen his support base and called on the people to take arms and fight the US and its allies.
Bombs in girls' schools and shops selling CDs, and suicide attacks on police and security forces became the order of the day. Maulana Fazlullah's "Shaheen Force," commanded by Siraj-ud-Din and supported by foreign fighters, took over schools, hospitals and government offices in the upper Swat valley. The Pakistani flag was replaced by the black and white flag of the movement.
The caretaker government at the time dispatched 25,000 regular army forces to confront Maulana Fazlullah fighters in Swat. Central government officials said that prior to this the ruling six-party religious alliance of North West Frontier Province had opposed military action, but was now determined to fight until the valley was cleared of militancy.
Paradise lostIn the clash that followed the security forces suffered massive casualties and at least 13 Pakistani security personnel were beheaded in the Matta and Charbagh areas of the district. Of the valley's 1.5 million population some 400,000 were displaced by the fighting. Tellingly, in Jehandabad, the fighters blew up a 700 year-old statue of Buddha, symbol of peace and humanity.
Zahid Khan, president of the Swat Hotels Association, said that 1,200 hotels had closed down in the area with owners suffering losses of 4 billion rupees.
The government claimed the area had been cleared of rebels and the FM radio station of Maulana Fazlullah shut down. But, after a few days' break, Maulana Fazlullah was back to broadcasting, and threatened security forces with dire consequences for killing his men and occupying the seminary he had built at a cost of 8m. rupees.
"They say we are hiding. That is wrong. We are not hiding; this is just a war strategy. We will teach them a lesson as our brothers did to the forces of the USSR in Afghanistan," he announced in his new radio broadcasts.
The past five months of fighting between Pakistani security forces and the extremists have rendered the whole area a virtual hell, where fear prevails and the locals have serious reservations about the military action. They say the government has proved itself unable to nip the evil in the bud. "First they allowed Maulana Fazlullah to recruit and train people. He was a minor leader then, but the government allowed him to become a monster. Now they are not able to rein in him," said Sher Ali, a college professor in Mingora.
Zia-ud-Din, secretary of the Swat Private Schools Association, said thousands of students were not attending class due to the school closures. "They are frightened, lost and utterly confused. Many of the children are suffering from psychological trauma," he reported.
Local people want to see something positive come out of the military operation, which has led to the deaths of many civilians and destroyed the local infrastructure. However, realities on the ground indicate that this lyrical valley, home to the Gandahara civilization, is lost forever. The current wave of violence in other parts of the country is darkening the gloom still further.
Is the US planning to attack Pakistan?The spread of terrorism by pro-Taliban fighters from Waziristan to the Swat Valley has prompted the US to attack al-Qaida targets in Pakistan. In 2007, Frances Townsend, homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, told CNN that if the United States had "actionable targets, anywhere in the world," including in Pakistan, "we would pursue those targets."
"There are no options that are off the table," she said.
Responding to US officials' concerns about Pakistan nuclear installations and the spread of militancy, Musharraf warned in an interview that any unilateral attacks by the US against al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in his country's tribal areas would be treated as an invasion.
Political analysts say that US attacks on al-Qaida targets in Pakistan would exacerbate the already volatile situation in the region and would send current opponents of militancy into al-Qaida's arms.
The religious political party alliance, Mutahida Majlas-e-Amal, won a landslide victory in the last elections by exploiting anti-American sentiments in Balochistan and North West Frontier Province.
"Any such act would further inflame the situation. It would destabilize the whole region. Peace efforts in Afghanistan would be derailed if the US attacks Pakistan," said Khadim Hussain Amir, a political analyst and professor at Bahria University in Islamabad.
Khadim Hussain added that the US has economic and strategic interests in the region and that the Pakistan military wished to protect these interests.
"President Bush says that al-Qaida's war is against American freedom and democracy while al-Qaida and Taliban say that the US war on terrorism is actually a war against Islam. On the other hand, nationalist forces think the aim of the current war is the genocide of the Pashtun [ethnic Afghan] people. These are the ideological foundations of the present crisis. In my view this war is against the people and their resources just to promote capitalist interests. Militancy and militarism both end in the large scale sufferings of the already marginalized people," said Khadim.
In Khadim's opinion, political parties, especially secular and progressive ones, can and must play a role to advance the peoples' agenda by creating the space for negotiation and dialogue among all stake holders - including the US.
WHEN WOMEN RULE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When Women Rule
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF(NYT)
While no woman has been president of the United States — yet — the world does have several thousand years’ worth of experience with female leaders. And I have to acknowledge it: Their historical record puts men’s to shame.
A notable share of the great leaders in history have been women: Queen Hatshepsut and Cleopatra of Egypt, Empress Wu Zetian of China, Isabella of Castile, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Granted, I’m neglecting the likes of Bloody Mary, but it’s still true that those women who climbed to power in monarchies had an astonishingly high success rate.
Research by political psychologists points to possible explanations. Scholars find that women, compared with men, tend to excel in consensus-building and certain other skills useful in leadership. If so, why have female political leaders been so much less impressive in the democratic era? Margaret Thatcher was a transformative figure, but women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven’t even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.
