Enemy Past The Gates

By Amir Zia

The News

November 6, 2012

Terrorist groups like the Taliban thrive on anarchy and disorder. Karachi’s fractured and highly polarised economic, social, ethnic and political environment makes it an ideal choice for all kinds of radicals and militants who want to confront and topple the existing order.

 

All of a sudden some of the high and mighty of this country seem to have woken up to the fact that Taliban insurgents have gained a foothold in Karachi. These religious zealots are resorting to bank robberies, kidnappings and extortion to raise funds for the so-called holy war that has consumed nearly 40,000 Pakistani lives since early 2002. Apart from operating crime rackets, the Taliban are also carrying out systematic assassinations of political rivals in Karachi’s Pakhtun-dominated neighbourhoods, where they have established control by ousting the nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) workers. A network of seminaries, mainstream religious parties, and new and old Islamic charities provide the militants a platform from where they penetrate, organise and entrench themselves in the city.

Therefore, the honourable Supreme Court – during a suo-motu hearing last week on the law and order crisis in Karachi – ordered action against the Taliban. The same week, President Asif Ali Zardari also asked authorities to present a report on the Taliban’s activities, while Interior Minister Rehman Malik informed the nation that Pakistan’s financial and industrial capital has transformed into a hub of these religious militants. 

On its part, the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) added the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) to its ever-expanding list of declared enemies. A TTP spokesman vowed that the Taliban would target MQM workers as a “religious obligation.” In his statement, he also encouraged the small Baloch and Sindhi militant bands to continue their struggle – in an apparent bid to find new allies and fuel ethnic, political and sectarian violence in Karachi, where more than 1,900 people have been killed so far this year. With the master of orchestrating suicide bombings and terror assaults formally announcing to join the fray in Karachi by throwing the gauntlet to the MQM, this means graver times lie ahead for the city.

Terrorist groups like the Taliban thrive on anarchy and disorder. Karachi’s fractured and highly polarised economic, social, ethnic and political environment makes it an ideal choice for all kinds of radicals and militants who want to confront and topple the existing order.

Although the Taliban presence in Karachi hit the headlines only in recent days, they have been expanding their network in the city for the past several years. The process gained momentum with the increased influx of the Pakhtun population to Karachi following the military operation in Swat and South Waziristan in 2009, and an escalation in US drone strikes on the militant-infested North Waziristan region. The majority of the refugees were ordinary citizens trying to escape the conflict, but a large number of militants also managed to find a safe-haven in the vast urban jungle of Karachi during this period.

The TTP’s hostility towards the MQM is understandable, since MQM leader Altaf Hussain and his supporters were the first to raise an alarm over increasing Talibanisation and the misuse of seminaries by extremist religious forces in the city.

However, the MQM’s early warning shots were largely ignored by friends and foes alike. Forces like the ANP saw it as a tactic by the MQM to protest against the continued influx of Pakhtuns in the megalopolis, while the concerned government officials and state institutions remained in a state of self-denial by design or default. The PPP – MQM’s senior partner in the ruling coalition – also failed to grasp the gravity of the situation as all the mainstream forces remained locked in self-defeating turf-wars and infighting at the cost of vital issues. The lack of focus and absence of any broad counter-terrorism strategy for the city allowed Al-Qaeda-inspired militants to rest, regroup, expand and carry out their activities – almost with impunity – in Karachi.

The MQM also emerged as the strongest and most vocal critic of the Taliban and their mindset following the assassination bid on Malala Yousafzai, in which she and two of her friends were wounded. In contrast to the other mainstream political parties, the MQM challenged the orthodox militia by trying to come up with an ideological counter-narrative, underlining the vision of Pakistan’s founding father, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who stood for a modern, progressive and secular state fused with the best traditions of Islam. While doing this, the MQM tried to mobilise people at different levels – especially the intelligentsia and the educated urban middle and upper-middle classes. The MQM’s plan to hold a referendum on November 8 to ask the people to decide whether they want Quaid-e-Azam’s Pakistan or the Taliban’s – is a positive initiative to mobilise public opinion against religious extremism and intolerance.

However, the MQM – with all its support in urban Sindh, a well-oiled organisational structure, die-hard workers and muscle power – is hardly in a position to take on the terrorist threat of the Taliban. In fact no political party can match the Taliban and its other Al-Qaeda-inspired allies on their turf of terrorism and suicide missions. A party the size of the MQM remains a soft target for the extremists, who already have a history of targeting the two other partners of the present ruling coalition – the ANP and the PPP – and depriving them of their some top leaders and scores of workers. Now the religious militia has added a new and dangerous element to Karachi’s ethnic and political minefield with their pledge to target the MQM. Dealing with the Taliban’s terror threat remains the sole responsibility of the country’s security forces, which too have remained the prime target of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents.

The Taliban challenge in Karachi should push the mainstream political parties to shun their petty differences and unite on the minimum agenda of fighting religious extremism in all its forms and manifestations. Any such consensus remains a must to mobilise public opinion against the Taliban and other non-state actors. It will isolate Taliban apologists like Imran Khan, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and various factions of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and allow the security forces to move against militants decisively on the back of popular support.

The PPP, the MQM, the ANP and other mainstream democratic forces – despite their differences and clash of interests – have a lot more in common when it comes to their politics and ideology. They cannot defeat terrorism alone, and need to join hands and unite the people if they want Pakistan to keep up with the 21st century world. The civil leadership must rise to the challenge in this battle of ideas without which the real conflict can never be won by the security forces in the short to mid-term.

In the long-term, both civilian and military leaders must focus on rehabilitating the foot-soldiers of these militant groups and focus on reforming seminaries, and providing modern education and economic opportunities to poor students. Karachi can be a game-changer in this conflict, but the window of opportunity in the election year might be very small.

All we need is a little common sense, a clear vision and some sincerity on the part of the politicians and military leaders to save Pakistan, which is teetering towards complete anarchy and chaos. Although the past offers little hope, rational thinking and sane decisions remain our only bet. Do we have any other choice? It is a matter of life and death now.

The Damned City

By Amir Zia
The News on Sunday

November 4, 2012

 

Today’s Karachi seems to rest on a keg of gunpowder, ready to explode. It is not a question of ifs and buts.

 

Who controls Karachi? 

The elected government and the state institutions or the political-cum-criminal mafias, killers, extortionists, land grabbers and street criminals.

 

Ask any ordinary citizen of this restive port city of Pakistan and you will probably hear that it is the law of the jungle in all its proverbial sense. Each state or non-state player has a small or large slice of turf of the city or a particular domain — depending on its power — and calls the shots not by the book but through force, intimidation or the barrel of the gun.
 

From the so-called elite to the common man, each and every one feels insecure and professes a sense of hopelessness about the present and the future of the country’s financial and commercial hub, which has transformed into one of the most dangerous mega-cities of the world.
 

The killers strike at will and remain at large in majority of the cases to return another day. The death toll in the city’s ethnic, religious and politically-motivated violence, gang wars and the blind murder category this year now hovers at around 1,900 and there are still nearly two months to go before 2012 ends. In 2011, there were 1,924 such deaths. The killings in Karachi since January 1, 2011 to date are more than 300 times higher than deaths caused by the US drone attacks on al-Qaeda and the Taliban militants on the country’s uncontrolled northern frontier.
 

The figure of the multi-billion racket of extortion is now anybody’s guess. On October 23, the Supreme Court of Pakistan in its hearing of the suo motu case on Karachi’s law and order crisis pointed out that no trader or industrialist can do business in the city without paying protection money. No wonder businesses and industries are shifting abroad and those still operating here are threatening a shutter-down as a protest against government’s continued inaction and indifference to their plight.

The broad daylight robberies and the looting of individuals at gunpoint no longer grab the media attention even. Crime statistics and figures have become irrelevant. In most cases, victims do not even lodge a police complaint — a fact recently admitted by the Chief Minister Sindh Syed Qaim Ali Shah. The victims know that nothing will come out of their complaints as police discourage them from registering the first investigation report in an attempt to keep the crime figure low — at least on paper. People just move on with their lives, hoping not to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Land grabbing also remains one of the most lucrative ventures for those who have muscle, weapons and the right political connections under the current political dispensation. Entire neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city are now no-go areas for the security personnel where armed-to-teeth militants belonging to this or that ethnic, religious or political group hold sway.

Ethnic, sectarian, political polarisation and turf wars keep Karachi’s pot on the boil all the time, and after regular intervals there is a mega-spike in the incidents of violence and lawlessness which, as a matter of routine, is followed by reassuring statements by the top government officials — from the president to interior minister — but nothing changes on the ground.

Yes, today’s Karachi seems to rest on a keg of gunpowder, ready to explode. It is not a question of ifs and buts. The situation is known to all, but those in power are not ready to acknowledge its gravity.

The thought and action required to stem the tide of lawlessness is missing.

