"Russia in Global Affairs"
Sergei Lavrov is Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister. This article was written on the basis of his June 20, 2008 speech at the international symposium “Russia in the 21st Century,” organized in Moscow by the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in partnership with the British think tank Policy Network, and the Alfred Herrhausen Society, within the framework of the latter’s project “Foresight – Forging Common Futures in a Multi-Polar World.”
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In modern international relations it is difficult to find a more fundamental issue than the definition of the current stage in global development. This is important for any country in order to correlate a development strategy and a foreign policy with the vision of the world we live in. It seems that a consensus is already being formed on this score, albeit at the level of the expert community both in Russia and abroad. This is largely a consequence of debates, on which Russia insisted. Moreover, this emerging consensus largely reproduces the analysis which Russia offered as a starting position for discussion in Vladimir Putin’s speech in Munich in February 2007.
It is already obvious that individual problems of world politics cannot be solved without understanding the “big issues” of global development and without reaching a common vision of them in the international community.
I will try to outline some of these issues, which are directly related to the building of Russia’s foreign-policy strategy.
THE END OF THE COLD WAR: UNDER WHAT THE LINE WAS DRAWN?
There is already no doubt that the end of the Cold War marked the end of a longer stage in global development, which lasted for 400 to 500 years and when the world was dominated by European civilization. This domination was consistently led by the historical West.
As regards the content of the new stage in humankind’s development, there are two basic approaches to it among countries. The first one holds that the world must gradually become a Greater West through the adoption of Western values. It is a kind of “the end of history.” The other approach – advocated by Russia – holds that competition is becoming truly global and acquiring a civilizational dimension; that is, the subject of competition now includes values and development models.
The new stage is sometimes defined as “post-American.” But, of course, this is not “a world after the United States,” the more so without the U.S. It is a world where – due to the growth of other global centers of power and influence – the relative importance of the U.S. role has been decreasing, as it has already happened in recent decades in the global economy and trade. Leadership is another matter, above all a matter of reaching agreement among partners and a matter of ability to be the first – but among equals.
Various terms have been proposed to define the content of the emerging world order, among them multi-polar, polycentric and nonpolar. The latter characteristic is given, in particular, by Richard Haass. It is difficult not to agree with him that power and influence are now becoming diffused. But even the former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department admits that ensuring the governability of global development in the new conditions requires establishing a core group of leading nations. That is, in any case the matter at hand is the need for collective leadership, which Russia has been consistently advocating. Of course, the diversity of the world requires that such collective leadership be truly representative both geographically and civilizationally.
We do not share the apprehensions that the ongoing reconfiguration in the world will inevitably bring about “chaos and anarchy.” It is a natural process of forming a new international architecture – both political and financial-economic – that would meet the new realities.
One such reality is the return of Russia to global politics, the global economy and finance as an active, full-fledged actor. This refers to our place on the world energy and grain markets; to our leadership in the field of nuclear energy and space exploration; to our capabilities in the sphere of land, air and sea transit; and to the role of the ruble as one of the most reliable world currencies.
Unfortunately, the Cold War experience has distorted the consciousness of several generations of people, above all political elites, making them think that any global policy must be ideologized. And now, when Russia is guided in international affairs by understandable, pragmatic interests, void of any ideological motives whatsoever, not everyone is able to adequately take it. Some people say we have some “grievances,” “hidden agendas,” “neo-imperial aspirations” and all that stuff. This situation will hardly change soon, as the matter at issue is psychological factors – after all, at least two generations of political leaders were brought up in a certain ideological system of coordinates, and sometimes they are simply unable to think in categories beyond those frameworks. Other factors include quite specific, understandably interested motives pertaining to privileges that the existing global financial-economic architecture gives to individual countries.
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT MODELS: PLURALISM AND SYNTHESIS
Russia views itself as part of a European civilization with common Christian roots. The experience of this region offers material that can be used to simulate forthcoming global processes. Thus, even a superficial analysis suggests the conclusion that the overcoming of the Cold War has not solved the problem of ways for social development. Rather, it has only helped to avoid extreme approaches and come closer to its solution on a more realistic basis – especially considering that ideological considerations very often distorted the effect of market forces, as well as the idea of democracy.
The rigid Anglo-Saxon model of socio-economic development has again started to fail, as it did in the 1920s. This time, the failure is due to the isolation of the U.S. financial system from the real sector of economy. On the other hand, there is the socially oriented Western European model, which was a product of European society’s development throughout the 20th century, including the tragedies of the two world wars, the Cold War, and the Soviet Union’s experience. The Soviet Union played no small role in this process, as it not only served as the “Soviet threat” that consolidated the West, but also motivated Western Europe to “socialize” its economic development.
Therefore, by proclaiming the goal of creating a socially oriented economy, the new Russia appeals to our common European heritage. This is yet more evidence of Russia’s compatibility with the rest of Europe.
The end of the Cold War coincided in time with attempts to unify European development according to the Anglo-Saxon model. However, there is an impression that Europe will hardly give up its development model which meets its views of life and which has a more solid financial and economic foundation. Rebalancing is possible and, apparently, inevitable on both sides of the Atlantic. This brings to mind Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal policy, which marked a time of convergence in America’s development.
Probably, a synthesis of various models – as a process, rather than a final result – will be a key trend in global development in the foreseeable future. Accordingly, the multiformity of the contemporary world, which reflects its more fundamental characteristic – cultural and civilizational diversity, will remain. One can also assume that in order to make the global “rules of the game” more effective in these conditions, they must be freed from ideology.
A different, unifying approach would lead to interventionism – a strategy that is hardly realistic, since its effectiveness can be achieved only in a transition toward global imperial construction. Movement in that direction would increase tensions in global and regional politics and would exacerbate unsolved global problems – as seen from the current aggravation of the global food crisis.
These factors speak in favor of pluralism on a wide range of social development parameters as a non-alternative and, most importantly, non-confrontational way for the international community’s existence at the present stage.
Whatever the circumstances of what is called the valorization of natural resources, this trend is creating conditions for moving toward equalization of development levels in the contemporary world. The task is to create modalities and mechanisms for the effective use of redistributed global financial resources for the purpose of universal development. Thus, sovereign wealth funds already participate in refinancing the U.S. banking system.
THE GAP BETWEEN THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ORDERS
International experts, including American ones, write about a “world turned upside down” and criticize the “weak dollar” policy. What is remarkable is the analysis of Henry Kissinger, who writes that “the International Monetary Fund as presently constituted is an anachronism” and who even points to the need of restoring moral aspects in economic and financial activities.
One cannot but agree with Kissinger’s statement about the emergence of a gap between the economic and political orders in the world. But we must clarify something in this regard. First, there is no reasonable alternative to a global political architecture relying on the United Nations and the rule of international law. Let us not forget that the UN was created even before the beginning of the Cold War for use in a multipolar international system. In other words, its potential can be fully tapped only now.
Second, the global financial-economic architecture was largely created by the West to suit its own needs. And now that we are watching the generally recognized shift of financial-economic power and influence toward new fast-growing economies, such as China, India, Russia and Brazil, the inadequacy of this system to the new realities becomes obvious. In reality, a financial-economic basis is needed that would conform to the polycentricity of the contemporary world. Otherwise, the governability of global development cannot be restored.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev spoke about this in detail in Berlin and at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. The reform of international institutions will be among the subjects to be discussed at the upcoming Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido, Japan. So the urgency of the matter evokes no doubt among our G8 partners, either. Russia is ready to participate constructively in this joint work.
WINDS OF CHANGE: RUSSIA AND THE U.S.
I think that as soon as these big issues are duly grasped, it will be easier to solve all the other issues, including the range of problems in relations within the Euro-Atlantic region.
Fyodor Tyutchev [a 19th-century Russian poet] wrote that “by the very fact of its existence Russia negates the future of the West.” We can refute Tyutchev only by acting together – building a common future for the whole Euro-Atlantic region and for the whole world, in which security and prosperity will be truly indivisible.
New things scare people. At the same time, they are inevitable. And there is only one rational response to this challenge – accept this reality. When they scare us with the threat of “anarchy” in the contemporary world (which is very Russian-like, but done, as a rule, from the outside), they forget that any system can be self-regulatory. This requires effective, adequate institutions, which should be created.
I would like to make it clear: Russia, as no other country, understands the painfulness of the current changes. No one can get away from them. Moreover, as experience shows, adaptation at the level of foreign policy can only result from serious changes within the states themselves. Therefore Russia has quite realistic expectations regarding when changes should be awaited in the foreign policy philosophy of its international partners.
In contemporary conditions, it is hardly appropriate to speak in terms of “challenges” thrown down by some states to others. This only results in too much focus in foreign-policy strategies on virtual dangers. The interdependence brought about by globalization motivates no one to “throw down challenges” to whomever. And Russia is the last one to need this: we have enough problems of our own, which we are well aware of; at the same time, we understand the interests of our partners. What is dangerous is a lack of cooperation and holding aloof from the problems of one’s partner – which makes collective actions to address common tasks impossible.
Each country and each nation have had enough national catastrophes and tragedies in their history. The longer the history, the more positive and negative events it comprises. I fully agree with Vladislav Inozemtsev who maintains that the Soviet Union and the United States, even when they confronted each other, remained remarkably alike. Often our actions, taken in the name of the assertion of opposite ideals, were remarkably similar in the means involved and their practical consequences.
There has always existed an interrelation between Russia and the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville predicted a common future for our countries way back in the 19th century. This interrelation also showed itself in the fact that after 1917 the U.S. gradually and even unwillingly replaced Russia in the European balance. It is another matter that there is currently no longer any need for Europe to have external balancers, be it Russia or the U.S. We understand this very well – and this is why we come out for equal relations in a tripartite format involving Russia, the European Union and the U.S.