I have a pet theory about what’s going on.
In monarchies, women who rose to the top dealt mostly with a narrow elite, so they could prove themselves and get on with governing. But in democracies in the television age, female leaders also have to navigate public prejudices — and these make democratic politics far more challenging for a woman than for a man.
In one common experiment, the “Goldberg paradigm,” people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man.
In particular, one lesson from this research is that promoting their own successes is a helpful strategy for ambitious men. But experiments have demonstrated that when women highlight their accomplishments, that’s a turn-off. And women seem even more offended by self-promoting females than men are.
This creates a huge challenge for ambitious women in politics or business: If they’re self-effacing, people find them unimpressive, but if they talk up their accomplishments, they come across as pushy braggarts.
The broader conundrum is that for women, but not for men, there is a tradeoff in qualities associated with top leadership. A woman can be perceived as competent or as likable, but not both.
“It’s an uphill struggle, to be judged both a good woman and a good leader,” said Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor who is an expert on women in leadership. Professor Kanter added that a pioneer in a man’s world, like Hillary Rodham Clinton, also faces scrutiny on many more dimensions than a man — witness the public debate about Mrs. Clinton’s allegedly “thick ankles,” or the headlines last year about cleavage.
Clothing and appearance generally matter more for women than for men, research shows. Surprisingly, several studies have found that it’s actually a disadvantage for a woman to be physically attractive when applying for a managerial job. Beautiful applicants received lower ratings, apparently because they were subconsciously pegged as stereotypically female and therefore unsuited for a job as a boss.
Female leaders face these impossible judgments all over the world. An M.I.T. economist, Esther Duflo, looked at India, which has required female leaders in one-third of village councils since the mid-1990s. Professor Duflo and her colleagues found that by objective standards, the women ran the villages better than men. For example, women constructed and maintained wells better, and took fewer bribes.
Yet ordinary villagers themselves judged the women as having done a worse job, and so most women were not re-elected. That seemed to result from simple prejudice. Professor Duflo asked villagers to listen to a speech, identical except that it was given by a man in some cases and by a woman in others. Villagers gave the speech much lower marks when it was given by a woman.
Such prejudices can be overridden after voters actually see female leaders in action. While the first ones received dismal evaluations, the second round of female leaders in the villages were rated the same as men. “Exposure reduces prejudice,” Professor Duflo suggested.
Women have often quipped that they have to be twice as good as men to get anywhere — but that, fortunately, is not difficult. In fact, it appears that it may be difficult after all. Modern democracies may empower deep prejudices and thus constrain female leaders in ways that ancient monarchies did not.
Pakistan....ON EDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Pakistan On edge
Jan 31st 2008 | LAHORE From The Economist print editionIf he rigs, he may have to rig big
Get article background
THE army is battling a Taliban insurgency in the tribal areas of the Afghan border, in which hundreds have been killed in recent weeks. In the cities, activists shouting “Go, Musharraf, Go!” are up in arms about alleged pre-election rigging of the vote due on February 18th. Yet Pakistan's increasingly edgy president, Pervez Musharraf, went on a ten-day European jaunt to tell the West why he is still Pakistan's best bet in the “transition to democracy” and the “war against terror”.
In London he berated a respected Pakistani journalist who dared question his government's efficacy and sincerity in combating extremism. Later he said Pakistanis should thrash such journalists if necessary for being “unpatriotic”, triggering a spate of angry comments.
Mr Musharraf's war is not going well. The “Pakistani Taliban” have merged under Baitullah Mehsud, a warlord accused by the government of ordering the murder in December of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister. The Pakistani authorities signed a controversial peace deal with Mr Mehsud in 2005. But he used the lull to expand his army of Taliban and suicide-bombers in the tribal area of South Waziristan. Late last year an allied Taliban faction tried to seize large tracts of the Swat valley in the North-West Frontier Province. Mr Musharraf sent the army into Swat and bombed Mr Mehsud's hideouts in Waziristan. Mr Mehsud's followers retaliated by seizing a small town, and cutting off the road to Waziristan. The army is now fighting “miscreants” all over the tribal areas.
Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, the former home minister, admits that the government failed to take “swift and decisive action” against the Taliban. He says the Taliban are well-financed, organised and motivated, and stopping their rise needs the backing of “political parties, civil society, [and] religious leaders”.
This is just what Mr Musharraf does not have. He is hugely unpopular and all the opposition parties want him out. Most Pakistanis also see this as America's war. This has made it hard to yield to American pressure to put its own boots on the ground in Waziristan against the Taliban. The Americans are providing aerial intelligence, counter-insurgency training and weaponry. Only rarely do the Pakistanis ask for missile attacks from American drones on targets in the border regions.
Meanwhile, it is still not certain that the elections postponed to February 18th will be held. The government has warned political leaders that they are on extremist hit lists. So security worries are curbing campaigning. Most politicians are relying on the electronic media. But the channels are shackled by new gagging laws and cannot give proper coverage to opposition rallies and protests. The air is also thick with allegations of pre-election rigging. Mr Musharraf has refused to nominate a neutral election commission or suspend the progovernment local mayors, who wield enormous influence.
