Washington's plans for Afghanistan must not exclude Mullah Umar and the Haqqani network just as Islamabad's plans must not be exclusively based on them," Friday Times editor in chief Najam Sethi had said in his July 15 editorial.
Indeed, the Haqqanis are the most operationally far-reaching and potent actors in the insurgent melange of the borderlands, but their lineage and structure remain ill understood in both Pakistan and the West.
The Haqqani Nexus, a new report from the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, therefore arrives at the right moment to inform ongoing debates over the nature of Pakistani militancy, its relationship to the future of Afghanistan, and its sustenance over the years by the Pakistani military.
An institute based at the US Military Academy is hardly a disinterested party in these questions. Don Rassler and Vahid Brown have, however, meticulously sourced their report - much of it from Urdu and Pashto, rather than just Arabic, documents. They incorporate the first known review of thousands of pages of jihadist magazines and letters between Haqqani commanders. Their conclusions are thus grounded on this scholarship, not American animosities towards Rawalpindi.
Three primary strands run through The Haqqani Nexus: the foundational role of the Haqqanis in the global jihadist movement; the marriage of convenience between the Haqqanis and the Afghan Taliban; and the enduring utility of the group to the ISI in its pursuit of that decades-old chimera, "strategic depth".
Haqqanis and Al Qaeda
The first contention is that the Haqqanis have been "more important to the development and sustainment of Al Qaeda and the global jihad than any other single actor or group".
Rassler and Brown show that the routing of supplies to the mujahidin through Haqqani-dominated turf greatly empowered the group, turning its camps into the "single most common destination for the Arabs who went beyond Peshawar in the 1980s".
Indeed, "to join the nascent Al Qaeda ... meant first training with the Haqqani network". Through the 1990s, the Haqqanis stressed the need to expand jihad globally even as bin Laden remained focused on the Arabian Peninsula. The Haqqanis hosted bin Laden on his return to Afghanistan in 1996, and helped the latter to circumvent the various restrictions imposed on him by the Taliban.
After 9/11, US counterterrorism efforts forced Al Qaeda and the Haqqanis closer together. Ayman al Zawahiri's wife, for instance, took refuge in a Haqqani-owned building when she was killed in a US airstrike in 2001. The cumulative effect has been "a sense of shared suffering and ideological affinity", which explains why the US considers the Haqqanis to be fundamentally irreconcilable actors whose exclusion from the Afghan stage is the sine qua non of any settlement.
Haqqanis and the Taliban
In contrast, The Haqqani Nexus portrays the Taliban-Haqqani link as far looser. Why, then, do the Haqqanis remain "a central partner for the [Balochistan-based] Quetta Shura Taliban", even enjoying representation on the Taliban's central coordinating body, the Rahbari Shura?
The answer is simply that the Haqqanis bridge the cultural gulf between the lowland tribes of Loya Kandahar (home to most of the Taliban's leadership) and the mountain tribes of Loya Paktia, allowing the Taliban to extend their brand and coercive power well beyond Kandahar, and "project itself as a cohesive national ... movement". Major attacks on Kabul are usually of Haqqani provenance, highlighting the group's "uniquely valuable asset: a geographically central platform for the delivery of violence".
Haqqanis and Pakistan
And so we reach the core issue in the blighted US-Pakistan relationship. Over the past decade, US policymakers have reassessed "the myth of Talqaeda", to use Alex Strick van Linschoten's wonderful phrase. In Washington, reconciliation is now respectable. But the Haqqanis, from their inception wedded to global jihad, are deemed beyond the pale.
Pakistan, conversely, "has long been a core sponsor and beneficiary" of the group. It functions as "a kinetic strike force through which Pakistan can achieve important signalling effects vis-a-vis India and its regional posture". This was more than evident from the prominent attacks by the Haqqanis on the Indian embassy in Kabul. As Rassler and Brown note, another troubling implication of this relationship is that "Pakistan could have played a more influential role in the development of Al Qaeda than has thus far been recognised".
The Haqqanis do serve as interlocutors between Pakistani state and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP). But this itself is a reflection of the fact that the TTP and its flourishing insurgency are "outgrowths", as the authors put it, of a self-destructive - and ongoing - process facilitated by the ISI over three decades.
Nearly 2,500 Pakistani soldiers were killed in the Tribal Areas between 2004 and May 2010. A push into North Waziristan would lead to the deaths of thousands more - but not nearly as many as will perish in the years ahead if Waziristan remains a petri dish of jihadis. Regrettably, it is that course - the percolation of militancy in the strategic depths of the ISI's sandbox - on which Pakistan seems set.
