Why We Should Grant ISIS Their State: New Age Islam's Selection: 06 June 2016
New Age
Islam Edit Bureau
06 June 2016
• Why We Should Grant ISIS Their State
By Latoya Mistral Ferns
• Where Are Our Conscientious Objectors?
By Yasser Latif Hamdani
• Chasing A Mirage
By Saad Hafiz
• Stability-Instability
By Cyril Almeida
• Who Is The Enemy?
By Muhammad Amir Rana
• America and Muslim World Politics
By Shahid Javed Burki
• Refugees and Our Conscience
By Zaigham Khan
• End Of Illusions
By Michael Krepon
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Why We Should Grant ISIS Their State
By Latoya Mistral Ferns
05-Jun-16 1052
Ever snigger at that phrase, “Be careful what you wish for?” It’s time to give ISIS what they wish for: recognition as a state. A state is so much more than Weber’s “compulsory political organisation with centralised government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a territory.” No one would dispute Daesh is a political organisation. Or that they have an organisational structure, a fledgling bureaucracy and the ability to influence people to do what they ordinarily wouldn’t in territory the size of Jordan. ISIS exert some external influence via media slick propaganda. A state is also a political entity whose presence is definable and bounded, whose scope is limited logistically, and in terms of international law, which makes statehood for ISIS an important argument for Politweak this week.
What we can do to combat ISIS is limited as long as we refer to them as non-state actors. Non-statehood confers the protection on many in the ISIS machinery as non-combatants. Traditionally, only states are the subjects of international laws like the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). LOAC is vital to war conduct as it is concerned with jus in bello, or limiting the kinds of force used. ISIS, as non-state actors, escape much of the culpability associated with the use of disproportionate force over and above military necessity, despite wielding legal weapons like rocket launchers and illegal weapons like Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP). EPFs are bombs that turn their copper casing into molten projectile, illegal according to the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons and responsible for civilian deaths and 18 percent of personnel fatalities.
Not recognising ISIS as a state erodes our own freedoms and immunities by eschewing the crucial customary distinction between combatants and civilians. To the reader it is intuitive, we are non-combatants while ISIS are armed. However, in LOAC, war is traditionally between state actors, and only the armed forces and armed opposition are recognised as combatants. In Iraq and Syria, armed opposition is hard to keep track of, as every sect seems to have a militia to protect/avenge it.
This is logistically problematic as combatants are required to wear identifiable fatigues to prevent civilians being attacked. ISIS fighters not having to comply give them the benefit of stealth and surprise attack, i.e. a head start on armed forces. Nevertheless, armed forces are still permitted to neutralise ISIS fighters as civilians directly participating in hostilities. Statehood for ISIS would aid counterinsurgency by obligating fighters to make themselves identifiable.
Blurring civvy/combatant distinction is more insidious for us than it is for ISIS or their nemesis. Simply, the increase in asymmetric warfare (between insurgents and state forces) has meant international powers like the US have been able to ignore the important principle of distinction in their counterinsurgency efforts to the peril of the most vulnerable and politically marginalised in border areas like the North West Frontier Province. For instance, drone attacks are not only personality based (i.e. targeting known terrorists) but also include signature strikes (which target people who aren’t known terrorists but display similarities). The increasing use of signature strikes is alarming because it is possible for regular civilians to frequent the same Salafi mosques as ISIS fighters or to be from the same tribes, while not being terrorists themselves. The top-secret algorithms behind our increasingly remote control War on Terror necessitate oversight and a mainstreaming of humanitarian standards, especially since abuse thrives in the silence and secrecy surrounding experts. The international community must recognise the statehood of ISIS and any other territory-controlling terrorist organisations to make them identifiable to minimise civilian murders and address surprise attack. As the nature of war changes, in order to stop transnational violence from snowballing, it is time that our experts disengage from the hastily put together talk shops we call peace talks and evolve a taxonomy to objectively ascertain when it would be prudent to acquiesce to demands for statehood.
It is time we purge the label ‘terrorist’ from our political vocabulary, at least as long as it is bandied about like some causeless cause, because it robs the reader of the enlightening opportunity to demystify what mistakenly seems like an ominous ‘post-9/11 monster’. Terrorism is nothing but those made weak by the cynical status quo trying to appear strong and fearsome, as they are fed up of waiting for a deus ex machina and for diplomats to abandon expediency for ethics. The oppressed, like the poor, are not a benign category as they are capable of (re-)acting in reprehensible, inexcusable ways.