Indeed, with various polls showing the popularity of his party plummeting, everyone believes that Mr Musharraf will have to rig the elections in a big way. His nemeses are the slain Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, at the head of her party, which is riding a wave of sympathy, and Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister he overthrew in 1999. Last month Mr Musharraf told Pakistani newspaper editors that he foresaw a greater crisis after the elections—if the opposition parties did not accept the results, or ganged up on him in the new parliament. But unless he strikes a deal soon with one of his foes, one of these outcomes seems hard to avoid.
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
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Pakistan On edge
Jan 31st 2008 | LAHORE From The Economist print editionIf he rigs, he may have to rig big
Get article background
THE army is battling a Taliban insurgency in the tribal areas of the Afghan border, in which hundreds have been killed in recent weeks. In the cities, activists shouting “Go, Musharraf, Go!” are up in arms about alleged pre-election rigging of the vote due on February 18th. Yet Pakistan's increasingly edgy president, Pervez Musharraf, went on a ten-day European jaunt to tell the West why he is still Pakistan's best bet in the “transition to democracy” and the “war against terror”.
In London he berated a respected Pakistani journalist who dared question his government's efficacy and sincerity in combating extremism. Later he said Pakistanis should thrash such journalists if necessary for being “unpatriotic”, triggering a spate of angry comments.
Mr Musharraf's war is not going well. The “Pakistani Taliban” have merged under Baitullah Mehsud, a warlord accused by the government of ordering the murder in December of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister. The Pakistani authorities signed a controversial peace deal with Mr Mehsud in 2005. But he used the lull to expand his army of Taliban and suicide-bombers in the tribal area of South Waziristan. Late last year an allied Taliban faction tried to seize large tracts of the Swat valley in the North-West Frontier Province. Mr Musharraf sent the army into Swat and bombed Mr Mehsud's hideouts in Waziristan. Mr Mehsud's followers retaliated by seizing a small town, and cutting off the road to Waziristan. The army is now fighting “miscreants” all over the tribal areas.
Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, the former home minister, admits that the government failed to take “swift and decisive action” against the Taliban. He says the Taliban are well-financed, organised and motivated, and stopping their rise needs the backing of “political parties, civil society, [and] religious leaders”.
This is just what Mr Musharraf does not have. He is hugely unpopular and all the opposition parties want him out. Most Pakistanis also see this as America's war. This has made it hard to yield to American pressure to put its own boots on the ground in Waziristan against the Taliban. The Americans are providing aerial intelligence, counter-insurgency training and weaponry. Only rarely do the Pakistanis ask for missile attacks from American drones on targets in the border regions.
Meanwhile, it is still not certain that the elections postponed to February 18th will be held. The government has warned political leaders that they are on extremist hit lists. So security worries are curbing campaigning. Most politicians are relying on the electronic media. But the channels are shackled by new gagging laws and cannot give proper coverage to opposition rallies and protests. The air is also thick with allegations of pre-election rigging. Mr Musharraf has refused to nominate a neutral election commission or suspend the progovernment local mayors, who wield enormous influence.
Indeed, with various polls showing the popularity of his party plummeting, everyone believes that Mr Musharraf will have to rig the elections in a big way. His nemeses are the slain Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, at the head of her party, which is riding a wave of sympathy, and Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister he overthrew in 1999. Last month Mr Musharraf told Pakistani newspaper editors that he foresaw a greater crisis after the elections—if the opposition parties did not accept the results, or ganged up on him in the new parliament. But unless he strikes a deal soon with one of his foes, one of these outcomes seems hard to avoid.
PESHAWAR UNDER SIEGE !!!!!!!!
January 18, 2008
Frontier Insurgency Spills Into Peshawar
By JANE PERLEZ
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — For centuries, fighting and lawlessness have been part of the fabric of this frontier city. But in the past year, Pakistan’s war with Islamic militants has spilled right into its alleys and bazaars, its forts and armories, killing policemen and soldiers and scaring its famously tough citizens.
There is a sense of siege here, as the Islamic insurgency pours out of the adjacent tribal region into this city, one of Pakistan’s largest, and its surrounding districts.
The Taliban and their militant sympathizers now hold strategic pockets on the city’s outskirts, the police say, from where they strike at the military and the police, order schoolgirls to wear the burqa and blow up stores selling DVDs, among other acts of violence.
Suicide bombings, bomb explosions and missile attacks occurred an average of once a week here in 2007, according to a tally by the city’s police department. In 2006, while there were occasional grenade attacks and explosions, the authorities did not record a single suicide bombing or rocket attack inside the city.
The proximity of Peshawar to the tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have regrouped in the past two years makes the city a feasible prize for the militants in Pakistan’s quickly escalating internal strife that pits the Islamic extremists against the American-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf.
Though few here believe that the Taliban will rule anytime soon, the police and residents say that by the standards of counterinsurgency warfare the extremists are doing well. They have undermined public faith in the government, sown distrust and made the police fearful for their lives. “People feel the insecurity is so high, no one can fix it,” said Humair Bilour, the sister-in-law of Malik Saad, a popular Peshawar police chief who was killed in a suicide bomb attack last year. “How can the government do anything when the government itself is involved in it?”