Shashank Joshi is a doctoral student at Harvard University; and also works as an Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute
[Dawn] Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It has become something of a personality cult in Pakistain. Nowhere is this cognitive dissonance more visible than amongst the educated who refuse to accept facts and logic, clinging instead to a neurotic persecution complex.
Columnist Khaled Ahmed says: "The vast majority of literate Paks take comfort in ignorance, skepticism and conspiracy theories. The self-glorification of an imagined past matched by habits of national denial have assumed crisis proportions today when Pakistain's existence is under far more serious threat from fellow Mohammedans than it was in 1947 from rival non Mohammedan communities." What lies beneath this inability to critique and lack of intelligent analysis? Undoubtedly, one's education influences views on politics and society. As Robert Frost aptly puts it: "education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
To sift the chaff from the grain, let us consider a ubiquitous slogan about the 'ideology' of Pakistain. A staple of our school textbooks, it echoed in massive public rallies as well as debates on secularism. Pakistain ka matlab kiya? La illaha il lallah (What is the meaning of Pakistain? There is no God but Allah) has become the rallying cry of the campaign to Islamise Pak society. Ironically, it is a slogan that was coined long after the creation of Pakistain, but it is now being falsely ascribed to the leaders of the Pakistain movement in 1947.
Religion has often proved to be a powerful binding factor which has merged heterogeneous groups into a distinct nationality. Through appeal to supernatural authority, religion promotes national unity as a divine command. Examples abound in contemporary history: the Greek church as a source for Greek nationalism, the Catholic church as a factor in Irish separatism, Judaism and the state of Israel, Islam and Pakistain.
Soon after he seized power in 1977, General Zia ul-Haq sought to create a nation based on religion rather than on secular principles. An important part of the Islamisation agenda was defining the Islamic 'ideology' of Pakistain. In stark contrast to modern textbooks, no textbook written prior to 1977 mentions the 'Ideology of Pakistain'.
Since education was a key factor in Zia's Machiavellian manoeuvrings, a presidential order was issued that all Pakistain Studies textbooks must "demonstrate that the basis of Pakistain is not to be founded in racial, linguistic, or geographical factors, but, rather, in the shared experience of a common religion. To get students to know and appreciate the Ideology of Pakistain, and to popularise it with slogans. To guide students towards the ultimate goal of Pakistain -- the creation of a completely Islamised State."
Instead of being a Mohammedan state as envisaged by its founders, Pakistain was recast in the mould of an Islamic state, where Islamic law would reign supreme. A state sponsored and systematic purging of liberal and secular values of future generations of Pakistain ensued.
History was rewritten to redefine Pak as an Islamic society, and no research on ancient India, the medieval period or the colonial era. Our history was linked with the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, thus alienating it from ancient Indian history. This interpretation creates a Mohammedan consciousness that seeks it's identity outside India.
Historian Mubarak Ali cautions "History should not be influenced by religious beliefs since history has no religion. Pakistain came into being in 1947, but our history existed before this which cannot be deleted."
History textbooks written soon after Partition -- a time when the grief of shattered families who experienced communal killings was at its peak -- show a more liberal mindset. The history of the subcontinent was taken to start with the ancient Indus valley civilisations rather than with the conquest of India by the first Mohammedan invader, Mohammad bin Qasim, in 712. In contrast to today's history books, these books contained discussions of the empires of Emperor Ashoka and the Maurya dynasty. Has there has been a deliberate revival of communal antagonism over 30 years after Partition? Undoubtedly, the permanent militarisation of society requires a permanent enemy.
Although Edward Everett may state that "education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army", the task of defending Pakistain's ideological borders has been entrusted to the military as they are defenders of the 'faith.' Textbooks extol the achievements of Mohammedan conquering heroes, as well as those of the Armed Forces. In sharp contrast, no contributions by any heroes in fields like education, medicine, law or social work are highlighted.
September 6 commemorates the defense of the country against an Indian attack in 1965. According to our textbooks, it was India which attacked Lahore in the middle of the night, without any provocation, but our army won this war. The reality is that Pakistain started the 1965 war on August 5 by sending soldiers into Kashmire and India retaliated the following day.
