Afghan provincial intel chief targeted in bombing

KABUL: A suicide bomber attacked a car carrying a provincial head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency on Monday, wounding the spy and killing a child in the north of the country, police said.

The bomber detonated next to a car in which the National Directorate of Security (NDS) official was travelling at 8:20am in Maymanah in Faryab province, Lal Mohammad, police spokesman for the northern region, told AFP.

“The chief of NDS was going to his office when the attacker, a person wearing a suicide vest, detonated near his car.

“One child is killed and six other people, including the provincial chief of NDS, are injured,” said Mohammad.

Mohammad had said initially that a “number of civilians” were killed.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/afghan-provincial-intel-chief-targeted-in-bombing.html

Report urges Obama to freeze Pakistan aid

WASHINGTON: An influential US think-tank urged the Obama administration on Friday to freeze its aid to Pakistan until the country took actions against perpetrators of the US Embassy attack in Kabul and helped shut down the Haqqani network.

The Heritage Foundation, often used by former US president George W. Bush to announce foreign policy decisions, also asked
the administration to back Congress on conditioning all US aid to Pakistan on certain counter-terrorism benchmarks. But the report warned that while this would be “a welcome tactic, it may be insufficient”.

The foundation demanded that the Obama administration designate the Haqqani network a Foreign Terrorist Organisation. It argued that failing to do so after the Sept. 13 attack on the US Embassy in Kabul would signal America’s weakness and invite additional attacks on its interests in Afghanistan.

The report also proposed establishing a congressional commission to oversee US relations with Pakistan. “Congress should investigate Pakistan’s role in fomenting the insurgency in Afghanistan and the extent to which its actions were preventing the US and Nato from achieving their security objectives in the region,” the report added.

The foundation also advised the Obama administration to step up drone attacks inside Pakistan. It pointed out that increased tempo in drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas had severely downgraded the Al Qaeda leadership and disrupted its ability to attack the US.

“Washington should pursue the same kind of aggressive drone campaign against the Haqqani network,” the report demanded.

The foundation also issued a fact-sheet to back its claim that the Obama administration needed to have a plan ‘B’ for dealing with Pakistan if it continued to ‘defy’ Washington.

The fact-sheet described Pakistan as “the main obstacle to progress in Afghanistan” because it “proxies conducting brazen attacks on US interests”.

The report claimed that the Haqqani network, which the former military chief Admiral Mike Mullen called a ‘veritable arm’ of ISI, was based in Pakistan and was planning and carrying out attacks at US interests in Afghanistan.

The foundation also urged the White House to change its Afghan strategy, noting that President Obama’s aggressive withdrawal plan to remove 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next September only “reinforces the Pakistani view that the US will turn its back” on the region. “We cannot afford to leave a void the Taliban can again fill. We should make clear that the US will remain engaged.”

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/15/report-urges-obama-to-freeze-pakistan-aid.html

Dawn Editorial - Crime and terrorism + Polio Cases

MILITANCY and terrorism in Pakistan is a hydra-headed monster. Experience has shown that even when the security forces achieve success in one area, their efforts do not succeed in killing the monster. By necessity, therefore, countering the threat requires concerted, multi-pronged efforts that target various aspects simultaneously, across the law and order spectrum. How crucial this last aspect is can be gauged from increasing evidence about links between the Pakistani Taliban and street crime as described in a recent news report. Increasingly, insurgents are raising funds for their activities through bank heists, kidnappings for ransom and extortion. Drawing upon a network of malcontents and for-hire criminals across the country, they are blamed for masterminding or carrying out crimes to fund their insurgency. In doing so, they add to the crime wave and contribute to further erosion of the people`s confidence in the state and intensification of fear. The Taliban hand, through the `Black Night` group, is said to have been behind a June raid on a Dera Ismail Khan bank; in Karachi, the Taliban are thought to have been behind three of four bank robberies carried out this year which netted $2.3m. Similar links have been found in numerous abduction and extortion cases.

The shift in sources is a simple equation. US and Pakistani military offensives have killed or sidelined many mid-level and senior commanders who were, in a number of cases, men with links to international funding networks. Meanwhile, greater scrutiny of money transfers has made it harder to send funds around the world. Countering this phenomenon will require cooperation and intelligence-sharing between the civil and military law-enforcement agencies. Only if both are equally well-equipped and trained, and are working in tandem to combat a common enemy, can there be any hope. Without that, both arms of the security forces will continue to address the problem in a piecemeal and ultimately ineffective fashion. As for the Taliban, the logic under which they justify their turning to crime is despicable. Although they advertise their war as being one of a religious hue, their tactics expose the hollowness of their ideology.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/15/crime-and-terrorism.html

New polio cases

A REPORT in this newspaper on Thursday says five fresh polio cases have been detected in Balochistan, bringing the number of children affected by the virus in Pakistan this year to over 100. Balochistan leads this unfortunate count with nearly 50 cases. Another alarming development is that a boy in Karachi`s Gadap Town, who reportedly received anti-polio drops seven times, is among the recent victims. It is worrisome that there are increasing reports of children in different parts of the country contracting polio despite receiving numerous doses of the vaccine. This raises questions about the efficacy of the polio vaccine; perhaps there are issues with the way it is being stored and handled. Reports that the virus has been detec-ted in Multan, Lahore and Rawalpindi are also cause for concern.

