Talking to the Taliban

By Rasul Bakhsh Rais

Published: June 26, 2011

The writer is professor of political science at LUMS rasul.rais@tribune.com.pk

When, how and on what terms will the Afghan war end? If we go by the political rhetoric of the warring sides, the Taliban and the United States and its Nato allies, there will be no solution until each side achieves its central objectives. The problem is that both sides in any conflict cannot achieve their objectives until they reach some middle ground by recognising that the other side has some legitimate concerns, interests and can be acknowledged as a party with whom some political business can be done.

‘New kind of militant’ behind Pakistan Karachi attack

By Syed Shoaib Hasan BBC News, Karachi  

The deadly 15-hour siege on Pakistan’s Mehran naval airbase in Karachi on Monday was carried out by attackers with military-level training, raising suspicions they had inside help.

Questions are being asked about the security of Pakistan’s vital military installations after a well-organised group of gunmen held off Pakistan’s equivalent of the US Navy Seals – the Special Services Group-Navy (SSG-N) – for 15 hours.

Public Opinion in Pakistan’s Tribal Regions

New America Foundation // Terror Free Tomorrow Public Opinion Survey

• People of Pakistan’s tribal areas strongly oppose the U.S. military pursuing al-Qaeda and
• Taliban fighters based in their region; American drone attacks deeply unpopular.
• Residents of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) back instead Pakistan military fighting against the militants.
• Scant support for al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban in FATA.

The New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow have conducted the first comprehensive public opinion survey covering sensitive political issues in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. The unprecedented survey, from June 30 to July 20, 2010, consisted of face-to-face interviews of 1,000 FATA residents age 18 or older across 120 villages/sampling points in all seven tribal Agencies of FATA, with a margin of error of +/- 3 percent, and field work by the locally-based Community Appraisal & Motivation Programme. Funding for the poll was provided by the United States Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded think tank, which had no other role in the poll.

A critical perspective on the LSE report on the Taliban-ISI alliance

Waldman’s one-sided and highly biased report refers to several unnamed single sources. Accusations against Pakistan are mostly based on hearsay.

By Shiraz Paracha

The London School of Economics’ (LSE) recent report on the alleged links between the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban is yet another proof of an unholy alliance, in which Western secret services, the mainstream Western media and some Western academic institutions are partners.

Pity the nation by Hajrah Mumtaz

The ironies we witness every day in Pakistan would have us shaking our heads were it not for the fact that they usually provoke such deep visceral dread.

Take the furore over the recent shutdown of Facebook and other websites. In Pakistan the debate framed the issue mainly in terms of either the freedom of speech or the legitimacy of government censorship. Both models, as constructed here in Pakistan, were flawed and reductionist. Let that be as it may, I wish to point out something else. The websites were shut down because many people found their content ‘blasphemous’ and hurtful to their sentiments as Muslims.

Battle begins to win over Taliban to Karzai’s court

Cautious interest as Afghan government seeks to draw all parties to the table

By Julius Cavendish in Kabul

AFP/GETTY IMAGES Taliban fighters are to be offered inducements to change sides, but they demand preconditions before talks

he Taliban fighter sitting in the front of the car was expressive, engaging, and dismissive of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s pleas for men like him to lay down their guns. Omar Khel, a tribal militant from Wardak province outside Kabul, is exactly the kind of reluctant rebel the Afghan government and the international community want to bring in from the cold.

“I am not in favour of fighting,” Mr Khel, a chubby man with strong features and grey-flecked hair, said. “I don’t have

enmity with the Americans. I have enmity with Fahim, with Khalili, with Dostum. We are fighting them.” He had named the three most notorious warlords in the new Afghan government.

PROSPECTS FOR PAKISTAN

Jonathan Paris

This Report analyses the prospects for Pakistan over a one to three year time horizon. It looks at economic, political, security, and bilateral issues. There are three possible scenarios for Pakistan over this relatively short time horizon; Pakistan probably will avoid becoming a “failed state” and is unlikely to find a “pathway to success” but, as Pakistan confronts a myriad of vexing challenges, the most likely scenario is that it will “muddle through”.

1. Economy

Looking at the economy optimistically, in just over 20 years, Pakistan will surpass Indonesia and become the fifth most populous country and the one with the most Muslims. Its youth bulge provides it with a baby boom which, if educated and employed, could provide its economy with a demographic dividend long after the equivalent bulges in China and India have aged and retired. Pakistan has an opportunity to leverage its domestic consumer market to attract multinationals and build up competitive economies of scale in industries like food, electronics, autos and engineering for the export market. Peace with India would turn Pakistan into an energy transit point and geographic hub for a possible South Asian boom.

The return of Yazid

By Nadeem F. Paracha

After enjoying a little more than two years of relative peace, Karachi was rudely dragged back on the mutilated map of terror today [yesterday]. A single suicide bomber managed to slip his dynamite strapped body inside a large procession of Shia mourners on Karachi’s M A Jinnah Road and blow himself up, killing and injuring dozens of innocent people, including some security men who were patrolling the fringes of the procession.

The attack has come as a rude shock to the citizens of Karachi and the Sindh province who had been witnessing horrific scenes of similar carnage perpetrated by extremists in the mosques and markets of Punjab and NWFP, and had, for the last couple of years, been somewhat spared from the madness that the terrorists have been displaying in the country, especially ever since 2003. Although the Taliban have yet to claim responsibility for the attack – and given Karachi’s history, the attacker may well hail from one of the banned sectarian outfits that have long been established in the city – many believe that there is no longer any point in making distinctions between different extremist groups. Citizens, meanwhile, are concerned that this attack marks the beginning of a wave of violence as witnessed in other parts of the country.

Pakistani comedians fight Taliban with humour

If the Taliban produced a soap opera, Pakistani comedy writer Younis Butt pondered one day, what would it be like?

The love triangles would be impossible to understand, he thought, because all the women would be hidden behind burkas and no one would know which character was engaged in a heated tiff with another.

An Islamic variety show would be equally absurd, he decided. With singing and dancing frowned upon, women covered from head-to-toe could only sit in a spotlight with their backs turned to the camera.

For Every Decent Human Being

By Bilal Qureshi

Isn’t it time?

For every decent human being, it is sickening to see people being butchered the way human beings are slaughtered in Pakistan these days. Human life has no respect or value for barbaric animals responsible for these bombings and suicide attacks. And if the news of bombings and killing was not enough, I was horrified to learn that Lahore’s commissioner (incorrectly) blames India for these attacks while Punjab’s law minister (correctly) believes that the thugs being smoked out from Swat and Wazirstan are actually behind these attacks to force the government to back down. Isn’t it time for Pakistan to get united? Isn’t it time stop obsessing about India? Isn’t it time to be realistic?

aye watan tujh pe agar jan ho nisar…

The Taliban Mindset

 

By Dr. Khalil Ahmad

In order to secure constitutional protection for Muslims, the Muslim League argued in separatist language on the basis of a different religious identity. However, as the Congress would not budge on the issue, the Muslim League went ahead with its demand for Pakistan.

Thus, the constitutional issue was merged into a religious issue. Naturally when Pakistan came into being, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah found himself facing a dilemma: the Muslim League had been using the rhetoric of separate religious identity and now he wanted to make the new homeland a religiously neutral state as is evident from his speech of August 11, 1947.

That it could not happen, and the controversy lives to this day, proves that.