ISIS, like al-Qaeda, has preyed on frustrated regional struggles for stakeholdership in the political process. In Iraq, Daesh are embodiment of the US’s haphazard democracy promotion and hurried exit strategy, which put the ‘moron’ in oxymoron by insisting on Shia leadership (51 percent of the population) over organically elected identity-neutral leadership. Alienated Sunnis (42 percent), it fuelled sectarianism. In Syria, Daesh is the outcome of Assad’s ‘pyramidal leadership structure’ of Alawis (13 percent) over Sunnis (74 percent) to capture shrinking state resources during economic recession, says former ISIS captive Henin. Assad also took a leaf out of unwitting US blunders in Iraq, and deliberately released jihadists from jail to give the peaceful pro-democracy Arab Spring a sinister dimension. Assad created a bogeyman in ISIS to scare the international community into believing that regime change, internal or external, would destabilise the entire region by birthing a rabid and fanatical state wannabes like ISIS. This is not farfetched. We were simply not paying attention when Assad’s state refined oil from ISIS controlled territory. ISIS statehood would erode this profiteering alliance and give the oppressed majority a choice of opting in/out of these political units based on the rights they confer and the services they provide — a far better scenario than Syria at present where basic water provision is used as a weapon of war.
ISIS cannot be eliminated as they and other armed organisations are supported by tribes looking for security and stakeholdership. Granting them statehood while they lose ground will contain them. They cannot be eliminated. They simply do not have the manpower to maintain a repressive or extensive state, which is why they fuel the apocalyptic narrative of Dabiq or the final fight between Islam and the Byzantines to attract foreign fighters to aid their attempt to control the state. Statehood would end ISIS’s claim to being wronged, which enables them to get away with using terror as a tactic to appear more powerful than they are and attract funding and recruits.
Statehood would also mean border control and a reduction of teenagers from Europe and the Americas, who feel like they don’t belong in the white mainstream; ISIS fighters groom and lure them online to be their wives. We cannot stop ISIS’ indoctrination on the Internet, but recognising them as a state will bring the added benefit of other states being able to disallow the movement of people and goods to its territory and they need not stop their war against Daesh either.
It is no secret that state-formation throughout history has been brutal — beheadings in public squares acting as deterrents in the absence of policing. Any reasonable person would balk at the idea of statehood for ISIS. However, rationality begs that we support statehood, while continuing to fight its brutality. It is far worse not to recognise powerful organised groups that have gained ground in Syria and Iraq because we cannot ‘sacrifice the bitter for the better’ by way of an ideal governance alternative, lest we doom these people to a dustbowl of a political culture where anyone wielding a weapon can come graze and move on. Heaven forbid, it is the contextually ignorant power-peacocking their dubious ‘responsibility to protect.’
South Asian ‘multi-nations’ must empower minorities, Christian, Shia or Ahmadiyya, lest they become vulnerable to recruiters for whom armed conflict is business. The scary but liberating takeaway is, states are not permanent unless fiscally and structurally representative. Even civilisations perish unless they are adaptable and inclusive.
Latoya Mistral Ferns is a politics and governance professional, integrated media strategist and Gross National Happiness researcher. Her column Politweak reimagines paths to peace in South Asia
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/05-Jun-16/why-we-should-grant-isis-their-state
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Where Are Our Conscientious Objectors?
By Yasser Latif Hamdani
06-Jun-16 8
As a child in the 1980s, I thought Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer of all time who passed away on Friday, was a Pakistani. It was only later when he visited Pakistan that I realised that he was not. I had been fooled into thinking he was a Pakistani, because in Pakistan we saw him as our own. This was the depth of the feeling we in Pakistan had for Muhammad Ali.
At college in the US I discovered that Ali was much more than just a great boxer, partly through Malcolm X’s autobiography and partly through the 2001 film Ali, starring Will Smith. It was around 1998 when I first landed in the US that I had come across the Nation of Islam through their newsletter The Final Call. This Nation of Islam, had it existed in post-Bhutto and post-Zia Pakistan, would have been declared a non-Muslim sect. Still I was not prejudiced. Through their writings, I discovered the depth of racial feeling that Americans of African descent had had to face in America. The Nation of Islam was not as much a religious movement as it was a movement for black rights and black identity in a majoritarian and racist society. It was nothing less than a rebellion against a social order that sought to keep African Americans backward and marginalised simply because of the colour of their skin.
Ali had joined the Nation of Islam in 1964. That was after years of disenchantment with the treatment of African Americans in a segregated America. In 1960, a white-only restaurant had refused to serve Ali, despite the fact that Ali had won the gold medal for the US at the Rome Olympics. At the time America practised segregation that was worse than even South Africa’s apartheid. Ali is known for some great fights in the ring, but his greatest fight came against the US government, when the heavyweight champion of the world refused to be drafted for the war in Vietnam as conscientious objector. The government revoked his boxing licence, and he was convicted in a trial in 1967. It was not until 1971 that the US Supreme Court returned an 8-0 verdict in the Clay v United States, 403 US 698 overturning Ali’s conviction. This was a great victory for the civil rights movement as well as the anti-war movement.
Many Pakistanis and indeed Muslims around the world admire Ali for being a great Muslim athlete. Yet Ali is perhaps much more relevant to us in Pakistan today. Muhammad Ali remains relevant because he fought and won against prejudice and against government oppression. In Pakistan the treatment of religious minorities is not very different, I am sorry to say, than the US’s treatment of African Americans in the 1950s. Echoes of the same bigotry are found at every level in our society.
