The Koran burning incident, which has raged in Afghanistan since the last couple of weeks, is symptomatic of the mutual misunderstanding with which the US and regional players have bumbled on for the last 10 1/2 years – with no clear goal in sight.
If the US goal in Afghanistan was to train the security forces to handle their own defenses, the incident of US soldiers burning the Koran outside Bagram prison – allegedly to thwart planning by Taliban soldiers against them – indicates that the decade long war has not taught American soldiers basic cultural norms of Muslim societies.
The Afghans have refused to buy the argument by US soldiers that the notes written on the Korans by Taliban prisoners may have been code words for an insurgency. Instead, the issue has touched a far deeper chord than the video of US soldiers humiliating the corpses of Taliban soldiers…which was repeatedly played in the US media.
The Koran burning incident has thrown world leaders into a bind. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, knowing that his fate will be decided by the Afghans after his US patrons leave, has turned to the Ulema (religious clergy) to defuse the crisis.
On the other hand, US President Barak Obama – with his multi-cultural upbringing – has apologized, but failed to contain the violence that has infiltrated into the Afghan security forces.
If the US had taken a leaf from history, it would found the need for greater sensitivity in a cultural milieu where tribal Afghans have fought off Western influences like the plague.
For example, the former Soviet Union was forced to end its modernity campaign in Afghanistan shortly after its invasion in 1979, after Russian literacy workers were murdered by conservative Afghans. Millions of Afghans migrated to Pakistan, where they coalesced into the Mujahidin. These “holy warriors” were subsequently funded and armed by the US against the Soviets in Afghanistan… in a movement that has fathered the Taliban.
Today, with history come a full circle, Afghan conservatism raises new challenges for the Obama administration.
The Koran burning issue has already spilled into Pakistan where the religious parties (who served as the mid-wives for the Taliban during the 1990s) have used it to capitalize on anti-US sentiment.
In Pakistan, the victimization of religious minorities and even Muslims suspected of sacrilegious acts mushroomed after 1984, when the Gen. Zia ul Haq’s military coup was followed by passage of the Blasphemy Laws to award the death penalty for insulting the Prophet of Islam and the Koran.
In 1994, I visited Gujranwala town in the Punjab to see how a Muslim who had even memorized the Koran, suffered the ultimate penalty for alleged blasphemy. The unfortunate Muslim, Hafiz Farooq Sajjad whose Koran caught fire…it is impossible to verify how it happened… was spotted by his neighbor while the Holy Book was burning, and reported he had burnt it on purpose.
As the news of the Koran burning spread through the town, the clerics announced it from the mosque. An angry mob descended on Sajjad’s home, tied him to the back of his motor bike and dragged him till he died of his wounds.
The most virulent Muslim sects have since emerged from the small towns of the Punjab – groups like the Anjuman Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan and the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi – who have singled out Shias, Christians, Ahmediyas and even Muslims for extermination.
Only last week the anti Iranian group, Jundullah took responsibility for singling out Shias traveling in a passenger bus in Pakistan’s northern areas – whence they were forced to disembark and shot on account of their sect.
In this complex scenario, where nations use religious and ethnic groups to fight proxy wars in the Pak-Afghan region, the dangers of religious extremism rise in proportion to incidents like Koran burning.
Indeed, as the Taliban claims military successes in Afghanistan… the religious extremists moving across the porous borders to Pakistan carry the seeds of intolerance that threaten to destabilize the nation still further.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience. – George Bernard Shaw
Bin Laden film settings (Credit: onenewspage.co.uk)Indians have protested against the shooting of a film by Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow on the hunt for Osama bin Laden on the grounds that the film-makers were portraying Pakistan on Indian soil.
Bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in May last year.
The film-makers, denied permission to film in Pakistan, converted parts of the Indian city of Chandigarh to look like the Pakistani city of Lahore.
But for right-wing Hindus, the use of India to portray sworn enemy Pakistan was too much.
“They have made Chandigarh like Pakistan, as if it is Pakistan,” said Vijay Bhardwaj, a leader of the radical Vishva Hindu Parishad group.
“We strongly oppose this and we will not let them put Pakistani flags here and we will not let them shoot for the film.”
Billboards with Urdu signs were put up on shops in a market in the north Indian city and auto-rickshaws were running with Lahore number plates. Burqa-clad women and men dressed in traditional Pakistani clothes roamed the streets.
The small group of protesters shouted slogans and some of them were seen arguing with cast and crew members as police tried to intervene.
The protesters said the government should have denied permission to make the film on Indian soil.
Bigelow, who won an Oscar for her Iraq war movie The Hurt Locker, was developing a film on the hunt for Bin Laden before the al-Qaeda leader was killed in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.
The film, Zero Dark Thirty, is due for release in late 2012.
Islamabad, Pakistan: Two Pakistani journalists filing reports home from Washington are quietly drawing their salaries from US State Department funding through a nonprofit intermediary, highlighting the sophisticated nature of America’s efforts to shape its image abroad.
Neither of the two media organizations, Express News and Dunya News, discloses that their reporters are paid by the nonprofit America Abroad Media (AAM) on their websites or in the reports filed by their correspondents. Though the journalists have worked under the auspices of AAM since February, AAM only made their links to the news organizations known on their website Wednesday, after being contacted by the Monitor.
The lack of transparency by the Pakistani organizations involved could heighten Pakistani mistrust of the US government, which is seen as having an undue level of influence in their country’s affairs.
“If an American journalist working as a foreign correspondent in Pakistan was paid in a similar manner, would it be morally or professionally acceptable for his news organization or audience?” asks Badar Alam, editor of Pakistan’s prestigious English-language Herald magazine.
The amount currently allocated for the project is some $2 million over two years from the public diplomacy funds allocated by the State Department, according to State Department officials in Washington familiar with the project. That includes salaries for the two correspondents – Huma Imtiaz of Express News and Awais Saleem of Dunya News – and a bureau for both TV channels.
Aaron Lobel, president of AAM, says his organization receives donations from a number of private funders, too, which it mainly spends on its programs on international affairs that run on Public Radio International in the United States.