It was on October 6, 2011 when the Supreme Court issued a detailed judgment on Karachi’s lawlessness and violence, directing the authorities to move against the illegal trade of weapons and mafias involved in various crimes. More than 12 months down the road the city’s crisis has only aggravated, forcing a five-member bench of the Supreme Court to again highlight the government’s inaction and indifference in dealing with the situation in one of the recent hearing of its 2011 suo motu case on Karachi.

But is anyone in the corridors of power paying any heed to the Supreme Court’s concerns and directives, which reflect the sentiments of the people of this traumatised city? Definitely not! “The judgments of the courts are systematically nullified as not a single accused has been executed in the last four-and-a-half years,” said Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, during the October 24 hearing. The Supreme Court underlined that more than 3,000 convicts had been given death penalty for murder and terrorism, but not a single one executed by the authorities.

The irony is that while the Supreme Court has been forced to take a suo motu action on the continuing tragedy of Karachi, the government officials and elected representatives of the ruling coalition fail to give any hope to the city as on the ground, the state writ continues to recede.

The ruling coalition comprising the PPP, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and other smaller parties — some of which have recently parted ways over the new local body system in Sindh — inherited a relatively peaceful city when it came to power after 2008 elections. Barring a spike in violence in 2007 in Karachi in which 540 people were killed (the highest during Pervez Musharraf rule), the former military-led government managed to keep both killings and general crime relatively under control. Yes, al-Qaeda inspired terrorist attacks did occur at routine interval, but the political-cum-criminal mafias were kept under check — which might appear as a politically incorrect statement in this day and age of democracy. There were less crime and criminals on the road. The same police ensured that the feudal and tribal politicians, clerics, the urban elected representatives and officials move on Karachi roads without their fearsome guards openly displaying weapons and terrorising citizens.

The situation reversed with the PPP-led government in power. The workers of the PPP, the MQM and the Awami National Party (ANP) — all partners in the ruling coalition –got locked in a bloody turf war as new and much more ruthless players tried to glean their pound of flesh from the city by grabbing land and running street crime, drugs and weapons mafias and the extortion rackets. For the first time, traders, shopkeepers, businesspeople and industrialists were left with no choice but to hold shutter-down strikes as they got an introduction to the Peoples’ Aman Committee and the criminal gangs operating under the banner of the ANP. The MQM, credited for introducing organised money extortion racket way back in the late 1980s and 1990s, got tough rivals.

While today the MQM is trying to distance itself from the criminals operating in its ranks and is in the forefront of the demand to put an end to the extortion racket, the new forces have gone all out to secure and expand their turfs. The result is the wave of tit-for-tat killings among the mainstream groups and it has continued since early 2008.

Although the top leaders of these parties — President Asif Ali Zardari and the MQM leader Altaf Hussain — have managed to keep their uneasy alliance intact, they failed to fully translate their vision among their zealots, who have remained at loggerheads for most of the period.

But the presence of criminals within the ranks of mainstream political parties is only one aspect of the problem. The banned sectarian and religious militant groups are also contributing to Karachi’s bloodletting. The influx of local immigrants from the country’s troubled tribal region has resulted into strengthening of the Taliban network and al-Qaeda sympathisers in Karachi, which offers a nightmarish scenario for the police and the security agencies. The Taliban and al-Qaeda-inspired terror cells are not just to blame for terrorism and planned assassinations, especially in the Pakhtoon-dominated neighbourhoods where they are mostly targeting the ANP activists, they are also raising funds through extortion, bank robberies and kidnapping for ransom.

Politics became criminalised and crime politicised in the city due to soft-peddling of the government and state institutions because of expediency, a desire to use one group against the other and a general lack of will. By design or default, it is the ruling coalition and the state institutions which are presiding over the present lawlessness of Karachi. It remains their collective sin.

All expectations that the ruling coalition — having more than two-third majority in the Sindh Assembly — would be effective in establishing the rule of the law have come to naught. As the country lurches towards the election year, the tidings appear ominous for Karachi as political players gear up to raise election funds and secure or expand their turfs. The relatively new element of the organised Taliban and the al-Qaeda inspired network is likely to make its presence felt more in the coming months as the Pakhtoon nationalist ANP has lost ground to the religious forces.

In the remaining months, till the next government comes into power, there is little chance that the incumbents would be able to take any new initiatives to ensure supremacy of law and do what they couldn’t do all through their term, including simple steps of ensuring proper investigations and speedy justice on all criminal cases and giving police and the security forces independence to act.

The state institutions also need to redefine their rules of engagement and stop pitching one group against the other or protecting “some of the militants’ assets.”

But, is bringing peace and eradicating crime and violence from Karachi on their agenda at all? Do we have any honest players, who can deliver? One can only hope against hope. As for now, Karachi appears unmanageable.

To Hang Or Not To Hang

By Amir Zia
The News
October 30, 2012

Terrorists, murderers, kidnappers, robbers, narcotics’ smugglers and rapists are among the main beneficiaries of the government’s “pro-human rights stance,” which ironically added another contradiction and dichotomy in the country’s dysfunctional prosecution and legal system.

On October 10, key national dailies carried advertisements sponsored by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), urging the government to abolish the death penalty. The advertisements were meant to mark the international day against the irreversible capital sentence, which has been scrapped by around 140 countries across the world.
The same day, news of the assassination bid on 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, in which she and two of her friends were wounded, dominated the national and international media. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – responsible for killing thousands of civilians and security personnel in recent years – was quick to take responsibility for the attack that shook the entire nation. The child was deemed fit for murder under the TTP’s controversial interpretation of Islam because she was seen as a collaborator of the United States by the so-called holy warriors.
With other reports of murders and routine crime that day, this newspaper also carried a small news item of vigilante justice on its Karachi pages – a report on a mob killing a suspected robber with sticks and iron rods. In recent years, there have been several such incidents in the country in which angry mobs spontaneously dispensed punishment to the alleged criminals. Reports of people killing under-trial suspects inside court premises to avenge alleged murders or the kidnappings of women also remain a common phenomenon.
The key reason for such outrage underlines the bitter reality that many people do not see justice taking its due course. Street wisdom says that even heinous crimes go unpunished in most cases as poor investigation and lack of evidence weaken the prosecution, which remains unable to prove the guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt. Justice is not just delayed, but denied. Yes, the proverbial long arms of the law often prove too weak when money, power and threats swing into action.
Therefore, many people prefer to settle scores on their own. Our society’s deep-rooted feudal and tribal system and its code of honour glorify private vendetta. This trend is restricted not just to rural areas, but has its buyers in urban centres as well. The situation has been further complicated thanks to the ill-conceived moratorium on executions by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led government since early 2008 in a country where more than 16,000 people have been killed in sectarian, religious, political and ethnic-related violence and terrorism during this period.
Terrorists, murderers, kidnappers, robbers, narcotics’ smugglers and rapists are among the main beneficiaries of the government’s “pro-human rights stance,” which ironically added another contradiction and dichotomy in the country’s dysfunctional prosecution and legal system.
No wonder Pakistani prisons now boast the world’s highest population of death-row convicts, numbering more than 8,000. The government stopped prison authorities from executing the court orders, but did nothing to remove the self-created contradiction in the law and its practice.
A close aide of President Asif Ali Zardari – who under the constitution wields power “to grant pardon, reprieve, respite, remit, suspend or commute any sentence passed by any court, tribunal or other authority,” – admits that the moratorium provide the two parties, the victim and the perpetuator of a crime, time for rapprochement. In a nut-shell, the state’s inaction gives a chance to the convict to pressurise the victims or their families to make deals through threat or lure of money.
The Islamic laws of Qisas and Diyat – originally conceived by former military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq – are often misused to help convicts buy freedom. The government, instead of fixing the flaws of the investigation, and the prosecution and legal systems to ensure speedy justice, has adopted a controversial way to appease the small section of rights activists and the European Union, which are at the forefront of the anti-death penalty campaign.
The government, however, is unable to fulfill the demand of abolishing the death penalty, which can be granted on 27 crimes under Pakistani law. The main reason: resistance from Islamic parties that see any such move as being in violation to Islam, and a bitter opposition by three provincial governments – barring the Sindh government. As a result, the country now has a hotchpotch system under which the death penalty exists only on paper – at least as long as this government stays in power.
The inconsistency in the law and its practice is fuelling lawlessness, crime and terrorism as the state remains unable to prosecute cases against known killers and terrorists and unwilling to move against convicts already given death sentences. Many legal and security experts believe that the capital punishment serves as a key deterrent to crime, though rights activists say that the state has no right to inflict irreversible punishment, which they argue is mostly given to the poor after prolonged legal process – often lasting for a decade or more. They argue that corruption and a flawed investigation system deprive a citizen of fundamental right to life without conclusively establishing the guilt.
But should criminals get blanket cover due to flaws in a system? Why not make it just and efficient so that any person – regardless of class or social background – gets equal treatment under the law. The local anti-death penalty campaigners and their foreign allies fail to take into account Pakistan’s objective conditions, which make it a very different case from those countries that banned this practice.
These differences are not just at the level of development, education and historical evolution, but also due to the erosion of the state writ in recent years and the rise of private militias and the armed groups, which are now directly confronting and undermining the state.
In a country where the life, property and honour of law-abiding citizens remain unsafe, it may look absurd to many to hear voices demanding a European Union-like compassionate approach in dealing with perpetuators of atrocious crimes and terrorism. Certainly, the countries that have abolished the death penalty do not witness 16,000 killings in political, ethnic, religious and terrorist violence in just four years. In their part of the world, militants do not shoot girls for demanding education or brainwash children to become suicide bombers.
What Pakistan requires is the implementation of laws. Any attempts to further blunt an already inefficient justice system will result in more chaos and lawlessness. Sometimes in history, even bad laws are considered better than lawlessness. Today’s Pakistan has slipped into this very abyss of disorder and turmoil and needs effective implementation of laws on a war footing.
One should not doubt the sincerity of human rights activists, but unfortunately the time for their “Great Idea” has not come yet in this land of the pure where any opinion poll will show that the majority want perpetuators of heinous crime taken to task. The sooner the government realises this and takes a stand for the supremacy of the law, the better for the people and the country.