Need I remind the reader of what happened at the Hafeez Centre, Lahore, earlier this year? Every other shop in that wretched shopping plaza in one of Pakistan’s most populous and supposedly educated cities has a sign that says that they would not serve the Ahmadi community. Some signs even refer to Ahmadis as dogs etc. Even the state is complicit. We all forcibly sign off on a statement abusing this forced minority community when getting our passports. Where are our conscientious objectors? I am ashamed and embarrassed to say that come my next passport-renewal, I too will meekly sign the statement that goes against everything I believe in and what I believe this country should stand for.
I hope you, the reader, are a better person than me. I hope that you have the courage to pull off a Muhammad Ali.
It is not just the Ahmadis who face prejudice and discrimination. Hindus in Sindh live in perpetual fear as their women are forcibly abducted and converted to Islam. Not a week passes by when a Christian is not accused of blasphemy, and when a mob does not resort to ‘vigilante’ (in)justice against them. Civil rights are a distant dream in Pakistan even today, despite Pakistan’s constitution promising fundamental rights to each citizen. Where is our Muhammad Ali? Where is our Malcolm X? Where is our Dr King?
The history of civil rights movement in the US is instructive for us. 50 years on, no one remembers those who stood in the way of civil rights. Meanwhile those who dissented, those who refused to accept the status quo and even paid the highest price are the heroes of today. Will there be a corresponding civil rights movement in Pakistan? As a Pakistani, I hope and pray for the sake of my country that such a movement comes sooner rather than later. Societies that stifle their minorities can never be successful. In a recent speech at convocation US First Lady Michelle Obama said that a government, a state and a society that stifles the potential of their citizens is less hopeful and less free. One would have imagined she was talking about Pakistan in 2016.
This is not what we were meant to be. The Pakistan we had set out to make was to be a different place. It was going to be a land where every citizen, notwithstanding his religion, caste, race, or gender, was an equal citizen of Pakistan. It was not supposed to be the dystopic hellhole we have made it. Our pusillanimous attitude and refusal to stand up for what is right has landed us where we are now. Let us find in ourselves the courage to stand up and to be conscientious objectors for the sake of our future generations.
Yasser Latif Hamdani is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality.
Source; dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/06-Jun-16/where-are-our-conscientious-objectors
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Chasing a Mirage
By Saad Hafiz
05-Jun-16 1367
After 35 years of civil war and 15 years of the US led-intervention, prospects for peace in Afghanistan are bleak. The much- touted Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process is a mirage. It is apparent that the vicious cycle of violence will continue unabated for the foreseeable future. The recent death of the Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a US drone strike in Pakistan seems inconsequential. The Taliban are not wilting under the pressure enough to bring them to the negotiating table. Overall, the balance of power remains unchanged and the military status quo persists.
The principal reason that peace in not on the cards in Afghanistan are the divergent goals and objectives of the warring parties and the external players involved in the conflict. For instance, Pakistan’s incomprehensible Afghan policy is a serious impediment to bringing peace to Afghanistan. In a nutshell, Pakistani is fine with the joys of Taliban rule in Afghanistan but does not want the same for itself. It is opposed to the enforcement of harsh Taliban religious laws in Pakistan but quite satisfied if they are imposed in Afghanistan. It battles the Pakistan Taliban, but provides safe haven and logistical support to its ideological cousin, the Afghan Taliban. It whines over lost sovereignty when the US frustrated with the lack of success in the peace talks takes out a Taliban leader on its territory.
Clearly, confidence-building measures and incentives will not bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table. They are unlikely to renounce their objective of regaining political power and territorial control. The Taliban underpinned by a hard-line ideology are on a quest to re-establish the Islamic emirate in Afghanistan. Sharing political power in a democratic system would be an anathema and would dilute support for the movement. Therefore, it is imperative that other parties particularly Pakistan do more to end Taliban intransigence.
At this moment, there is a glaring lack of trust between the purported allies Pakistan and the US, who are the main external players in the Afghan conflict. Neither the US’s fight-talk nor Pakistan’s talk-talk strategies seem to be working in Afghanistan. The US strategy seeks to weaken the Taliban sufficiently to allow the Afghan people to safely reject it; develop Afghan security forces so that Afghans can defend themselves as US troops leave; and, through an enhanced civilian effort, help the Afghan government sustain the support of its people by providing basic services. However, the Taliban have been resilient, reminding one of the Viet Cong in Indo-China, as they keep coming back despite heavy losses and technological disadvantages. The Taliban strategy of wearing down the enemy and re-capturing lost territory, even holding it for short periods, seems to be working.
On the other hand, the National Unity Government led by Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah appears weak. The government is dogged by allegations of corruption and incompetence. It is sincere and anxious to make peace but it cannot seem to get rid of the tag of being a US ‘puppet’. It can try to do all it can to create an environment conducive to reconciliation. But as long as the Taliban sense that government will collapse once the US leaves they will play the wait-and-see game. For obvious security reasons, government cannot agree to the Taliban’s main precondition for peace talks, which is the complete withdrawal of US-led foreign forces from Afghanistan. Many Afghans would oppose a return to harsh Taliban rule despite the shortcomings of the Ghani government. Some progress has been made on women’s rights, freedom of expression, education and democratic values that the Taliban do not share. Under the Taliban rule, girls were prohibited from attending school; women were entirely shunned from public life; boys were forbidden to play sports; music was banned.