The timing of AAM’s website disclosure – after contact from the Monitor – was a coincidence and the update had been planned for “several months,” he says. “We are a small organization with two web guys. They are really working hard on the new site – not just about the Pakistan project but on everything we do. Yes, it would have been better to have a lot of information [before]. We have been preparing this site for a long time to provide that information.”
“The content production is done first and foremost [by] Pakistanis who are here and work with their channels back home to produce content,” says Lobel.
Sometimes the Pakistani journalists and editors at home come up with stories. But AAM also holds production meetings where the group’s managing director, Aliya Salahuddin, suggests stories, says Lobel.
“I understand the fears that define the joint ventures that comprise the US-Pakistan relationship. [But] we are very proud we have a good relationship with Dunya and Express. It allows Pakistani journalists to cover the US with a Pakistani perspective. I haven’t encountered any Pakistani channel that doesn’t want to work with us,” he says, adding that AAM is hopeful of partnering with more Pakistani channels in the future.
Both reporters cover a wide variety of stories, some related to the US government and others not.
In her work for the English-language newspaper the Express Tribune, a respected national Pakistani daily that is a part of the Express Media Group, Huma Imtiaz regularly quotes unnamed US officials, at times from the State Department and at times from the Department of Defense.
In a story published Aug. 16, “Strings attached: Talk of US scorecard rubbished,” Imtiaz interviews a Department of Defense official who contradicts an earlier Wall Street Journal report that the US government was making decisions on aid based on Pakistani performance and cooperation.
She has also written for The New York Times, though not since drawing a salary from AAM, and published one essay for the Indian Express on being a Pakistani journalist in America when Osama bin Laden was captured. She also writes for Foreign Policy’s website, where she is credited only as the correspondent for Express News in Washington.
Awais Saleem’s reports include stories on cricket in Chicago and Pakistani fashion in the United States.
Neither reporter was willing to comment on the story.
Making a clear connection
AAM’s ombudsman, Jeffery Dvorkin, insists there is no US government involvement with content production.
“My role as ombudsman is to help AAM ensure there is no effort by its funders, including the government, to interfere with any of the content produced. Thus far, there have been no efforts of this kind. Secondly, AAM continues to make it clear to the government and to all funders that in order for AAM to proceed with this initiative, the government could have no involvement in content production or selection,” he says.
Mr. Dvorkin says his only misgiving was about Lobel’s ability to be the AAM’s chief fundraiser and remain involved editorially at the same time – an issue that has since been resolved with the imminent hire of new managing editor.
But the lack of transparency, particularly by the Pakistani news organizations, raises ethical issues for all parties involved, says Richard Wald, a journalism ethics professor at Columbia University in New York City.
“The essential question here is not who pays, but who knows who pays,” says Professor Wald. “In a correct world, if there were such a situation, people should make the connection clear – not simply to the editors and management of the Pakistani papers – but to the receivers of the information so they can judge it on their own.”
He adds there can be a place for government-funded access to reporting for things like equipment and travel so long as it is clear where the funding is coming from.
The State Department official counters that both the US government and AAM “encourage” the channels to make their ties clear. “We’re very proud of this program,” the official says. But eight months into the program, officials from AAM had not reached out to the channels regarding disclosure.
The official notes that this is part of a broader effort to reach out, including bringing Pakistani journalists to the US for short visits under the International Visitor Leadership Program.
Defending his newspaper’s decision not to disclose the source of Imtiaz’s funding, Express Tribune editor Mohammad Ziauddin told the Monitor: “The lady reports in conjunction with the [nongovernmental organization AAM]. The lady has been recruited by us in consultation with the NGO in a way we do not need to mention this. By putting that line we would be putting this into perspective but since we already edit [her stories] according to our thinking we do not need to. Editorially we sensitize it to a great extent.”
He adds that the process of building links with government officials is commonplace the world over. “I know a number of instances where a correspondent has landed in Pakistan and has been won over by our own information departments and briefed by our government agencies. Obviously they would like to keep his sources intact and at times he or she obliges [the government].”
Ziauddin adds that the partnership was conducted “as an experiment” and in the future the newspaper intends to pay for its own correspondent in Washington, just as they do in London.
Countering environment of misinformation
Christine Fair, a Pakistan expert and assistant professor at Georgetown University in Washington, says it is important to remember that the US government is operating in an environment of misinformation, where anti-US stories in Pakistan seeded by the Pakistani security establishment are commonplace.
“Is anyone calling them out on this? The Pakistani press is the freest press that money can buy,” she says, adding: “The larger story is the Pakistani media is up for sale to as many people want to buy it. This fiction is that the country is really benefiting from some independent media. The US government wants to get into this game to counter this ISI [Inter Services Intelligence] propaganda.”
Naveed Kashif, chief operating officer of Dunya News, also stated that since final control resided with the channel, they did not feel the need to declare the partnership with AAM to their viewers.
(Editor’s note: the original version of this story gave the incorrect name for the chief operating officer of Dunya News.)
Shias protest killings in Kohistan (Credit: nation.com.pk)Gunmen have killed at least 18 Shia Muslim bus passengers in a sectarian attack in the northern Pakistani district of Kohistan, officials say.
The attackers are reported to have checked the identity cards of all the passengers before removing the Shias and shooting them.
About 27 other passengers on the bus were spared.
Meanwhile, a Chinese woman was shot dead with a Pakistani male companion in the city of Peshawar, police say.
Bus attack
Kohistan is not known for militancy, but it borders the Swat valley, which has had a Taliban presence in the past.
The attack took place close to the remote and mountainous area of Harban Nala, approximately 130 miles (208 km) north of the capital, Islamabad.
Four buses were travelling in a convoy from the city of Rawalpindi to the northern town of Gilgit.
“Armed men hiding on both sides of the road attacked,” local police chief Mohammad Ilyas told the Agence France-Presse news agency. Local officials say that the men who ambushed the bus were wearing military fatigues.
It happened in an area dominated by Sunni tribes, Reuters quotes a policeman as saying.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has condemned the attack, insisting that such incidents would not deter the government in its resolve to fight “the menace of terror”.
Correspondents say that more than two-thirds of Kohistan’s 500,000 people live a nomadic life and move up and down the country in search of pastures.