Instead of the soul searching and accountability undertaken by nations like Japan and Germany after devastating wars, our history textbooks explained the separation of East Pakistain in 1971 as an evil design by India which created the guerrilla group Mukhti Bahini in order to seize Pak territory. Although we lost half of Pakistain, there was no mention of the gross inequalities which led to the grievances of the Bengalis. Tens of thousands died, millions were displaced, atrocities were committed and the country was rent asunder. But the guilty were never punished.
The seeds of the distortion of history and the preponderance of religious dogma which were sown decades ago are bearing fruit today. Examples from the curriculum designed by the Federal Ministry of Education abound. The Social Studies textbook for Class 7 says: "European nations have been working during the past three centuries, through conspiracies on naked aggression to subjugate the countries of the Mohammedan world."
14-year-old students of Pakistain Studies are being taught that: "one of the reasons of the downfall of the Mohammedans in the sub-continent was the lack of the spirit of jihad."
13-year-olds are instructed: "In Islam jihad is very important.....The person who offers his life never dies....All the prayers nurture one's passion of jihad."
Thus, a primary and secondary school environment is being created which is nurturing prejudice and extremism. "College and university come much too late; change must begin at the primary and secondary school level," sums up physicist and lecturer Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy.
Although religious schools or madrassas in Pakistain are often blamed for breeding extremism, only 6 per cent of children are educated in these schools. Furthermore, research does not confirm the link between madrassa education and terrorism. The cause for the intolerance experienced by Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians lies in public education, structured as it has been to defend Pakistain against some phantom enemy. Non-Mohammedans are forced to read the same textbooks which contain derogatory remarks against Hindus, e.g being eternal enemies of Mohammedans. Our myopic educational system discourages questioning and causes ethnic and religious minorities to be viewed with suspicion.
Pakistain is primarily a young country, so it is the youth which is severely impacted by rampant unemployment, inflation, corruption and violence. Many amongst this disenchanted segment have started seeing religion as their anchor and are attracted to demagogues like Zaid Hamid. A self-proclaimed jihadist who claims to have fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Hamid banks on the insecurity and frustrations of college students and television viewers. Just as Adolf Hitler dwelt on Germany's 'maimed honour' in his famous beer-hall oratory in Munich (where he promised that Germany would conquer the world), Hamid calls for the Pakistain Army to go to war against India and liberate Kashmire, Paleostine, Chechnya and Afghanistan.
Our curriculum stresses the formal and ritualistic aspects of Islam, as against those which emphasise social justice. Science and secular knowledge are regarded with contempt. Dr Hoodbhoy says, "I have never seen a first-rate Mohammedan scientist become an Islamist or a terrorist even when he or she is a strong believer. But second-and third-rate technologists are more susceptible. These are people who use science in some capacity but without any need to understand it very much--engineers, doctors, technicians, etc.--all of whom are more inclined towards radicalism. They have been trained to absorb facts without thinking, and this makes them more susceptible to the inducements of holy books and preachers."
The steady diet of religious fundamentalism and blind faith has clouded objective and rational thinking, and transformed Pakistain from a moderate Mohammedan-majority country into one where the majority wants Islam to play a key role in politics. A 2008 survey by World Public Opinion found that 54 per cent of Paks wanted strict application of Sharia. The British Council polled 1226 young Paks between 18 and 29 in 2009 and found that 'three-quarters of all young people identify themselves primarily as Mohammedans. Just 14 per cent chose to define themselves primarily as a citizen of Pakistain.'
Pakistain's skewed priorities may account for the huge amount spent on its ever increasing "defence needs" and only 1.5 per cent of it's GDP on education. But lost in the brouhaha over the lack of access to education is the dire need to revise the dogmatic and distorted school curriculum. As the pendulum swings in Pakistain between faceless myrmidons and moderates, we need our friends to stand with us and demand that Paks don't need an education which stunts, blinds, distorts and deadens any more. As Alvin Toffler said, "The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/02/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] COUNTERING terrorism needs a multifaceted approach that focuses not just on confronting it through the coercive apparatus of the state but also through disengagement strategies.
Disengaging a Islamic exemplar from violence and Islamic exemplar tendencies is an uphill task because of his or her ideological and political association with the cause. A number of countries have developed de-radicalisation programmes to deal with the issue but the level of success remains debatable, notwithstanding the claims made by the states concerned. The rehabilitation of juggedhard boyz becomes an integral component of any such programme as part of the prevention strategy.
