Your ticket to India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the rest of South Asia
From Dawn:
A black goat is slaughtered almost daily to ward off ‘evil eyes’ and protect President Asif Ali Zardari from ‘black magic’. Does this, and the use of camel and goat milk, make the beleaguered president appear to be a superstitious man?
Well, not to his spokesman. “It has been an old practice of Mr Zardari to offer Sadqa (animal sacrifice). He has been doing this for a long time,” spokesman Farhatullah Babar told Dawn on Tuesday. More:
From the Economist:
By its recent chaotic standards, Pakistan had quite a good 2009. Admittedly, more than 2m people were displaced by fighting between the army and Taliban militants. The economy was in the doldrums. And a threat of political crisis, pitting President Asif Zardari against his main rival, Nawaz Sharif, loomed. Yet his government, a coalition led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), looked stable. An injection of IMF cash—and a promise from America of an extra $1.5 billion a year—kept its creditors at bay. And the army, despite much suffering, won the biggest victories of a floundering eight-year campaign on its north-west frontier. Without catastrophic violence—an important assassination or a terrorist attack in India—Pakistan will be messy, but stable after this fashion, in 2010.
The army will also make a bit more progress against the militants. Goaded into action in early 2009, after the Taliban seized areas of North-West Frontier Province alarmingly close to Islamabad, it pushed them back ruthlessly. Compounding the Taliban’s troubles, their supreme leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who was responsible for a two-year suicide-bomb spree (and allegedly for the 2007 murder of Mr Zardari’s wife, Benazir Bhutto), was killed by an American missile last August. And in October the army launched an assault on his former fief, in South Waziristan. Alas, it has shown no interest in pursuing members of the other Taliban, Afghanistan’s former rulers, who have found refuge in Pakistan. More:
Sardar Mumtaz Ali Bhutto in The News, Pakistan:
While the entire focus is on the game of musical chairs being played by Zardari and Nawaz Sharif and the question being asked is “When will Zardari quit?”
The Zardari-Sharif game is easy to comprehend: Zardari, of course, has no desire to vacate the house on the hill and has devised a strategy of paying out the rope a little when the pull gets too strong in the tug-of-war for power. First of all, it was reconciliation, through which Zardari appeased the opposition and, beyond his wildest dreams, got the top job while others too received huge shares of power. Consequently, there are 90 federal ministers and advisers, compared to less than 20 during the tenure of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, each of them costing people Rs100,000 per day. Then we have the repeated agreements at Bhurban, Islamabad, Dubai and London to restore the judges, but Zardari relented only in the face of the long march. However, he did manage to get a few months’ reprieve out of the wrangle. Recently there has been the matter of the NRO and finally the surrender on that too, which has again bought Zardari another respite until the fate of the cases against him and his fellow travellers are decided by the courts. More:
Sardar Mumtaz Ali Bhutto in the News:
The present dispensation is the direct result of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto’s murder. It is believed that the deal sponsored by the Americans between Musharraf and her, was “Plan A.” She deviated from this on her return to Pakistan and had to be eliminated. This is a view recently supported by Gen (Retd.) Aslam Baig, former chief of army staff. Thus, the standby “Plan B” came into operation and her long-estranged husband came on the scene. A controversial and often-questioned will emerged, according to which Asif Ali Zardari was made co-chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party.
It is not astonishing or surprising that Plan B has worked. The rot that set in with Zia’s success in corrupting not just politics but the very mindset of people, and is a practice advanced by all his successors to facilitate a shortcut to power. Thus even the most sceptical elements in the PPP found it expedient to climb onto the Zardari bandwagon. High offices, membership of assemblies, advisory positions and access to the corridors of power was just around the corner, and it became imperative to pretend that the emperor was fully clothed. “Democracy is the best revenge” was the absurd slogan coined to bury the murder of Benazir, while referring the matter to a UN tribunal was done to seek a permanent closure of this sordid chapter.