Kohistan is 7,400 sq km of sheer mountains, rising from 2,400m (7,874 ft) to 3,700m (12,139 ft) with virtually no plains.
Sunni extremists allied to or inspired by al-Qaeda and the Taliban routinely attack government and security targets in north-west Pakistan, in addition to religious minorities and other Muslim sects they consider to be infidels.
The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad reports that there are frequently complaints from Shias that the Pakistani state does little to stop the attacks and has even released from custody notorious militants accused of carrying them out.
Last month more than 30 Shias were killed in an attack on a mosque in north-west Pakistan.
Chinese targets
The Chinese woman, 40, and her Pakistani companion, 22, were killed by gunmen on motorbikes while walking in the Kohati bazaar area in the historic centre of Peshawar, police said.
It was the fifth shooting or bomb attack in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province since Thursday, raising concerns that violence is worsening following a relative lull in recent months.
The father of the dead Pakistani said that his son had been working as a translator for the Chinese woman while he was on holiday from studying English literature at university.
The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that while a motive for the attack is unclear, it is not unusual for Chinese people to be targeted in Pakistan.
In 2009 a Chinese engineer was kidnapped in the Dir region of north-west Pakistan. He was released after five months
A Chinese beautician kidnapped during the Red Mosque siege of 2007 was released several months after being abducted
One of two Chinese engineers kidnapped by militants loyal to Taliban commander Abdullah Mehsud in 2004 was killed during a rescue bid by Pakistani forces.
US Congressman Dana Rohrbacher (Credit: historycommons.org)
When former Northern Alliance leaders met with a group of influential US congressmen and businessmen in Berlin in early January, the meeting made a lot of waves in Kabul, because it created the impression that a broad anti-Karzai alliance was in the making and that it had started to muster support in the US. Furthermore, the meeting’s participants released a press statement demanding the decentralisation of the country.
Kabul reacted with accusations of anti-constitutional activities. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig, who was in Berlin (but not at this meeting), looks at the context: anti-Karzai alliance building, the heated Afghan discussion about decentralisation, federalism and even ‘division of the country’. He starts even to wonder to what extent a Somalia or even a Katanga-type scenario* – a mineral resources-induced partition – might emerge, if this alliance were to develop.
There were two conferences organised by the (German branch) of the Aspen Institute in Berlin recently.
The first one took place on 9 January and it brought together three or four Afghan leaders, four US Congress members and few US businessmen. No one from AAN participated in this or contributed to it (or was even aware of it until after it was over). But because of the controversial issues discussed there – for example suggestions to decentralise Afghanistan – and later published in a press statement (the only official part of this conference was a small press conference to which – it seems – only hand-picked journalists were invited), this is the one I am reporting about below.
The second conference took place on 10 and 11 January, in the same Berlin hotel. It was co-organised by Aspen and the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation. It brought together a number of academia, analysts and politicians from different countries, among them from Afghanistan – but none of the Afghans leaders who had participated or contributed to the first conference (Mssrs. Zia Massud, Dostum, Mohaqqeq and Saleh) were there; one of the US congressmen was. Its results will be published, and written contributions to it are already available online.
This includes a paper which I have been asked to write about possible post-2014 scenarios and which is among those available online. This is a work of analysis, not of preferences. (Although I call the scenario of a partition of Afghanistan a ‘freak scenario’ and dangerous there.)
After having been informed about the character of the first conference, I clearly stated at the second conference that issues that concern the political system in Afghanistan and possible changes to it need to be discussed, but decisions about this are the prerogative of Afghans only. Foreigners should keep out from making even recommendations. The same statement you will find in my blog below.
Original text continues:
There are probably few people in Afghanistan and outside who would disagree with the analysis coming out of the Berlin meeting of four Afghan leaders and four US Congress members. The statement signed after it and presented at a press conference on 9 January (find its full text at the bottom and here and see a picture of it here) calls Afghanistan’s present political system ‘dysfunctional because all the power is centralised’, criticised the Karzai government’s ‘incompetence and corruption’ and expressed the fear that the conduct of talks with the Taleban might lead to a ‘back room deal’ and a ‘sell-out’. Parliament needs to have more real power and political parties a bigger role in parliament, it says, and SNTV needs to be replaced by a better electoral system. Finally, the participants spoke in favour of a ‘national dialogue […] to correct the inherent flaws in the present power structure’.
The remedy proposed by the eight is more controversial: ‘decentralizing the political system’ in Afghanistan and ‘election of [provincial] Governors’. ‘[E]lected Governors and provincial councils should also have authority for such things as creating budgets and generating revenue, overseeing police and healthcare, as well as establishing educational authority, if they so desire.’ Rohrabacher even went as far as saying that ‘the overly centralized government power structure in Afghanistan is contrary to that country’s culture’.
**Federalism has been a long-standing political demand in parts of the Afghan north. Dostum’s Jombesh has been promoting this more openly over the past year or so and it has also become more popular among some other political groups among Tajiks and Hazaras, not least because of what is seen by them as the increasingly Pashtun-centric course set by the Kabul government. At the same time, many Pashtuns, including those who are critical of Karzai, see decentralisation as a euphemism for federalism, and federalism as the first step to separatism and the division of the country.
But as is often the case, it is not so important what was said (and much of it has been said in the past), but rather who has said it, in who’s company and where. The leaders who signed the statement with their full titles, claiming to represent ‘over 60 per cent of the Afghan population’, were:
‘Mr. Ahmed Zia Massoud, Chairman, National Front [Jebha-ye Melli]
General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Leader, National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan [Jombesh]
Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, Leader, People´s Unity Party of Afghanistan [Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom]
Mr. Amrullah Saleh, Former Director, Afghan National Security Directorate’
(Note: It is not clear whether Mr Saleh was in Berlin personally or whether he gave his approval for the statement from somewhere else.)All of these men have been involved in the latest round of alliance forging in Afghanistan itself. They are trying to come up with a united, anti-Karzai front and possibly a single candidate for the 2014 presidential election who can challenge the incumbent’s still-to-be-chosen successor and enable him to have better chances than Qanuni in 2004 or Dr Abdullah in 2009.