To paraphrase the author John Steinbeck, “All conflict is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” In Afghanistan, all parties must think their way out of the quagmire. Some obvious approaches come to mind:
1) All countries agree to act against the common threat emanating from the network of like-minded terrorist groups in the region
2) Pakistan is persuaded to dropping the Taliban as a useful hedge in a post-US Afghanistan
3) the US accepts an Afghan government that incorporates the Taliban
4) Afghanistan ensures that its territory is not used against its neighbours
5) Political reforms in Afghanistan grant a greater voice to a broader range of Afghan interests, such as local and provincial leaders, political parties, and parliament. The Afghan government needs a wider base of political support than it currently enjoys and its institutions are able to deliver
6) Taliban are convinced that their dream of an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan is unrealistic and will remain unfulfilled. It should be made clear to the Taliban that if they persist in their campaign, they would face the full military might of Pakistan and the US on both sides of the porous border.
Source; dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/05-Jun-16/chasing-a-mirage
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Stability-Instability
By Cyril Almeida
June 5th, 2016
THE month-long snooze, we can hope, is almost upon us again, so let’s catch our breaths and have a look at the lie of the land instead.
Political stability — we’re back into normal-ish mode. Panama isn’t dead, but the frenzy has subsided.
You can’t kill off your opponent politically while he’s laid up in hospital — the average Pakistani won’t stand for it, hence the cries of surgery fraud by Nawaz’s political enemies.
From here, there’s one of three ways Panama can be re-energised: something new pops up, the boys decide to pull the plug or the Nawaz team screws up the ToR negotiations.
Panama was a bolt from the blue, so you can’t rule out something new. You know there are more skeletons and closets.
But don’t bet on them tumbling out. Nawaz seems to have learned the Zardari way —— don’t get caught with your hand in the cookie jar; make sure it’s someone else’s.
There’s a reason the London apartments are still, two decades on, the main public symbol of Nawaz’s misdeeds.
The boys pulling the plug — there is a disdain among them for Nawaz that is different to the one felt for Zardari, but the same in its intensity. It is strange.
If it were just the older lot, it would make a kind of sense. The older lot saw Nawaz 1.0 and that forever shaped how they feel about him.
But the younger lot having the same disdain is curious — there is little of the scandal and none of the conflict this time round to feed the anger. But it’s there all right.
Still, through this Panama business, there hasn’t been a systematic, determined and sustained attempt by the boys to turn the screws.
Sure, there’s no sympathy for Nawaz — see above — and if he drowns himself, you know they’ll let him.
But if Panama is to be re-energised, it doesn’t look like it’ll come through the boys.
There’s a reason the London apartments are still, two decades on, the main public symbol of Nawaz’s misdeeds.
The ToR negotiations — this one’s tricky because there’re so many moving parts involved. And egos and personalities.
But the N-League does have a strategy: insist that Nawaz is willing to face whatever scrutiny wanted by whomever; simultaneously argue it’s only fair others face the same scrutiny; and indicate that the party is willing to go into campaign mode.
That openness-cum-aggressiveness makes it hard to keep the focus on Nawaz alone and as soon as the net gets widened, the game is up. No frenzy — no ouster. No focus — no ouster. Onwards it would be to 2018.
Internal security: the chief has given us the only clue that matters — Zarb-i-Azb is winding down. The details can be argued over — what about Punjab? And the anti-India lot! Will the anti-Pak lot regroup? — but there are two new realities.
First, fewer things are going to go boom. That matters because things going boom and TV screens flashing with carnage and gore are the one thing that injects true systemic instability.
Because it gnaws at the position and the image of the boys — of themselves and the one everyone else has of them. Too much pressure can make for choices — and mistakes — by the boys that everyone else has to pay for.
Second, even if something big does go boom now, the threat of the civilians taking advantage is gone. You can’t claw back civ-mil space when you’re on the ropes in the political arena.
Raheel or no Raheel, the boys unambiguously control the security narrative once again and where they can’t control what the militants do, they’ll control the state response.
Either way, they boys will eventually get their way in Punjab.
External stuff — we’re back where we started and where the boys have always wanted us to be: India is at the centre of all of that we see and do. Things are normal again.
How the hell is this normal, you may be thinking: we’re sniping with Iran; the Afghans are mad at us; the Americans are bullying us; the Indians are trying to isolate us; and only China, dear, dear China, is standing by us.
But go through each of that. The US is in election mania — it’s not going to do something crazy with us. Not now.
The Afghan government isn’t hoping for talks anytime soon and the US has indicated it won’t let the Taliban overrun the Afghan state this year — that adds up to time.
