What Drives Religious Extremism?: New Age Islam’s Selection From Pakistan Press, 23 December 2015
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
December 23, 2015
• What drives religious extremism?
By Jonathan Power
• The mindset of the terrorist
By Rasul Bakhsh Rais
• Saudi-led ‘Islamic military alliance: A flawed alliance
By Zahid Hussain
• Coalition at a price
By Sikander Ahmed Shah
• Forever girls
By Rafia Zakaria
• Fear and hope in Kabul
By Imtiaz Gul
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What drives religious extremism?
Jonathan Power
December 23, 2015
What drives people to extremes? Why do the people behind al Qaeda or Islamic State (IS) get so charged up and angry? Perhaps to understand we should go back to the 16th century in Europe and the furious debate about the “divine right of kings”. For decades the royal houses of Europe had been becoming less accessible to their subjects. William of Orange, ruler of the powerful Netherlands, said he had “received his power from God and God alone”.
Philip II of Spain was also a principle protagonist of this theme. Indeed, when Spain conquered Holland, Philip tried to squash the new Protestant “heresy”, using the brutal practices of the Spanish Inquisition. It is no wonder that the Dutch were ready for a bloody revolt. They would no longer accept the prerogatives of rulers who claimed a “divine right”. In 1581, the Dutch withdrew their allegiance from Philip II. Accountability of a ruler to his subjects, not to his God, was the new dispensation.
Meanwhile, England, under the rule of Elizabeth I and James I, continued to believe in the divine right of the monarch. Only when James’s son came to the throne, Charles I, was the belief overturned. Parliament raised an army. Seven years of war was followed by the king’s trial, conviction and execution in 1649. The poet John Milton wrote at the time, “All men naturally were born free.” John Locke wrote 40 years later that “The very objective of government is setting up a known authority to which everyone of that society may appeal upon any injury received... The legislative power should be placed in collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please”.
From then on, over the course of two centuries, very much influenced by Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers, a constitutional form of government was slowly built across much of Europe. However, it was the US that first became a full democracy, with separation of church and state. But, despite the great advance from the days of “divine rule”, parliaments and governments regularly failed the people. Parliaments were often dominated, or at least greatly influenced, by those with inherited titles, people with money, the army and even criminal gangs.
Much of the struggle against the divine right of kings and the corrupt policies of the Pope in Rome led Martin Luther in 1517 to nail his handbill to the doors of a church in Wittenberg in Germany. Faith in God, not in pope or king, was the only way to gain heavenly salvation, he preached. No wonder that Philip II savagely repressed the profession and declarations of Protestant faith in Holland. It was in Holland that some Protestants became extremists. In the late 1560s, Protestant iconoclasts went into the catholic churches and destroyed the statues of Mary and the saints. They also destroyed any manifestation of the wealth and riches that the church had been extorting for so long. Their anger was such that we would call them today “violent, religious extremists”.
Sarah Chayes points out in her excellent new book, Thieves of State, “We can see parallels between the 16th century struggles in Europe against the kings and Catholic church, and the religious militancy of al Qaeda and IS. The resemblance between the language used to explain their violence and that of the earlier Protestant insurrectionists castigating the acute corruption of the Catholic Church and its royalist allies (with their belief in the divine right of kings) is unmistakable.”
Al Qaeda and IS are as puritanical as some of these early Protestants. They frown on liquor, dancing, romance and festivities, and impose gruesome punishments on non-conformists. Al Qaeda-linked rebels invaded Timbuktu and trashed historic shines dedicated to Sufi saints. The two movements have fought against the authoritarianism of Middle Eastern, Afghani and Pakistani rulers.
The Islamic militants of today rage against the kleptocratic and corrupt (apart from Jordan and Morocco) kings of the Middle East (who act as if they have a divine right to rule), and against the governments of the US and Europe who, they believe, help keep them in power. They also rage against autocratic, secular leaders such as President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and presidents Hamid Karzai and Mohammad Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan.
In Europe, governments, royalty and the Catholic Church (look at Pope Francis) gradually have discarded much of their old anachronistic beliefs (although that did not stop their governments precipitating the two great wars of the 20th century or their tolerating corruption today and allowing the wealthy to call the shots in the US elections).