What makes it even worse for Karzai is that, in 2009, Dostum and Mohaqqeq were still on his side and helped him to secure his majority, with claims that they had provided the Uzbek and large parts of the Hazara votes. Although it is still a long way to go to the 2014 elections and today’s alliances might break, Karzai knows that, without them, his successor will have difficulties winning.
Furthermore, the invitation list for Berlin*** had also included other major ‘Northern’ figures – current Second Vice President Karim Khalili, Dr Abdullah, Yunis Qanuni, Ustad Atta and MP Saleh Seljuqi, labelled a ‘Khan staffer’ (with apparent reference to Ismail Khan). They chose not to attend; after all, Khalili and Ismail Khan are part of the government in Kabul. But it was clearly the intention of Rohrabacher’s group to help to create the broadest possible anti-Karzai alliance.
Although the terrible F word (federalism) was avoided in Berlin, a push for decentralisation was probably never made so prominently – jointly by leaders from the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara communities. And it was made from abroad. And from Berlin of all places where the German government had just helped the US open a direct channel to the Taleban, circumventing Karzai. It could be expected, including by the organisers, that this would create suspicion in Kabul where the government tends to blame foreigners for all mistakes and now clearly sees another conspiracy to undermine President Karzai and build up a political alternative. The Afghan foreign ministry condemned the meeting as ‘contrary to the spirit of national unity and the principles enshrined in the Constitution of Afghanistan’ and criticised the ‘plain interference’ of foreign countries.****
Karzai must also have raised concerns that a division of the country was being planned when he intervened with the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, in Kabul. (Karzai reportedly also personally called the German foreign office by phone but the meeting was already over by then. He apparently had learnt of it too late.) Why else should Crocker have issued the following most remarkable four-sentence statement on 10 January titled ‘The United States Supports Afghan Unity’?‘
In response to recent press [sic] reports, the U.S. Embassy reaffirms the long-standing support of the United States for a unified Afghanistan based on the Afghan Constitution. Any assertions to the contrary are entirely without foundation. Reconciliation and the political process in Afghanistan are led by the elected government and the Afghan people. Any statement to the contrary is inaccurate.’
For Karzai, the constellation of players may well recall the situation in early 2008. Then, Obama’s pre-election team had started criticising him heavily for the widespread corruption he was presiding over and created the impression that any incoming administration would drop him in favour of a Pashtun team (Ali Jalali, Ashraf Ghani, Hanif Atmar and/or Gul Agha Sherzai) or Dr Abdullah. The group that met in Berlin was supported by influential people in Washington.
Among the four Congress members present, the Republican Dana Rohrabacher, is in his twelfth term and heads the influential House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight; he is an Afghan old hand since the anti-Soviet jehad. Given the lack of a discernibly unified US strategy on Afghanistan, there is no way Karzai can be sure that what has been suggested in Berlin won’t become official strategy one day, particularly given the possibility of a Republican success in this year’s US presidential elections. Apart from that, it is well-known how political and business interests are often muddled in the US, particularly among US Republicans.
Rohrabacher himself is supported by a team that has openly been favouring the Northern Alliance for decades. Among them is Charlie Santos, another old Afghan hand***** who was present in Berlin but not mentioned on the participants’ lists (while other staffers were).
Rohrabacher himself called Santos a ‘confidant of Afghan Uzbek leader, General Dostum’ ina speech in 2009. In a US Congress hearing in 2003, and a number of interviews and articles, Santos had already advocated ‘the idea of federalism and the powerful role of democratically-elected local and regional governments as a way of creating trust and good will among diverse regions and communities’ in Afghanistan.
The 8 January meeting was also not the first of its kind. Already, on 31 July 2010, Rohrabacher and others met Zia Massud, Mohaqqeq and Dostum’s confidant and former MP, Faizullah Zaki.
The meeting went largely unnoticed at the time, but what did not go unnoticed was a highly controversial article by George W. Bush’s former deputy national security adviser, Robert D. Blackwill, that was published at the same time on the Politico blog. Blackwill suggested a ‘de facto partition’ of Afghanistan to ‘focus on defending the northern and western regions […], including Kabul’ with a ‘longtime residual U.S. military force in Afghanistan of about 40,000 to 50,000 troops’ and to ‘offer the Afghan Taliban an agreement in which neither side seeks to enlarge its territory’. ‘Human rights in the Taliban-controlled areas would also probably be abysmal, including for minorities’ but ‘the sky over Pashtun Afghanistan would be dark with manned and unmanned coalition aircraft — targeting not only terrorists but, as necessary, the new Taliban government in all its dimensions’. He added that ‘Karzai and his associates would almost certainly resist partition [my emphasis] — and might not remain in power.’
Afghanistan observers in the US, whose names cannot be disclosed, have told me that Santos claims to work as an advisor for US CENTCOM where the plan for the New Silk Road project was originally created. This includes regional transport corridors for goods and access to the re-discovered, but still unexploited, mineral wealth of Afghanistan for which the government in Kabul is currently trying to trigger an investment bonanza. These sources mainly see interests in northern Afghanistan’s mineral resources as being behind the Berlin meeting.
Even if the four Congress members’ initiative primarily aims to influence US policy on Afghanistan – for example against a power-sharing deal with the Taleban – or tends to inflate the importance of the factional leaders involved, it represent another attempt to shape Afghanistan’s future from outside the country.
Over the past ten years, though, it should have become obvious that such attempts tend to deepen conflicts in Afghanistan rather than alleviate them. Changes to the constitutional order and the political system, – based on what has worked over the past ten years and what hasn’t and why – as necessary as they are, should be the subject of a genuinely broad (ie not warlord-only) debate among Afghans.
The Americans involved ignore the fact that most of the Afghan leaders participating in Berlin have an extremely chequered past. Many were senior players in the events of the mid-1990s when, after the Soviet withdrawal and the fall of the PDPA/Watan regime, they failed to govern the country in a constructive way and, in the consequence, the country descended into factional warfare. In fact it was Dostum who, in January 1994 in a strange alliance with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Khalili’s former boss, Abdul Ali Mazari, tried to break the increasingly monopolistic power of Jamiat led by Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Massud over Kabul. The surprise military attack comprised probably the worst rocketing of the war for Kabul. It was a particularly bloody chapter in a period characterised by war crimes and human rights violations by all factions and the complete breakdown of the state. It led many Kabulis to later see the Taleban as a force liberating them from warlordism.