In the 20th century, this interrelation was corroborated by convergence events that were not only limited to the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and allied relations within the anti-Hitler coalition. Thus, the election of John F. Kennedy as U.S. president can be attributed, among other things, to America’s reaction to the Soviet Union’s rise – not only technological and military-technical, but also spiritual, at the level of an entirely new attitude to the world, which stemmed from Khrushchev’s Thaw and the completion of the postwar reconstruction. Kennedy made a bold attempt to overcome the logic of militarization of foreign-policy thinking, of whose danger his predecessor had warned. Unfortunately, later the pendulum of foreign-policy philosophy swung toward politics based on instincts and ideological prejudice. Now everyone is wondering when this pendulum will swing back, which will show what kind of America the world will have to deal with.
Russian-U.S. relations would benefit greatly from the establishment of an atmosphere of mutual trust and mutual respect, which characterized the relationship between the presidents of the two countries over the last eight years but which not always showed itself at the lower levels. Paradoxically, there was more mutual trust and respect between the two states during the Cold War. Perhaps, it was because there was less lecturing then about what a state should be and how it should behave. There was awareness of the need – and the desire – to address issues that were truly significant for our two countries and the whole world.
We understand that America is facing difficult tasks. On the positive side, we see that the understanding is beginning to prevail that these are problems, above all, of America itself, including its ability to accept “a world with a diversity of voices and viewpoints.” Intellectual rigidity will only restrain America’s inherent ability to adapt to changing realities. History “happens” to all countries and peoples, and this refers to Russia much more than to any other country. But this factor teaches tolerance, without which neither empires nor simply normal equal relations between states can survive.
It is gratifying that in the course of the current U.S. presidential campaign voices are growing louder in favor of preserving and developing the disarmament and arms control process. Such cooperation alone would be enough to ensure stability for our bilateral relations, until there is mutual readiness for their substantial modernization in accordance with the requirements of the times.
EURO-ATLANTIC SPACE: BETWEEN FRAGMENTATION AND A COMMON FUTURE
The issue of the destiny of the diverse European civilization now presents itself in a new way. At the political level, there is a need for equal interaction among its three independent, yet related, component parts. The confrontational paradigm of intra-European relations of the Cold War era is giving way to a cooperation paradigm. This means tolerance of dissent, and pluralism of views and positions. Democracy is always historical and national by nature.
The proposals put forward by President Medvedev in Berlin are based on a sober analysis of the situation. The European architecture, established back in the Cold War years, prevents overcoming the negative dynamics set by inertia approaches of the past and by contradictions accumulating in European affairs. There remains only one thing to do, and that is to look further than what we have; that is, to try and create something that would unite the entire Euro-Atlantic region at the level of principles, by which we should be guided in our relations. After that, we will be able to move on. But without this clarity it will be difficult to create a critical mass of confidence that is required for building positive, forward-looking relations in our region. The importance of principles follows, for example, from the fact that at the annual OSCE ministerial meetings we have for years been unable to achieve any accord on reiteration by all states-parties of their adherence to the principles of the Helsinki Final Act. What more proof is required to prove the ailment of all Euro-Atlantic politics?
There is a need for a positive process, including convening a pan-European summit, in order to fill the political vacuum emerging in the Euro-Atlantic region, and to make up a positive agenda, which we lack so badly now. Over time, we could determine which elements of European architecture are promising and which are not, what stands in our way, and what we can take with us into the future. Why not insure ourselves, especially when much is still unclear? That would not be a means of pressure on any existing structure or organization. The matter at issue would be the creation of a new atmosphere of confidence in our region, which could help to take a new look at the relevance of the arms control process, as well. Let us develop it on a modern universal basis, rather than along bloc lines. Otherwise, the legacy that we have inherited from the previous epoch will only create a feeling that a war in Europe is still possible.
We all should think and look around – this is the meaning of the pause that we suggest. But this means that all projects should be frozen where they are now, be it Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, the implementation of plans to deploy elements of a U.S. global missile defense system in Eastern Europe, or NATO’s eastward expansion – because any desire to complete – at any cost and by a specific date – the implementation of what causes strong rejection among partners and what threatens to ruin established relations, will cause a reaction. This vicious circle must be broken.
What is the alternative? A further accumulation of “electricity” in the atmosphere of Euro-Atlantic relations? Do we really need to continue making blunders? Will it be good for all of us if we watch from the outside how, for example, the European Union proves its post-modernity, or NATO, its efficiency in Afghanistan? Likewise, we would not want our partners to remain aloof from the implementation of the project for Russia’s modernization.
Finally, we all should step over ourselves and stop the unnecessary talk about “veto power” outside the UN Security Council, about “spheres of influence” and the like. We can very well do without all that, as there are more important things where we undoubtedly have common interests. We must build confidence and develop skills for joint work in truly significant strategic matters. Then many things will look different. Let life decide and put everything in its place. What really depends on us and what demands political decisions is that we must stop sliding into the past, into an absurdity that we all will be ashamed of. And history will not forgive us, either. Is it not in our common interest to have “a coherent Europe,” all parts of which are united by “workable relations”?
TIME TO ADDRESS GLOBAL PROBLEMS TOGETHER
Everyone has their own problems; everyone has something to do. The U.S. electorate is about to make a choice. The European Union is in the process of adaptation. In EU countries, processes of ethno-religious self-determination are ripening – both among the indigenous population and recent immigrants. “Rich” regions aspire to their independent existence in order not to pay for the development of “poor” regions within one and the same state. This is a serious test for the EU’s commitment to the ideas of tolerance and solidarity.
Psychologically, it is easy to understand those who wish to leave everything the way it is, in order to die in the Europe or the America in which they were born. But the rapid changes do not allow such a luxury. They presuppose, among other things, civilizational compatibility, and tolerance not only in word but also in deed. And this will be hard to achieve in conditions when militant secularism acts from positions that differ little from an official religion.
No less importantly, the time has come to address global problems which the world had no time to address during the Cold War. There were other, ideological priorities then. If not now, then when will we fight global poverty, hunger and diseases? The international community has not achieved much progress yet.
We see nothing in our approach that would be contrary to the principles of rationality, intrinsic in Europeans’ attitude to the world. Acting differently means piling up problems upon problems and making the future of Europe and the entire Euro-Atlantic region hostage to hasty decisions. That would be a huge waste of time, resulting in a multitude of lost opportunities for joint action. We are not hurrying anyone; we only urge all nations to think together about what is awaiting us. But a breakthrough into our common future requires new, innovative approaches. The future belongs to them.
© 2004 "Russia in Global Affairs".
Russia and the World in the 21st Century
Envoy offers grim review of risks facing Afghanistan
GENEVA: Ex- EU envoy presses West to step up effort
One of the most experienced Western envoys in Afghanistan delivered a depressing review Sunday of the situation there, calling it the worst since 2001 and urging concerted American and foreign action even before a new U. S. administration takes office to avoid " a very hot winter for all of us."
Francesc Vendrell, who has just stepped down as European Union envoy in Afghanistan and has eight years of experience in the country, in particular criticized the growing number of civilian deaths in attacks by U. S. and international forces. These have created " a great deal of antipathy," and helped widen the growing distance between the Afghan government and its citizens, he said at a meeting of foreign and security policy experts organized by the London- based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The U. S. military is currently engaged in an inquiry into an incident in Shindand District in western Afghanistan in which, villagers assert, about 90 people were killed in a missile attack on Aug. 22. American officers have given a far lower toll, saying 7 civilians were killed.
Vendrell warned that the situation was particularly dangerous among the Pashtun tribes that live mainly in southern Afghanistan, bordering Pakistan. However, he noted that the insurgency led by the Taliban had spread not only to the east, but close to Kabul, and in pockets to the hitherto relatively peaceful north and west of the country.
While only a minority of Pashtun actively support the Taliban, he added, most Pashtun " are sitting on the fence to see who is going to be the winner."
With inflation raising prices of food and fuel, deteriorating security and the failure to engage either the Taliban or regional powers such as Pakistan, Iran and India in searching for solutions, Vendrell said, Afghanistan could be facing " a very cold winter" that threatens to become " a very hot winter for all of us."
Bluntly, Vendrell traced what he called a long series of foreign mistakes in Afghanistan, and recommended action to ensure that the local Afghan authorities and foreign agencies followed up any military successes against the Taliban with concrete assistance to local citizens, to convince them that Westerners and the Kabul government can deliver security and some minimal well- being.
Vendrell, a Spanish diplomat who played a leading role in the conference in Bonn that set up the post- Taliban government, said the " first great mistake" in 2001 was to hold that conference after the United States had triumphed over the Taliban government that sheltered the Qaeda terrorists blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks. By the time the Bonn talks took place, he said, Northern Alliance warlords and their allies controlled some two- thirds of Afghanistan, making their control a " fait accompli."
In addition, too much faith was placed in President Hamid Karzai and too little was done to ensure that his government had a monopoly of force, strong police and other institutions, in part because of what Vendrell called " Secretary Rumsfeld' s abhorrence for nation building," referring to Donald Rumsfeld, the chief of the Pentagon at the time.
Vendrell' s audience included dozens of security and foreign policy experts, many of whom advise European governments, a smattering of U. S. military officers and some cabinet ministers, including the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari. The note of alarm sounded about Afghanistan, and Pakistan, was echoed in off- the- record conversations at the conference, an annual review of global strategy by the nongovernmental International Institute for Strategic Studies.
It was a mistake by the United Nations to limit the mandate of foreign soldiers to Kabul, and for the world to get distracted by the war in Iraq, Vendrell said.
Alluding to Karzai without naming him, Vendrell added: " We thought we had found a miracle man; miracle men do not exist."
" Too much responsibility without power was invested in this person," he said.
Another person " we should not have taken at his word" was the former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, Vendrell said, citing what he called Pakistan' s history of supporting extremists in Afghanistan, its quarrels over the so- called Durand Line separating the two countries and the failure of the Pakistani military and politicians to formulate clearly how they would like events to unfold in Afghanistan.
Despite his depressing review, Vendrell said it was no time to abandon Afghanistan, but indeed to redouble efforts there, both militarily and in building up civilian institutions, ensuring elections are held next year and, for the United States in particular, developing clear policies and standards to govern the detention of hundreds of Afghans it holds without trial. Such detentions create a " bad precedent" for the future Afghan authorities, he said.