She said she and her friends were now afraid to go out. “People go to the bazaar and make jokes: ‘Is this going to be my last trip?’ ” she said.
The extremists have selected the police and the army, two important pillars of the Pakistani state, as particular targets.
Last week, rockets were fired at an army barracks in Warsak on the city’s perimeter, a warning of the power of the militants to strike from Mohmand, a district in the tribal areas adjacent to Peshawar, an area that a few months ago was considered free of the Taliban.
The army headquarters in the center of the city were struck last month by a bomber who was hiding explosives under her burqa that were set off by remote control. The assassination a year ago of the police chief, Mr. Saad, who was killed while on duty trying to control a religious procession in one of the bazaars, shook the city.
“It’s asymmetrical warfare against an established state,” said Muhammad Sulaman Khan, chief of operations for the Peshawar police and a close friend of Mr. Saad. “The terrorists only don’t have to lose it, we need to win it.”
At the core of the troubles here, many say, lie demands by the United States that the Pakistani military, generously financed by Washington, join in its campaign against terrorism, which means killing fellow Pakistanis in the tribal areas. Even if those Pakistanis are extremists, the people here say, they do not like a policy of killing fellow tribesmen, and fellow countrymen, particularly on behalf of the United States.
The Bush administration is convinced that Al Qaeda and the Taliban have gained new strength in the past two years, particularly in the tribal regions of North and South Waziristan and Bajaur. It has said it is considering sending American forces to help the Pakistani soldiers in those areas. Mr. Musharraf has scoffed at the idea.
Any direct intervention by American forces would only strengthen the backlash now under way against soldiers and the police in Peshawar, said Farook Adam Khan, a lawyer here. That reaction spread last week to Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, where a suicide bomber killed almost two dozen policemen at a lawyers’ rally, he said.
“Pakistani soldiers never used to be targets,” Mr. Khan said. “Now we have the radicals antagonized by Musharraf and his politics of cozying up to the United States. The actions taken by the army in Waziristan and Bajaur and Swat are causing the problems here.” Swat is an area 100 miles north of Peshawar, where the Pakistani Army is currently battling a Pakistani Taliban insurgent group with mixed results.
The standing of the Pakistani military is being further harmed by an increasing awareness here that it is for the first time suffering significant numbers of defections, mostly among soldiers reluctant to fight in the tribal areas. The defections gain only scant mention in the press, but people talk about them.
There are rumors of courts-martial, although the information is tightly held by the army, former officers said. Morale among the police in Peshawar has plummeted amid a series of police killings, making the city far from the glamorous posting it once was, when the police were fighting smugglers and other outlaws.
Terrorist activities around Peshawar began to increase, Mr. Khan said, after a major attack on a madrasa in Bajaur in October 2006, in which 82 people, including 12 teenagers, were killed. The Pakistani Army said intelligence had shown that the madrasa was used as a training base by Al Qaeda. Local residents said the killings were the work of an American remotely piloted drone, a charge that Washington denied.
A few months later, government schools for girls around Peshawar began to receive threats that they would be blown up if the students did not wear burqas.
At one such school, in Shah Dhand Baba, a town on the northern fringes of Peshawar, the principal, Gul Bahar Begum, said she received a handwritten letter in the mail last February demanding that the students cover up or the school would be blown up.
Ms. Begum, who wears lipstick and lightly covers her hair with a scarf, and whose office is filled with sports trophies won by her students, said that about 70 percent of the girls now wore burqas when they stepped outside the school.
“It is the Islamic way to cover,” she said of her instructions to the girls to cover up. “So the militants were right, but the way they imposed their decision was not.”
The students, dressed in loose white pants and long shirts, suggested that they accepted the demands because they had to, not because they believed it was a religious necessity.
Maryam Sultan, 16, who wore a denim jacket over her uniform, said she and her friends came to school in burqas “for security.” Ms. Sultan, who was more interested in talking about her desire to become a doctor, said there was little choice but to cover up.
The outward bravura at the school masked a deeper problem: the inability of the police or any other authorities to deter the militants. At another school where a threatening letter was received, the principal protested.
She made contact with the militants, saying that burqas were too expensive for some of the girls. The militants replied, saying, “If the girls can afford makeup, they can afford burqas,” according to officials in the district. Days later, the girls were in burqas.
Himayat Mayar, the local mayor, blamed the government for the threats against the girls.
He said that during the five years that Mr. Musharraf and his allies in a coalition of Islamic parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, had governed the North-West Frontier Province, they had allowed madrasas for young Islamic jihadists to flourish.
“There are so many madrasas run by mullahs that train jihadis and get funds from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,” Mr. Mayar said. “These jihadists know only jihad. They should be brought into the mainstream.” If it wanted to, he added, the government could easily provide teachers and computers to the madrasas, and register them.
Peshawar’s booming business in illicit Western and Indian DVDs has been another target of the militants. Many of the city’s myriad retail outlets have closed after being bombed, or threatened with violence.
At the Bilal DVD Parlor, the owners, Bilal Javed and Akhtar Ali, said their sales — ranging from “Pride and Prejudice” to “Die Hard 4.0,” to the latest Bollywood films and old Bruce Lee movies — had fallen by 90 percent. Their decade-old wholesale business in the tribal region was finished, they said.