In this context, the likely scenario resulting from the kind of decentralisation as proposed in Berlin – with elected governors and far-reaching budgetary and police autonomy – is easy to imagine: Dostum would win provincial governor election in gas-rich Jowzjan, Ismail Khan in Herat, Ustad Atta in Balkh and so forth. The local people may end up in a situation that is not better than now, just different: with officialised ‘ethnic’ fiefdoms, ruled by armed factions, as corrupt as the current centre-run country and financed by mining and ‘service’ companies. This would cement armed warlord rule, not democracy. Instead of one unstable Afghanistan, Afghans would get a handful of small unstable ones.
The comparisons this brings to my mind of where this sort of politicking could lead are of places like Somalia, the two Sudans or post-independence Congo. As in a ‘Somalia scenario’, provinces or regions could drift away from each other and a functionally even weaker Kabul than the current one – which would become as unimportant as Mogadishu in the current Somalia.
This could even lead gradually to a full breakup of the country, even if it had not been intended initially. This might trigger another round of a ‘civil’ (or factional) war, ‘low intensity’ enough for the outside world to ignore, but terrible enough for the Afghans, simply because mineral deposits will be disputed between regions or provinces. (Look at the new South Sudan, for example.) A ‘simple’ north-south split, whether official or ‘just’ de facto, could lead to the same results. If any side in such a scenario is supported and possibly financed from outside, based on interests in minerals, it might even resemble the almost forgotten secessionist Katanga episode of 1960 which was only the beginning of a serious of wars still continuing. In any case, the – let’s call it – Rohrabacher/NA alliance is playing with fire.
Therefore, decentralisation should not be discussed at half-secret meetings abroad. This just creates further mistrust and deepens the already growing ethnic rifts in the country. It is as exclusive as hand-picked jirgas are. Instead, any discussion about possible changes to the country’s political system should be organised in Afghanistan, as a public process where Afghan local communities, intellectuals and others have the same say as political leaders. Foreign politicians are entitled to their own opinions but should be extra careful when expressing them and must avoid re-drawing borders on the maps hanging in their offices, after all that already has gone wrong in Afghanistan.
Annex:
Rep. Rohrabacher Leads Bipartisan Delegation’s Afghanistan Strategy Session With National Front Leaders in Berlin
Calls Any Taliban Inclusion in Coalition Government A “Betrayal”
Berlin, Germany, Jan 9 – Today, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), led a bipartisan Congressional delegation strategy session with leaders of Afghanistan’s newly formed National Front, to discuss alternatives to Hamid Karazi’s [sic] consideration of including the Taliban in Afghanistan’s coalition government. Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Steve King (R-IA), Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) and several leaders of Afghanistan’s National Front joined Rep. Rohrabacher in Berlin.
“The Afghans and Members of Congress meeting in Berlin today have concluded that there is a serious concern the blood and treasure invested in Afghanistan over this last decade may well have been in vain,” said Rohrabacher. “The overly centralized government power structure in Afghanistan is contrary to that country’s culture and has inhibited progress toward building a stable and democratic society there.
“The incompetence and corruption of Karzai’s government has now brought serious consideration to accepting the Taliban as part of the coalition government, this would be a betrayal of those Americans who shed their blood in the last decade, as well as, a sellout of the brave Afghans in the North Alliance who cast their lot with us after 9/11 in order to defeat the Taliban dictatorship. All participants in this meeting agreed that if the Taliban wants to participate in running for democratic office, they should be permitted to do so, but they should not be included in a back room deal among power brokers so that they would hold some kind of authority and power in an upcoming Afghan government.”
Upon conclusion of the briefing, both groups issued the following joint policy statement:
“We call for a national dialogue on a revised Constitution to correct the inherent flaws in the present power structure by decentralizing the political system, making it more compatible with the diverse political, social and cultural nature of Afghanistan. The Afghan people deserve and need a parliamentary form of democracy instead of a personality-centered Presidential system.
“We firmly believe that any negotiation with the Taliban can only be acceptable, and therefore effective, if all parties to the conflict are involved in the process. The present form of discussions with the Taliban is flawed, as it excludes anti-Taliban Afghans. It must be recalled that the Taliban extremists and their Al-Qaeda supporters were defeated by Afghans resisting extremism with minimal human embedded support from the United States and International community. The present negotiations with the Taliban fail to take into account the risks, sacrifices and legitimate interests of the Afghans who ended the brutal oppression of all Afghans.
“In order to speed the withdrawal of international forces, the participants believe it is essential to strengthen regional and national institutions that are inclusive and represent the concerns of all the communities of Afghanistan.
“The participants favor a change in the Electoral System from a Single Non Transferable Vote System to a nationally accepted variant of the Proportional Representation system with equal opportunities for both independent candidates, the political parties, or tribal representatives. We also support the election of Governors and empowerment of provincial councils. Such elected Governors and provincial councils should also have authority for such things as creating budgets and generating revenue, overseeing police and healthcare, as well as establishing educational authority, if they so desire.”
Mr. Ahmed Zia Massoud, Chairman, National Front
General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Leader, National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan
Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, Leader, People´s Unity Party of Afghanistan
Mr. Amrullah Saleh, Former Director, Afghan National Security Directorate
Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-California)
Representative Loretta Sanchez (D-California)
Represenative [sic] Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)
Representative Steve King (R-Iowa)
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight.”
* Not everybody might remember: Katanga is a once separatist mineral-rich province in the south of what now is the DR Congo and what once had been the Belgian Congo, then Congo-Leopoldville, then Congo-Kinshasa, then Zaire. When the country became independent in 1960 and an anti-colonialist leader, Patrice Lumumba, became head of the government, the former colonial power and mining companies organised a separatist rebellion in Katanga. During a military coup Lumumba was captured, handed over to the separatists and murdered by them.