" This is not the time to leave. We are not destined to fail, but we are far from succeeding," he said. " We must continue to remember the sad experience of Sept. 11, when we had walked away from Afghanistan for 13 years."
PAKISTAN'S WILD WEST....TRIBAL HISTORY AND INTRODUCTION
Pakistan’s remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (the tribal lands) have been a training ground for insurgents and a focal point for terrorism fears, particularly since the 9/11 attacks. President Pervez Musharraf finds himself squeezed between U.S. demands to control militants in the tribal lands and opposition from his own army against fighting the region's predominant ethnic Pashtuns, who have strongly resisted Pakistani rule just as they fought British control during colonial times.
Meanwhile, tensions between Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and Musharraf grow. Karzai insists Pakistan increase security and stop incursions by Taliban insurgents into his country, even though the Afghan leader refuses to recognize the disputed common border, which divides tribes of the Pashtun ethnic group on either side of the frontier. As the tribal lands continue to serve as a training base for terrorists and the Taliban, deploying Pakistani troops into the region has harmed efforts to integrate the tribal areas into Pakistan. Bill Roggio, a U.S. veteran who has written from Iraq and Afghanistan, says the uncertainty over how to handle the tribal lands “makes the problems in Iraq look like a picnic.”
The Pakistani Tribal Areas
The semi-autonomous tribal lands consist of seven parts called “agencies”: Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, and North and South Waziristan. There are also six smaller zones known as frontier regions in the transitional area between the tribal lands and the North-West Frontier Province to the east. The harsh, mountainous territory of the tribal lands runs along the Afghanistan border, drawn during colonial times by British diplomat Sir Henry Mortimer Durand as a means to divide and weaken the eleven major Pashtun tribes and turn Afghanistan into a buffer zone between the British and Russian empires. To the south of the tribal lands lies the large province of Balochistan. It is also divided by the border known as the Durand Line, which has never been recognized by Afghanistan and is a fluid boundary across which the Taliban make incursions from Pakistan. “There’s no border security, there’s no border guards, there’s no border control,” says Amin Tarzi, a regional analyst for U.S.- financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The tribal lands joined Pakistan rather than India after the former gained independence in 1947, but Islamabad historically has had minimal control over the fiercely independent Pashtuns.
Governance of the Tribal Agencies
Although Pakistan’s constitution gives the president executive authority over the region, the appointed governor of the North West Frontier Province in Peshawar controls the tribal lands by managing the bureaus that deliver services such as health care and education in the tribal areas. The tribal lands have representatives in the national assembly, but not in the assembly of the North West Frontier Province.
However, the real power in the tribal agencies has historically rested with each of their political agents, who represent the federal government and maintain control through the colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulations. These laws “have been used as a whip to control the border tribes” for more than a century, write Barnett R. Rubin and Abubakar Siddique in a report on Afghan-Pakistani relations for the United States Institute of Peace. The regulations allow the political agent to impose collective punishment for crimes committed by an individual and to deliver prison sentences without due process or right of appeal. The tribal lands are also rife with corruption, given that selected tribal leaders known as maliks are given economic incentives doled out by political agents in exchange for their loyalty.
Individual tribesmen have limited rights, and in a region where political agents collect and distribute revenue with little oversight, development indicators show the literacy rate is a bleak 17 percent and there are more than eight thousand people per doctor, compared to roughly 1,500 people per doctor in the country overall. Rubin and Siddique report there are only 102 high schools in all of the tribal lands, while as many as three hundred madrassas, or Muslim schools, operate there. The rising number of these religious schools reflects the growing power of Islamic extremists in the tribal lands.
Extremists in the Tribal Lands
Yes. “The [tribal area] has become a melting pot for jihadis from all over the world,” says Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, adding that the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban, al-Qaeda, Chechens, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan are among the militants who train and take refuge in the tribal region. Furthermore, since the beginning of the Afghanistan war, members of the Taliban have advanced into leadership roles in some parts of the tribal lands, particularly the agencies of North and South Waziristan and Bajaur. The Pakistani government appears to take a harder stand on al-Qaeda to please the United States and a more permissive posture with the Taliban, who in turn work with other militant groups.
The rise of the Taliban has upset the political balance in the tribal areas, where there have been cases of tribal leaders getting killed for questioning the Taliban’s growing power or working too closely with Islamabad. However, the Taliban’s religious extremism is not a new element in the tribal lands. Longtime foreign correspondent and Pakistan-based author Kathy Gannon explains “extreme tribal views are not new,” and predate the international counterterrorism operation in the region by decades.
The Pakistani Government in the Tribal Lands
For the area’s tribesmen, being citizens of Pakistan is secondary to their Pashtun identity, and they regard foreigners, including Pakistani forces, with suspicion. Historically, Islamabad has exercised limited authority over the tribal agencies, but after the 9/11 attacks, the region came under the scrutiny of the United States as Taliban and al-Qaeda members took refuge there. Under U.S. pressure, President Musharraf ordered a counterterrorism maneuver involving the deployment of eighty thousand Pakistani troops over the course of the operation, which took place mainly in the agencies of North and South Waziristan. But the operation backfired when the forces failed to win a decisive victory. The conflict became increasingly unpopular with the Pakistani armed forces, the core of Musharraf’s support, among which there is a sense they are fighting their own countrymen under U.S. pressure. (Pashtuns are the second-largest ethnic group represented among the troops.) The Taliban also received past—and, some say, present—support from the Pakistani military and intelligence agency. On top of that, Gannon says the military’s operation in the Waziristan agencies stirred up the Pashtun desire for vengeance. “The more tribespeople you killed, the more you created a whole group who had to seek revenge,” explains Gannon. By June 2006, Musharraf realized he had to negotiate with tribal leaders to end the unpopular conflict.
Peace Deals with Tribal Areas
Since 9/11, Musharraf has been trying to control militancy in the tribal areas through various peace agreements. But so far, these deals have brought negligible success. The Pakistani government has little means to force tribal leaders to hold up their end of the bargain, given the unpopularity of military intervention in the region. Also, the peace agreements have been widely criticized for strengthening militancy and are perceived as the central government’s defeat at the hands of the militants.
In 2004, the Pakistani government reached a deal with Pakistani Taliban led by Nek Mohammed in South Waziristan whereby the militants agreed to live peacefully and not use Pakistani soil against any other country. Hailed as a breakthrough, by late 2007 the deal was regarded as a failure.
In September 2006, the Pakistani government reached a controversial peace treaty called the Miramshah agreement with North Waziristan tribal leaders and members of the Taliban. As part of the accords, Islamabad withdrew troops, released 165 militants, agreed to economically compensate tribe members for their losses, and allowed them to continue carrying small weapons. In return, tribal leaders said they would stop the infiltration of militants across the Afghani border and prevent attacks on the military. However, in July 2007, militants renounced the deal and cross-border operations surged.
In March 2007, the government signed another deal with pro-Taliban militants and tribal leaders in the Bajaur agency. The tribesmen and the militants agreed not to give foreign militants safe haven in the area and the government pledged not to make arrests without consulting tribal elders. But bombings and attacks on government property in the area followed, prompting renewed government efforts in August 2007 to negotiate with tribal elders and the militants. The militants insisted they were not responsible for the new violence while at the same time demanding the release of fellow militants arrested by government forces.
In August and September 2007, the government also signed peace treaties with different tribes in Mohmand agency, in which the tribes made similar promises of not sheltering any foreigners or supporting the militants. But journalist Rashid says, “I think what is important to understand is these agreements are extremely dangerous because they leave the Taliban in place.” He suggests a better course of action would be to round up Afghani Taliban leaders and send them to Kabul.
Looking to the Future
Experts agree that resolving the complex political issues in the region will take a long time. Gannon concedes that “it’s not as easy as just providing infrastructure” in a region where people have a long-standing code of behavior, but suggests that building roads and providing services can function as one step to draw tribal leaders “into the system.” Roggio says he is not an advocate of putting U.S. troops into the tribal lands, but says security in the region could be boosted by offering Pakistan counterinsurgency training and providing intelligence. The best hope would be to hold an informal meeting between Karzai and Musharraf to resolve how to control the tribal area on both sides of the border as well as the movement of insurgents across it, says Tarzi. But, he warns, “I think the winner here will be the terrorists, unfortunately.
*************************INTRODUCTION ***************
SOME MAJOR PUKHTOON TRIBES ALONG THE PAK-AFGHAN BORDER
S. Iftikhar Hussain Shah/ Edited by M.Y. Effendi,
Area Study Centre (Russia, Central Asia, and China), University of Peshawar and Hanns Seidel Foundation,
Germany, 2000, pp. 252.
Some Major Pukhtoon Tribes along the Pak-Afghan Border by S. Iftikhar Hussain Shah is a 2000 publication of the Area Study Centre, University of Peshawar and Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany. It is one of the Ph. D theses published by this center in the year 2000. The study has focused on an important subject of the day, i.e. the Pukhtoon tribes living along the Pak-Afghan border (The Durand Line), and in the Tribal Agencies of Pakistan. The writer, however, has not discussed all the tribes and the agencies. He has taken a sample of Afridi, Mohmand, and Wazir tribes and the areas they live in.
Introducing the Tribal Areas of the Pukhtoons, the author says that the Tribal Areas of the North Western Frontier Province of Pakistan have always served as the crossroads of many ancient cultures, dating back to more than 10,000 years. Before the arrival of the British in this region, there had been no special system for dealing with the independent Pukhtoon tribes. The British, in order to enhance their hold over the then Indian N.W. Frontier, established the Khyber Agency in 1879 for the Afridi Tribe, headed by a Political Officer. The Kurrum Agency was created in 1892 one year before the demarcation of the proper Indo-Afghan boundary, the Durand Line. In the year 1895-6, three more agencies, Malakand Agency, North Waziristan, and South Waziristan were also established. These agencies were directly administered by the central government through the political officer. In 1901, the then Viceroy, Lord Curzon, changed the title of ‘Political Officer’ into ‘Political Agent’ and introduced further administrative changes along the Indian North-Western Frontier.