India? India is hardly going to declare war on us and it can try all it likes to diplomatically isolate us or militarily intimidate us — it’s not like it’s going to work. See above.
And China, slow pace of CPEC or not, isn’t going anywhere because we’re the best thing it’s got in this neighbourhood.
Sure, opportunities galore may be passing us by — but that’s not the point.
With India at the centre of all that we say and do, the point is about fending off threats, not seizing nation-altering opportunities.
And if you take all of that together — political stability, internal stability, external stability — we get the problem that is Pakistan:
Instability brings with it the possibility of change, while stability reasserts old patterns; but, in our stability-instability cycles, we get from instability to stability too quickly for change — of the good kind — to manifest itself.
Then again, this is Pakistan — the next spell of instability, and with it the possibility of change, can’t be too far off.
Cyril Almeida is a member of staff.
Source: dawn.com/news/1262794/stability-instability
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Who Is The Enemy?
By Muhammad Amir Rana
June 5th, 2016
WHO is a bigger enemy for Pakistan? The terrorists or drones? The answer to this question may not be as simple as it appears.
The killing of the Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a US drone strike in Balochistan has triggered a complex debate about different issues including sovereignty, regional stability, peace in Afghanistan and the security of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, etc. A negative impact on already deteriorating Pakistan-US relations was expected, but the incident also brought Iran into the picture; reportedly, Mullah Mansour was coming from Iran when he was hit by the drone.
For Pakistan, the Iranian factor is important both from the Indian and Middle Eastern perspectives. Pakistan uses the Middle East as a key balancing factor in its ties with India and Iran. More complex strategic and geopolitical implications linked with the death of Mansour can be found and linked to Pakistan’s internal and external challenges.
As much of the public debate in Pakistan on these issues projects Mullah Mansour as a ‘peacemaker’, it supports the suspicions of the outside world that the Afghan Taliban are Pakistan’s assets. The situation can also be interpreted in terms of geopolitical confusion the country has been in for decades now, with policymakers being unable to identify and aptly describe the country’s interests and policies.
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif’s statement that the drone strike in Nushki was an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty was in line with the usual Pakistani reaction over drone incidents. But we have never challenged the legality of drone strikes at appropriate international forums.
There have been many grey areas in counterterrorism cooperation between the US and Pakistan.
The defence minister raised an interesting point: why do drones not target Mullah Fazlullah, the head of the anti-Pakistan militant group Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, based across the border in Afghanistan? Let’s not forget that drones helped eliminate some important TTP leaders including Qari Hussain, Baitullah Mehsud, Waliur Rehman and Hakeemullah Mehsud whose death the interior minister of Pakistan ‘mourned’.
Just a few days before Mullah Mansour’s death was confirmed, a renowned expert on military affairs, Aqil Shah, challenged the myth of the blowback effect of drones through his study. According to his findings, a significant majority of those in drone-hit areas support drone strikes. Shahbaz Taseer, who was abducted and remained in the custody of militants for more than four years, made an interesting point when he tweeted that he always found the terrorists worried about drones.
Mystery still shrouds Pakistan’s cooperation in drone operations. At one time, the international media linked the Mehran naval base attack in Karachi and the militants’ unsuccessful attempt to capture a warship to their efforts to weaken drone surveillance operations. Many grey areas have existed in counterterrorism cooperation between the US and Pakistan. Neither side appears willing to make the cooperation transparent.
On the other hand, an even bigger grey area exists within the realm of the Afghan Taliban and their links with anti-Pakistan terrorist groups including the TTP and Al Qaeda. The TTP has pledged allegiance to Mullah Haibatullah, the new head of the Afghan Taliban movement, and it is expected that Al Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahiri will extend his support to the new chief as he pledged allegiance to Mansour last summer. It is also possible that these grey areas exist only in our assessments while the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban are very clear about their relations with each other.
It is not only the Afghan Taliban but also the Haqqani network that is depicted as a strategic asset of Pakistan; both have remained reluctant to use their influence over Pakistani militants to stop terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. They behave like rational actors and are open to broadening their allies’ network both with other non-state actors as well as states. When militants are perceived as proxies, it becomes difficult to treat them as rational actors.
This is a real dilemma for many experts — understanding Pakistan’s dichotomous relations with the US and the Taliban and what the country’s establishment really wants to achieve from this equation. For the US, it may be a question of terrorism and stability in Afghanistan. Washington may also have designs to use Pakistan as a scapegoat for its failure in Afghanistan, but for Pakistan, Afghanistan has a very different context. The Indian factor is important but most importantly, Pakistan wants not a hostile but a friendly and cooperative nation to its west.
The evidence on the ground does not support the notion that Pakistan will secure a friendly Afghanistan as anti-Pakistan sentiments are high in Afghanistan and Pakistan has not invested enough in the political sphere to win the hearts and minds of Afghans. Even Islamabad’s former ally, Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, has joined the political mainstream. There should be no doubt that Pakistan does not have any political capital in Afghanistan. What alternative does Pakistan have?