In 1965, General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (later Mobutu Sese Seko) emerged as the country’s president and created what became known as one of the world’s most notorious kleptocracies where billions of aid money were channelled into private bank accounts of the dictator abroad. After he was toppled in 1997, the new government started to recover the money.
** It also transpired that Rohrabacher stated in Berlin that Afghans do not ‘deserve’ statehood and referred to the former Northern Alliance groups as the only US allies in Afghanistan. Another Berlin demand – for a ‘national dialogue on a revised Constitution’ (my emphasis) – even opens up a weak flank to the Taleban who reportedly demanded the same (without being specific on what points exactly) when meeting US representatives when the opening of the Qatar office was discussed.
*** It can be found here but the website is not one hosted by the meeting’s organiser, the Aspen Institute Germany. It seems to be authentic, however, because the same list has been sent by Aspen to media in Berlin.
**** Muhaqqeq, on Rah-e Farda TV (14 January, as monitored by AAN Kabul) countered and said there are ‘some fascist around the palace’, hinting at the government’s intention to talk with the Taleban: ‘We are from this people, we are their representative, we stand to defend this land, we suffered due tot he war against the Taleban, we are the survivors of the Yakaolang, Bamian and Mazar massacres’. He also talks about the Berlin conference on a Youtube video.
Other Afghan reactions to the meeting can be found here, here and here.
The Taleban also reacted to the Berlin meeting with two articles in their web site: ‘Afghanistan is undividable’ and ‘Old Partition plan and new players’. Here are the links to the Pashtu and the English versions.
***** He was ‘UN Political Advisor on Afghanistan; Deputy and Senior Political Advisor, United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan (1987-1995); Vice President, Centgas Consortium (1996 to1999); Senior Vice President, Delta Oil Company’, as it is summarised on the website of another company (established in 2009) of which he is (or has been) part of the board of directors.
Centgas was a consortium of Saudi Delta Oil and UNOCAL (now merged with Chevron) that tried to build a pipeline from Central Asia’s gas and oil fields through Afghanistan to Indian Ocean ports in the mid-1990s (in competition with another consortium including the Argentinian Bridas).
With the US-Pakistan relationship in turmoil, and hopefully resetting itself to a healthier, more equitable and less dependent one, our usual conventional lack of wisdom has it that America has painted itself into a corner by making us no longer dependent on it while remaining dependent on us to get it out of Afghanistan. It’s never quite that simple.
No matter how great the political, economic and financial decline of the most powerful country in history, it will still remain the most powerful for some time yet, a huge market, and most importantly, possessor of the greatest knowledge bank. It would be foolhardy to have an adversarial relationship with it, forget no relationship at all, but it takes two to tango. It moot whether America is a worse dancer or we are.
America’s scientific and technological advancement is greater than most people imagine. This knowledge it has used in certain areas, some good some bad. A good one that springs to mind is medicine, particularly surgery, including its advanced tools. Another is the Internet, which has made communications so easy and quick that the post office, already out of fashion, will soon go out of business altogether. It has opened vast information and knowledge banks for all peoples of the world for virtually free, a most admirable achievement indeed.
But at the same time, the Internet’s social pages being spawned have also become the most modern weapon so far, for it conquers hearts and colonizes minds and keeps people constantly tagged and under watch. How many young people do you run into from the boondocks that study in local schools and have never even been to Karachi leave alone to America speaking with comical American accents?
The worst areas that knowledge has been used for are making weaponry. It has been so with since the advent of Man. America is compelled to do this, and also start wars, to feed its vast military-industrial complex that is the engine of its economy. It still lives in the outdated paradigm that the only way to gain economic advantage is by establishing hegemony over the world. Time to shift this paradigm, and only America has the wherewithal to do this. It tried by shifting to ‘consensual hegemony’ rather than European-style coercive hegemony, but when it became the sole superpower it went hyper and fell back on coercive hegemony like a rooster goes for hens after being caged for a time.
It’s not easy to change because gaining economic advantage emanates from that most primeval instinct of man – survival. America has given more money to the world than any country before, but it failed to win hearts, minds and admiration because of its shrill bullying that is part of its personality. The much-acclaimed book, ‘The Ugly American’, described this shrill bullying.
America’s societal advancement (as indeed the advancement of the entire world) is comparatively far less, particularly its economic and financial systems, which were dynamic once but have since become static and exploitative. So has its political system that at one time produced admirable leaders but is today spewing out the sort of leadership we have before us. This is where America has taken a self-inflicted beating, reinforcing the notion that the very powerful cannot be beaten from the outside but fall from within because of inevitable decadence and hubris and the end of dynamism.
Dynamism is lost when people think that, “We have arrived and nothing and nobody can challenge us so we don’t need to change.” This mindset leads to a certain kind of mental lethargy that makes one stick to the tried and tested that worked for a while but is now worn out and stale and so is failing. People and the world change constantly, so what was credible once is no longer even plausible. Though no longer a ‘neocon’, US hubris was reflected in the title of Francis Fukuyama’s book, ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ that was published after the collapse of the Soviet Union. ‘End of History’ says it all. How can one even contemplate such an outlandish notion unless one is completely zoned out in the throes of intellectual hubris and mental lethargy? So long as there is time and dialectics, history will never end.
We romantic Pakistanis never got one thing straight: there is no such thing as ‘friend’ in relations between states, only temporary allies in a common cause that serves all parties. The minute that cause ceases or ceases to be common, the alliance either ends or its intensity decreases. For one state to expect a continuing special privileged relationship and preferential treatment from another because at one time they were allies in a particular endeavor doesn’t make sense.
The problem is that for us alliances are more like romances that don’t cease because we live in that fool’s paradise that was especially made for one-way romantics. Which is why America cannot understand why we keep on dredging up our common history. In the sense of romance history for us doesn’t end. We remain mired in it. We should know that when alliances end another history begins.
We Pakistanis suffer from the courtier culture of India’s princely past – please the prince and many vistas will open up. But courtier culture becomes decadent and contrary when it is thrown into a contemporary milieu – trying to live in the past and the present at the same time. When we try and treat America like the potentate of a princely state it gets befuddled, unlike their European cousins who themselves come from a courtier culture and which is one reason why they remained our masters for so long.