Al Qaeda, IS and their like will start to go quiet only when the authoritarians and kleptomaniacs in power (supported by their western friends) purge themselves of financial excess, the false claims of absolute rulers and open themselves to root and branch democratic political reform.
The writer has been a foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune for 20 years and author of the much acclaimed new book, Conundrums of Humanity — the Big Foreign Policy Questions of Our Age. He may be contacted at jonathanpower95@gmail.coma
dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/23-Dec-2015/what-drives-religious-extremism
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The mindset of the terrorist
By Rasul Bakhsh Rais
December 23, 2015
We often look at the symptoms, reflect a little bit on the consequences of tragic events, but hardly put in place resources and systems through which we can get to the bottom of things. The war on terror in Pakistan is one such issue — so central to our security, stability and progress, yet our policymakers remain clueless about the causes of the terror. Without research and good analytical tools, the media, the policymaking community and the political class keep regurgitating meaningless sound bites, vague messages and catchy phrases. For about a decade now, we have been asking the same questions and repeating the same answers, falsely reassuring ourselves that we know what the problem is, why it is persisting what its solutions are. In identifying the causes, for some reason, the attention turns to madrassa education, religious clerics, poverty, illiteracy and conspiracy theories — that ‘foreign’ adversaries and their ‘agents’ in Pakistan are doing all this to us. This catchall way of understanding the problem, let alone finding a solution, will not help at all.
Admittedly, there are multiple causes or factors behind the terrorist phenomenon, but we must do solid work to separate them for identification purposes, rank them and devise solutions for each of them. The one-size-fits-all method will never work. An approach based solely on the enforcement of law and order is one such method. It attempts to treat the symptoms, deal with the consequences and address largely, the aftermath of terror attacks. It is not as if such an approach has no value; but we need to remember that it is only temporary and is driven essentially by political urgency.
The biggest challenge for Pakistan and every country, for that matter — Muslim or Western facing terrorism — is to find out why some people choose to destroy innocent lives along with their own. The psychological and sociological theories and knowledge accumulated in these fields may us help understand some of the tricky dimensions of the terrorist mind. However, terrorism motivated by religion, unlike nationalist or anarchist, has its roots in 21st century political developments in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. We may go a couple of decades back and reflect on the anti-Soviet Mujahideen war. One of the many unintended consequences of that war is the emergence of violent groups that pursued power through the barrel of gun, and had inflated confidence that they can conquer weak states.
The great powers’ thoughtless policy of changing regimes, and rebuilding nations and states according to their script of political stability, whether it was the Soviet intervention or the more recent American wars in the Middle East, served only to destroy state infrastructure. States in our part of the world are not ideal, but they have provided some order, stability and security. Moreover, foreign interventions, wars and massive human and material destruction, as well as the physical displacement of peoples from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other countries have created an ideal social and political climate for militancy. Militant groups feed on the idea of injustice, and sell wars and destruction by others as a rallying point to gain strength. They target those they believe are collaborating with their enemies. In an anarchic world, injustice, real or imagined, breeds more injustice; only the perpetrators and victims keep changing.
At the micro-individual level, extremist thought seems to be rooted in the simplistic division of the world into good and bad, with the terrorist making it a religious mission for himself or herself to destroy the ‘bad’. As many of the recent events n Pakistan suggest, these individuals are graduates of modern institutions, have had careers and come from the middle class. Religious extremism and radicalism is an Islamic challenge, as much as it is a social and state problem. We need to teach ourselves to live in peace in an imperfect, unjust world, while thinking of justice not as revenge, but rather as an idea focusing on bringing about social and economic reforms from within.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais is a professor of political science at LUMS
tribune.com.pk/story/1014562/the-mindset-of-the-terrorist/
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Saudi-led ‘Islamic military alliance: A flawed alliance
Zahid Hussain
December 23, 2015
ARE we or are we not a part of the newly formed Saudi-led ‘Islamic military alliance’? The contradictory statements emanating from the foreign ministry have deepened the puzzle. First, there was an appearance of surprise when the Saudi deputy crown prince named Pakistan among the 34 countries in the alliance. ‘We were not consulted’ was the reaction from the foreign secretary. A day later, the Foreign Office endorsed the Saudi move. What caused this sudden turnaround is anyone’s guess.