Review: Tilism-e-Hoshruba

By Amir Zia
Newsline
September, 2012

The Arab ladies, as pointed out by veteran critic Aziz Ahmed, “were probably hidden behind the seven veils” and no one could even cast an evil eye on them. However, their chivalrous men, despite having several wives, habitually risked their neck for a ka’afir beauty

Long before the wizard-boy Harry Potter cast his magic spell on readers across the globe, long before the half-man, half-god teenager, Percy Jackson, became an instant hit with youngsters as he battled monsters and demons from the Greek mythology in a modern-day setting, Urdu, our very own language too had produced grander and far more colourful masterpieces of fantasy, replete with magical wonderlands and heroics which kept generation after generation mesmerised.

While today’s Potter and Jackson belong to the realm of children’s literature, the magical world of fantasies in the Urdu language, known as dastans, were intended for adult listeners and readers. Considered the foremost among them is the adventures of the Arab warrior, Ameer Hamza and his friend, Umroo Aayar, a master trickster and spy. Hamza, his sons, grandsons and friends fought mighty kings, warriors, sorcerers, demons and jinns in a vast epic spread over 46 volumes, 42,000 pages and comprising at least 25 million words.

In the early 1970s, Ferozsons Limited did a commendable job of publishing abridged and simplified editions of this epic tale in two separate series comprising 10 volumes each, titled Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza and Tilism-e-Hoshruba. These books are still available at select book stores, but they are no longer the rage as they were among children growing up in the ’70s and the ’80s. Globalisation has shrunk the space for our local tales and heroes. It is now only imported heroes that are firing the imagination of most of our children who belong to the middle and upper middle classes – at least in the key urban centres. This stands in stark contrast to the past when Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven and the classic tales, The Three Musketeers and The Adventures of Robin Hood had to compete with local heroes, from the beggar boy, Mungoo, to the Pakistani war hero, Shaheen.

However, even in the ’70s and ’80s, a decent print of the original Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza was difficult to find. What was mostly available in those days were cheap, badly printed one-volume editions of Dastan, which were by no means a collector’s item. The binding was poor and the pages would unfurl no matter how carefully you handled them. The good editions – if available – were beyond the reach of my pocket.

Fortunately, Oxford University Press (OUP) has recently published some of the long lost original Urdu classics that include the first volume of Tilism-e-Hoshruba in three parts in hard-back editions. The original nine-volume Tilism-e-Hoshruba, of which the first four were written by one of Urdu’s greatest prose stylists and poet Muhammad Husain Jah and the rest by his contemporary Ahmed Hussain Qamar at the close of the 19th Century, is part of the 46-volume Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza.

Many readers treat the two as separate tales, but they are part of the orginal Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza as we are informed in the preface of Tilism’s first part, written by eminent Indian critic Shams-ur Rahman Faruqi, who is also the series editor. Ajmal Kamal’s name features as copy editor.

Jah penned Tilism with the help of the oral narrative and transcriptions of professional dastan-gos (storytellers) in the last quarter of the 19th century. But its roots, according to the eminent critic Mohammad Hasan Askari, go back to the times of Mughal Emperor Akbar in 16th century Hindustan, when it was reportedly written in Persian by Faizi.

The OUP’s three-part edition of the first volume of Tilism has been edited in line with the modern syntax of the language, which means paragraphs, full-stops and commas have been introduced to facilitate the reader. In the original work, there was hardly any concept of such luxuries. The flowery text is heavily Persianised and loaded with Sanskrit words and heavy doses of poetry, which might be off-putting for many of the present readers who even find Urdu works of contemporary satirist and humourist Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi difficult to comprehend. Unfortunately, our burgeoning private schools make no attempt to introduce some of Urdu’s finest literary work to their students. That aside, OUP would have done a great service, had it introduced a glossary of difficult and now dead words and their meanings on every page in the Tilisim reprint. It would have helped contemporary readers to comprehend and appreciate its text.

But, frankly speaking, the barrier of heavily Persianised Urdu is swept away when one gets hooked to the story, its colourful narrative, its larger-than-life characters, details of a bygone era, the world of bewitching beauties, sordid desires, chivalry, wars and magic. There are stories within the main story in which handsome princes often meet charming sorcerers or princesses and fall in love at first sight. Naturally, the heroes were from the camp of the Arab warrior, Hamza, and the leading ladies, ever ready to die for them, came from the enemy camp of the kufa’ar, Laqa, who had declared himself god, and his follower king, Afrasayab Jadu, who ruled the Tilism Hoshruba.

The Arab ladies, as pointed out by veteran critic Aziz Ahmed, “were probably hidden behind the seven veils” and no one could even cast an evil eye on them. However, their chivalrous men, despite having several wives, habitually risked their neck for a ka’afir beauty. Very often, they landed themselves in trouble and had to be rescued by tricksters and spies (aayars), who could change guise at the drop of a hat. Yes, the heroes were no match for the wizards and witches of Tilism-e-Hoshurba; it was these aayars, including the king of them all, Umroo Aayar, who could defeat them through deceit and guile and, that too, mostly in the guise of pretty women. No wonder women dominate Tilism – both as evil protagonists, as well as virtuous heroines.

Behind the side-stories of love and lust, the central theme of the epic remains Hamza’s efforts to vanquish Laqa and his followers. And as he confronts the might of Laqa and his allies at Kohistan, he sends one of his grandsons, Asad, and five tricksters, led by Umroo Aayar to Tilism-e-Hoshruba along with an army, which incidentally vanishes at the very start of his campaign. Asad, too, is imprisoned at a later stage, and eventually, it is these aayars, who with the help of dissident wizards and sorceresses, challenge and weaken Afrasayab Jadu.

The river of flowing blood (Darya-e-Khoon Rawan), the flying claws and thrones, the limitless variety of magical weapons spitting fire, stones and arrows, or making opponents insane or motionless, the invisibility blanket of Umroo Aayar, his melodious voice, his ability to transform himself into any person thanks to the blessings of saints and prophets, his boundless greed, his small bag, zambeel, a gift from a saint which could carry the world’s treasures in it – they all stay in the reader’s mind. As do the details of preparation before every war, the conflict itself, the revelries, merrymaking and festivities which follow every battle – and then suddenly, all this vanishes as rival forces strike back, leaving the place of joy splattered with blood, bodies and wailing men and women.
OUP has done Urdu and its followers a commendable service by printing this hard-to-find treasure of yesteryear. Let’s hope the remaining volumes of this masterpiece will be printed sooner rather than later.

Our Collective Sin

By Amir Zia
The News
October 16, 2012

Our collective sin remains that we waited far too long and did little when all these years the Taliban had been busy blowing up schools in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, brainwashing and preparing child suicide bombers and using Pakistani soil for terrorism not just within the country but also in other parts of the world.

A text message from the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir – circulated among many media persons this week – blamed the “Raymond Davis network” for the attack on Malala Yousafzai by which it implied that the US spy agency was involved in the affair. Many mainstream religious parties – from the Jamaat-e-Islami to the various factions of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) – instead of condemning the ghastly assault on the 14-year-old girl from Swat, tried to spin it by saying that it was the result of the US-led war in Afghanistan and its drone strikes on Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. A leader of a prominent religious party had the audacity to say in a television talk-show that the attack was a reaction to the way the government, the media and non-government organisations (NGOs) used Malala against the Taliban.

While the majority of ordinary Pakistanis have put their hearts and souls in praying for Malala’s life and condemning the perpetrators of the attack, the religious forces today stand exposed by not condemning the Taliban who tried to silence this young voice pleading the case of girls’ education in her hometown and taking a position against the systematic destruction of schools by militants.

The JUI chief, Maulana Fazlur Rehman said in a menacing tone that all statements slamming clerics and religious leaders for not denouncing the Taliban militants are being noted. According to media reports that quote intelligence sources, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is planning action against national and international media houses, following which the Interior Ministry beefed up their security.