On a recent day, their modern retail store, fitted with polished chrome, was packed floor to ceiling with DVDs. There were no customers. They said people had been afraid to shop there since a bomb hidden in a water cooler exploded at a DVD store across the street last year, killing five people, including a 7-year-old boy who wanted to buy a computer mouse.
“The police chief said, ‘We can’t secure ourselves, how can we secure you?’ ” Mr. Javed said.
ARTICLE FROM NEWSWEEK
The Growing Power of Petro-Islam
In Saudi Arabia, Bush encounters a force more powerful than democracy.
By Michael Hirsh
A day after George W. Bush gave his big democracy speech and declared the opening of "a great new era … founded on the equality of all people"—a line he delivered at the astonishingly opulent Emirates Palace hotel, where most of the $2,450-a-night suites are reserved for visiting royals—the president flew to Saudi Arabia on Monday. There he planned to spend a day with King Abdullah at his ranch, where the monarch keeps 150 Arabian stallions for his pleasure, and thousands of goats and sheep "bred to feed the guests at the King's royal banquets," as the White House put it in the "press kit" it handed out to reporters on the eve of the president's eight-day Mideast tour. Bush was also expected to take time out to meet with a group of "Saudi entrepreneurs."
What could not be found on Bush's schedule was one Saudi dissident or political activist, much less a democrat. Just a day after his speech in Abu Dhabi—and three years after declaring in his second inaugural address that "it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture"—the president made time for a tour of Saudi Arabia's National History Museum but not for a meeting with Fouad al-Farhan. Farhan, Saudi Arabia's most popular blogger, was arrested in Jidda last month for daring to defend a group of Saudis who wanted to form a civil rights group.
OK, you get my point. Bush's words were, for the most part, seen as empty here. Especially since there was no follow-up. This is a part of the world where tribal sheikdoms have scarcely modified their medievalism, much less embraced democracy—even as their petro-dollars bring in Frank Gehry and other famous names, wrapping their Potemkin city-states in 21st-century glamour. I understand that Bush must engage in some realpolitik at the moment. This is no time to undermine the Arab regimes. It's important to rally them against Iran's nuclear program and to enlist them in supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In addition, the worrisome rise of oil prices to around $100 a barrel has given the big producers even more leverage.
But if that's so, then don't plan a major democracy speech when you know you're not going to act on it, with not even a symbolic move of any kind to accompany it. There's a word for this kind of thing. It's called hypocrisy.
The president seemed to know he wasn't exactly calling for democratic revolution in the Mideast. His underwhelming speech—touted before the trip as a high point—was a kind of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too address. So as not to upset the emirs and other Arab royalty too much, Bush told them they can probably keep their various monarchies even if they do democratize. He compared his vision for bringing democratic governance to the Arab world to what the United States did in Asia after World War II, beginning with occupied Japan. "The results are now in," he said. "Today the people of Japan have both a working democracy and a hereditary emperor." (Never mind that Akihito has no power.) When Steve Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, was asked what the emirs' response was to the president's "freedom agenda," he responded with an image as underwhelming as the president's speech. "Heads nod. Heads nod," Hadley said. This was true: a number of audience members in Abu Dhabi were nodding off as Bush spoke.
But the picture is far more pathological than you think, especially here in Saudi Arabia. We need to have an honest discussion about the nature of this strange state, which contains as much as 20 percent of the world's oil reserves. Saudi Arabia has always been a nation run by a family, the vast network of Saud princes who operate in a manner more reminiscent of the Sopranos than a modern, relatively transparent government, says a former senior CIA and FBI official with long experience in the country. The Saud family's legitimacy is built not on law but on an extremist brand of Islam, Wahhabism, in which Osama bin Laden was schooled, much as Tony Soprano's power is based on violence. (Remember when people used to talk about forcing the Saudis to change their radical Islamist views after 9/11? Didn't happen. Instead we invaded somewhat secular Iraq—at least it was next door to the real problem—and found ourselves preoccupied.) Imagine if Tony S. ran much of the world's oil supply and used the vast profits to fund more Bada-Bing fronts for organized crime all over the world? Don't you think governments would band together to stop it? Well, that's not unlike what's happening today, with Saudi Arabia's financing of anti-Western sentiment—but no one's doing anything about it, starting with George Bush. Simply because it's the Saudi government. Our "friends."
Clearly King Abdullah and other senior members of his government are not unfriendly to Washington. But many other Saudis are. This is what some experts have called petro-Islam. The Saudis have used their vast profits to fund not Bada-Bing clubs but Wahhabist mosques around the world, even in the United States. Wahhabists—or Salafists, as members of the broader movement are called—believe in a strict interpretation of the Qur'an and a pure, self-contained Islamic state. Many also embrace the idea that integration into the West—or American society—is profane. This never represented mainstream Islam. In fact, the creator of Wahhabism, the 18th-century thinker Mohammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, was notorious among Muslims of his time for being something of an extremist himself. He vandalized shrines, and he was denounced by many Islamic theologians for his "doctrinal mediocrity and illegitimacy," as the scholar Abdelwahab Meddeb notes in "Islam and Its Discontents." The upshot is that Western consumers are paying hundreds of billions of dollars in oil profits to help educate and fund their own potential murderers.