After the creation of Pakistan three more agencies were established. These are the Mohmand Agency in 1959, and the Orakzai Agency and Bajaur Agency in 1973. Besides these seven agencies there are some small tribal pockets as well called the Frontier Regions. These are administered by the district administration of the contiguous district. These include Frontier Region Peshawar, Frontier Region Kohat, Frontier Region Bannu, and Frontier Region Dera Ismail Kahn. Some tribal pockets are kept under the provincial administration as well. These are called the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas. For example Malakand Agency, which now is under the provincial administration.
In the second chapter, the author has discussed the salient features of the Pukhtoon Society, which is mainly dominated by the Pukhtoons’ traditional code of life called ‘Pukhtoonwali’. It is an unwritten sort of constitution of the Pukhtoon tribal society and is keenly observed by those living in the Pukhtoon tribal areas. Its injunctions and sanctions have not been affected with the passage of the time. Basically, as the author brings out in his study, the edifice of Pukhtoonwali is built upon four pillars: Milmastiya (hospitality), Badal (revenge), Paighour (taunt) and Nanawatay (begging for pardon or protection). The violator has no place in that society. To get a true picture of the Pukhtoonwali Code, the author suggests that one must live in the midst of the Pukhtoon society for a sufficiently long time. The British did so during their rule over India.
He says that a true Pukhtoon always keeps his door open for his guests and feels pride in serving guests and strangers. To a Pukhtoon entertaining a guest with food or drink is real Islam and he considers it his moral as well as social duty. Taking revenge for some wrong is one of the fundamentals of the Pukhtoon code. It is always in reaction or retaliation against a wrong or an insult. It is considered a social obligation not to let the offender go unpunished, but at the same time not to exceed the limits of the actual wrong done. Taunt is considered a curse in the Pukhtoon society. Some commissions or omissions lead to taunts, which ultimately end on bloodshed. Usually it happens when someone is taunted for not taking, or being unable to take revenge, or not paying back his enemy in the same coin. When a person realises his wrong, whether injuring or insulting another person, he goes to the Hujra (guest house of that family), house, or mosque of the aggrieved party and throws himself at its mercy, confesses his fault and begs for pardon. Usually no Pukhtoon refuses such request. The elders, influential and religious leaders always play a prime role in all these matters.
In the third chapter, the author discusses the main Pukhtoon tribes living along the Durand Line. The Afridis live entirely within the Pakistani side of the Pak-Afghan border, mainly in the Khyber agency. Afridis inhabit the most important geo-strategic point of the border, the Khyber Pass. This pass has remained and is an important gateway to the Sub-continent. In all historic movements to and from India the Afridis have played a decisive role. They have eight large clans: Malikdin Khel, Kuki Khel, Qambar Khel, Sepay, Aka Khel, Adam Khel, Zakah Khel, and Kamar Khel. The tribal chieftains hierarchy has been divided into two groups according to their status and influence in their respective clans. These are Muwajib and Lungidar. At present there are 779 Muwajibs and 2493 Lungidars in the Khyber Agency. The number of the Muwajib elders is fixed while that of the Lungidars keeps varying. The former is by succession, while the latter is by nomination. They all are called ‘Spin Giree’, or the white beards and they act as a bridge between the Tribal Political Administration and their respective tribes.
The area inhabitted by the Afridis stretches from the eastern spurs of the Sufaid Koh to the northern half of Tirah and from the Khyber Pass to the west and south of Peshawar. Besides the Afridis, small pockets of Shinwari, Mullagori, Mohmand, and Shalmani tribes also live in this region. Some of the Afridis are very well off, but the majority is poor. They come down to the plains in order to find means of earning, mainly by labouring. They are very strict in their religious beliefs, which is blended with the Pukhtoowali, and some times they have no hesitation in following practices which go far into antiquity. The author has quoted a British writer, Major Ridgway, in this regard:
‘The tribes of the Frontier are generally ignorant of everything connected with their religion beyond its elementary doctrine. In matter of religion they confine themselves to belief that there is a God, a Prophet, a resurrection and a day of judgment. But their practice is un-Islamic. Though they believe in one God, but they almost invariably prefer to worship some saint or tomb. Indeed, superstition is a more appropriate term for the ordinary belief of the people than the name of religion.’
Further he has discussed the local sites, customs and traits of the Khyber Agency.
In the fourth chapter, regarding the Shinwari Tribe, the author says that, by and large, they inhabit the Afghan side of the border. However, a significant number of them live on the Pakistani side as well. The Loargi sub-tribe of Ali Sher Khel Shinwaris inhabits along the Kanda ravine–Landi Khana section of the Durand Line. Durand Line has bifurcated the Afghan and Pakistani Shinwaris into two nation states. They, however, conduct cross-border social and trade interaction, and have always stood steadfast against every invader. The British, however, used them against the Afghan government in the 1920s. They are also superstitiously religious like the Afridis and hold great respect for Pirs, Faqirs, and Mullahs. A great number of them are engaged in the profession of transport sector throughout the country. Agriculture is their second major profession.
Another larger, powerful and important tribe, the Mohmand, is discussed in the chapter five. In the north of the Mohmand Agency, there is the Bajaur Agency, and some portion of Kunar province of Afghanistan. On the west is the Kunar Valley and the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. The Khyber Agency is in the South while the Peshawar District is towards the east. The Mohmands are an influential tribe and are divided into two sections: The ‘Kuz’ (lower) Mohmands and ‘Bar’ (Upper) Mohmands. The Kuz Mohmands live in the plains, in the south-western corner of the Peshawar District, mainly in the Kotla Mohsin Khan, Bahadur Kalay, Kagawali, Landi, and areas around them. The Bar Mohmands inhabit the network of hills between the Kabul and Swat rivers. Their main concentrations are Lalpura, Kama, and Gosha, along the Pak-Afghan border. They are mainly divided into eight clans: Khawezai, Baezai, Halimzai, Tarakzai, Aka Khel, Burhan Khel, Dawezai, and Utmanzai. A small pocket of Safi Pukhtoon tribe also lives in their areas.
According to the author, clerics and sufis have a strong hold over the Mohmands and they seek the advice of the clergy concerning even mundane affairs. Over a number of occasions, they have fought wars against their enemies under the leadership of their Mullahs and Pirs. Another characteristic of theirs is that they mostly resolve their disputes through jirga, instead of taking law into their hands. Their major occupation, like that of the Shinwaris, is transportation. Other occupations are agriculture, sheep breeding, and trading firewood. Their areas have enough water but their lands are not plain for proper agriculture.
In chapter six, the author discusses the Wazir Tribe. Wazirs are the most important tribe in the tangle of mountains that runs southwards, beyond the Kurrum Agency and Dera Ismail Khan, and finally form the western border of the North-West Frontier Province with the Zhob District of the Balochistan Province. This area is commonly known as Waziristan. Administratively it is divided into two agencies: North Waziristan Agency and South Waziristan Agency. In the north, the North Waziristan agency is bounded by Paktia Province of Afghanistan, and Shawal tribal region of Pakistan in the west. The Birmal area of Afghanistan and the South Waziristan Agency of Pakistan in the west, and the Frontier Region of Bannu District in the east. The North Waziristan Agency is to the north of the South Waziristan Agency, Zhob District of Balochistan in the south, Katawaz area of Afghanistan in the west and Dera Ismail Khan District in the east.
The Wazirs are further divided into the Utmanzai and Ahmadzai clans. The former live in the North Waziristan Agency, while the latter live in the South Waziristan. Besides the Wazir, Mahsuds, Baitanis, Urmars, and Daurs also live in the Wazirsiatn region. There are 1424 Muwajibs and 66 Lungidars in the North Waziristan Agency, while 1028 Muwajibs and 137 Lungidars in the South Waziristan Agency respectively. The Wazirs are considered true lovers of Sharia and they follow Sharia orders in their Jirgas. Jirga decisions are binding upon the parties concerned. They are also very conservative and adhere strictly to their traditional tribal ways of life. Like other Pukhtoon tribes they also have great respect for and are influenced by Pirs and Mullahs. The Wazirs’ main occupations are agriculture, sheep breeding, and trade. They often resort to kidnapping, and usually kidnap visitors and government officials, and seek ransom in return.
In the last chapter, the author has discussed some non-Pukhtoon tribes living along the Pak-Afghan border in and around the Chitral area. These are the Wakhi, Khow, Kirghiz, Tajik, Kalash, Sarikuli, Yedgha, and Brushgali. Almost all of them have a Central Asian origin and live in small pockets.
Since the book is based on a selected sample of the tribes, it has not touched upon many other large and important Pukhtoon tribes living along the Durand Line. For example, the Yusufzai, the largest Pukhtoon tribe living in and around Bajaur Agency in the extreme north-west of the Durand Line; the Mahsuds, another large and influential tribe of the South Waziristan Agency; the Durrani, Achakzai, Kakar, Popalzai, Nasir, etc. in Balochistan as well as the Daur, Sherani, Burki, Bangash, and many others in Waziristan. The author has covered the facts on historical events, local customs, local heroes, poets, writers as well the administrative and economic developments about the Afridi, Mohmand and Wazir tribes and their respective agencies.
The book is a useful sociological account of the tribes discussed in it, and provides an informative guide for those who intend to work in the Tribal areas of Pakistan.
Pakistan's badlands: new ground zero for terror
Seven years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the "war on terror" is increasingly focused on Pakistan's tribal zones, a lawless sliver of land near the Afghan border from where re-energized terror networks are threatening to undermine the global fight against terrorism.
Despite a $25 million bounty on his head, Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is still at large. Most intelligence analysts believe the al Qaeda chief – as well as Ayman al Zawahiri, his second-in-command - are based in the region.
A sparsely populated landscape dotted with dusty, often armed, walled compounds, Pakistan's tribal zones is currently home to a veritable Who's Who of wanted men, including Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban and the alleged brains behind the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Two days before the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, at his swearing-in ceremony, Bhutto's widower, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, pledged to work with Afghanistan to fight terrorism.