The Taliban and the militants are the beneficiaries of these dichotomies. There is little hope that they would opt for peace in Afghanistan. Their lower cadre — in fact, even important field commanders — have fallen for the fallacy of victory. They also do not enjoy public support in the country and most importantly, they see no advantage in sharing power with Kabul. They have evolved their own economy and are increasingly behaving like a legitimate state on the pattern of the militant Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. It is expected that their current attitude will continue as they are gaining power in Helmand province.
Recent developments indicate bleak chances of stability in Afghanistan and the region. The challenge for Pakistan would be to stop cross-border incursions by anti-Pakistan terrorists sheltering in Afghanistan. This would be a difficult and costly task. Instability in Afghanistan will continue to frustrate Washington, and the chances of drone strikes will remain high inside Pakistan. A common Pakistani will also remain confused about who our real enemy is: drones or terrorists?
Muhammad Amir Rana is a security analyst.
Source: dawn.com/news/1262793/who-is-the-enemy
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America and Muslim World Politics
By Shahid Javed Burki
June 5, 2016
In what came to be called the “Obama Doctrine”, the American president wanted to keep his country out of the business of nation-building. This was to be the case in particular with the politically backward Muslim world. This doctrine was diametrically opposed to the policy preferences of President George W Bush, Obama’s immediate predecessor. Bush followed a two-step approach: military action to overthrow an existing political order dominated by a narrow and self-serving elite followed by the quick introduction of liberal political institutions. He believed that his military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq would create an environment that would eventually lead to the establishment of liberal democratic institutions in these countries.
This was a highly naive belief against which a number of American scholars had argued at length. To take just two examples: the works of Fareed Zakaria and Francis Fukuyama. In his book, The Future of Freedom, the former wrote as follows: “For people in the West, democracy means ‘liberal democracy’: a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, separation of powers, and protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. But the bundle of freedoms — what might be termed ‘constitutional liberalism’ — has nothing intrinsically to do with democracy and the two have not always gone together, even in the West.” Fukuyama produced a two-volume work to indicate how democratic institutions have developed and how they can fail if not properly tended. The Bush belief that regime change by the use of force would make the Muslim world suddenly democratic was not supported by experience and academic thought. In fact, his Afghanistan and Iraq interventions created more chaos than political order.
It was also a fault to treat the Muslim world as a homogenous stretch of land defined by the prevalence of one religion. The American intervention in Iraq was to demonstrate that sectarian differences once released from the discipline imposed by an authoritarian regime produced political and social chaos that led to the rise of the Islamic State.
Also the influence of tribalism on the political cultures of many parts of the Muslim world went under-appreciated by the “interventionists” in the West — in the US and Britain in particular. These two countries were to partner in the adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was surprising that the then British prime minister Tony Blair became a strong advocate of the Bush approach towards the Muslim world. As Christina Lamb suggests in her long study of her country’s involvement in Afghanistan, the US should draw some lessons from Britain’s failed attempts to bring Afghanistan under its control. Blair’s enthusiastic participation in Bush’s war ignored these lessons. “When Britons look back on the first and second Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century, they see mostly graveyards. In 1963, the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan declared, ‘Rule No. 1 in politics: Never invade Afghanistan,’” writes Lamb.
While staying out of the Muslim world’s politics will most probably survive as the policy preference for the US in the post-Obama period, Washington will need to keep a close watch on what happens in societies that populate these regions. Given Pakistan’s geographical position, it could influence the political, social, economic and political progress of Muslim societies.
In this context, we need to identify the circumstances that drew Pakistan close to the conservative societies of the Arabian Peninsula and then analyse how the religious movement identified by some as ‘radical Islam’ is likely to shape the evolution of the global system. Pakistan was drawn to the Arab monarchies — in particular to Saudi Arabia — for reasons that included the ‘Muslimisation’ of the country as a result of the 1947 exchange of population; the migration of millions of young men to the Arabian Peninsula after the oil boom of the mid-1970s and how and why they succumbed to the charm of a radical interpretation of religion; the strong predisposition towards orthodox Islam on the part of President Ziaul Haq; and the need for external finance to keep the economy from collapsing.
It is on this strong link between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that I rest my case for a strong association between Pakistan and the US. Pakistan’s robust political development could serve as a model for Saudi Arabia and other politically backward Arab states. Pakistan is now the second largest Muslim country in the world. In the next few decades, it will become the largest Muslim nation and how it develops politically, socially and economically could profoundly influence the world. What is now needed is to help it become a test case and a model for the democratisation of Muslim politics.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1116846/america-muslim-world-politics/
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Refugees and Our Conscience
By Zaigham Khan
June 06, 2016
Born to an Afghan family living in our neighbourhood, Wali was a five-year-old child who used to be my son’s playmate. The only thing I remember about him is the fact that he would cry whenever his parents mentioned of going back to Afghanistan. “No, I was born here. I am a Pakistani,” he would say. A young adult today, Wali must be under relentless pressure to return to his country, if he is still in Pakistan. To me, Wali is the quintessential Afghan refugee who belongs to this land but has no way to assert his claim.