It is yet another foreign policy disaster in the making. The confusion exposes the complete disarray in our decision-making process on a critical foreign policy issue that has direct bearing on our national security. Sartaj Aziz, the adviser on foreign affairs, told the Senate that he was still unaware of the full details of the new alliance.
How come we have committed ourselves to a coalition in whose formation we had no role? We are not even clear about its tasks. Is it not bizarre that the adviser had no clue about the assurance of support we might already have given to the Saudi rulers?
The Saudi role in fighting IS that has established its brutal rule in parts of Iraq and Syria has remained dubious.
The Saudi move seems to have taken many other Muslim countries, supposedly part of the alliance, by surprise. Except for Turkey and some Gulf countries, that are already part of the Saudi-led military coalition against Yemen, no other Muslim country has endorsed the ‘Sunni’ alliance.
Although the declared objective of the proposed military alliance is to fight global terrorism, it is largely seen as a means of promoting the Saudi agenda of dividing Muslim nations along sectarian lines and solidifying an anti-Iran coalition. The Saudi role in fanning the Middle East civil war has hugely contributed to the rise of the militant Islamic State group that the alliance is supposed to counter.
Unsurprisingly, the announcement of the formation of the alliance came from none other than the young Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman who is believed to be responsible for his country’s disastrous military entanglement in the Yemeni civil war. The detail of what task the new alliance would undertake has deliberately been left vague. Saudi officials maintain that the modalities of how to move forward remain to be worked out. Predictably, Iran has been excluded from the list of the members.
One of the objectives of the new alliance is to fight IS. But the Saudi role in fighting the militant group that has established its brutal rule in parts of Iraq and Syria has remained dubious. The kingdom has been actively backing some of the extremist Islamist groups the elements of which later became a part of IS.
The power struggle in Syria that has left millions of people dead or homeless has largely turned into a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia with other countries on one side or the other too. While Iran backed the government of Bashar al-Assad, the Saudis provided financial support to rebel groups that also included the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat-al Nusra.
Furthermore, the Saudis are actively supporting some of the Sunni rebel groups fighting the Iranian-backed Baghdad government. The kingdom has actually played no role in fighting IS so far. Instead, its focus has been diverted to Yemen, where it is combating what it says are Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Meanwhile, the role of Turkey, one of the main sponsors of the alliance, also raises questions about Ankara’s commitment to fighting IS. It is not only Russia that has accused Turkey of buying oil from IS that helps the terrorist group finance its war. Some other reports also confirm the allegation of Turkey looking the other way as foreign IS fighters cross into Syria.
Turkey has also been actively involved in the Syrian civil war supporting some of the Saudi-backed Sunni rebel groups. Its Kurdish separatist movement that has roots across the border in Iraq and Syria dictates Turkey’s position on the Syrian war. For Ankara, perhaps, the IS presents a counterweight to the Kurds in both Iraq and Syria.
Interestingly, Saudi officials maintain that one objective of the alliance is to fight the scourge of terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan. But the names of three of them — Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan — are absent from the list of alliance member countries. Iraq is obviously left out because of its closeness to Iran. So, how is the military alliance going to fight terrorism in those countries without their participation?
In this situation, the proposed military alliance would only sharpen the polarisation in the Middle East along sectarian lines, further worsening the civil war and making it more difficult to counter IS. For sure, there is an urgent need for uniting Muslim countries to fight terrorism, but a Saudi-sponsored military alliance with its headquarters in Riyadh can hardly bring together a Muslim world that is divided along sectarian lines. How can any counterterrorism alliance work with some member countries directly or indirectly supporting some of the militant groups?
In fact, it is hard to see a country that itself has long been seen as the sponsor of extremism and radical Islam — that is a major source of militancy in various countries, particularly in Pakistan — as a leader of the alliance.
The funding for radical madressahs involved in the sectarian conflict is believed to be coming from Saudi charities.
Surely, terrorism in all its shapes cannot be eradicated without countering extremism. It does not require a military alliance; rather it is the end of the sectarian-based proxy war in the Middle East that should be on the decision table.
Joining the Saudi-led military alliance spells more trouble for Pakistan waging its own war against militancy. In some ways, it has already been drawn into the proxy war with both Saudi Arabia and Iran reportedly recruiting Pakistani fighters for their respective proxies involved in Syria and Iraq. Pakistan’s joining the Saudi military alliance could just make the situation totally combustible.