At a joint press conference with his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, Zardari addressed Afghan concerns that Pakistan was not doing enough to curb cross-border militancy.
"I assure you if there are any weaknesses on this side or that side of the border, we shall stand together," said Zardari.
'Land of the lawless'
The Pakistani side of the 2,600 kilometer Afghan-Pakistan border has been plagued with weaknesses since the birth of the Pakistani nation in 1947.
In more than six decades, there has been plenty of talk, but little political will to tackle the administrative mess that lies at very root of the problem, according to several experts.
"This is an area that is over-investigated, but surely the most under-implemented," said Afrasiab Khattak, a prominent Pakistani politician and human rights activist.
Khattak should know. As the leader of the leftist Awami National Party in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, Khattak is at the forefront of the "tribal question" that has systemically challenged Pakistani authorities.
Squashed between the Afghan border and the North West Frontier Province, Pakistan's tribal zone is officially called FATA, short for Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
In popular Pakistani discourse though, the tribal region is simply referred to as "ilaka ghair" or the land of the lawless.
Colonial laws, cash handouts and collective punishment
But experts say Pakistan's tribal zones are inherently lawless, simply because the laws of the land do not apply to the region.
Home to more than 3 million people, mostly Pashtun tribes, FATA is governed by colonial era laws designed by the British to pacify tribes. Under the 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR), the British maintained order by simply paying tribal leaders to secure their cooperation. Failure to do so resulted in the "pacification" of the entire tribe.
The laws were adopted wholesale at independence and more than 60 years later, has resulted in administrative mismanagement of Kafkaesque proportions.
Political parties are legally barred in the tribal zones, denying residents the political representation guaranteed under Pakistani law.
Social order is – theoretically, at least – maintained by buying the support of elders, or maliks, through cash handouts or personal privileges.
Failure to secure the order results in the collective punishment of a tribe, which contravenes the Pakistani Constitution.
"This kind of law is unacceptable," says Ali Dayan Hasan of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The provision of collective punishment contravenes international law. Under the war on terror, the Pakistani government is using the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulations to justify the use of methods such as collective punishment, and economic blockades of civilians."
Laws that aid the militancy
But experts say that far from stemming militancy, the colonial-era laws are aiding the militancy.
"It is the state's failure to extend its control over and provide good governance to its citizens in FATA that has enabled the militants to mount their powerful challenge," concluded a December 2006 report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
The officially sanctioned policy of appeasement has led the Pakistani government to provide militants amnesties in exchange for "empty" verbal commitments to end attacks on Pakistani forces, according to the report.
What's more, it has allowed militants to establish parallel, Taliban-style judicial systems that are threatening to percolate into neighbouring North West Frontier Province and Balochistan.
While successive Pakistani governments have emphasized the need to overhaul the tribal administrative system, Khattak maintains that very little is done on the ground.
"The fact is, there are elements in the ruling circles in Pakistan that have used these areas as a shadow space rather than an area where human beings live," says Khattak. "There are elements in the ruling circles who want to keep FATA a no-go area, a secretive zone where everything is possible and they are preventing political parties in terms of political organization so that extremists and militants will have no competition."
The lawlessness in the tribal zones, complete with a thriving parallel economy, enables corrupt political agents as well as tribal elders to enrich themselves.
A change in the letter of the law?
Shortly after he was nominated prime minister following the February 18 elections, Yousuf Raza Gilani called for the scrapping of the FCR, a move that was widely welcomed in and outside Pakistan.
A committee subsequently set up to recommend changes has proposed renaming the hated FCR the "FATA Regulations, 2008". But while the committee has proposed banning the arrests of women and children, it has also maintained that if a tribe fails to hand over an accused member to the government, close relatives and other tribal notables may be arrested.
A draft of the proposed FATA Regulations, 2008, is set to be presented to Gilani and once it secures the prime minster's approval, the draft will be sent to the president. Under the Pakistani Constitution, only the president has the authority to make amendments to the FCR.
It remains to be seen if Pakistan's new president has the will to take on the weaknesses on his side of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
U.S. Hits al Qaeda in Pakistan
September 12, 2008
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has stepped up its covert war against Islamic militants inside Pakistan, deploying American commandos onto Pakistani soil without that government's permission and significantly expanding the use of American air power against Pakistani targets.
Senior U.S. officials said the new measures have been put in place gradually since the beginning of the summer amid rising fears that insurgent safe havens in Pakistan's lawless border regions are destabilizing Afghanistan and fueling a spike in violence there.
The moves represent an escalation of U.S. efforts to counter al Qaeda in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Taken together, the measures mean the U.S. has effectively opened a third front in its war on terror, with Pakistan joining Afghanistan and Iraq as a major battle zone.
The administration's approach carries risks, notably for the fragile U.S. relationship with Pakistan. The White House may be gambling that it can score security gains in the short run without destabilizing the new Islamabad regime.
In an unusually strong public statement, Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, late Wednesday warned that U.S. incursions into Pakistan wouldn't be tolerated and that Pakistani forces would defend national sovereignty at all costs. He said only Pakistani forces have the right to conduct operations against militants inside Pakistan. "There is no question of any agreement or understanding with the coalition forces, allowing them to strike inside Pakistan," he said.
Senior U.S. policy makers have offered increasingly dire assessments of conditions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The administration this week announced plans to gradually withdraw 8,000 troops from Iraq while boosting U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan by 4,500. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers Wednesday the U.S. couldn't prevail in Afghanistan unless Pakistan took stronger steps to crack down on its insurgent sanctuaries.
The new approach drew the endorsement of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has long pressed for a harder line with Pakistan. "It means that we go to those areas which are the training bases and havens of [terrorists] and we jointly go there and remove and destroy them," he told reporters in Kabul.
Two senior officials familiar with the matter said Navy Seals and other elite military Special Operations Forces have been given White House permission to mount ground operations inside Pakistan without prior approval from the Pakistani government. President Bush's classified order allowing the raids was reported Thursday by the New York Times.
The officials said the military and Central Intelligence Agency have expanded their use of Predators and other unmanned aircraft, sending drones deeper into Pakistan and more frequently firing missiles at insurgent targets.
One official in Afghanistan estimated that drone usage in Pakistan has doubled since the summer, and he said missiles are now being fired at Pakistani targets virtually every day. The U.S. is trying to kill high-ranking Taliban and al Qaeda leaders who are believed to have taken shelter in Pakistan.
A senior official in Washington said military personnel and intelligence operatives previously had to "jump through hoops" to get the legal clearances needed to strike an individual militant. Today, by contrast, "it's pretty much always a green light," he said.
The White House declined to comment about the new push. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said he had no information about the measures.
The administration has debated whether to deploy U.S. commandos in Pakistan since 2002. Before July, the White House repeatedly decided against ground raids, preferring to instead rely on then-President Pervez Musharraf, according to a former intelligence official. Mr. Musharraf resigned under pressure last month. Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was sworn in as president this week.
U.S. officials worry that Mr. Zardari's government is unable or unwilling to crack down on the insurgents operating freely in Pakistan's border regions. "They really have no choice but to do what they doing," the former official said. "I don't think anybody's particularly enthusiastic about this" because of the possibility of angering the Pakistani government.
There is no ‘honour’ in killing
Beena Sarwar
Sep 2, 2008
Time to stop hiding behind custom, tradition or religion
Given the multiple issues facing Pakistanis, the last thing we surely need is for a legislator to defend a heinous crime in the name of tradition or custom. We don’t need the heinous crime either, in this case the murder of women who were apparently defying their families by trying to marry of their own choice.
The resistance of conservative families to expressions of autonomy by their daughters is an ongoing problem in patriarchal, conservative societies like ours. Some parents accept their children’s wishes. Others submit to the inevitable, cutting off inheritance or refusing to meet them. In Pakistan, some misuse the legal system to gain submission, filing cases of ‘zina’ (adultery) against daughters who elope, preferring to see them tried for a crime punishable by death rather than married to someone ‘unsuitable’. Others resort to physical violence, locking up the erring child without food, cutting off all communication in an effort to gain submission. In the most extreme cases, some family member uses a gun, a knife or an axe to end the defiance once and for all -- termed a ‘crime of passion’ in much of the world. Here, it is called ‘honour killing’.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan recorded over 600 cases of ‘honour’ killings or ‘karo kari’ last year – just the reported incidents, compiled from reports appearing daily in the media. Over ninety such murders were reported in the first three months of this year alone. The actual number may be higher, as not all cases are reported. Is the violence actually rising or is it just that the media is reporting such cases with greater frequency? The media boom is certainly instrumental in bringing more such stories to light. However, such cases may also be on the rise because of emerging conflicts within a rapidly modernising conservative, patriarchal society where women are traditionally seen as family property and the repositories of honour.
Greater exposure to media and more education leads to a heightened awareness of human rights issues. Those who defy the old order have greater support – legal, moral, and financial -- from various non-government and even some government organisations.
Pitted against these developments are conservative elements fearful of their culture and traditions changing before their eyes, who then seek to codify ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’, until now fairly amorphous. This may be the context of the inexcusable justification that Senator Israrullah Zehri of the BNP presented in defence of the brutal murders reported in his home province Balochistan: five women reportedly beaten, shot and then buried alive for defying their families.
This is hardly the first time that culture and tradition, or even religion, were used to justify violence and suppression of women. The prosecuting lawyer in the Samia Waheed ‘love marriage case’ argued that in the sect of Islam to which Samia belonged, a woman must seek the ‘wali’ or guardian’s approval to marry “even if she is sixty years old”. Although she won the case, fearful for her life, she fled abroad along with the man she had eloped with.
In another infamous case, Saima Sarwar wasn’t so lucky. The young woman from Peshawar had left her abusive, drug-dependent husband. Her parents accepted that but drew the line at her intention to divorce him and re-marry. She took refuge at a women’s shelter in Lahore. In April 1999, her mother asked to meet Saima at AGHS, the office of her attorney Hina Jillani, arriving with a manservant. As Saima entered the room, he pulled out a pistol and shot her dead. Her mother escaped in a rickshaw but a plainclothes policeman at AGHS shot the murderer dead as he attempted to flee. Entering the building immediately after the incident, one had to step around the body sprawled on the stairs in a pool of blood. Upstairs, the victim’s petite black-clad body lay on the floor by Hina Jillani’s desk, a bullet lodged in the wall behind it, having missed Ms Jillani herself.