Despite efforts by the fundamentalist forces to confuse the issue and link it with the war in Afghanistan and drone attacks, there remains a clarity and level-headedness among ordinary Pakistanis, who find targeting a child, for whatever so-called lofty ideals, unacceptable.

Indeed, Malala has become a symbol of defiance against the barbarism and atrocities the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies have been committing using the sacred name of Islam, which preaches kindness, forgiveness, moderation, and tolerance even in conflict and war. But this fundamental message of Islam seems to have been forgotten by militants and their cheerleaders in the rightwing and religious parties, who represent the triumph of all that is unreasonable and unjust over reason and justice. Their emotional arguments and violent deeds generate heat, but unfortunately no light.

Our collective sin remains that we waited far too long and did little when all these years the Taliban had been busy blowing up schools in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, brainwashing and preparing child suicide bombers and using Pakistani soil for terrorism not just within the country but also in other parts of the world.

The silence of the majority, the failure of mainstream political parties and the government in countering the self-defeating narrative of the Taliban, and the half-hearted measures of the security forces in fighting terrorism have led to Malala’s current ordeal. She represents all the tens of thousands of students who missed valuable academic years because their schools were destroyed by these self-styled “holy warriors”. She is the face of all those children who were killed, maimed or injured in terrorist attacks that have remained “part of our lives” for more than a decade now. She is the emblem of all those who carry the trauma and scars of losing their near and dear ones at the hands of the Taliban.

The extremist mindset attacked a potent symbol of defiance by targeting and wounding Malala and two other female students – Kainat and Shazia. Before shooting and wounding these girls, the so-called brave and pious Taliban completely destroyed 121 schools in Malala’s hometown of Swat and partially damaged 280 others, according to a report issued last month by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc). The total number of schools destroyed in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, according to the report, remains more than 700, depriving at least 600,000 children of education.

When all this was happening, we, the majority chose to remain silent or pay lip service to mark our indignation at these horrendous acts amidst the crescendo of voices raised by the Taliban apologists, supporters and ideological backers, who justified and defended every crime and every madness committed in the name of our religion on the pretext that the war against terrorism and extremism was not our war.

The Imran Khans, Maulana Fazal-ur Rehmans and Munawar Hasans of this world tried to thrive and score points by confusing the homegrown challenge of extremism and terrorism by justifying that it was a mere reaction to the foreign intervention in Afghanistan and drone strikes in Pakistan. They conveniently forgot the circumstances that led to this intervention. Their half-truths, conspiracy theories and deliberate distortion of facts always fail to take into account that the region serves as a safe-haven for all shades of local, regional and international militants who threaten Pakistan by trying to impose their harsh brand of Islam and use its soil to carry out terrorist activities around the world. The footprints of many international terrorist plots led directly to our doorstep. Pakistan paid a far higher price compared with any other country at the hands of extremists.

Our inability to establish writ of the state in the tribal region and parts of northern Pakistan – infested by local and foreign militants – remained one of the key failures. We tried half-hearted crackdowns, devoid of ideological support from the mainstream political parties. We failed in giving a popular counter-narrative to challenge the Taliban and Al-Qaeda’s distorted version of Islam. Instead, the authorities kept moving between the two extremes of military operations or striking deals with commander this and commander that. But the policy of appeasement failed to curb militancy.

Our class-based and multi-tiered education system, which excludes poor children from modern schooling, is other mega factor responsible for the growing intolerance and extremism. The children of the poor are mostly left at the mercy of antiquated seminaries, run on donations and alms. Despite many announcements, we failed to reform these seminaries or provide a better alternative to their students as the state abdicated its responsibility of providing education. The worldview of the seminary students stands in stark contrast to the children belonging to the privileged and middle classes, who attend fancy private English-medium school. Thus we created and accepted an ever-widening divide, which alienated one world from the other, creating all the right conditions for a conflict.

The state needs to take a holistic approach when dealing with the challenge of extremism that is bent upon destroying the very fabric of our society. Any counter-terrorism strategy needs to be backed by an ideological narrative in which the political parties and the civil society have a crucial role to play. Reforming the education system, and ensuring it provides equal opportunities to students of all classes – both in the rural and urban centres of Pakistan – should be one of its main pillars. That’s what Malala stood for. And that’s what we must stand for – if we love our children and care for the future of Pakistan. If we fail to act now, we will all have to pay the price. 

Political Maturity Not Weakness

By Amir Zia
The News On Sunday
October 7, 2012

The PPP-MQM duo will have to remain persistent and ride through the patchy waters to make the nascent local government system work

The minor stakeholders in the Sindh Assembly and small nationalist groups are all out to whip-up emotions and raise a storm over the swift approval of the local government bill on October 1 by the treasury benches. Only 13 members in the 168-member house opposed the bill, which was passed with a thumping two-third majority by the ruling Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) and its key ally the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) more than three weeks after it was promulgated as an Ordinance.

Some political pundits predict that the new local government system would increase ethnic and political polarisation in an already troubled province where political assassinations, mob violence and rampant crime remain the order of the day, especially in the provincial capital of Karachi.

Others say that the opposition by the small political parties and fringe nationalist groups within and outside the assembly hardly pose a serious challenge to Sindh’s ruling coalition, which still has the support of more than 140 members in the provincial assembly despite the defection of its minor allies including the Awami National Party, the Pakistan Muslim League (F) and the National Peoples’ Party.

But the new system, christened as the Sindh People’s Local Government (SPLG) Act, 2012, has certainly triggered a heated debate and resulted in partial strikes and minor protests in parts of Sindh that is seen to have a potential to snowball into an explosive issue amid allegations by the nationalist and opposition parties — that it is aimed to divide the province.

This criticism, however, appears more emotional and political than going into the nitty-gritty of the new system, identifying its flaws and suggesting improvements.

Under the SPLG, out of 23 districts in Sindh, five urban centres — Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana, Sukkar and Mirpurkhas — have been declared for the first time as Metropolitan Corporations, headed by mayors and deputy mayors. Earlier, Karachi used to be the only Metropolitan Corporation in Sindh. This reflects the growing urbanisation in Sindh and a right step to manage the challenges of major and secondary cities.

Under the new system, the remaining 18 districts of Sindh will be led by chairmen and their deputies, having same functions and administrative and financial powers as that of their urban counterparts.

By-and-large, the structure of the new system is akin to that of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf era’s local government, though fairly diluted in terms of certain powers.

The SPLG ensured that commissioners and deputy commissioners continue to hold central positions in the administrative structure, which they lost under Musharraf. In health, education and excise and taxation departments, the SPLG allowed only partial devolution, while the provincial minister continues to call shots when it comes to the overall revenue collection.

What has been retained from the old system is its overall spirit of giving representation to the elected representative at the unions, taluka, town, district and metropolitan bodies’ level.

The MQM managed to prevail in ensuring that Karachi be treated as one district comprising 18 towns and 178 union councils. It will bring more than 2,300 elected representatives to serve their respective constituencies with equal powers and financial resources. These representatives will come from different ethnic backgrounds and party affiliations, depending on the demography and political leanings of their voters, who will be able to hold them accountable in much more effective manner.

Overall in Sindh, there will be more than 10,000 such representatives addressing the day-to-day civic issues and infrastructure challenges, which in no way should fall under the ambit of provincial and national assembly legislatures, who have a different constitutional role to perform and practically remain beyond the reach of majority of the people.

The MQM wanted the PPP to revert back to the Musharraf-era system in totality. This demand was unacceptable to the PPP, which saw it infringing upon many powers of the provincial government.

The long stalemate over the issue remained the main bone of contention between these two major parties of Sindh straining their ties during the last two-and-a-half years. Neither side budged from its stated positions during the countless rounds of talks, but the alliance was saved from an imminent collapse following direct intervention from President Asif Ali Zardari and MQM leader Altaf Hussain. As a result, both sides conceded ground and introduced a local government system that has been prepared by the political parties under a democratic order. In the past, it was mostly the military rulers who pushed the local bodies system to fill in the vacuum of elected representatives at the provincial and federal level.

The give-and-take by the two biggest political parties of Sindh on local bodies system and developing a consensus should be seen as a healthy sign for the country’s frail democratic system.

The very fact that the PPP could have any bill passed by a simple majority with its 90 plus lawmakers in Sindh Assembly, but it chose to keep minority partner on board despite pressure from hardliners, underlines political maturity and not a weakness.

Similarly, the MQM leadership too faced demands from within the party to pull out of its uneasy relationship with the PPP, but its central leaders particularly Altaf Hussain managed to keep the partnership going.

This bodes well for the multi-ethnic province as an outright PPP-MQM clash would have aggravated the law and order problem, particularly in Karachi where the coalition government keeps a dismal track record in curbing crime and political-cum-criminal mafias, which have penetrated their own rank-and-file.

While these two major stakeholders of Sindh need to improve performance manifold when it comes to maintaining peace and rule of law in their domain, the very fact that they continued to share power is no small feat, given their apparent conflicting political and financial stakes in the province.