The writer is an author and journalist.
Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2015
dawn.com/news/1228179/a-flawed-alliance
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Coalition at a price
Sikander Ahmed Shah
December 23rd, 2015
SAUDI ARABIA recently announced the formation of an Islamic military alliance for combating terrorism consisting of 34 Muslim-majority states. After some initial confusion, the Pakistani government confirmed its participation in this coalition, but without stating whether it would be willing to commit troops abroad. The credibility of this alliance is questionable, since Syria, and Shia-majority Iran and Iraq, have not been included. Without the collaboration and support of these three key states, the Middle East stands little chance of neutralising the militant Islamic State group.
The US has welcomed the Saudi announcement — behind closed doors, it might even have pressured the Saudi government to initiate this project. The US presidential election is less than a year away, and the Obama administration is under intense pressure from the Republicans for not doing enough to battle IS. The US does not want to commit boots on the ground; it wants friendly Arab nations to commit resources and soldiers for fighting IS.
Ironically, the rise of IS can be partially credited to the US: its inference and military adventurism in the Middle East, including by arming rebels many of whom later joined IS, has significantly weakened state policing and military institutions in the region. The US desired regime change in Libya and Syria. It succeeded in Libya by astutely getting the Security Council to acquiesce in its military involvement on the premise of protecting human rights. But on Syria, both Russian and China vetoed any Security Council resolution authorising the use of force against the established government.
We can’t afford to get drawn into unnecessary international wars.
A pivotal question arises: is the primary objective of the Saudi military alliance to neutralise terrorist groups which control swathes of territory and subjugate populations under their occupation, or is the aim to protect regimes in specific countries while concomitantly bringing about regime changes in others? For example, Arab monarchies threatened by IS desire regime change in Syria, but not in Yemen.
There is precedent of inter-states alliances to guard against regime change, eg the Economic Community of Western African States set up a convention under which the union is allowed to intervene in a member state to prevent regime change on the pretext of preventing grave breaches of international humanitarian law. The creation of a Sunni Muslim Nato-like alliance which acts in collective self-defence of member states might be in the making, but Pakistan can ill afford to get drawn into unnecessary international wars by committing troops at the moment.
In any case, under international law, a state’s consent is required for any military involvement on its territory by third states except when the latter are responding to an armed attack in self-defence. While Syria is in the midst of a civil war, under international law Bashar al-Assad’s regime remains in power because it currently controls the capital city and considerable parts of the country without being in imminent danger of collapse. Hence, any military involvement in Syria without its government’s consent would be legally problematic, because of the challenges posed to Syrian sovereignty under international law.
The right of collective self-defence, enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter, privileges Syria and Iraq to request and authorise other states to assist in the defence of their sovereignty against rebels and insurgents — including terrorists. Russian military involvement in Syria is an example of acting on the basis of such authorisation, whereas US aerial bombing clearly is not. Thus, any military operations targeting militants by this newly formed Muslim states alliance, without the consent of the state on whose territory the terrorists are active, disregards the principle of territorial integrity enshrined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.
Pakistan is already overstretched in its internal conflict with the TTP. Diverting military resources and manpower overseas will militate against establishing peace and security within its own border. IS has shown sophistication and craftiness, including by adeptly using social media, in executing terrorist attacks and fanning radicalism in countries it wants to target. Any external involvement against transnational terrorist organisations like IS will expose Pakistan to the wrath of the former.
Additionally, by joining military operations or providing other forms of military or intelligence support, Pakistan might end up antagonising Iran, driving it closer to what is currently a hostile India. Pakistan can thus end up jeopardising its commerce, energy and trade linkages with Iran at a time when sanctions are being lifted.
Increased trade with Iran has the potential to significantly boost the economy of Pakistan. While condemning terrorism and cooperating with all relevant UN bodies in combating it, Pakistan should aim to remain neutral in what increasingly seems to resemble a Cold War between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with US and Russian support respectively.