Thus began the journey to Olympus at the foot of Margalla Hills fuelled by the endless use of the “Jiay Bhutto” slogan and crocodile tears for Benazir. Meanwhile, people continued to be fed the stale promise of not only their supremacy but the forty-year-old clichés of roti, kapra aur makan and that democracy was gospel and Parliament sovereign. To this was added the concept of reconciliation and change of the system. More:
In the New York Times, Joshua Kurlantzick reviews “To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan,” by Nicholas Schmidle:
Taking office in January, Barack Obama promised a radically different vision of foreign policy from that of his predecessor. But on perhaps the most critical issue, the new king looks a lot like the old one. In Pakistan, President Obama has retained the Bush administration’s targeted drone missile attacks against suspected militants and may quietly be expanding the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert battle against jihadis along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
As Nicholas Schmidle, a contributor to publications including The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and Slate, reveals in a richly reported book based on his two years traveling across Pakistan, United States policy does not change because Pakistan, sadly, does not change. Birthed in 1947 by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the lawyer son of a rich merchant, the country remains in the grip of venal, feudal, wealthy politician-landlords like the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and the current president, Asif Ali Zardari, for whom democracy means one vote one time, after which the victors go on to dominate indefinitely. Worse, greed and graft have led Islamabad’s ruling class to ignore large portions of the population, who remain illiterate, and their incompetent governance has opened the door to Islamists’ offering average Pakistanis promises that the first Mayor Daley would have recognized – safe and orderly streets – not through machine politics but through the brutal application of Shariah law. More:
Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News, in the Financial Times:
One year and some months in office may seem like early days in extraordinary times for the coalition government led by President Asif Zardari but there is a discernible pattern to the nature and quality of its governance.
So far the government’s performance has been uninspired and uninspiring. Even if allowance is made for the daunting and complex challenges at hand its record has been underwhelming. Its momentum has seemed to sag, and there is still no sense of direction. It has adopted a patchwork approach to addressing fundamental issues and relied on firefighting rather than evolving a thoughtful and coherent strategy.
Several features seem to have become hallmarks of the style and substance of governance of the PPP-led administration. Six key characteristics can be identified as: 1) Unstructured or informal governance; 2) Decision making confined to a cabal or narrow circle with close ties to the president; 3) Reactive mode of addressing issues; 4) Substituting platitudes for policy; 5) Using parliament as a passive body to affirm rather than debate and shape policy actions; and 6) A proclivity to focus excessively on external help to address internal issues. More:
Andrew Buncombe in the Independent:
Why is the battle for Swat so important?
Before it fell under the mounting influence of the Taliban two years ago, the stunning, rugged valley was a popular tourist destination for middle-class Pakistanis and – unlike the tribal areas – was seen a part of “Pakistan proper”. But after militants took effective control of the valley and then, in April, spilled into several neighbouring areas, including Buner and Lower Dir, no more than 60 miles from Islamabad, there was mounting pressure on the government to act.
The Obama administration considers the operation a test of resolve for President Asif Ali Zardari and the Pakistani military following years of claims that the army has been reluctant or unable to go to war against the militants. In turn, the Pakistani leadership has pitched the operation as nothing less than a fight for the survival of the country. As such, to this point, it appears to have a fair degree of popular support – even if Mr Zardari himself does not.
Had the government tried to do a deal with the Taliban?
Among the population of Swat – which until 1969 was a so-called princely state and not fully incorporated into Pakistan – there was mounting frustration with the official justice system. People complained about corruption and bureaucracy. The valley had a tradition of Sharia or Islamic law and the Taliban seized on the people’s desire for speedier justice to push for the establishment of Sharia. The militants’ version of this code, however, was overwhelmingly brutal; girls schools were burned, people were flogged or beheaded and women were banned from appearing in public.
Despite this, the government brokered a ceasefire deal in February that involved the establishment of official Sharia courts. But the Taliban failed to meet its end of the deal and lay down its weapons. In April, as the Taliban started to extend its grip into surrounding areas, the military launched its operation. More:
Ahmed Rashid in the New York Review of Books:
To get to President Asif Ali Zardari’s presidential palace in the heart of Islamabad for dinner is like running an obstacle course. Pakistan’s once sleepy capital, full of restaurant-going bureaucrats and diplomats, is now littered with concrete barriers, blast walls, checkpoints, armed police, and soldiers; as a result of recent suicide bombings the city now resembles Baghdad or Kabul. At the first checkpoint, two miles from the palace, they have my name and my car’s license number. There are seven more checkpoints to negotiate along the way.
Apart from traveling to the airport by helicopter to take trips abroad, the President stays inside the palace; he fears threats to his life by the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda, who in December 2007 killed his wife, the charismatic Benazir Bhutto, then perhaps the country’s only genuine national leader. Zardari’s isolation has only added to his growing unpopularity, his indecisiveness, and the public feeling that he is out of touch. Even as most Pakistanis have concluded that the Taliban now pose the greatest threat to the Pakistani state since its cre- ation, the president, the prime minister, and the army chief have, until recently, been in a state of denial of reality.