On principle, few can argue that huge urban centres like Karachi could be run without an effective local government system. No big city in the world has the concept of being administrated in the absence of a powerful mayor and local government system. The same remains true for other major urban centres of Sindh where effective local government system would help address the basic civic, development and infrastructure issues in a more efficient manner.

Even small towns and villages need local representatives who have a hands-on approach on these issues. This is how the system works in most democracies of the world. But here in Pakistan, it is unfortunate that for short-term tactical political advantages, local government system is being opposed by creating an issue out of non-issue and fanning conspiracy theories that the move is aimed at dividing the province.

The majority parties have every right to legislate, which is the true spirit of democracy. They can ignore or bring on board the smaller parties on any issue. It is their sweet will, but majority parties cannot be dictated by them.

In the rough, tough and mean world of Pakistani politics, games are seldom played by the books. Therefore, the PPP-MQM duo will have to remain persistent and ride through the patchy waters — at least in the short-run — to make their nascent local government system work.

Weaving Dreams

By Amir Zia
Money Matters
The News
October 1, 2012

Can corporate gurus and businesspeople manage to make their voices heard in the quarters that matter? The pragmatic answer is that is that in today’s world, the economic imperative dictates foreign policy. If the people, who create and multiply wealth, really mean business, they can make a difference

The contrast was stark. In the plush environs of a hotel in the historic city of Lahore, some of the best corporate minds of Pakistan and India wove dreams of creating the world’s largest common market of 1.5 billion people and discussed the opportunities afforded by the knowledge economy. Outside, frenzied protesters in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and Peshawar set ablaze public and private property over the making of a blasphemous film, punishing their fellow Pakistanis for the sins of one living seven seas away.

The madness on the streets and the rational discourse among the participants of the Pakistan-India Management Summit 2012 titled “Dividends” created a situation replete with irony. But the subcontinent has a long history of being buffeted by the cross winds of irrationality and rationality.

Before these corporate leaders, political giants such as Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and poet philosophers Dr. Mohammed Iqbal and Rabindranath Tagore witnessed great misery and greater madness. But since their times didn’t stop them from dreaming and striving for a better tomorrow, why should these times discourage today’s leaders from aspiring for peace, economic development and prosperity?

Correspondingly, peaceniks on both sides of the divided frontier are working furiously to keep this flame alive. With expressions of love for each other’s countries and peoples, these new leaders are talking of peace, resolving protracted issues bedeviling their relationship and breaking barriers. Crawling or with baby steps, these people are surely inching towards this goal.One such step was the first-ever Pakistan-India Management Summit held on September 20-21, which brought under one roof more than 80 top-of-the-line Indian corporate leaders and around 600 Pakistanis. The Jang Group and The Times of India led peace initiative – Aman ki Asha – partnered with the Nutshell Forum to organise this event, which was to enable participants to share their management experiences and challenges as well as establish relations on an institutional level.

Significantly, however, the participants weren’t just discussing the art of running and expanding business and investment empires. A key feature of many presentations was the vast economic potential of an engaged, cooperative and mutually supportive relationship between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours. While innovation, productivity and competiveness were buzz words during discussions about creating an impact in the global markets, thought leaders simultaneously grappled with the need to balance risk and opportunity while envisioning the face of corporations of the future.

There’s a history to this dialogue. Since its launch in January 2010, Aman ki Asha has organised and supported a number of events to boost economic and trade relations, promote cultural ties and discuss thorny political issues, including that of the divided region of Kashmir. The first business conference was held in New Delhi that year; the second in Lahore this year. And this management summit helped carry forward the agenda set in the earlier two conferences by providing corporate leaders a rare opportunity to meet and exchange views.

(A critical aspect of these conferences tends to be overlooked: the presence of foreigners in Lahore. Most businesspersons and investors today are too afraid to travel to Pakistan due to threats of terrorism, soaring crime and the poor law and order situation. And the senseless violence in the wake of the blasphemous film only reinforces that sense of fear. At such a time, attracting a sizeable contingent of Indians is no small feat and it’s for this that the organisers deserve rich kudos.)

One of the dominant themes of the conference was the fact that despite their vast economic potential and enormously talented human resource pool, around 350 million people in the subcontinent live below the poverty line.

In an excellent presentation, Shiv Shivakumar, Nokia’s senior vice president for India, Middle East and Africa, argued that the major factors holding the two countries back are their slim educational and health budgets and their disproportionally high military expenditures. If there were no military expenditures, he said, some $53 billion will be freed up for expenditure on education and health in the two countries.

Interestingly, Shivakumar’s sentiments were echoed by a number of top guns of the business and financial worlds from both countries. All, in turn, underlined the futility of confrontation and high defence spending and preached the benefits of peace and amity.

The point to remember is that Pakistan and India are the not only two countries in the world, which have border disputes. However, the other countries facing similar challenges have not stopped exploring and enhancing trade and business ties. China and Taiwan, for example, managed to boost bilateral trade to more than $100 billion per annum from $8.1 billion in 1991. Even India and China, which had bilateral trade worth just $1 billion in the 1990s, have upped this number to $60 billion.

The lesson for countries like Pakistan and India, which have more in common, reason experts, is that they can increase trade by 20 to 50 times from their existing official level of $2 billion, once they open borders and start cooperating, rather than indulging in a race to the bottom in terms of restrictive trade practices. And this slogan of intra-regional trade, say these trade analysts, can boost per capita income in the two countries to a significant level from the current $1,200 in Pakistan and $1,500 in India.

There were also interesting, new ideas floated in “the assembly of the like-minded” (as one of the speakers pointed out). In a lively session conducted Dr Sunil Gupta, Chief Learning Officer of the Ideas Consulting & Lifetime Master Trainer, there came a host of suggestions for improving Pakistan-India ties. While one group of participants wanted to educate the media to ensure good relations between Pakistan and India, another wanted a joint Pakistan-India cricket team. There were suggestions regarding exchange programmes for students and teachers; the free flow of textbooks, newspapers and magazines; the holding of interfaith conferences for hardliner Muslim clerics and Hindu pundits; the issuance of ‘honeymoon visas’ and, most remarkably, a recommendation to encourage marriages between the people of the two countries.

The key issue remains, will the corporate gurus and businesspeople manage to make their voices heard in the quarters that matter? And the pragmatic answer to that is that in today’s world, the economic imperative dictates foreign policy. If the people, who create and multiply wealth, really mean business, they can make a difference. What they need is perhaps the sense of urgency to make their dreams of a common market a reality.

Of Trade, Trust & Terrorists

By Amir Zia
Money Matters
The News
September 10, 2012

The real headache for the organisers was not the Shiv Sena protest or the arrival of the Mumbai monsoon; it was the overzealous Indian Customs. Of a total of 57 exhibitors, almost half sat by empty stalls for the first four days of the six-day exhibition, desperately waiting for customs officials to give the green signal to their goods.