Sikander Ahmed Shah is a former legal adviser, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
dawn.com/news/1228176/coalition-at-a-price
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Forever girls
Rafia Zakaria
December 23rd, 2015
THEY descend upon Pakistani television screens almost as soon as the men and the working women have left, bound for grim offices via car-clogged roads. Many of the women hosts of Pakistan’s morning television shows are unrelenting in their insistence that the new day is going to be a glorious one. One can, of course, pause at the absurdity of this claim, dissect its inapplicability to every single new day in Pakistan; but there are others that annoy more, and grate on the intellect as they do on the senses.
This kind of deluded optimism is not the only crime of the morning show. Even more annoying than the relentless and artificial excitement is the ‘girlishness’ with which it is conducted. There is something crucial to be noted here: few of the many hosts of the many channels are actually ‘girls’ or anywhere around the neighbourhood of just-passed adolescence. Their mode and manner, however, seems never to have recovered from that bygone age bracket; as they seek to project that the grown woman is really just a girl. In turn, a girl, naïve and innocent, forever cheerful and untainted by the seriousness of the world, is the epitome of Pakistani womanhood.
The morning show is just one instance, albeit a grating one, of this curse of infantile thinking that is inflicted on millions of Pakistani women who must never grow up. In this, its most visible iteration, it says to women that maintaining the persona of a girl — the just-grown anorexic body, the impish impudence and the naiveté with which all things serious or pressing are somehow out of bounds — equals attractiveness.
A society that is obsessive in its idealisation of ‘girls’ is one that can never really be committed to ending practices like child marriage.
Seriousness of purpose, engagement with issues beyond wedding outfits, crafts and cooking are generally questionable, suggesting an un-femininity that is, if not outright noxious, definitely not attractive. Advertisements and television dramas further substantiate the stereotypes; the girls who grow up into women, are more often than not the villains, scheming, plotting and arranging the demise of the girlish innocents, who cannot see through their evil machinations.
Excavating the curse of being the forever girl from Pakistani society requires a bit of acuity in cultural products — mornings shows, television dramas and advertisements — that are otherwise uncritically consumed by too many. It also requires recognising what such an image does to the larger situation of women in the country.
A society that is obsessive in its idealisation of ‘girls’ is one that can never really be committed to ending practices like child marriage. If it is the ‘girl’ that is the epitome of attractiveness, then it follows that younger and younger girls are sexualised and made available for marriage. In turn, the girls who escape this practice, who become women, are caught in the vice-like grip of cultural expectation that requires them to pretend at being younger than they are, embarrassed, even rejected, for being women.
It is not just they who are being discarded; the degrees, the professional skills or educational achievements that they may have gathered on their way to becoming women are all also devalued. A society that wants women to stay forever girls is disrespecting all women by saying that women are or should be, in some perpetual way, always children. Children, we all know, must be told what to do, protected, never permitted to do as they wish. So it is the condition of women as well.
If we assess this wreckage produced by cultural norms that find women attractive only when they model the childishness of girlhood, then the realm of the morning show is recast as yet another scene of battle. Grown women, guests and hosts and those who call in are constricted by the shackles of a permanent adolescence, one they must embrace to be considered attractive, even acceptable.
Further iterations are available throughout the wedding season, where the unwed, aged anywhere beyond 18 or 19, must maintain the mien of that glorious age if they are to preserve any prospect of being betrothed. This latter goal, everyone in Pakistan knows, is the defining dream of every unwed Pakistani woman — I mean girl.
The task of changing norms can only belong to those who are currently defined by them. If Pakistani women do not recognise the degradation and perversion of an idealisation of girlhood as the feminine ideal, then all of them, married or unmarried, old or young, will remain shackled by its boundaries, pushed for years to come into the pretence of being childlike.
Youth and its preservation is undoubtedly a universal quest, the paints and potions sold to women around the world all evidence of its ubiquity and timelessness.
There is, however, a difference between the worldwide quest of staying young and the social insistence that only the female and the young are pretty, marriageable or beautiful. The former points to the human fear of death and aging, applicable to men and women, in Pakistan and elsewhere. The latter, the curse of the forever girl, points to something particularly Pakistani: a clever equation of the female with the child, something that indirectly justifies the subjugation of women, their relegation to lesser beings.