The prison holds crucial significance in the de-radicalisation strategy as many of these programmes -- including those in Egypt, Soddy Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom -- are run in prisons. The logic for this approach is twofold: first, prisons offer an atmosphere where the detainees have time to think and interact with many influences; second, if the inmates are not engaged in constructive activities, they would be likely to use their time in prison to mobilise outside support, radicalise other prisoners and, given the opportunity, attempt to form an operational command structure.
The Pakistain Army launched an initiative for the rehabilitation of detainees in the conflict-hit Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... in 2009 after a successful military operation against Islamic exemplarhard boyz there. During the operation, thousands of hard boyz and their active supporters surrendered, were incarcerated or turned in by their families. They remain in the army's custody.
In 2010, the army decided to screen detainees in order to identify hardcore Islamic exemplars. A de-radicalisation programme was launched for detainees other than hardcore Islamic exemplars. The initiative is in its initial phase still and there is room to learn from the best practices and make adjustments where needed to improve its chances of success.
The rehabilitation programmes for detainees are usually part of a larger de-radicalisation strategy. Different states use different strategies but there are four major approaches in practice to rehabilitate individuals and vulnerable communities.
These four approaches operate at the security, societal, ideological and political levels, and are based on the concepts of de-radicalisation and counter-radicalisation.
There is general agreement that the best practices on countering radicalisation are a combination of all four approaches, ranging from engagement to winning the hearts and minds of the people. But the objective of most of the programmes is neutralising the security threat. Despite sharing common objectives, such programmes in Mohammedan-majority states have some characteristics that differ from the models developed by non-Mohammedan states with a sizable Mohammedan population.
Programmes in Mohammedan states focus mainly on prevention and creating an ideological response to radicalisation. The Egyptian, Yemeni, Jordanian and Indonesian models essentially developed as ideological responses and the Saudi model emphasised rehabilitation through psychological and social modules, along with ideological responses.
Pakistain's rehabilitation programme in Swat is not part of a comprehensive policy and is a counter-insurgency initiative introduced by the Pakistain Army. Yet if implemented judiciously, it could provide the basis for a broader de-radicalisation strategy.
The initiative to rehabilitate detainees in Pakistain was taken in September 2009 with an initial cost of Rs4.4m, which was provided by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government. The programme has three main components: Project Sabaoon focuses on juveniles; Project Mishal concentrates on adult detainees; Project Sparlay is for the family members of jugged persons.
Rehabilitation efforts have also been divided into four main modules, including an educational module comprising formal education, especially for juveniles, to enable them to continue their education. Another module includes psychological counselling and therapy for developing independent and logical thinking. The social module includes social issues and family participation and the fourth module includes vocational training, such as repairing home appliances, etc., to equip the detainees with skills that enable them to make a decent living. Through the initiative, over 400 individuals have been reintegrated into society so far.
The Swat rehabilitation programme is based on the Saudi model. As is obvious from the difficulties faced by the Mishal project, financial constraints were not considered while designing these initiatives. On the other hand, although Sabaoon is not facing any financial constraints, the absence of knowledgeable and devoted scholars such as Dr Farooq Khan (killed on Oct 2, 2010 by the Taliban) has certainly been a challenge. In addition to these constraints, the initiatives focus mainly on low-cadre hard boyz who come from poor economic backgrounds.
The rehabilitation of this rank is important but the programme needs to be expanded to the mid-level cadre which has more political and ideological tendencies towards radicalisation. If some of them are disengaged from hard boyz and extremism, they can prove valuable assets in the de-radicalisation process, as has happened in Indonesia. Yet bringing about the disengagement of the mid-level cadre is a difficult task and countering its narratives is a challenge. Egypt has a good record in this area.
The Swat model was developed with a post-insurgency perspective and the counter-argument modules focus on defusing anti-state tendencies. However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... in Pakistain the Islamic exemplar landscape is quite complex and in the presence of other violent actors, who are involved in international and regional terrorism, this narrative cannot prevent them from joining other groups. The complete denunciation of extremism should be the programme's objective and a viable ideological anchor needs to be provided in the framework of nationalism and pluralism.
The Swat model can be replicated in other parts of the country after addressing framework deficiencies and intellectual and financial constraints. But at the same time, the civil administration needs to shoulder responsibility. In other countries, such initiatives have been taken by the political government and implemented by the civilian administration. Only a representatives and accountable political set-up can have the credibility, legitimacy and mandate to take on the ideological and political sensitivities involved in the de-radicalisation process.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/02/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] THE way the Pak hive mind works can often leave you with the feeling that either you yourself are mad, or everybody else is.