It may not have been the best of times to take an exhibition of Pakistani goods to Mumbai, the birthplace of the Hindu nationist party Shiv Sena. But it also was not the worst of times to undertake this long-awaited venture into India’s financial and commercial hub. The memories of the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai by Islamic militants, allegedly orchestrated by a banned Pakistani radical group Lashkar-e-Taiba, still haunt many citizens of India’s largest city. While relations between the two countries have luckily moved beyond this bitter episode, the attacks remain a reference point in the discussions of Mumbaikars. And for the Shiv Sena and other fundamentalist Hindu nationalist forces, Islamabad remains a favourite punching bag and anti Pakistan rhetoric often helps galvanise their rank-and-file. For this reason alone, any trade and business venture of Pakistani origin needs to tread carefully in the lair of Shiv Sena, which has not yet softened its stance despite all the positive vibes from New Delhi regarding the normalisation of relations between the two South Asian nuclear powers.
So when the Made in Pakistan Expo 2012 opened in Mumbai’s World Trade Centre on August 31 this year, it was not business as usual for the organisers – the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) and the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). On their shoulders lay the unenviable task of ensuring that they neither over- nor undersold the Pakistan card.
Most countries try to take a slice of their culture to trade fairs in foreign lands. As such, such events often feature local music, national colours and the inevitable national flag. However, in Mumbai, the organisers had to tread cautiously in promoting Brand Pakistan. So the advertising and marketing campaigns for the event were subdued and notably bereft of the colour green and the Pakistani flag. While the organisers did manage a handful of hoardings, bus-wraps and newspaper advertisements, the placement of the ‘Made in Pakistan’ tagline was that befitting a brand, rather than a country-specific fair.
However, this nod at the sensitivities of the Shiv Sena wasn’t enough to deter its activists from performing their duty of staging a small protest on the opening day of the exhibition. (That said, the protest was seen more as a symbolic gesture rather than any meaningful attempt to disrupt the event.) And ironically enough, the protest and the consequent news coverage only served to draw more eyeballs to the event than the timid advertising campaign had done.
However, the real headache for the organisers was not the Shiv Sena protest or the arrival of the Mumbai monsoon; it was the overzealous Indian Customs. Of a total of 57 exhibitors, almost half sat by empty stalls for the first four days of the six-day exhibition, desperately waiting for customs officials to give the green signal to their goods at the Wagah-Attari border.
As organisers ran from pillar to post to get consignments cleared, there were controversies regarding the purportedly jacked up duty on Pakistani goods as well as last-minute objections from customs officials who allegedly demanded, for example, certification about a dye from a particular laboratory or an application written on a particular official letterhead. (The expo was finally extended by three days for those exhibitors who’d not received their goods on time.)
But did these glitches translate into the failure of the expo? Not by a long shot, if the number of visitors it drew is any indication. Further, a number of leading brands – almost 90 percent of exhibitors were from the textiles sector – managed not just to sell up to 70 percent of their goods, they also claimed to have made valuable contacts.
Admittedly, the Mumbai expo could not match the size, scope and grandeur of the four-day Lifestyle Pakistan Fair held in April this year in New Delhi. However, the point that needs to be remembered is that the latter was an initiative backed by both Islamabad and New Delhi. Given that this fair was a private-sector initiative in the untested-for-14-years waters of Mumbai, the fair can safely be said to have made quite a few waves.
Interestingly, it wasn’t just the leading brands such as Al Karam or Gul Ahmed – which are familiar with the Indian market – that benefitted from the expo; some first-timers and smaller players also managed to sell most of their stock and make contacts.
Kokab Zia of Designer Wear, Karachi, caters to a niche European market – Paris particularly – claimed to be thrilled by the response she got in India. “The Indian women loved our designs, which are aimed at high-end users. Not only did I manage good sales, I’ve even gotten some valuable contacts,” she enthused.
Lahore retailer Imran Khurshid of Times Clothing had similar luck. “We brought 150 outfits and have only about a dozen left,” he said on the fifth day of the exhibition. “We saw this expo not as a retail sale opportunity, but to make future contacts. And we have done well in introducing our brand to the Indian market.”
However, there were losers as well. Mohammed Nadeem of Lisa Wear in Lahore barely sold five percent of his stock. “We haven’t even managed to recover the rent of the stall, the travelling and boarding expenses; everything will go from our pocket,” he said. “But such things happen; profit and loss go hand-in-hand.”
According to veteran exporters, many Pakistani businesses which sign up for such exhibitions fail to research the Indian market adequately and rarely do the spadework required to make sales. “Buyers in Mumbai are very picky and choosy about clothes; it’s a market very different from the New Delhi one,” said Huzaifa Eassabhai of Gul Ahmed. “You’ll see mostly working women here and they don’t want gaudy and heavily embroidered stuff. We made good sales because we knew the market.”
Given the appreciation accorded to Pakistani textiles – in terms of design, variety and quality – many businesses have returned convinced about the vast potential of the Indian market.
It’s a sentiment that is echoed on the other side of the border as well. Vijay G. Kalantri, president of the All India Association of Industries and chairman of Dighi Port Ltd, points towards the fact that many Pakistani goods land in India after detours to Dubai and other countries. “The official trade volume will shoot up to $10 billion from the current $2 billion within the next five years once Pakistan grants India the status of most favoured nation by the year-end and New Delhi removes non-tariff barriers,” he said.
According to Kalantri, such exhibitions help pave the way for better relations. “Traders and businesspeople want good relations with Pakistan,” he insisted. “This will help both countries reduce unemployment and ensure economic development for the greater good of their people. Neither nation can afford the arms race nor the massive defence expenditure they incur at present.”
Like Kalantri, many Pakistanis and Indians are bullish on trade. And this is the reason their respective governments are taking their cues from these new advocates of peace. While progress is slow and the resolution of contentious political issues slower still, the ice has been broken – at least on the economic and trade front. Baby steps – both symbolic and concrete – have been taken by both countries. But the most creditable aspect is that in doing so, both have managed to break away from an acrimonious past and keep relations on track despite challenges from hardliners and non-state actors.

The Enemy Within

By Amir Zia
The News
August 29, 2012

General Kayani’s statement of owning the war against extremism will certainly help in removing the cobwebs in the minds of some of the confused not just within the rank-and-file of the armed forces, but also those civilians who are being duped in the sacred name of Islam by militants and radical Islamists

For any army in the world, the biggest nightmare is when its personnel, installations and assets stand vulnerable to attacks from within its own territory. This is a sign of the erosion of the writ of the state and its failure in resolving the internal contradictions that allows disgruntled small or big armed groups or sections of the population to flout the law of the land and take on the civil and military institutions. It is considered a bigger national security threat compared with the one emitting from abroad or a hostile nation. The decay in the writ of the state creates chaos and lawlessness and the establishment of parallel centres of power. The situation, if allowed to fester for long, often results in the collapse of the state from within or its dismemberment.
Unfortunately, today Pakistan faces a similar grave challenge to its national security and cohesion in which non-state actors not just hold large swaths of land in the rugged northern parts of the country, but are also trying to undermine the country’s most powerful institution – the armed forces – by waging direct assaults on its personnel and bases.
The August 16 attack on the Kamra airbase is just one of the many against the Pakistani security forces by Al-Qaeda-inspired local Islamic militants that underlines the severity of the crisis. The official assertions that preparedness of the security personnel at Kamra prevented any major loss of lives or Air Force assets remain only a small consolation, given the fact that our protectors now stand unsafe in their own backyard.
The ever-looming internal threat is, indeed, more ominous for the armed forces rather than an external one for which they are basically trained and should ideally remain focused.
If these are not the worrying times for the Army Chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and his top brass than what other calamity could they be waiting for? No wonder, in his August 14 Independence Day speech, the general finally declared that the fight against extremism is our own war.
But this war has not suddenly become “our war” following General Kayani’s statement. It has always been “our war” for more than a decade now when former military ruler Pervez Musharraf tried to shift Pakistan’s policy, with limited success, by banning various militant groups in 2002 and starting a selective crackdown on these retrogressive forces which remain bent upon using Pakistani territory not just for terrorism in various parts of the world, but also within the country.
The loss of more than 40,000 lives, including thousands of security personnel, during this period is living testimony to how the local Taliban and their allies brutalised the society and tried to undermine the state in line with their narrow interpretation of Islam.
Yes, there has been frequent wavering in this war against extremism as the civil and military establishment struck doomed peace deals and attempted to neutralize various bands of militants through a policy of appeasement.
This produced only confusion in the minds of many Pakistanis about the legitimacy of this war and gave more space to these non-state actors, creating an international perception that Pakistan is a reluctant partner in the global fight against terrorism and is following a policy of duplicity. As a result, the country suffered on every front – politically, socially and economically. Its international isolation grew, providing an opportunity to the critics of Islamabad to portray the country as an irresponsible state. This negative international perception remains ironic given the fact that the kind of price Pakistan paid in the fight against al-Qaeda and their local allies, both in terms of human lives and financial and economic losses over the last one decade.
The civil and military leadership’s half-hearted measures, an apparent lack of commitment and absence of a cohesive anti-terrorism policy, focusing both at operational details and an ideological narrative, also hurt the overall morale of the country regarding this fight.
Our soldiers need clarity of purpose and conviction to fight and win this war. It is a must to keep the unity and cohesion of the armed forces, which by-and-large have maintained their discipline barring a handful of dissensions at the lower and mid-level when security personnel were found involved in aiding terrorists or themselves becoming part of terror plots.
General Kayani’s statement of owning the war against extremism will certainly help in removing the cobwebs in the minds of some of the confused not just within the rank-and-file of the armed forces, but also those civilians who are being duped in the sacred name of Islam by militants and radical Islamists.
What is now required is to aggressively push and reiterate General Kayani’s message at every level to counter the organised propaganda that this war is not our war. In Pakistan, the army alone has the operational capacity and ability to stand up to and defeat the extremists. The political leadership – both in the government and the opposition – should take the cue and provide an ideological narrative to help build and mould popular public opinion on the need for winning this war and defeating the extremists who threaten the Pakistani state and should be seen as enemy number one.
Luckily, a vast majority of Pakistanis are moderates and they abhor religious zealotry, violence and extremism which also directly hurt their social and economic interests. This remains an encouraging factor.
However, there is also no dearth of those religious and rightwing forces who try to misguide the people by portraying the conflict as an American war. Some of these religious parties have their direct vested economic interests tied to this stance. For supporting and sponsoring militancy has become a huge business empire since the early 1980s when Pakistan decided to join the war in Afghanistan against the former Soviet troops through its proxies and non-state actors with the support of the United States and its allies. It is now big money raised in the name of donations and charity.
For some other forces opposing the fight against extremism, it is just one quick way to fame and tapping into the rightwing vote. They intentionally or unintentionally choose to live in a state of self-denial and find a foreign-hand in our misfortunes, which in fact are of our own doing.
This happened again in the case of the Kamra attack in which many so-called analysts, public opinion makers, politicians and even television anchors were seen trying to find a grand international conspiracy behind the assault, conveniently forgetting all about the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. But this kind of self-denial is always self-defeating.
If one would have listened to the advice and recommendations of Pakistan’s politically astute clerics and closet clean-shaved Taliban, who want the Pakistan Air Force to engage US drones, seal the NATO supplies and give a free-hand to militants to plot terrorism across the world, Pakistan would have long ago been declared a rogue state or gone into a self-destructive war with its neighbours and the world powers. We should thank God that despite our penchant for adventurism in our civil and military corridors of power, somehow a little bit of sanity always prevailed and we managed to avoid the doomsday scenario. But perhaps this is the time for us to shed the weight around our neck once for all and free the country of warlords, militant movements and private armies. For this is now a battle for Pakistan.