“We are not a failed state yet but we may become one in ten years if we don’t receive international support to combat the Taliban threat,” Zardari indignantly says, pointing out that in contrast to the more than $11 billion former president Pervez Musharraf received from the US in the years after the September 11 attacks, his own administration has received only between “$10 and $15 million,” despite all the new American promises of aid. More:
From the New York Times news blog The Lede:
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Last week on “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart showed part of a CNN interview (embedded above) in which Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, responded to questions about why his government has been unable to defeat the Taliban insurgency by asking a question of his own: “Why hasn’t the United States, with all the might at its disposal, been able to put down the Taliban in Afghanistan since 9/11?”
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While Mr. Stewart pointed out that diverting U.S. resources away from Afghanistan and toward Iraq might be part of the answer, clearly another part is that the Taliban withdrew across the border into safe havens inside Pakistan to regroup. Explaining why that was allowed to happen is clearly one of the trickier parts of the job of being Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States these days. More:
On a recent visit to Washington, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari sat down together for an exclusive conversation with “Charlie Rose tonight”. This is the first time the leaders of these two countries have done such an interview. Below, the full transcript of the interview [via SAJA]:
Charlie Rose:
There is no protocol for where I start, so I’ll just begin from left to right. What do you hope this accomplishes? And what do you believe it accomplishes?
Asif Ali Zardari:
Well, I personally feel that this should have been done much earlier. We are three countries facing the same challenge. And how unfortunate that nobody ever thought of this before. I am new at my job. I’ve been president of Pakistan seven months. But there are establishments around, and I think it’s a great accomplishment. I think that President Obama’s — this idea is very good. We bring a lot of strength to each other. And our people bring a lot of understanding to each other. So I think it’s better late than never, and I think it’s a step in the right direction.
Charlie Rose:
President Karzai.
Hamid Karzai:
Very good idea that we are together. This was a positive event in helping a better understanding and cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan and a better ground for better improvement for the United States of America with both of us in the common [unintelligible] of us in the struggle against terrorism.
Charlie Rose:
I would like for both of you to tell me what you believe is at stake in this moment from what is going on in Afghanistan with the Taliban, what is going on in Pakistan with the Taliban.
Hamid Karzai:
What is at stake is, of course, our freedom, the security of our lives, our future prosperity and well-being and the security of the world at large. If we do not make our two countries and the region secure from the threats of terrorism and radicalism, it will travel further afield into the rest of the world, as it did. Therefore, it’s not only the two countries that are at risk, having great stakes, but the rest of the world too. And that’s why the United States and its allies are there.
Asif Ali Zardari:
I would agree. I would second that motion totally of my brother Karzai, that the world is at stake, not just our two nations, the way of our life and our coming generations. But there’s a challenge to the world which needs to be stemmed.
Charlie Rose:
What specific things happened here that will allow things to be done that have not been done before so that the Taliban has advanced to levels and proximity to Islamabad and in Afghanistan that worries everyone? What steps here? Continue reading ‘Karzai and Zardari on Charlie Rose’
Huma Yusuf in The Indian Express:
The problem with a love triangle is that someone always winds up with a broken heart. As Pakistanis rejoice at the restoration of the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, I can’t help but wonder who will come away broken-hearted from the sordid entanglement that brought Chaudhry, President Asif Zardari, and Pakistan Muslim League leader Nawaz Sharif together in an ill-fated ménage a trois. Flags are waving in the streets of Islamabad and Lahore, music is blaring, congratulatory text messages are being forwarded, and bloggers are beginning to tire of the words “historic day.”
So, is President Zardari the triangle’s victim?
Fatima Bhutto in The New Statesman:
“Droned” is a verb we use now in Pakistan. It turns out, interestingly enough, that those US predator drones that have been killing Pakistani citizens almost weekly have been taking off from and landing within our own country. Secret airbases in Balochistan – what did we ever do before Google Earth?
The PPP-led government, hailed as being “democratic”, capitulated to the Pakistan Taliban’s demands for sharia law in the Swat Valley in February. There was no vote, no referendum, nothing. The government, tired of fighting those pesky militants who’ve been burning down Sufi shrines and local girls’ schools, just declared that a part of the country would be ruled no longer by federal law, but by a myopically interpreted and Taliban-approved “Islamic” code. And verily it shall be.