A heartless, cruel and insulting statement from Sarfaraz Bugti, the interior minister of Balochistan, has ignited a debate over the future of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Though Bugti’s language has been widely condemned, forcing him to retract his statement, there appears to be a broad agreement in Pakistan that Afghan refugees must ‘return’ to ‘their’ country, sooner than later.
There are two issues belonging to two different domains that have been confused and mixed together in this debate. The first is the problematic relationship between the two neighbouring states of Pakistan and Afghanistan and the second is the ‘problem’ of Afghan refugees based in Pakistan.
States are heartless, self-serving creatures run by people who are supposed to guard their national interests, as defined by the ruling elite of the country, as rational actors. Refugees, on the other hand, are vulnerable humans who leave their homes, their communities and their countries to find shelter in a ‘new world’ and they deserve compassion, sympathy and rights.
While states remain relatively stable, human beings transform with their surroundings and may change beyond recognition within their lifetimes. That’s why many countries recognise ‘jus soli’ – the ‘right of the soil’ or the right of anyone born in the territory of a state to nationality or citizenship. However, in much of the modern world, refugees still remain ‘strangers’.
In a remarkable essay, ‘The Stranger’, written in 1908, German sociologist George Simmel describes a ‘stranger’ as “the person who comes today and stays tomorrow”, a “potential wanderer” whose position in society is defined “by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the beginning”. Although the stranger is a spatial member of the group, in that he is physically present, Simmel explains that he is not a full member in a social sense. Because he is from somewhere else, the stranger instead occupies a specific position ‘in’ the group but not ‘of’ it.
Simmel’s idea of the stranger is often discussed while debating attitudes towards refugees as they ‘live’ among ‘us’ but are not of ‘us. They are not only rejected as one of us but their positive contribution to society is also often ignored and they are considered a source of threat to society.
The ‘strangeness’ that often works against refugees can be seen as a positive attribute – at least for a limited period. After the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, Afghan migration was actively encouraged by Pakistan and its allies. At times, Mujahideen, supported by Pakistan, even used violence to evict Afghans from their villages. By 1987, more than 3.5 million Afghans had migrated to Pakistan, making it the world’s largest recipient of refugees. The West, during that period, was generous towards Afghan refugees and a visit to their camps used to be an important item on the itinerary of the world leaders. In the official narrative of Pakistan, these refugees were brave Mujahideen.
Refugees at that time were considered helpful to the interests of the country and its superpower patron, the US. Their camps also served as recruiting grounds for the Afghan Mujahideen and later the Taliban. The state favoured madrasa education for their children and their affairs were often mediated through Mujahideen groups and religious parties, particularly the Jamaat-e-Islami and JUI. The schools in these camps used textbooks that were “filled with violent images and militant teachings.” For example, children were “taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles, and land mines.” Printed with foreign funding, millions of these textbooks were used long after 1994.
Unlike Iran, which confined Afghan refugees to camps, Pakistan allowed them the freedom to move around in the country and engage in businesses activities – a policy that helped integration and smooth relationship between the host and the migrant communities. Afghans have lived in various parts of the country without any inter-community conflict, sharing neighbourhoods, working and studying together and even intermarrying.
However, many have strived to maintain themselves at subsistence level. Confronted with limited opportunities, a large number of Afghan refugees entered into a debt-bondage relationship in Pakistani brick-kilns and, according to a Human Rights Watch Report, some have been forced to remain in Pakistan against their will even though they want to return.
The attitude towards Afghan refugees started changing in the wake of September 11 attacks when Mujahideen became terrorists and the Afghan character lost its glory. From a strategic asset, Afghan refugees turned into a strategic burden and very soon a stick to beat the Afghan state with. Their involvement in crimes and terrorism, particularly with the TTP, was exaggerated, putting their security and wellbeing at risk and souring the relationship between the refugees and the host communities.
Point 19 of the National Action Plan states: “Comprehensive policy will be formed for registration of Afghan refugees”. To many analysts, it is an indirect hint at the resolve of the state to send back all Afghan refugees, without leaving any scope for their assimilation or integration in Pakistan.
In the age of identities and the modern nation-state, the refugee is a stranger who must be through restoration into the nation-state system using one of the three ways outlined by the UNHCR: naturalisation, repatriation, and resettlement to a third country. The Pakistani state and the overwhelming majority of its citizens are not willing to naturalise Afghan refugees who have been on this land for more than three decades, not even their children or grandchildren who were born here. Similarly, there are no third countries willing to take them any longer. The only place left for Afghans is Afghanistan. To Afghanistan they must return – to the villages they have never seen, to farms that have become barren or taken over by other people and to professions for which they have no skills.
Between 2002 and 2015, 3.9 million refugees have been repatriated to Afghanistan from Pakistan. At the moment, there are 1.5 million documented Afghans in this country, with valid computerised Afghan Citizen Proof of Registration Cards (PoR). There may be an additional one million Afghan refugees who do not have such a card and are not considered legal persons. The PoR cards will expire towards the end of this month and the Pakistani government must decide about their future by then.