What many found astounding was that Saima’s parents were not some illiterate people from a remote tribal area, but educated, influential, city dwellers. The father was a businessman who had headed the Peshawar Chamber of Commerce and Industry while the mother was a gynaecologist.
Then too, there was uproar in the Senate, when former law minister Iqbal Haider of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party initiated a resolution against the murder on August 2, 1999. Like Israrullah Zehri of the Balochistan National Party which has secular, nationalist credentials, Ajmal Khattak, the supposedly progressive leader of the Awami National Party, a successor of the National Awami Party, also a secular, nationalist party, had shouted Mr Haider down. He held that Saima Sarwar had disgraced her family who had acted according to Pakhtoon tradition. Some senators from FATA physically attacked Mr Haider. Only four Senators stood in support of the resolution: besides Iqbal Haider, his party colleagues the indominatible Aitzaz Ahsan, then leader of opposition in the Senate, and the late Hussain Shah Rashidi. The fourth was the MQM’s Jamiluddin Aali. Twenty-four Senators including the PML-Q’s presidential candiate Mushahid Hussain Syed (then with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML) and other luminaries like the retired judge Javed Iqbal and former foreign secretary Akram Zaki stood to oppose it.
Flash forward to another democratic era barely a decade later. Another horrific murder, another voice raised in the Senate (this time by a woman), and another Senator’s justification in the name of tradition.
Whether the women were buried alive or whether they were already dead when buried is beside the point. The tragedy is not so much how they suffered (although the murder is more horrific if they were still breathing when buried). First of all, no one has the right to take another life. Second, the women’s ‘crime’ (to want to marry of their own choice) was no crime under any law or religion. Third, even if murdering women who disgrace their families is accepted in some areas, not every aggrieved family resorts to such action. And fourth but not least, slavery too was once a widely accepted custom. So was the burying alive of baby girls. Neither practice is condoned now, in any way, anywhere in the world.
Interestingly, both these Senate debates for and against the murder of women for ‘honour’ took place after particularly gruesome crimes committed under a democratic dispensation. This is certainly not because there was less gender violence when the military was at the helm of affairs. Violence against women has risen over the last decade. It was at its peak under Gen Ziaul Haq and his discriminatory ‘religious’ laws that strengthened reactionary forces and reinforced negative stereotypes about women. But democracy, with elected representatives answerable to their constituencies, opens up spaces to discuss and debate such issues rather than sweeping them under the carpet, going beyond knee-jerk responses like incident-specific legislation such as that enacted after the public denuding and humiliation of women in the infamous Nawabpur case of 1984 (also on the pretext of ‘honour’).
Some would prefer not to discuss such issues because this ‘brings a bad name to the country’ (or province). They need to ask themselves who is responsible: those who perpetuate the violence, or those who are its victims? What would make us a better, stronger nation: dealing with the issue, or burying it in the sand.
Buried truth? ‘Honor Killings’
HONOR KILLING IS IGNORANCE..........The so-called “honor killing” is based on ignorance and disregard of morals and laws, which cannot be abolished except by disciplinary punishments.
Buried truth?
THE NEWS
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
The issue of the incident in Jaffarabad district in Balochistan, where five women were reportedly buried alive, has finally created a national furore. This of course is as things should be. Protests have been staged outside parliament over the remarks made by Senator Israrullah Zehri attempting to defend the gruesome 'honour' killing as 'tribal custom'. Other leaders from Balochistan have denied such practices are a part of tradition.
But, sadly, even as the Senate passed a unanimous resolution condemning the incident and demanding punishment for its perpetrators, an attempt at a cover-up is on. The government presented an extremely dubious report before the Senate, stating three women and not five had been killed, that the incident involved a property dispute and was not a case of 'honour' killing and that the women had been killed before being buried. The adviser on interior, perhaps realizing that all this sounded blatantly unbelievable given mounting evidence of the horrific event that had actually taken place, has conceded that this version based on local police accounts differs from the report by the IG and a full investigation is on. But an obvious attempt seems to be on to bury the truth, alongside the hapless women who met so terrible an end. The interior adviser himself shied away from making any reference to a live burial, focusing instead on 'honour' killings that he emphasized also took place outside Balochistan. While three arrests have been made, including that of the fathers of the girls and the brother of two, and two bodies exhumed, authorities insist the brother of a PPP provincial minister was not involved. They have maintained media reports accusing him of playing a part in the whole sordid incident are inaccurate.
This is a distinct diversion from accounts from NGOs that have investigated the happening. People in Usta Muhammad, the principal town of Jaffarabad, had reported a vehicle with government number plates had been used to whisk away the three teenage girls – and possibly another woman accompanying them – from a hotel. They speak of a 'tribal influential' being involved. It is thought the young women, all of them educated, who had chosen to exercise their lawful right to make their own choice in marriage, had come to the town to enter into court marriages with the men of their choosing. Many details, lost amidst various cover-ups, remain hazy. Police now say two and not five women were killed. Local people, in the village of Babakot where the event took place, are clearly too terrorized to talk. The arrested brother of two of the women killed has reportedly taken responsibility. This seems like a replication of the pattern seen in numerous 'honour' killings, where a brother accepts blame, and is then 'forgiven' by the father of the victim, thus ensuring that under the country's Qisas and Diyat law his son escapes scot-free and no one is punished.
The fact that the Balochistan High Court has taken suo motu notice of the incident is good news. This raises some hope the truth will eventually emerge from amidst the sands in which an attempt is being made to bury it. The central government must ensure it participates fully in the effort to punish all those involved in the crime and join hands with civil society for this. The fact that in the first three months of this year, at least 90 women suffered 'honour' killings according to the Aurat Foundation indicates how grave the problem is. Thousands are believed to have died over the past five years for the sake of family 'honour'. The 2005 law that set in place tougher penalties for such crimes remains poorly enforced. These are the wrongs a government, led till the end of this year by a woman in whose name it still speaks, must right. Attempting a cover-up would only add to the crime itself.
Ramazan package’ for terrorists?
Daily Times
The interior adviser, Mr Rehman Malik, has announced that the military operation in the Tribal Areas will be suspended on August 31 in deference to the holy month of Ramazan. That means that for 30 days our army will not fight the militants who have literally taken a large chunk of our territory away. Mr Rehman says it is not going to be a ceasefire, and only he can make sense of this “rider clause”, but we hope that our army doesn’t give up its position of advantage in Bajaur and Swat because of this “deal” in the month of fasting.
The past pattern is stark. “Peace talks” proceeded after sending the army back to the barracks, pulling down the checkposts and returning the territory which should not have been returned. Now Mr Rehman says the army will suspend operations but if the militants start something it will retaliate: “If they fire a single bullet we will respond with 10 bullets”. In the past, this has not happened. It is the militants who fired the ten bullets, it is our men who died, while the politicians kept on saying they wanted “peace talks”. The militants always regrouped and returned with redoubled strength that found no comparable counter-force opposing them.
No one can be blamed for characterising the suspension of military operations in the Tribal Areas as a weak-kneed response to the challenge of internationalised terror. One can’t see how it is going to be different this time. If the operation is suspended, does it mean the troops stay where they are but do nothing when they see the militants getting fresh supplies of munitions and men? Does suspension mean that the troops will go back to their cantonments to fast and say their special Ramazan prayers? If that is going to be the shape of things to come in the next 30 days, who will look after the safety of Bajaur refugees trying to return to their homes?
Ramazan has assumed a great religious importance in our days. Entire cities go into partial suspension of life and work because everyone is fasting. No one wants to work seriously and doesn’t even think it is wrong to violate traffic rules. Will this apply to war also? It has never happened in the past. Some wars are known in Muslim history as “Ramadan wars” because the enemy will not strike according to the Islamic calendar. In fact the enemy will strike most effectively during Ramazan because Muslims are not willing to be active during the fasting month. Let us be frank, the terrorists who kill fellow-Muslims have a poor record as far as observing the holy months is concerned. The militants one faces in Bajaur are the same people who have been killing Muslims during Ashura.
In a way, the 23,000 people who are supposed to return home and start fasting will walk straight into the arms of the terrorists. Already the people displaced by the terrorists have come to Peshawar and are opposing military operations against the Taliban. Their mind is influenced by the past hesitation on the part of the state to take on the terrorists. They simply don’t believe that the state is capable of defending their rights; therefore, to save their lives they are ready to give up their right to shave their beards, to educate their daughters and listen to music, and prevent their sons from being trained as suicide bombers. Hundreds of thousands of people have actually migrated from South Waziristan, Swat and Kurram, and they are so forlorn and desperate to just “live” that they are prepared to accept the tyranny of the Taliban because the Pakistani state cannot or will not protect them.
The state’s response was on the upswing before the fasting month came around. Eighteen Taliban making life miserable in Peshawar surrendered and swore on the Quran that they would not repeat their evil deeds. Of course this means nothing unless the state is dominant. One is conscious of the fact that the state has asserted itself in Swat and Bajaur, but it has not yet established dominance. (It has turned tail in Kurram, of course, where the Shia are being allowed to die.) The right thing to do is to carry on the noble deed of rescuing the people of Pakistan during Ramazan and to think of resting only after the job is accomplished.
We have tried peace talks; we have tried jirgas. Peace talks have allowed the terrorists to reorganise and replenish. The jirgas are no longer real because all the elders who could have talked peace have been killed by the terrorists. Now we can try Ramazan, and after that Eid too in the hope that this will work and the Taliban will vacate aggression and allow the writ of the state to prevail. But if it doesn’t work, we will rue the lesson that there is nothing more damaging for morale than to give up after succeeding partially.