The Zardari Government is making peace with the Taliban which is hanging amputated bodies from electric poles. In Tehelka, Islamabad-based journalist Amir Mateen analyses the dangers for Pakistan:
The rich have left for Peshawar – 70 miles away, and the richer for more posh Islamabad – 100 miles in the south. The poor, with no place to go, suffered the trauma that makes Hollywood horrors look like a picnic. Intelligence sources dubbed as ‘spies’ and government officials – particularly from law-enforcing agencies – were specifically targeted by the Taliban. They were abducted and maimed and their killing turned into a gruesome spectacle in order to send a message to others.
The reign of terror is symbolised by what has come to be known as Khooni Chowk – the Crossing of Blood. A band of Taliban would, late at night, block the central crossing in the city centre of Mingora, the district headquarters the size of Srinagar and no less beautiful. They hung amputated bodies – some headless – on an electrical pole in the middle of the crossing, with notes giving their name and details of their ‘misdeeds’ against Islam. The bodies were not to be removed before a given date. Anybody violating this dictat could do so only at the risk of being himself put up headless.
Click here for the rest of the story.
Also in Tehelka, Ahmed Rashid, author of a book on the Taliban, tells that even India needs to worry enormously. In an interview with Harinder Baweja, Rashid said: “The fact is that there are Pakistani Taliban fighting in Afghanistan and there are Afghan Taliban fighting in Pakistan. I think it would very immature for us to be in a state of denial about that. The Afghans are not in denial about that but elements in Pakistan certainly are.” More here:
Tom Coghlan in Kabul, Zahid Hussain in Islamabad and Jeremy Page in Delhi. From The Times:
The CIA is secretly using an airbase in southern Pakistan to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, a Times investigation has found.
The Pakistani and US governments have repeatedly denied that Washington is running military operations, covert or otherwise, on Pakistani territory – a hugely sensitive issue in the predominantly Muslim country.
The Pakistani Government has also repeatedly demanded that the US halt drone attacks on northern tribal areas that it says have caused hundreds of civilian casualties and fuelled anti-American sentiment.
Jeremy Page in The Times:
The discovery of a secret CIA airbase in southern Pakistan exposes the dangerous double game that Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s President, has to play as he tries to manage relations both with the United States and with a fiercely anti-American public.
While he is criticised in Washington for surrendering to the Taleban by allowing Sharia in the Swat Valley, he will be lambasted at home for allowing the Americans to use a Pakistani base to launch drone attacks on his own territory.
India might now do well to resist the temptation to behave as the U.S. did after 9/11, and show the world how a responsible and confident Asian power carries itself even when in pain. Haris Gazdar in the Hindu:
Who knows if the timing of Mumbai had anything to do with the struggle within the Pakistani state, but it is worth remembering that Mr. Musharraf’s coup followed Kargil, which followed Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s bus yatra to Lahore. Mumbai is relevant to Pakistan’s transition because regardless of any evidence of Pakistani complicity, the policy of reconciliation with India requires that assistance requested should be rendered. The civilian leadership was right to respond positively to India’s request for high-level representation of Pakistan’s secret agencies, and it was wrong to wriggle out of its commitment. The rethink may have been forced by the military’s displeasure.
Nevertheless, the ball is now in the court of the military. By falling in line with the civilian government’s diplomatic effort they will reveal their intention to be on board in the transition.
Pakistan president on CNN Larry King Live:
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari denied his nation was involved in last week’s deadly attacks on Mumbai, India, and told CNN on Tuesday he’s seen no evidence that a suspect in custody is a Pakistani national as Indian officials claim.
“I think these are stateless actors who have been operating all throughout the region,” Zardari said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in an interview set to air Tuesday night. “The gunmen plus the planners, whoever they are, [are] stateless actors who have been holding hostage the whole world.”
More:
Click here for full transcript:
King: What do you know about this lone surviving attacker, the man that’s in custody? Is he definitely a Pakistani?
Zardari: Not as yet. We have not been giving any tangible proof to say that he is definitely a Pakistani. I very much doubt, Larry, that he’s a Pakistani.
King: Really? Who do you think — what’s your guess?