Winning The Battle Of Ideas

By Amir Zia
The News
August 24, 2012

Jinnah’s Pakistan is not meant for fanatic clerics, the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, who feel that they serve Islam by killing innocent people, terrorism and blowing up schools. We have to reclaim the Pakistan of our founding fathers from these forces of darkness, operating under the sacred name of Islam.

In its sixty-sixth year of independence, Pakistan’s ideological vision continues to remain blurred and fragmented. There are those radical and militant religious forces, which want to transform Pakistan into a theocratic state in line with the ideology of their respective Islamic school of thoughts. From ballot to bullet, one finds advocates and practitioners of all sorts of tactics among these legal and outlawed groups as they attempt to restructure the society in accordance to their narrow interpretation of Islam, which remains rigid, intolerant, confrontationist and averse to modernity and rational thinking.
Then there are liberals and fringe leftist groups who want to see Pakistan as a secular, modern and egalitarian state. But they appear to be trying to implant borrowed and imported ideas which find few takers among the majority of Pakistanis, who by-and-large are traditionally religious, but at the same time abhor zealotry and extremism espoused in the name of Islam. Therefore, despite their passion for democracy, the Pakistani liberals and leftist hold little ground when it comes to the rough tough politics of the masses. Nonetheless, they make their presence felt in the battle of ideas through non-government organisations, rights and cultural groups and the English-language press in at least the country’s main urban centres.
Between these two extremes, there are traditional mainstream political parties, which stand non-committal, maintaining a deliberate ambiguity in their stance about the ideology and vision for Pakistan. We find them performing a balancing act between Islamists and liberals, but they overwhelmingly tend to strike compromises with the religious forces on vital issues – from establishing the writ of the state to fighting rampant intolerance and various shades of extremism in our society. Important issues relating to women and minorities’ rights, pro-people legislation, including scrapping laws from General Ziaul Haq’s era that allow murderers to go free in the name of qisas and diyat, or framing a modern education system – all are often sacrificed as the mainstream parties try to appease these retrogressive forces. Their lip-service to the cause of Islam is indeed hypocritical but it prevents the genie of Islamic radicals and extremists launching a direct assault on them. These political parties stand more for self-preservation rather than rising up to the challenge of the extremist Islamic mind-set threatening the country’s social and political fabric.
Although the legal Islamic parties have a history of faring poorly when it comes to the politics of ballot, they wield tremendous influence because of their organised radical rank-and-file, which remain directly or indirectly linked to the banned militant organisations. These forces have been dominating the popular political narrative since the 1980s when they were nurtured, supported and groomed by the military establishment for its adventures in Afghanistan and India.
It is ironic that these forces are now at loggerheads with the institution which helped them set-up the private “jihad industry” to confront the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan at the behest of the United States and its free-world allies and monarchs of the Middle East. But that is in the past and cannot be undone.
However, our current predicaments stem from this self-destructive 1980s policy of using religion and non-state actors to stifle the country’s democratic movement and as a foreign policy tool.
Former military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf tried to gradually alter this course by banning militant groups, but failed to change the political landscape, given the penetration of these groups in our society, lack of consensus within the establishment on the alternative course of action and absence of counter ideological narrative to the challenge of radical Islam.
The democratic dispensation that followed ignored confronting the fundamental challenge of extremism on political grounds and through reforms as it got entangled in its battle of survival.
The military largely spearheaded this fight, but operational measures and partial battleground victories without an ideological narrative can only be of limited success.
No wonder attacks on security forces such as the recent one in Kamra – the nerve-centre of Pakistan Air Force – and slaughtering of citizens remain in vogue in today’s Pakistan. The Kamra attack was one of countless assaults on security forces and civilians that have consumed nearly 40,000 lives since Pakistan became a reluctant partner in the US-led war on terrorism following the Al-Qaeda strikes on the United States in Sept 2011.
But despite this unprecedented price, the military establishment and the mainstream political parties have ignored the fundamental front on which this battle will either be lost or won – the vision for Pakistan. Without addressing this core question, the country will continue to remain the battleground of rival ideological forces in which many Islamic militants have upped the ante by connecting themselves with global Islamic terror network.
The counter-narrative for Taliban and their likes need not be any foreign import. It can be found in the vision of Pakistan’s founding fathers, who articulated the economic and political rights of the Muslims, which the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress failed to guarantee in united India. Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was no myopic, intolerant communal leader, but a man of vision who blended modernity and tradition to achieve the goal of creating the world’s biggest Muslim country of its time. What the so-called secular Congress failed to guarantee in India, the Quaid wanted to ensure for citizens of his nascent state irrespective of their caste, creed, religion or language.
To make his dream a reality, Jinnah had to confront not just the Congress, but also the retrogressive religious forces united against the idea of Pakistan in the form of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, the Jamaat-e-Islami, Majlis-e-Ahrar and others.
But Jinnah was not the lone figure who launched the crusade to unite Muslims of the sub-continent and liberate their minds from religious orthodoxy. It was the socially modern and enlightened Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his Aligarh movement, which provided genesis for the Pakistani state. He laid the foundation of modern education, rational thinking and enlightenment among Indian Muslims despite bitter opposition by the narrow-minded clerics. Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal nurtured it by taking on the religious orthodoxy and bigotry both in his prose and poetry.
There is a need to highlight the vision of these national heroes, who blended modernity with the best of tradition of our religion that stands for peace, kindness, forgiveness, justice, human endeavour for a better life and tolerance.
The vision of Jinnah and his team was to create a modern, democratic, welfare state in which rationality and peoples’ will had to be its guiding principles. Their ideas and ideals remain relevant even in today’s Pakistan.
Jinnah’s Pakistan is not meant for fanatic clerics, the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, who feel that they serve Islam by killing innocent people, terrorism and blowing up schools. We have to reclaim the Pakistan of our founding fathers from these forces of darkness, operating under the sacred name of Islam.
To win back the popular narrative and seize initiative from extremists, the mainstream parties and the military establishment must highlight the vision of a modern, democratic and egalitarian country, rooted in its tradition rather than seen banking on foreign implants. Winning the battle of ideas is a matter of life and death in today’s context if we want to prevent Pakistan from sliding into anarchy and chaos.

And Ne’er The Twain Shall Meet?

By Amir Zia
Monthly Newsline
July 2012

The frail democratic system is indeed creaking under the weight of heightening government-judiciary tussle. There are genuine fears not just about its future, but also about the state’s viability and writ that has been shaken to the core due to the many years of misgovernance and misrule and the growing challenge of extremism and terrorism.