Of course, we realise that there may be some short-term political compulsions also in this new development. The JUI, in particular, has pegged its support for Mr Asif Zardari’s presidential bid to a “soft” compromise by the state in the tribal areas. Most FATA MNAs are also putting a lot of pressure on the federal government to capitulate to the Taliban. This pressure can be released by accepting their demands in good faith until the Taliban break the agreement. Mr Rehman Malik has said as much but added that “one Taliban bullet will be returned with ten bullets by the state”. So be it. The government should get over the presidential election in a week’s time and review the Ramazan deal realistically in light of its short-term and long term experience. *
Second Editorial: Mangal Bagh still rules Khyber
There is no need to say what happened after a “successful” operation in Khyber Agency. Warlord Mangal Bagh was put to flight and is under a deadline to leave the agency. The latest news is that his gang Lashkar-e-Islam has asked the people of Landi Kotal to obey his orders, or else. Mr Bagh has asked the people to voluntarily hoist his army’s black flags on their rooftops or face punitive action. He has asked men to keep beards, cover their heads with caps, and keep their ankles visible to avoid thrashings. A large number of people have bought caps to avoid being killed. Since he is using the FM radio, the sales of radio sets have shot up. People don’t want to miss out on his fresh orders and suffer. Every prayer-leader will have to follow the timetable for five prayers set by Mr Bagh’s army.
It is the same as in Swat and Bajaur. No one dares to speak up against Mr Bagh. But everyone is ready to speak against the state and ask it not to come to their help. This is because the state has gone in and then left the job unfinished. When the state was winning against him, Mr Bagh was laughing on TV. He still owns houses in Peshawar and orders people around in Hayatabad, but the state is not there in Khyber.
Religious parties and militants
Religious parties and militants
M Waqar
Everyday we read news items on internet, TV, NEWSPAPERS all over the world that: Death toll in Wah blasts climbs to 70; Tehreek-e-Taliban accepts responsibility for Wah blasts and third news is in Urdu, Islamists bomb girls school or music centre and then we hear and read that religious parties like Jaamat-e-Islami is asking the Govt to stop operations against militants. I get confused and think what’s wrong, the innocent people are being killed, none of them belong to the family of Qazi Hussain or any other member of Pakistan elite club. JI is the same group of mullahs who were against the creation of Pakistan, they labelled Sir Syed as Kafir because heasked Muslims of India to learn English and get educated. Qazi Hussain knows only the politics of protests and DHARNAS. If he is a sincere politicians why cannot he go to Tribal areas and talk to those killing innocent people. If QAZI thinks that TALIBAN are innocent then who is killing innocent Pukhtoons? Instead of supporting actions of law enforcing agencies, leaders of religious parties are supporting fanatics, criminals, Taliban. The government has chosen to negotiate instead of fight, which has further emboldened the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazlur and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, legitimate Pakistani political parties which dominate the political scene in the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies support Taliban on both sides of Puktoons borders. The rising lawlessness in the country and the growing popularity and success of suicide attacks are the most dangerous signs for Pakistan's integrity. Today, the belief is becoming strong among the masses that the war against terror is the war of the United States and the Pakistan army. It has nothing to do with the people of Pakistan. There is a need to change this perception. Terrorism is the biggest threat to the world. Suicide attacks are the most lethal and successful weapons of the terrorists. Terrorism must be rooted out and it cannot be done by isolating the people of Pakistan, The Pashtun nation is a victim of a conspiracy. All Pukhtoons including other people of the whole province as well as the tribal area must come together. Putting aside our political affiliations or linguistic proficiency we must once and for all realize that disunity equals destruction and unity is the need of the hour as without unity we have no other options. So let us unite and rise to the occasion and save our land, our identity, our faith and the destiny of our present and future generations.
Ahmed Faraz: poet of love and defiance
Ab ke hum bichray - Mehdi Hassan
Ahmed Faraz, who died in Islamabad on Monday night after a long struggle with a host of ailments, having taken ill in the first week of July while on a visit to the United States, was a classicist like Faiz Ahmed Faiz who, like him, produced poetry of great lyrical beauty and who, like his mentor, never hesitated to stand up against oppression and never was afraid of suffering for his beliefs.
Faraz, steeped in the classical tradition, was the true inheritor of Faiz’s mantle. Like Faiz, he suffered prison and lived in exile during the dark days of military rule in the 1980s. Like Faiz, he was loved by the people, especially the young, and nobody wrote with more intensity about love than Faraz. He gained fame as a young man – he was teaching at Peshawar University at the time - and while much in the way of comfort and the easy life forsook him on more occasions than one, his fame and his popularity never languished. Few poets have had more of their work set to music and performed by the great singers of the age than Faraz. Almost always, he found himself on the wrong side of the government of the day. From Ayub, through Yahya, through Bhutto and down to Musharraf, Faraz was always viewed by the establishment as the rebel he was. He was never afraid to write what others only whispered about and he never let adversity stray him from the path he had chosen for himself. More of his poetry is remembered and recited by his admirers in his own country, in India and wherever Urdu is loved and spoken, than that of any other poet of modern times.
The journalist Iftikhar Ali recalled in New York as the news of Faraz’s death broke, “Faraz was a year senior to me when I joined the Islamia College Peshawar, in 1954. He was remarkably handsome, full of life but very much into poetry. He would gather students around him and read out his mostly romantic poems. There was no open mixing of male and female students in those days. But somehow his poems managed to reach girl students who felt greatly attracted to him. He would receive dozens of hand written letters from them, not only those at the university but from a women’s college in the city as well. The well-to-do ones would have their servants deliver their letters while others would drop them in front of Faraz at bus stops. At that time, he loved to watch hockey and would lead slogans at the annual match between the two old rivals -- Islamia College and Edwards Collge.”
During Bhutto’s days, Faraz was sent home by Maulana Kausar Niazi for writing a couplet that some considered heretical, a misstep that was soon rectified. He lost his job under the Zia regime and he spent many years in exile in Europe and America, quite a few of them in London. His great poem Mohasra (The Siege) remains one of the most powerful indictments of military rule. Faraz told the BBC in a recent interview that he would never like to leave Pakistan because he wanted to live in the country, which was his home, because it was there that he would want to continue his struggle against dictatorship. “I am against dictatorship and military rule. The time has not yet arrived when I should escape from the country out of fear. I will stay home and fight.” He was actively involved in the movement that has built itself around the ousted chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Faraz used his influence to urge writers and poets to join the protest.
Few people know that in 1947 when the uprising in Kashmir against the Maharaja’s rule began, among the volunteers who went in to fight on the side of the Kashmiris was the teenager Ahmed Faraz from Kohat. He said in a recent conversation that his heart bleeds at the military aggression to which the people of Waziristan and Balochistan have been subjected. He said what we know today as Azad Kashmir was not liberated by the army but by Wazir tribes who went into the state to fight the Maharaja’s forces. Faraz, asked why he had returned the Hilal-i-Imtiaz conferred on him by the Musharraf regime, felt that he could not keep the award because it was given to him by a military regime, although many people had told him that it was an honour conferred on him by the people of Pakistan. He said whenever the country has come under an army rule, it has suffered grievously, to the extent of being rent asunder, as in 1971. Ask why he had not written another poem like Mohasra, he replied, “Because I do not want to write the same poem again. In Pakistan, things do not change and, consequently, the poems I wrote in the past have not become dated."
PUKHTOONS MUST UNITE OR PERISH !!!!!!
PUKHTOONS MUST UNITE OR PERISH
By Dr Adalat Khan
There is nothing worse, or more pathetic, than to see the whole Pukhtoon nations standing aside and wringing their collective hands over the death and destruction of their fellow brethrens either by bigoted extremists or mercenary forces. The whole Pukhtunkhwa is under fire and it would seem that if sense and sensibility did not visit the minds of Pukhtoons the whole race will erase. This is not exaggerating because many strong nations who once ruled the world do not exist today and have only become part of the forgotten history. Babylonians, Romans, Byzantine are just a few examples of civilizations which were wiped out and do not exist today. Is that a destiny Pukhtoons wish to embrace? If the answer is yes then this article will lose its utility. But let us hope that the same nation which was once the envy of the world will regain its dignity if not earlier glory. The task is tough but not impossible provided there is a collective struggle towards this end. No one can change the conditions of Pukhtoons but themselves. In the Holy Quran, Allah says that He does not change the conditions of a people unless they make efforts to change these themselves. The time to change our conditions is now because now are the worst conditions we as a nation face. After the last kind Pukhtoon King Ibrahim Lodhi whose rule was taken by Mughals in 1562 Pukhtoons have seen the worst of oppressions, colonialism, wars and destructions. However of and on they were able to bounce back either by consistently fighting their enemies, or regaining back their sovereignty from occupying forces. However today this regal race is pushed to the extreme wall and sliding backward will prove fatal. The one and only option available to Pukhtoons is to move forward and unite. Unity is not only needed but it is our survival and if we do not grab this opportunity in the history of annals we will be attributed the worse place.
There are great dangers because the great devils have brought the battle to our homes but alas we are fighting among our selves. A New Great Game is being played where the only obstacles seen are Pukhtoons and conditions are orchestrated to wipe out this race so there is a free flow of oil from the Caspian Sea to the Gwadar port and onward to the West. In The New Great Game, a book written by Lutz Kleveman, he gives us a fearless, insightful and exacting portrait of a new battleground in the violent politics and passion of oil: Central Asia, known as the "black hole of the earth" for much of the last century. The Caspian Sea contains the world’s largest amount of untapped oil and gas resources. It is estimated that there might be as much as one hundred billion barrels of crude oil in the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan alone. And to transport this resource all obstacle must be removed at all costs including the annihilation of the Pukhtoon race.
Division into different parties, sects, tribes, and schools of thought is only offering the ammunition to our enemies to wipe us out. So what is needed is unity. It is ironic to see that the big Khans who sing the songs of Pukhtoon unity have not united us but further divided us. Our youth have joined extremist groups because the Khans have discriminated them, divided and ruled them, and in some instances forced even to vote against their will. Some of these Khans who even give long lectures on Pukhtoon unity have the blood of poor Pukhtoons on their hands. They must be shameful now as the Pukhtoons have reached a stage where if not reversed they will face total destructions. For the unity to be realized the following are some of the steps which needs to be taken:
• All Pukhtoons including other people of the whole province as well as the tribal area must come together. Putting aside our political affiliations or linguistic proficiency we must once and for all realize that disunity equals destruction and unity is the need of the hour.