ZARDARI: Like I said, these are stateless individuals who operate throughout — I mean, I’ve got a situation in Pakistan that the fourth largest army in the world is challenged on my border on the west. I’ve got 150 people out, boys out, soldiers out. We have casualties every day.
We’ve had incidents just the past two days in Karachi where we’ve lost more than 40 to 45 people, hundreds injured. These are stateless actors who are moving throughout this region.
In The Spectator, Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say the Marriott bomb in Islamabad shows how weak the new Pakistani President is in the face of the Talebanised sectors of this failing state:
The Pakistani Taleban could not wage war across the border were it not for the long-standing infiltration of the Pakistani army and ISI by jihadists. For years, the Pakistani-Indian conflict over Kashmir was the pretext for ignoring this. Similarly, rivalry with India served as the justification for Mr Zardari’s predecessor, General Pervez Musharraf, to protect Abdul Qadeer Khan, the alleged rogue physicist who we now know helped provide nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Zardari’s rival and occasional partner, Nawaz Sharif, a recent resident of Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, continues his historic alignment with the jihadists.
Zardari insists that his government can handle the situation without foreign involvement. Such arguments are simply more rhetoric. They cover a policy of accommodation with the Taleban invaders, best exemplified when the Pakistani army fired at US helicopters on 21 September, the day after the Marriott atrocity. A week before, Pakistani forces were officially ordered to shoot at American troops if the latter crossed the barely defined Afghan border.
More:
By Dexter Filkins, who has covered the Afghanistan and Iraq wars for The New York Times:
Gun market: Near the Khyber Pass is Peshawar, the administrative center for the tribal areas where the Taliban regroups and rearms. Photo: Tyler Hicks / NYTimes
It was more than a decade ago that Pakistan’s leaders began nurturing the Taliban and their brethren to help advance the country’s regional interests. Now they are finding that their home-schooled militants have grown too strong to control. No longer content to just cross into Afghanistan to kill American soldiers, the militants have begun to challenge the government itself. “The Pakistanis are truly concerned about their whole country unraveling,” said a Western military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive.
That is a horrifying prospect, especially for Pakistan’s fledgling civilian government, its first since 1999. The country has a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons. The tribal areas, which harbor thousands of Taliban militants, are also believed to contain Al Qaeda’s senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.
More:
After more than seven years in exile, Pakistan’s former PM is back in power and doing his best to depose the president. In The Guardian, Julian Borger goes to visit him at the family home outside Lahore:
The road to Nawaz Sharif’s house performs some radical zigzags along the way. This is presumably for security purposes – forcing would be suicide-bombers to slow down enough for the guards to take a shot. But the winding drive must also serve as a daily reminder for Sharif of the precarious route to power in Pakistan.
He has twice been prime minister. His last term was cut short in 1999 by a coup by his army chief, Pervez Musharraf. Nine years on, Musharraf is still president but has been haemorrhaging authority for months in the face of public disdain.
Sharif is back from exile and back in power, this time as part of a new democratically elected coalition, and working hard to sideline the president with the aim of eventually forcing him out.
Eric Ellis, Southeast Asia correspondent for Fortune Magazine, on Asia Sentinel. Ellis was an official monitor of Pakistan election:
Although the western powers are breathing a sigh of relief over what appears to have been a relatively free and clean election in Pakistan last week, which delivered a decisive drubbing for the strongman Pervez Musharraf, it didn’t take long for the men of violence to re-appear. With the victors still to decide who’ll formally run the country, Pakistan’s military top medic, General Mushtaq Baig, was killed along with eight others by a suicide attack in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.
The warm inner glow of the post-election is quickly fading to the realization that the election probably has created a mess that will have to be cleaned up in any time between a year and 18 months from now. Keep an eye on the military, which has run this country for 34 of its 60 years of existence.
A day after Pakistan held historic elections that restored the nation to civilian rule, President Pervez Musharraf talked to Peter Wonacott, senior South Asia correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, in Islamabad:
President Pervez Musharraf, confronted with a crushing political defeat, said he intends to stay in office to guide Pakistan’s democratic transition — even if it means working with a man he believes once tried to kill him.
In an interview a day after a landmark national election delivered resounding losses to his allies in Parliament, Mr. Musharraf said he has no plans to step down. Instead, he said he wanted to help end the internecine battles between presidents and prime ministers that have marred Pakistan’s political history and precipitated military interference in the government.
Musharraf Q&A: ‘We Have to Move Forward’