The courtier culture also keeps us mired in western political constructs for they were our last princes. That begs the question: what is the eastern political construct, or a modern Muslim one for that matter, that we could fall back on after 90 years of colonization? While one can make fumbling assertions about some Muslim construct or the other, we will find nothing in the present that suits the times. I know about Turkey. Our last political construct was dynastic rule, which still obtains in most Arab countries regardless of what title potentates bestow on themselves, and in our own political culture of the subcontinent where we have political dynasties. That is how backward we are. The only eastern country to have forged a distinct and modern political system of its own is China.
We remain stuck in ended histories, like our undoubtedly great Muslim past (“Muslims have a great past but no future”) or our past favours to the US – what we did for it in Afghanistan or by opening our door to China. What America cannot understand is why we didn’t insist on larger pieces of flesh at the time: Yahya Khan’s servile statement to Nixon comes to mind when after his famous China visit Nixon asked what he could do for Pakistan. Our portly general-president replied in a haze: “It was good to be of service, Sir”. We think that such talk will put us on a pedestal and we will get more in return than even what America had in mind. That could have happened with the ‘Nabob of Boogaland’ in the 19th century, but no longer.
Our mentality is that if we stake a claim to greater benefits in a particular joint venture, we are ‘selling’ ourselves. This sort of thinking comes from the courtier-courtesan mentality that has not left us, even though princely states and fiefdoms have. Today’s world is ruthless and no place for any goody two shoes.
Pakistan and America have more than one thing in common. One is that we are both expert gravediggers – of our own graves. What we consider self-interest is self-destruction. In bombing countries to smithereens and occupying them for a while, America might cause regime change, but by destroying their infrastructure and slaughtering thousands of people they turn angry mobs into nations, causing themselves greater harm.
What we thought would be good for us by joining the ‘war on terror’ because it will help rid us of terrorism in our own country has boomeranged: today large chunks of our people feel disenfranchised and disheartened with Pakistan and terrorism has increased the world over. humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com
Nafisa Hoodbhoy, former staff reporter at Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English language newspaper, former teacher at University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Amherst College, and now author of Aboard the Democracy Train: A Journey Through Pakistan’s Last Decade of Democracy, discusses the politics of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in the post-9/11 era, and how ethnic violence and women’s rights fit into Pakistan’s democratic history.
You can see Nafisa Hoodbhoy in conversation with Professor Henry (Chip) Carey and Karen Frillman of WNYC tonight at McNally Jackson bookstore in NYC.
In busy New York city, throbbing with frenetic commercial activity, the Western literati flocked on a cold Tuesday evening into the independent book store, McNally Jackson. They had come to hear the only woman reporter under Gen. Zia ul Haq, Nafisa Hoodbhoy launch her book, `Aboard the Democracy Train: A Journey through Pakistan’s Last Decade of Democracy.’
The event was moderated by the Managing Editor Newsroom, New York Public Radio – Karen Frillmann and included comments by Political Science professor at Georgia State University, Henry F. Carey. Prof. Carey had in the 90s accompanied Ms Hoodbhoy through the rural areas of Sindh and Punjab, at a time when she reported on the nation’s struggle to return to democracy.
In her opening address, Ms Hoodbhoy said that it was extraordinary that she was launching her book from New York, where she had begun her journalistic career. In her words, the US women’s movement had inspired and motivated her to become the only woman reporter for Pakistan’s leading English language, Dawn newspaper… where she covered Benazir Bhutto’s bid to become the nation’s only woman prime minister.
Ms Frillmann asked Ms Hoodbhoy a host of questions about the social structure, history and politics of Pakistan, including civil society’s struggle for rule of law. In particular, she voiced the concern of American intellectuals about the effects of US involvement in the region.
The ATDT author spoke for about an hour about the issues raised by the moderator…referring back to the chapters of her book. In turn, the audience remained highly attentive throughout the presentation.
Prof. Carey made brief interventions, based on his observations and experiences on Pakistan’s struggle for democracy.
Afterwards, Ms Hoodbhoy answered a slew of questions raised by the audience – most of whom had a good working knowledge about Pakistan. Responding to questions from the audience about the news carried about Pakistan by the US media, the author gave her own perspective on current events.
The talk was followed by a book signing by the author.
RECENTLY, a report titled Pakistan flood emergency: Lessons from a continuing crisis was prepared by a collaborative group of over a dozen leading international and national humanitarian aid agencies.
Victims of 2010 floods in Sindh Photo credit: AFP
It is a deeply saddening reminder that some 2.5 million people affected by floods last year are still struggling to return to normal life. The miseries of these citizens are going unnoticed, having been overshadowed by the political turmoil in the country.
According to the provincial disaster management authority’s official website, no flood affectees are living in camps any more. This masks the fact that they are still in dire need of food, shelter, drinking water, sanitation facilities and medicine. Thousands remain hungry and shivering in the unprecedented cold wave. The numbers that find space on official websites do not reflect any of these very grim realities.
The hardship being suffered by those affected by the floods does not end when they evacuate the camps; in fact, they return to their places of residence with nothing with which to resume their lives. In the absence of a robust early recovery plan, those affected by disaster find themselves destitute. The social ramifications of this can be very extensive and perhaps worse than the disaster itself.
Following the floods, the official appeal for international aid was inexplicably delayed; meanwhile, the humanitarian community’s lukewarm response means that there was insufficient support for relief. The loss of 2.2 million acres of crop lands and an estimated 116,000 heads of cattle has shattered the local economy in flood-hit areas.Fe
Sowing during the Rabi season following the floods was scanty, as more than 10,000 square kilometres of land in the seven worst-hit districts remained inundated, making ploughing impossible. These districts included the most fertile and crop-intensive areas: Sanghar, Mirpurkhas, Tando Allahyar, Shaheed Benazirabad and Tando Mohammad Khan.
In a Feb 17 update, the Sindh Disaster Management Authority acknowledged that over 1,200 square kilometres remained inundated. Further compounding the situation, the provincial government was unable to provide the promised package of seed and fertiliser to farmers. Of the 70,000 tonnes of fertiliser that were promised, only 23,000 tonnes were mobilised; administrative inefficiency meant that merely 9,000 tonnes actually reached farmers.