• There is a need for a collective dialogue with the government as well as the so called Pro Taliban elements. Consultation or Jirga is not only part of the Pukhtoon culture but at the heart of Islam. We need to iron out all our differences be it between the Pro-Taliban or the people or the government. I am sure win-win solution could be found as the destruction of any of the three parties is the destruction of all.
• Instead of wasting time on futile and minute issues as to what should be the ring tone of a mobile phone or how long should the shalwar be hanging over the knuckles etc. people as well as government must focus on development activities. Health, education, employment and entrepreneurship should be spurred as these are the root causes which have enraged people into doing the things which we see these days.
• It is also the duty of every Pukhtoons to see that Pakistan remains intact as a country and counter all elements which are bent on destruction be they inside or outside. We must give up the retreat mentality but expand our influence throughout the country as well as the world.
• Extremism, ignorance, media assault on our image are some of the enemies which we need to confront. Being a freedom loving, secular, and Islamic minded people we must get rid of these menaces before the destroy us.
Pukhtoons have seen the best of times as well as the worst of times. Today Pukhtoons are at the crossroads and defining moment of their identity or survival. Extremism, international conspiracy to vanish them, and the lack of great leadership to steer them out of trouble are just a few of the myriads of problems faced by this brave people. Frankly there are only two options-first being destruction which is searching us and the second being survival which we must seek. If we do not opt for the second one then it is almost certain that we will become part of a forgotten history. A history where the members of the community were utterly disunited, too caught up in the pursuit of self interests and personal power, too reliant on others to do their work and to fight their wars, and these are the danger signs. They warn of destruction in society, the loss of identity and a decline in resolve that in times past had ensured both the survival of society and its continued existence. Unity among Pukhtoons and the people of the NWFP and Tribal Areas is the need of the hour as without unity we have no other options. So let us unite and rise to the occasion and save our land, our identity, our faith and the destiny of our present and future generations.
Dr Adalat Khan is an international columnist who is based in Malaysia and can be reached at dradalat@gmail.com
Russia stands up from its knees
Long-term consequences of the recent events in the Caucasus are still unclear. The sides involved in the conflict have said everything that they considered necessary to say under the current political situation. The unrecognized republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have survived another bloody conflict with Georgia. The conflict has proved that it is absolutely impossible for the three nations to live within the borders of one legal state. It means that the two republics will ask Moscow to recognize their independence again.
Georgia has had an objective impression of its own political administration and its aptitude to the solution of strategic goals. The Georgian military has proved to be absolutely incapable of waging civilized military actions, whereas the authorities of Georgia showed that they did not care to think about their people.
Russia was forced to launch a massive military action in response to Georgia’s aggression. The Russian troops tested their skills on the enemy armed with US, Ukrainian and Israeli weapons.
US presidential runoffs did not miss a good opportunity to exercise their views in foreign politics. For the first time in many years, Washington’s hawks and their secretary of state became honest in their statements about Russia.
Politics is full of cynicism. Georgia was obviously solving its own problems shelling Tskhinvali with bombs and missiles at night. Thousands of Ossetians were thinking about their future existence.
Anti-Russian sentiments were voiced in Washington, Brussels, Kiev, Warsaw, etc. Russia, Europe and the USA had their own reasons to set their claims to each other, of course. However, Georgia and South Ossetia were quickly moved into the background against the issues of the US-Polish missile deal and the future of Russia’s fuel shipments to Europe. Moscow stood up to defend its geopolitical interests, whereas NATO stood up against Russia, and the USA demonstrated its real influence in the world, which in its turn proved to be indifferent to Washington’s views about a small democratic country of Georgia.
The Caucasian knot became a classic example of the beginning of a global crisis. The crisis appeared at the time, when Russia decided to pass from words to deeds for the first time in its recent history. The West was obviously surprised and scared.
The institutions, which imitated the maintenance of peace on the globe, appeared to be worthless organizations. The OSCE became a participant of the conflict because the Georgian administration had previously informed the organization of the imminent attack on South Ossetia. NATO showed that it was unwilling to find itself in a tough opposition against Russia. As for the United Nations, there were no illusions regarding the efficiency of this organization before. Its headquarters can only be good for televising international discussions, but they can not be a platform where consolidated and efficient decisions are made.
The crisis in South Ossetia has split the Western society. Such a large variety of opinions and views in European and American media could last be seen on the threshold of USA’s incursion in Iraq.
It is an open secret that the world has a rather mean opinion of Russia. However, many Western journalists urge their leaders to finally stop annoying the Russian bear, especially when it comes to Russia’s influence in its historic regions.
22.08.2008 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/106182-russia-0
The Western media have always been quite precautious in their attitude to Russia. Their current approach carries one simple message. The West should have tamed Russia a decade ago, but now it just has to deal with it.
Russia has exercised a strong determination to rise from its knees, although it has not stood out yet. Its actions in South Ossetia and Georgia have tested Russia’s military, diplomatic and political possibilities. It seems that Moscow has been winning the fierce fight in foreign policy, although it does not intend to win the fight at all costs. Russia depends on the West just as like the West depends on Russia.
Russia must do its best not to step into the euphoria of the rising superpower. It is worthy of note that even skeptics acknowledged the new quality of Russia’s policies as a result of Moscow’s political restraint in everything about the recent military activity in the Caucasus.
If Moscow maintains the new status, then the conflict in South Ossetia will become a springboard for serious geopolitical changes in the world. Splitting NATO, Turkey’s opposition to the USA, the nuclear problem of Iran - these are only a few issues of the developing crisis.
Pakistan in a dilemma as terrorist attacks at peak
Two suicide blasts occurred in Pakistan's cantonment city Wah Cantt on Thursday, leaving 76 people dead and 110 others injured, according to state-run PTV.
It is the second suicide attack within three days in Pakistan, a sign that the terrorists activities have reached a new height.
The blasts took place at the main gate and another gate of Pakistan Ordnance Factory in Wah Cantt, some 50 km northwest from Islamabad.
Two suicide bomber blew themselves up at the time when the shift was changed and a lot of workers were leaving the factory in a bid to cause maximum casualties.
A militant organization Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack. The TTP spokesman Maulvi Umar asked the security forces to stop their operations in the northwestern part and tribal areas, private TV channel Ary One World reported.
It is worth mentioning that the group was also responsible for a suicide blast at a hospital in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on Tuesday. As many as 23 people were killed in the attack.
He warned that more attacks would be conducted in other places during the coming two days if the operations were not terminated.
As always, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani strongly condemned the bomb blasts and directed the authorities to make efforts to expose the hidden hands behind the incident and bring them to justice.
However, it seems that there is still a long way for the country to defeat the menace of terrorism.
The Pakistani government has made it clear that a multi-faceted strategy will be adopted to win a war against terrorism. After the coalition government came into being at the end of March, the administration initiated peace talks with militants in the northwestern part of the country.
As the talks with militant groups were nearing an end, the Pakistani government was facing mounting pressure from the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which were fighting Taliban in Afghanistan.
The NATO spokesman Mark Laity in late May urged Pakistan to avoid agreements that "put our troops and our mission under threat." The U.S. officials also voiced their concern that Islamabad's peace talks with militants could preclude a rise in attacks in Afghanistan.
The Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama even threatened to send troops to Pakistan to hunt down militants.
At the end of June, Gillani gave full authority to the army chief in connection with the military operation in northwestern Pakistan. The security forces launched a major operation against militants thereafter.
During his visit to the U.S. in July, Gillani pledged that Pakistan would continue its fight against terrorists.
"We are committed to fight against those extremists and terrorists who are destroying and making the world not safe," Gillani said.
Gillani sought the cooperation from the U.S. for economic stabilization to overcome financial, energy and food problems.
Pakistan is currently facing high inflation and its economy has shown signs of slowdown, making the U.S. financial aid for Pakistan more significant.
On the other hand, lawmakers in the U.S. called for a review of its financial aid to Pakistan. They proposed that the aid should be based on Pakistan's performance in fighting militants.
After the resignation of former President Pervez Musharraf who used to be called a key ally of the U.S. against terrorism, the TTP said that they would support the coalition government if they rejected Musharraf's anti-terror policy. However, Gillani said the government would continue to fight terrorism.
Thus the security across Pakistan will be put on high alert as the militants are pondering more attacks.
Saga of missed opportunities.....
Pervez Musharraf has resigned. And with that comes to an end the saga of his nearly decade-long rule of missed opportunities. When he marched in, in 1999, he was received with open arms by a people fed up thoroughly with the corrupt misrules of the PML (N) and the PPP. And his seven-point agenda did give hope to a despondent public. Initially, he did work on it zealously, for which he drew popular applause. But then he surrendered to his vaulting power ambitions and gave this programme a boot, to the masses’ great consternation and to the utter grief to national solidarity, cohesion and unity. Still, had he had not constricted his counsels to a select coterie and had he had taken to all-inclusive consultative processes, which contrary to his assertions in his departing nationwide address he throughout rebuffed derisively, he would have avoided many a pitfall that hurt him so incurably, indeed becoming an albatross around his neck. To be fair to him, he did put enormous money in development, in fact so much as the PML (N) and PPP governments combined had not in all their terms. The national economy was certainly booming on his watch. But by keeping the political leaderships, even his own the PML (Q) caboodle, at bay from his counsels, he couldn’t realise any feelingly that his economic miracle was only enriching a corporate Pakistan, not the common man’s Pakistan, and that the nation’s wealth was getting concentrated into a few hundreds of privileged hands, leaving the huge mass of millions of people penurious, poorer, deprived and denied.When he took power,people welcomed him because of his liberal views,making pakistan an secular society,people liked him because majority of pakistanis don't beleive in religious fanaticism,but then like every former General of Pakistan he shook hand with some corrupt pakistani politicians which damaged his reputation.