Consider the word that has recently been doing the rounds: that the army must somehow, constitutionally and without initiating a coup, save the country. Are we crazy? True, there are a formidable number of challenges facing us -- not that that is anything new.
From an unwieldy and seemingly escalating war with the obscurantists variously labelled as 'terrorists', 'militants' and 'insurgents' to a tanking economy, power shortages and the crisis of the flood-affected and the internally displaced, Pakistain is facing a host of issues of the sort that would deflate the optimist wearing even the rosiest of rose-tinted spectacles.
But what is the army, with its boots and guns and with its hands full, meant to do about this? Ask someone making this suggestion and they tend to do the metaphorical equivalent of shuffling their feet in embarrassment, grumbling about extraordinary times dictating extraordinary measures and how "somebody has to do something". Such murmurings recently came to a head in certain sections of the media but they're nothing new, really.
Since this phase of Pakistain's flirtation with democracy began, sections of a shadowy 'civil society' have been mumbling about Pakistain being unfit for civilian rule -- i.e. this country's people need the stick, not the carrot -- and about the ruling parties being unfit to rule. This is the same 'civil society', incidentally, that historically has refused to vote or participate much in politics and, most ironically, heaved itself out of its armchair only to boo the most recent of Pakistain's civic-minded military rulers.
The basic trouble with a number of Paks is that their memories are too short. Disconnected from the past, having learnt few lessons and even fewer truths, we float in an endless present, severed from history or context and therefore living in a present shorn of meaning.
We treat every crisis as a stand-alone affront, refusing to look at its roots and flailing ineffectively instead at its fruit, and then being flummoxed by the fact that a new shoot has sprung up elsewhere. As a society, generally, we try to understand the present through lots of single-frame 'nows', and become frustrated when the meaning that looking at the whole reel would produce is not forthcoming.
It seems that four crippling bouts of military takeovers have not been enough to make it clear to us, once and for all, that the tin hats' exit leaves us worse off, and with even more systemic issues than we had before. Forget history, even the memory of events in our own lifetimes, just a few years ago, tends to evaporate from our minds.
Take the power crisis that is the first thing on everybody's minds these days. If I had a rupee for each time I've heard someone, from drawing-room activists to people in shops and on the streets or being interviewed on television, say that we had electricity during the Musharraf years -- well, I'd be quite rich by now, even while factoring in inflation. The implication is that Musharraf gave us electricity, the present government took it away.
Yes, there was far less loadshedding then. But did the present government start its time in office by shutting down power plants and thereby creating the crisis?
Rationally, we have no electricity now because for nearly a decade, nobody did much to cater to the future needs of a growing population, expanding industry and increasing urbanisation. There was little investment in the power-generation infrastructure and next to no planning. The result, which anybody could have guessed, is that now there is simply not enough to go around.
While bemoaning their fate today, how many people bother to remember that back in the 1990s, Pakistain had a surfeit of electricity and there was talk of selling it to India?
Pakistain's tragedy is, and always has been, the tendency to reset to a baseline mode of existence which involves perpetually taking two steps back for each one forward, and that too with a unique variety of muddled thinking in which anything that is not a quick-fix solution is not worth considering.
That explains why there is such a widespread tendency to view democracy as some sort of magic wand which, if waved even once, will without further ado solve all our problems. And that, in turn, is the reason that a lot of people are especially critical of this government and the mess that it is overseeing.
Democracy has failed us, goes the line of thinking, because, see, we have it and yet our problems are only multiplying.
Obviously, democracy doesn't work. Bring on the tin hats.
But democracy is not a goal in and of itself, obviously, and neither is it the sacred cow that many people view it as. It is incredible that one has to explain the fact that it is a process, but one does. Democracy allows you to vote in the people of your choice, and if the choice is only between the devil and the deep blue sea, then so be it.
They can carry on doing the damage that they do and in five years' time, we'll be wiser and can refuse to vote for them.
Dictatorships, on the other hand, you're stuck with. Demand of any general in the presidency, 'You and whose army?', and all he has to do is point out of the window.
Many of us Paks, with our short memories and desire for instant solutions, do not see this. And because we fail to learn from history, we live in an endless cycle of making the same mistakes over and over again.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/02/2011 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
THE way the Pak hive mind works can often leave you with the feeling that either you yourself are mad, or everybody else is.