President Asif Ali Zardari took charge of matters by communicating directly with the district administration, but the impact of this move was diluted by political manoeuvring at the local level. From relief aid to cash support, availing anything required political connections. This left the poor of the province even further marginalised. There is little doubt that this will result in these communities becoming even more food insecure. Last year, some reports found malnutrition levels amongst women and children in rural Sindh similar to those in famine-hit Africa. The government failed to mobilise the international community for sufficient resources.
Meanwhile, the economic turmoil in the Eurozone and America, the competing demands of other disaster-hit areas, the compromised credibility of the Pakistani government machinery, restrictions on the mobility of international aid workers and the ineffective media coverage resulted in sluggish inflows of aid. The UN launched a $357m appeal last September but till Feb 10, hardly half of this sum had been mobilised.
Considering that over nine million people were affected by the floods, the hoped-for sum amounted to $66 per person. This is a very modest figure when compared to the appeal for $97 per person after the floods of 2010 in Pakistan, or $481 per person after the Haiti earthquake of 2010.
What compounded the situation further in Pakistan was the fact that key sectors of humanitarian response remained anaemic, which kept thousands of flood-affected people in limbo for months on end. According to a report by the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), the most under-resourced sectors are water sanitation and hygiene where 80 per cent of the needs remain unmet. These are followed by health, shelter and food security, where over 50 per cents of the people’s needs are unfulfilled.
Meanwhile, as most of the promises made by the government have yet to be kept, a significant amount of the sum earmarked for those affected by the 2010 floods have been diverted to other areas by the Sindh government. Of the sum allocated for the rehabilitation of flood-hit areas and communities by the Provincial Annual Development Plan, Rs8bn have been diverted to the development fund through elected representatives.
The government seems to be revisiting its priorities as an election year looms. The provincial government has chopped off some Rs4bn allocated for the construction of 40,000 houses and the provision of basic amenities in 200 flood-affected villages. This sum is now to be spent on schemes identified by elected representatives.
Such willful disregard for the plight of the flood-affected shows a lack of political commitment on the part of the provincial government. And that further hinders assistance by the international humanitarian community. The vacuum created in the absence of active governmental and international aid is being filled by faith-based groups. The penetration of extremist elements under the guise of humanitarian work is being under-estimated, and could hurt the relatively liberal social fabric that exists in Sindh.
The monsoon season is again just a few months away. Even a moderate shock this year would destroy the disaster management apparatus and ailing provincial economy that are already in a shambles. Disaster risk reduction and preparedness should be the top priority of the government, aid agencies and civil society. We need to develop early warning systems and emergency evacuation plans, repair infrastructure and start planning; the trajectory of the past year’s failures needs to be altered.
The writer is the chief executive of Strengthening Participatory Organisation.nmemon@spopk.org
In an op-ed titled “Be strong, not hard”, published in these pages on February 21, Ejaz Haider problematises conflict in Balochistan and offers suggestions to Islamabad on how to tackle the crisis in the troubled province. The premise of his argument is on the assumption that all states are alike when it comes to dealing with people wanting to secede from them.
He puts it unequivocally in following words: “Balochistan is indeed Pakistan’s internal issue. Those who want Balochistan to secede from Pakistan will get the state’s full reply. That too, given how states behave, is a foregone conclusion. Hell, states don’t even let go of disputed territories and care even less about whether or not people in those territories want to live with them.”
Historical and empirical evidence of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, fortunately, does not validate Ejaz Haider’s claim. States do care if people living in their jurisdictions want to stay under existing arrangements or not. Contrary to Ejaz Haider’s claim, states do let go of people and territories through peaceful means.
I will cite three cases where the states in question have behaved peacefully while dealing with political actors who have championed the cause of independence from them. My argument, therefore, is that not all states are alike and the outcomes of independence movements vary significantly.
Let us look at the former Czechoslovakia, a state where leaders peacefully decided in 1992 to split into two countries — Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 1989, Vaclav Havel’s Civic Forum led the peaceful movement against the communist regime. This movement because of its ability to affect political change through nonviolent means got the title of the Velvet Revolution. Viladimir Meciar’s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia emerged as a leading party in Slovakia demanding greater autonomy for the region. Unable to get along in a federation, the Czech and Slovak leaders passed the law on December 27, 1992 to go their separate ways. Three years into the Velvet Revolution, Czech and Slovakia opted for the velvet divorce.
The Quebec sovereignty movement in Canada is another case where the central government has chosen to deal with the demand for sovereignty through peaceful means. The Parti Quebecois (PQ), pro-sovereignty party in Canada’s second most populous province, was in power in the 1990s. The PQ held a referendum in the province in 1995 asking people if they would like to form an independent country. The PQ lost the referendum by a razor-thin margin of less than one per cent. The Canadian government, at no point, had indicated or implied the use of force to suppress the Quebec separatists.
Lastly, let us look at Scotland where the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) under the leadership of Alex Salmond has decided to hold referendum in the autumn of 2014 on the independence of Scotland from the United Kingdom. London has not mobilised forces, conventional or nuclear, to prevent tiny Scotland to get out of mighty United Kingdom.
Scottish Secretary Michael Moore says that any referendum held without Westminster — seat of the British power — backing would not be legally binding and can be legal challenged. Mr Moore, however, does recognise the SNP’s right to hold a referendum. David Cameron, the British prime minister has said that ‘Scotland will vote to remain part of the UK.’ Cameron is selling the idea of a unified UK to Scotland on the ground that together they can meet challenges, mainly economic, more effectively than on their own. Mr Cameron recognises that ‘the choice over independence should be for the Scottish people to make.’ The prime minister made it clear that he is ‘not going to stand here and suggest Scotland couldn’t make a go of being on its own, if that’s what people decide.’
Examples of Canada, former Czechoslovakia, and the United Kingdom illustrate that not all states are alike when it comes to keeping or letting go of disenchanted populations and regions within their territories. Thus, the argument that in essence all states are the same is a fallacy that is neither theoretically useful nor empirically sustainable.