None of this would have happened had it not been for the petro-dollar. The Saudis would have stayed obscure Bedouins and Wahhabism little more than a cult. But because of their oil wealth, the Saudis were able to spread Wahhabism's seed worldwide, making it far more mainstream than it would have been otherwise. As one Egyptian intellectual described it me, "It's as if Jimmy Swaggart had come into hundreds of billions of dollars and taken over most of Christianity."
Saudi Arabia was always the problem, and not just because 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. It is because of the rise of petro-Islam in this troubled land. And as oil climbs in value, and research lags on alternative energy sources, this pathological family concern known as Saudi Arabia only grows. Even now no one is really doing anything about this critical problem. Bush was right when he said in his second inaugural address, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." If only he had taken himself seriously on this trip. Perhaps next time he ought to insist on seeing a few dissidents.
BENAZIR....THE LEGEND
Benazir: The legend
M Waqar USA Khyberzalmee@comcast.net
I was shocked, disheartened and saddened by awful news of Benazir Bhutto’s murder and with her of many others. Benazir wanted freedom for her country and democracy, freedom to choose the leader of Jinnah’ s Pakistan. Democracy is the important part of freedom and letting the people to choose their leader, whom they want to represent them. Ms Bhutto’s murder shows that she was close to cutting the ties that the terrorist held against nation wanting democracy and freedom of its people. The murder of this great lady shows how coward these terrorists really are. They run and hide like dogs with their tails between their legs. Hide in rat holes and hide their faces, In the name of Allah terrorists do terrible things that Allah is actually against. The Quran is the word of the Lord of the Worlds, which Allah revealed to His Messenger Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), to bring mankind forth from darkness into light.” I think Ms Bhutto was doing that herself, bringing people out of the darkness into the light of a free world where basic needs should be met, plenty of food, warm shelter and clean water to drink. She was an extraordinary lady. We need to salute the extraordinary courage, determination and fortitude exhibited by Benazir Bhutto in the face of overwhelming odds. Human beings of lesser endowments would have long since taken to safer avenues. She faced all the tribulations following her father’s hanging with determination, and had only Pakistan’s interest on her mind. Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination has brutally highlighted the growing influence of inhuman terrorists in Pakistan. Let us be clear that these extremists are a clear and present danger to not just Pakistan, but the whole world. These cowards will be judged not just in the afterlife, but also in this world. While Ms Bhutto will live on in the hearts and minds of millions, these terrorists will be cursed forever. Her death is a sad indicator of how dangerous it has become in this country to be a liberal and a moderate. Religious extremism that leads to such blatant violence. She was killed by fierce, brutal, cruel ,ignorant person. These barbaric practices of Al-qaeda are unacceptable in civilized world. She was a brave woman, who did not hide in rat holes like Osama, mullah omar and his cronies, she had courage and like her father was not afraid of death. Benazir Bhutto was a sign of hope not only for the country but also for the women who saw in her a saviour. If we look at paki history, non of paki leaders enjoyed respect, the ones who were real, sincere, people of principles. There are stories about the death of Jinnah, Fatima Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Z A Bhutto and now his daughter, Benazir murdered in cold blood, her entire family wiped out by two generals. The story of Bhutto family can be compared to Kennedys of America and Gandhis of India. Its a conspiracy against Bhutto family. Benazir was champion of progressive politics. None of paki politicians can match her and Z A Bhutto charisma, talent and quality of leadership. Taliban, the Al Qaeda and other extremist groups have achieved their target to Talibanise Pakistan by killing Benazir. Today in Pakistan, educated, moderate class is ignoring this danger, leaders of progressive parties are just watching events unfolding from their drawing rooms, they even don’t have courage to say something, they are afraid of death, the Death Benazir welcomed. She was a legend. She could stay in London, New York and Dubai, she gained more respect and honour on foreign soils, she was not a fashion show model, movie star, singer but was a woman, who cared about her country, who knew the miseries of her people, she knew people in her country have no rights, education, freedom. She was invited to deliver lectures in USA and Europe, was not that an honour for Pakistan? During my 21 year stay in USA ,I never seen anyone so disgusted and sad about the murder of Benazir. New York is a place where you can meet anyone from any part of the world, from asia to Africa to Europe, its amazing that people in USA were glued to tv news and watching coverage of this horrible crime committed by Musharraf security agencies through talibans and al-qeada. If anyone finds out, you are from Pakistan, there first question is why this happened? why they killed Benazir? Does women have no rights in Pakistan? is it OK to kill women in Pakistan? that’s what Islam teach? She was killed because muslims don’t like women in power? These are the questions Pakistanis are trying to answer all over the world in free societies. Does anyone not believe that Musharraf’s security forces are secretly supporting al-Qaeda in Pakistan? Does anyone not believe that Musharraf wanted Bhutto dead, and saw her as a threat to his own dictatorship? Bhutto symbolizes the freedom that every woman in the Islamic World strives to achieve, a freedom from male dominated Talibanistic tyrants like Musharraf who is trying to play both sides of the fence to preserve his own dictatorship. It's a coward and a barbarian who stalks and kills someone who thinks differently. It is not a brave martyr, but a coward. Musharraf did not conduct investigations of last attempt on her life in Karachi. Benazir openly said that Ch. Wajahat Hussain and Ch. Pervez Elhi and intelligence