There are many tools in the arsenal of those who wish to deny women equality, and other women are one of them. The mavens of morning shows, fighting the fervent rating wars, are perhaps too preoccupied with the task of widening their appeal and emphasising their girlish inability to question the structures within which they operate. If they were to take up their task, they could begin by putting their flippancy aside and consider with some seriousness the fact that Pakistani women, including themselves, deserve much better than to be sentenced to being forever girls.
Rafia Zakaria is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
dawn.com/news/1228178/forever-girls
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Fear and hope in Kabul
By Imtiaz Gul
December 23rd, 2015
The writer heads the independent Centre for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad and is author of Pakistan: Pivot of Hizbut Tahrir’s Global Caliphate
The air in Kabul is filled with acute scepticism, fearful uncertainty and a bit of optimism pinned on the inauguration of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline and the expected visit by Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif.
Most Kabulites, both ordinary citizens as well as the ruling elites, remain extremely sceptical of Pakistan’s commitment to counterterrorism. They continue to be wary of Pakistan’s ‘nexus’ with the Taliban and the Haqqanis. They also point to the existence of jihadi groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, as something contrary to Islamabad’s claim that “Afghanistan’s enemy is Pakistan’s enemy”. They still insist that Operation Zarb-e-Azb excluded the Afghan Taliban from action on the ground.
Accompanying this scepticism is the fearful uncertainty that the relentless Taliban attacks and advances — Kunduz, Helmand, Ningarhar and the suicide bombing on a Nato base near Bagram on December 21 — are generating. Most Afghans view this terror campaign as a ploy to bring the Taliban back. This situation makes the majority of Afghans uncertain about the future of the current National Unity Government (NUG) and is instilling fear in them. The situation is also marked by impatience vis-a-vis Pakistan, as well as disagreements within the NUG over whether to talk to the Taliban or to take them on as terrorists who are killing Afghan women and children indiscriminately. If Afghans agree on this, Pakistan should respond accordingly and not spare anybody who is using its soil for planning terror inside Afghanistan.
Amidst this uncertainty, the government has announced that the TAPI pipeline would create about 7,000 jobs — a promise that has rekindled some hope. This optimism has received further impetus by the news of General Raheel Sharif’s impending visit. Some in Kabul are hoping this visit might inject new confidence in the bilateral relationship.
This is how one could sum up the Afghan reservations and observations at a recent huddle of leading Pakistani and Afghan security experts and parliamentarians held this week in Kabul. Led by the Center for Research and Security Studies, the dialogue couldn’t have come at a better time. Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to Afghanistan, told the participants to appreciate that the “threat to Pakistan (at the hands of terrorists and militants) is not as existential as it is to Afghanistan”. She underscored the need for resumption of peace talks as soon as possible because the past decade or so proves that the “military solution is no option”. What is going on in Afghanistan is threatening Afghans as well as extended communities, and hence the need for a coordinated, honest attempt to take the road to reconciliation through negotiations. Drawing on the British experience in fighting the Irish insurgency, Pierce pointed out that it took the IRA two years to learn to negotiate and this is what all Afghan stakeholders need to do as the international community stands by to support them in finding peace and reconciliation.
Some of the participants spoke of the urgency for a candid dialogue among the military and intelligence apparatus as key to durable negotiations. The major stumbling block, most observed, was the trust deficit, which could be narrowed only through talks. Participants also urged both governments to urgently agree on standard operating procedures for better border management. This, they said, was key to stemming cross-border movement of terrorists. This would also improve the operational difficulties and facilitate state-to-state dialogue on counterterrorism. A second crucial element of the Pak-Afghan counterterrorism strategy, Pakistani delegates suggested, would be to put in place a joint verification mechanism to deal with the issue of terrorist and militant sanctuaries in both countries. The Quetta and Peshawar Taliban shuras were specifically referenced in this context. Most participants agreed that both countries must commit to protecting every inch of the border.
Participants from both sides agreed on the urgency of a bilateral dialogue in addition to the resumption of the reconciliation process. They agreed that the Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad on December 9 offered a new window of opportunity for engagement among all key stakeholders for a strategy on dealing with the issue of ‘legitimate interlocutors’ and the ‘red lines’ that are still a source of contention. The Taliban reject the Afghan Constitution while the majority, including Pakistan and the international community, consider this as the foundation for any dialogue on the political future of the country.
tribune.com.pk/story/1014575/fear-and-hope-in-kabul/
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