Afghan refugees have been with us for too long to be considered aliens. We are only hurting our own humanity and blemishing our own history by forcing them to pay the cost of changing foreign policies and inter-state rivalries through discrimination and harassment. It is not only their lives that are at stake, but our conscience as well.
Zaigham Khan is a social anthropologist and development professional.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/125602-Refugees-and-our-conscience
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End Of Illusions
By Michael Krepon
June 5th, 2016
There are no more illusions in US- Pakistan relations. Pakistan feels bitter about Washington’s embrace of India and the blowback from US counterterrorism policies. Washington feels embittered by Pakistan’s decisions and seeming incapability of changing course.
In retrospect, the last stand of wishful thinking in the US was the 2010 Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation. Washington’s strategy then was to put more money on the table to incentivise a reconsideration of Pakistan’s policies towards internal threats, Afghanistan, ties with India, and its nuclear posture.
From Washington’s perspective, the timing of KLB seemed right. A new civilian government was in place and in need of reinforcement. A thaw with India — a necessary condition to spur Pakistan’s economic growth — seemed possible. Perhaps Pakistan could be persuaded to not veto negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, since it was harming Pakistan’s standing without constraining India. And maybe both countries could collaborate on finding a workable political settlement in Afghanistan.
KLB did not fare very well. Well-meaning but tone-deaf members of Congress included a provision supporting civilian control of the military, prompting a backlash and antagonising those capable of changing Pakistan’s national security policies. Pakistan took the money and didn’t change most of its policies. The big exception was that Pakistan’s military took on the Pakistani Taliban.
Six years after KLB, relations have reached another low point. Messages to move past the ‘blame game’ will again be heard, but this talking point has lost its powers of persuasion, as has the theme of betrayal. On Capitol Hill, members of Congress are losing sympathy with Pakistan. Afghan Taliban leaders still find refuge on Pakistan’s soil where they are periodically targeted by drone strikes that damage the standing of both Pakistan and the US. Hope has waned on negotiations over Afghanistan’s future and Pak-Afghan ties. The Indian prime minister makes a surprise visit to Lahore to jump-start improved ties, only to be stymied by the usual blocking action — an attack on a sensitive Indian target allegedly by cadres of an extremist group that finds safe haven in Pakistan. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal continues to grow faster than India’s.
Pakistan’s Equities in the US Have Shrunk.
The end of illusions helps to explain Capitol Hill’s behaviour towards the F-16 sale. The only choices Congress seriously considered were to block the sale or to require payment in full. Yes, Washington appreciates the sacrifices made by Pakistan’s military in dealing with the Pakistani Taliban — a campaign that relies partly on F-16 sorties. But members of Congress also recognise that money is fungible; helping Pakistan to finance the purchase of F-16s will free up money for choices that are contrary to US foreign policy and national security interests.
The Obama administration has lost leverage it previously had on Capitol Hill in support of Pakistan. Its talking points are no more persuasive than Pakistan’s when it comes to the Haqqani network. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker fought back efforts to kill the sale, while insisting that Pakistan prioritise between its desire for more F-16s and outlays for other military initiatives. This outcome is likely to become the template followed by the next administration, as well.
A realistic appraisal of trend lines, stripped of illusion, leads to the following, inescapable conclusions. The US will grow closer to India. Pakistan’s equities in Washington have shrunk with the declining US troop presence in Afghanistan and with Pakistan’s perceived need to hedge its bets with the Afghan Taliban. US defence assistance to India will continue to expand, while US coalition support funding to Pakistan will diminish. The pro-India caucus on Capitol Hill will gain strength, and the pro-Pakistan caucus will shrink.
The US will, however, continue to offer Pakistan assistance because of residual common interests — especially on counterterrorism. Because perceptions of common US-Pakistan interests have narrowed, Pakistan’s ties with China will become stronger, as they must. In time, Pakistan will find reason to be displeased with Chinese support, just as it found reason to grumble about US assistance. Even the most artful diplomacy cannot alter these trends.
Pakistan will continue to chart its own course towards internal threats, Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban, India, and nuclear issues — regardless of what Washington says or does. If Pakistan changes its national security policies, it will be because change is perceived by Pakistan to be in its interests, not because of Washington’s incentives, or penalties.
US-Pakistan relations have been transactional, but both sides now have good reasons to be unhappy with transactionalism. From Washington’s perspective, Pakistan’s compensation has been generous. From Pakistan’s perspective, the compensation seems insufficient. Washington’s transactional calculus has now changed. It’s no longer about the sum total of US assistance; it’s about Pakistan’s choices.
Michael Krepon is the co-founder of the Stimson Centre. His latest edited book is The Lure and Pitfalls of MIRVs: From the First to the Second Nuclear Age.
Source: dawn.com/news/1262796/end-of-illusions
URL: https://newageislam.com/pakistan-press/grant-isis-their-state-new/d/107537