agency were behind her assassination attempt. Musharraf refused to accept her demand of bringing investigators from US. Musharraf knows killers, Ijazul-Haq and his Al-qeada buddies are mastermind of this murder. International news agencies are reporting that SSG Commandos killed PPP Chief Benazir Bhutto, What was the crime of Bhutto family??? Z A BHUTTO’s crime was to make Pakistan a nuclear power, to unite muslim world, what was the crime of Benazir ??? The attack at Rawalpindi bore the hallmarks of a sophisticated military operation. Al-qeada is a ‘’B ’’ team of Musharraf, he can’t be trusted, that’s the reason I wrote an article published in Frontier Post earlier this year (Deal or No Deal), I knew Benazir was trapped by generals. This general is taking billions of dollars from USA and is also negotiating and shaking hands with Taliban. Who knows if Osama and his cronies are hiding somewhere. Lets look at this murder from another point of view, as we know Mush-regime is getting billions of dollars from USA to fight against Al-qeada, we know where that money is going and this regime was afraid of that if Benazir gets power she might disclose to the world how Mush and his cronies used that money, to hide Mush regime crimes and Choudries of Punjab’s corruption. Benazir Bhutto was fearful for her life that she tried to hire British and American security experts to protect her, according to The Sunday Telegraph. But the plans collapsed because Musharraf refused to allow the foreign contractors to operate in Pakistan, when there are terrorist threats, security paraphernalia prevents leaders from mixing with their followers. Pakistani authorities have pressured the medical personnel who tried to save Benazir Bhutto's life to remain silent about what happened in her final hour and have removed records of her treatment from the facility, so this clearly shows that Mush is involved in her murder, doctors who were at Bhutto's side at Rawalpindi General Hospital said they were under extreme pressure not to share details about the nature of the injuries that the opposition leader suffered in an attack here Dec. 27. Pindi is a city that serves as headquarters of the Pakistani military and if citizens and important public figures can be killed in that sensitive city then what that tells u???? Only a professional person can murder someone like this, trained by military. The truth is, Mush regime is not doing any investigation as it did not when she was attacked in October. Ms Bhutto was a brave leader who gave priority to meeting people at the cost of security risks, and paid a heavy price for this.
Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=le&nid=275&ad=02-01-200
Dated: January 02 , 2008 Wednesday 22 Zil Hajj 1428 A.H
Talibanisation of Pakhtoonistan
Talibanisation of the NWFP
Dr Naeem Chishti
Located on both banks of the river Indus, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) is undoubtedly the most beautiful province of Pakistan. With an approximate population of 21 million, it covers an area of 28,772 square miles stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the deserts of Punjab and Baluchistan in the south. The province is divided into 24 administrative districts, with 83 percent of its population living in rural areas. About 70 percent of its residents are Pashtuns with Pashto as their mother-tongue and twenty percent are Hindkowans (sometimes referred to as Punjabi Pathans) with Hindko as their primary language. By comparison, almost 99 percent of the FATA population is Pashto speaking. While above eighty percent of NWFP’s population belongs to Ahl-i-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat, about 15 percent of its inhabitants are Shiite Muslims. In the domain of social sector indicators, 46 percent of the province's population lives below poverty line while the literacy rate is as low as 38 percent which is particularly precarious in case of female literacy. Since Pakistan’s creation in 1947, there have been many transformations in the political orientation of the people of the province ranging from the rise of secular nationalist forces such as National Awami Party (NAP) in 1957 to the growth of the politico-religious parties such as Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP) in 1970. The 1980s Afghan war introduced a militant flavour to the politics of the province as Peshawar and its adjacent tribal areas became home to mujahideen from all over the Muslim world. The dynamics of the area were soon changed by the spread of madrassahs, the presence of CIA personnel, the influx of Saudi petro-dollars and the establishment of training camps by some agencies. Between 1988 and 1999, Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif’s faction of the Pakistan Muslim League alternated in ruling the province. The Awami National Party (ANP), a successor of the secular NAP, also became an influential player in the 1990s and remained a coalition partner in governing the volatile province. The NWFP has always been a victim of Pakistan’s regional policy as well as international politics. The wounds of the 1980s Afghan war in the shape of religious militancy, drug trade and kilashankove culture still haunt the province. Consequently, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s had a deep impact on Pashtun identity and politics. While the madrassahs that played a large part in producing the Taliban are still operational, the military strategy adopted by the United States and partly implemented by Pakistan has further complicated the crisis. In the midst of all this, a new wave of religious bigotry has taken over the rural areas of the NWFP, where local extremists, inspired by the Taliban in Afghanistan and in the FATA, are trying to convince people that their own dogmatic version of Islam is the only ray of hope. However, in urban centres and non-Pashtun or Hindko speaking areas of the NWFP centrist and leftist political forces still hold ground. In various districts adjacent to the FATA, Taliban and local militant forces are gaining ground—especially in Karak, Tank, Lakki Marwat, Bannu, Kohat, and Dera Ismail Khan. All of these districts border Waziristan. The activities of religious militant groups in these districts area include closing girls’ schools, the bombing of video and music shops, ban on shaving beards, strict imposition of the burqa or hijab for women and attacks on NGOs, especially those employing women. Importantly, the Taliban added a dangerous new dimension