It is now a guessing game; how long can Raja Pervaiz Ashraf survive on the wicket as prime minister? If all goes well, though few are likely to bet on it, Ashraf will be in the prime minister’s house for not more than eight months before the hurly burly of elections starts and an interim set-up takes over. But if the judiciary strikes again, which remains the most likely scenario, his days are numbered. His exit could be in a couple of months at the most, or even in a few weeks.
The country’s executive and judiciary have already laid their cards on the table. The new prime minister has categorically announced that he, like his predecessor, will not write to the Swiss authorities regarding the opening of graft cases against President Asif Ali Zardari. Yousuf Raza Gilani chose to be disqualified rather than follow the Supreme Court verdict on the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) case. The Supreme Court has now given the new prime minister the deadline of July 12 to formally indicate whether he will ask the Swiss authorities to reopen cases against President Zardari, who, the Pakistan Peoples Party’s constitutional and legal experts maintain, enjoys immunity from prosecution as head of state.
Between these two inflexible positions there appears to be no middle ground. It is either “my way or the highway.” The country is thus destined to remain in the throes of political uncertainty and strife for the foreseeable future, as two of the important state institutions remain openly at loggerheads. Although the other institutions, including the mighty military establishment, declare neutrality, they continue to operate from the shadows, as they have been doing since the return of democracy to the country – sometimes showing restraint and at other times working as a catalyst in determining the course of events.
The opposition – from the Pakistan Muslim League (N) to Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf, and marginal players like the Jamaat-e-Islami – have their daggers drawn for an early ouster of the PPP-led government, even if it means cutting short its five-year term by only a few months. The opposition is the foremost cheerleader of the judiciary, along with the mainstream media which is serving as the main battle tank trying to clear and mould public opinion against the government.
The frail democratic system is indeed creaking under the weight of this heightening tussle. There are genuine fears not just about its future, but also about the state’s viability and writ that has been shaken to the core due to the many years of misgovernance and misrule and the growing challenge of extremism and terrorism.
No wonder Islamabad remains rife with rumours, with political pundits, experts and analysts drawing out different future scenarios for the country – from the ouster of this government through direct military intervention, to its removal through the judiciary and the induction of a set-up comprising technocrats and relatively clean politicians. The buzz around town is that some kind of Bangladesh model is being created. Critics meanwhile, contend that this is doomed to fail having already been tried, tested and found defective. The grinding of rumour mills aside, the underlining point is that most doubt the continuity of this democratic setup.
Zahid Hussain, senior analyst and author, says that the noose appears to be tightening around the PPP. “Zardari has saved the government from falling temporarily, and in doing so has increased the PPP’s reliance on its allies manifold, especially the PML-Q (Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam group), but the crisis remains very much there.”
He continues, “Despite compromises, the question is, will this alliance survive in the mid to long run? Zardari accepted the verdict (of Gilani’s disqualification) because of the pressure of his coalition partners. These compromises will lead to other compromises…the situation is tenuous and this critical tight-roping cannot work for long.”
Government circles, however, remain hopeful that they will once again prove successful in defying prophecies of doom as they have managed to do in the past, complete their five-year term, hold elections and return to power. This view may appear almost unbelievably optimistic, but PPP stalwarts say that their support in the rural areas, which consistitutes the majority of the vote bank, remains intact due to this government’s pro-agriculturist and farmer policies and pro-poor programmes. In the urban areas, they maintain they still retain their support base, along with help from their allies.
Meanwhile, the routine conciliatory statements of top government officials towards the judiciary, replete with obsequious vows of respect for its authority, for the rule of law and the desire to avoid a clash of the institutions, appear deceptive as many of the government lawmakers, second-tier politicians and supporters aggressively accuse the superior courts of trying to stage a ‘judicial coup,’ of activism and of infringing on the grounds of the executive.
Perhaps in defence of the abysmal failure of governance witnessed in the past four years, the Pipliyas also keep highlighting the fact that the coalition government has been kept on the ropes since the start of its term, with the judiciary serving at the vanguard of the assault. From the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO)-related cases, that include the implementation of the courts judgment to that of Zardari concurrently holding the two positions of head of state and party co-chairman, the cases against Zardari are being cited by government loyalists as merely the tip of the iceberg that aims to sink the PPP-led coalition. Other roadblocks, which have made it difficult for the government to run even mundane day-to-day affairs, government officials contend, include the scrapping of the executive orders regarding appointments for senior positions, and efforts by the superior courts to micro-manage who should represent the government or investigate high-profile corruption cases against its senior members and their relatives. “The superior judiciary even tried to fix sugar prices rather than leaving it to market forces, and has kept the executive in the dock in regard to various high-profile cases, including that of missing persons, rental power and privatisation,” says one PPP official.
Senior PPP politician Taj Haider contends that Zardari is the actual target of all the attacks, but the PPP has so far managed to divert the frontal assault on him. “Gilani took the shot aimed at him, and we have shown that the PPP and its allies have no dearth of candidates for the slot of prime minister. We are all set to complete our term and Zardari will be president even after the elections. This scenario has made our opponents nervous. They are now getting desperate,” he says.
But the bravado and defiance of the PPP leaders and their allies have failed to impress detractors. They argue that the judiciary’s firm stance against the government’s open efforts to undermine the law, misuse its power and penchant for corruption and nepotism has proved, at least in part, a successful deterrent and prevented the government from going even further overboard in its wanton abuse of power.
As proof of this they cite the NRO case, in which the judgment to strike down the ordinance was announced unanimously by the Supreme Court judges in December 2009, and the government confessed in writing that the controversial ordinance was indefensible and unconstitutional.
“Despite having a two-third majority at that time, the government failed to have the NRO validated by parliament because it was discriminatory and unconstitutional,” says former law minister Iqbal Haider. “This shows that the Supreme Court judgment on the NRO had constitutional and political backing.” Ironically, legal experts say, the government filed a review petition in the NRO case even though it had admitted that it was “unconstitutional.”
Former Supreme Court judge Wajihuddin Ahmed maintains that during the NRO case hearing the Supreme Court did not insist on the implementation of its decision.
Lawyers agree that it was only after the dismissal of the review petition that the Supreme Court directed Gilani to implement the court order by writing to the Swiss authorities, but he defied the orders, which led to the contempt of court proceedings against him and his disqualification.
“The Supreme Court should be asked why it delayed doing this for so long,” says Ahmed. “The government filed a review petition in the NRO case, but it never asked for any stay, and if you don’t ask for a stay none is granted. Despite that, the judiciary showed utmost restraint, given the fact that in review petitions the success rate is usually less than one percent as the fundamentals of a case do not change.”
Experts say that even in the Lahore High Court verdict pertaining to Zardari’s holding of two offices of president and party chief, restraint has been demonstrated. The president has been given the option to choose either one of the two offices, and has been given time till September 5 to decide, which demonstrates that the judiciary does not want to undermine the democratic system and wants its continuity, they contend.
“But look at the government’s conduct on the other hand,” says Wajihuddin Ahmed. “After Gilani’s removal, they first tried to bring Makhdoom Shahabuddin in as premier – a man tainted by the ephedrine scandal along with Gilani’s son, Ali Musa Gilani. Once warrants were issued against him, they came up with Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, against whom there are also serious corruption allegations in the rental power case.”
PPP backers, unsurprisingly, insist that the allegations of corruption against their party members are fabricated. Taj Haider cites Zardari, who was imprisoned for 10 years, but not a single case was proven against him. “There is a clear bias towards the PPP and its leaders,” he says. “My question is, why it is only the PPP government which is being kept under the microscope? What about the performance of other institutions, including the judiciary, which failed to address the issue of hundreds and thousands of pending cases, to provide justice to the common man or even make appointments to vacant positions? “Therefore,” says Haider, “we propose to restructure the judicial system of the country and make four provincial Supreme Courts and a Federal Court in line with the charter of democracy, and ensure the accountability of judges as well”.
As the tussle between the two camps drags on, it is becoming ever more personalised, with a lot of mud-slinging from both sides. In an attempt to undermine the judiciary, the PPP and its allies point fingers toward Chief Justice Chaudhary Mohammed Iftikhar’s son, Arslan Iftikhar, who allegedly took bribes from real-estate tycoon Malik Riaz, promising to get him relief from his father’s court.
The chief justice’s supporters say that Arslan may have erred, but there is not a single case in which Malik Riaz’s Bahria Town has been provided relief by the court his father presides over.
Athar Minallah, a leading lawyer who was in the forefront in the pro-chief justice campaign during the days of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, describes the situation as complex. “As an institution, the authority of the judiciary is at stake… some sections are trying to push the judiciary into the political arena. The question is, how can the judiciary step back on the NRO issue after Gilani’s disqualification?” The challenge is to ensure the sanctity and authority of the judiciary as well as to avoid the clash of institutions in which the ultimate loser will be Pakistan and its democratic system,” he says.
In this highly volatile and explosive situation, however, neither side appears to be backing down. In fact, each seems to be upping the ante rather than finding a workable middle ground.
“Politicians – be it in the government or the opposition – should have acted with more responsibility and maturity, rather than putting everything in front of the judiciary to decide,” Minallah says. “They should use parliament to decide contentious issues and seek political solutions in a rational manner. But, unfortunately, the country’s political forces have failed to do so.”
After Gilani’s dismissal, the judiciary indeed appears more confident and there are clear indications that the Supreme Court will further increase pressure on the beleaguered government, which seems to be fast running out of options as the opposition mounts the pressure for early elections.
One possible way out for the government is to call early elections, but this seems easier said than done. So far there has not even been an agreement between the government and the opposition on the composition of the interim set-up that could ensure free and fair polls. And even if they manage to cross this river, holding elections in this highly charged and polarised situation will be no mean challenge.
As political rivals and institutions lock horns, issues which are critical for the country are being placed on the back burner. The government has long abandoned the much-needed reforms vital for the battered economy, caught in a vortex of low growth and high inflation for the last four years. As feared by experts, the new budget 2012-13 (July-June) fails to address the structural flaws of the economy including expanding its narrow tax base, slashing the widening budget deficit which hovers at above 6.0 % in fiscal 2011-12, and reforming the energy sector and loss-making public sector enterprises which remain a huge drain on the economy.
In all the political turmoil and in the run-up to the elections, these urgent issues will have to wait to be addressed, which the country can ill afford. Simultaneously, the spectre of terrorism and extremism and the weakening writ of the state in different parts of the country pose a huge internal security challenge which is directly impacting Pakistan’s foreign relations and resulting in estranged ties not just with its neighbours, but also with the United States and other western powers. Given the government’s dismal performance on this front too, Pakistan’s future is becoming increasingly bleak. The government battles for the survival of its rule, but does so at the expense of the country.