to their militancy campaign in March this year when they allegedly forced schoolchildren in a small town in Tank district to sign up for suicide bombing missions. According to press reports at least 30 schoolchildren in Tank district were abducted for this cause which sent shock waves through the area and forced many families to migrate to other parts of the province. When the school principal called the police, he was kidnapped from his home and his dead body was later found in South Waziristan. In Swat district, Maulana Fazlullah of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) was able to enforce his writ and he publicly foisted Taliban flags on at least five major police stations in the area after removing the flag of Pakistan. TNSM successfully terrorized the people of Swat and raised significant money from the area at gunpoint. Their gangs regularly disarmed security personnel, took over government buildings and introduced a parallel justice system based on their extreme version of Sharia law. Maulana Fazlullah also ran more than two dozen FM radio stations propagating his extremist views. Very recently, Pakistan Army started its military operation in the area and the troops were able to claim some success after stiff battles to bring the area under the government’s control. It is curious, however, why Musharraf regime never targeted the TNSM communication and media network before. This is in stark contrast to President Musharraf’s clampdown on liberal media outlets immediately after the November 3 emergency rule, when he even went to the extent of pressuring the UAE government to stop the transmission of Geo and ARY channels. In June this year, the National Security Council under the leadership of General Musharraf discussed in detail a report prepared jointly by the leading intelligence agencies about the growing influence of Taliban in the area. The report mentioned that the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan, lingering political disputes in the Muslim world and a growing feeling among Muslims that they are under attack from the West are major contributory factors behind the growing insurgency in the region. The report also projected a downturn in U.S. interest in Afghanistan beginning in 2007 suggesting that in the long run Pakistan would have to tackle the problem of Talibanisation by itself. Past and current practices of our intelligence agencies indicate that they must have concluded earlier that Pakistan would yet again need a “working relationship” with the Taliban to pursue its interests in Afghanistan and to compete with Indian and Iranian goals in the region. That explains why JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman is becoming increasingly friendly towards Musharraf regime. Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s JUI-F, which is a major component of the MMA, has been in power in the province for full five years from November 2002 to October 2007. It is during this period that Taliban were able to consolidate themselves in the province to such an extent that they even challenged the military authorities openly. Therefore, after getting an assurance that his party would return to power, Maulana Fazlur Rehman has accelerated his activities in the area by vowing not to boycott the polls. Clearly, his new attitude is the result of guarantees given to him that the NWFP will remain under his control. That is why he is not challenging General Musharraf openly even when all other major political parties are targeting the president. It is because of the same assurance that the JUI-chief unexpectedly gave a pro-American statement after meeting US ambassador Anne W Anderson last month in which he declared that tribesmen in the FATA are not against Washington-sponsored development projects and that the United States is sincere in developing the area. It is questionable, however, whether Maulana Fazlur Rehman will be able to manage the new extremist forces in the area if his party returns to power after the next general elections. Events in the province’s Swat district such as the rise of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) are signs of the increasing threat to the security of Pakistan. However, the NWFP is not likely to physically slip out of Pakistan’s hands like East Pakistan did on 16 December 1971. But, like East Pakistan, the NWFP is certainly in the eye of the storm at present. Despite Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s claims to the contrary, religious political forces have lost some of their support base due to poor governance and the MMA is not expected to do well in the coming elections because of internal divisions between JI and JUI-F. The main problem of the province is Talibanisation for which religious elements are mainly responsible. However, instead of targeting them through his arbitrary imposition of emergency rule, General Musharraf targeted those very forces on 3 November 2007 which could challenge extremists. As a result, many human rights activists and lawyers in the NWFP were arrested and top judges of the NWFP high court known for their progressive views and integrity were sent home. Among the militants, nonetheless, this action of General Musharraf is being interpreted as his weakness, further emboldening their activities. Pakistan is faced with a long struggle to return a measure of stability and normalcy to the province. The absence of credible democratic institutions coupled with poverty of the masses has severely damaged the body politic of the province. Lack of investment for education is another potent factor. Districts where insurgents and militants are thriving have the worst literacy rates in the province. All independent reports suggest that General Musharraf’s model of government has played into the hands of religious extremist forces instead of discouraging Talibanisation. Now with a major military operation in Swat, Musharraf regime may be able to tackle the TNSM strongly and may also hail it as a major victory in the international market but this is not permanent solution of the NWFP problem, since TNSM remnants will certainly raise their heads again given the prevailing circumstances in the region. If the government or the international agencies are really interested in preventing the province from falling under the influence, if not in the hands, of Taliban they should focus their energies on maximising job opportunities, increasing literacy and establishing true democracy in the NWFP.