The state`s health authorities as well as international experts need to investigate why there have been cases of infection despite the vaccine being administered multiple times. If the vaccine`s efficacy has been compromised, the problem must be rectified immediately. The state also needs to monitor migrant and mobile populations who play a major role in transmitting the virus from high-risk to hitherto `clean` zones. For example, the highest number of polio cases was reported from Balochistan`s Qilla Abdullah district which borders Afghanistan. Pakistan and Afghanistan — both endemic countries — re-infect each other due to the regular movement of people between them. The World Health Organisation has recommended that mobile and migrant populations be mapped in order to keep track of polio`s spread. The state needs to implement this recommendation to the fullest and plug the loopholes. Failure to do so will have consequences apart from the health risk: the World Bank has warned that a $40m grant will be converted into a loan due to Pakistan`s poor response to the fight against polio.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/15/new-polio-cases.html

Aiders and abettors by Kamran Shafi

The Deep State is not alone in its enterprise of trying to fool all of the people all of the time for its own ends: it is aided and abetted by various and varied ‘elites’, most of whom have either occupied positions of high authority in government; are media ‘stars’; even Captains of private enterprise. All of them, of course, say what they do to amplify the Establishment’s views, to therefore, snuggle ever closer to it.

Some of these ‘elites’ are dishonest and hypocritical to boot, trying to be all things to all people: hawks to our own because that is the preferred attitude of the Deep State and its handmaidens in the ultra-right media which dishonestly moulds public opinion to its masters’ preferences; reasonable to the West where, incidentally, they spend most of their lives in their luxurious homes, returning to Pakistan for a few months before flying off again to spread more Deep State-inspired confusion in the various think-tanks and study groups.

On the Urdu media they flaunt Pakistan’s bums, saying in the context of the present difficulties with the United States that we should show confidence because we are a nuclear power; in the English press they go softly, softly, and become ‘reasonable’.

Case in point: the views of a former ambassador to the United States and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom as expressed on an Urdu TV channel and, a few days later, in an opinion piece in an English language newspaper. In the TV interview appearing alongside the great hawk, strategist, and ‘victor’ of Jalalabad, Hamid Gul, invoking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons; in the article advocating quiet diplomacy, and the need for both countries to make up.

This is absolutely appalling. Leave the world’s most powerful country aside, how can the reiteration of Pakistan being a nuclear weapons state help in talking and negotiating with any nation? Could the threat of nuclear bombs be a negotiating tool for any country, leave alone a desperately poor one like ours with barely a friend in the world; a country that barely keeps its head above water with periodic handouts from the IFCs and other donors?

Do we (yet!) not know that our so-called ‘deterrents’ are more like several massive, and very dead albatrosses around our country’s collective neck rather than weapons we can scare other countries with? In any case, how precisely do those that flaunt our ‘bums’ suggest Pakistan use them to its advantage? Threaten to nuke Kabul? Delhi? Bagram? Sheer madness, and yes, utter hypocrisy, for they know perfectly well that it can never be. Yet they will strike impossible attitudes.

For, despite the great game-changer introduced into this wholetamasha just last week by the Afghanistan-India Strategic Partnership Agreement, our brilliant strategists go on pinning their aspirations of one day ruling Central Asia on Pakistan’s geographic location alone. They fail to realise that Pakistan is like the spoilt little brat — whilst I used this example many years ago it holds true to-date, our strategists not having learnt a thing — who sits atop a tree flinging stones at passersby with his catapult, thinking he is beyond reach.

All it takes to fix the brat is for one of those he hits with his catapult rather hard, to one day roll up his sleeves, climb the tree, haul the whippersnapper down by his ear and give him ‘two tight slaps’ as we say in the subcontinent. I mean, look at where we are standing today, as I said before, with nary a friend in the whole wide world!

Nary a friend, did I say? We have even been reduced to whining about Turkey hosting a conference on Afghanistan in November without a-by-your-leave from us! AND inviting India to it, to boot! AND not waiting until we had used up all of our machinations trying to influence the so-called peace talks with the terrorist Taliban! The wooden-headedness, the plain mulishness of our Rommels and Guderians baffles one most completely.

And what do their propagandists do, quite shamelessly? Target the few people who do good for Pakistan, who fight its battles as best they can; who are true to their country and try to talk sense to those who call the shots?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, 50-60 ‘students’ of the ‘Ziaul Aloom’ (fitting name, eh?) madrassa in Satellite Town, carrying iron rods, broke into the Committee Model High School for Girls located in the neighbourhood and beat up the girls and their teachers for not heeding their instructions to wear the hijab.

What is to be noted is that the local police official first said the police had been told not to react, later changing his story and saying what the hooligans did was not an ‘offence’ since they were protesting the conviction of Governor Salmaan Taseer’s assassin. So there! The Taliban are on the March again, my friends … surely sanctioned by the powers that be … for they are part and parcel of the Jihadist ‘assets’. Remember Swat?

And now for those who quote Iqbal saying Afghanistan is the heart of Asia, possibly as a means of supporting the Deep State’s seeking the holy grail of a, what is the word I want, subservient(?), Afghanistan. Let us quote the stanzas in whole, which go like this:

‘Aasia yak paikar e aab o gil ast; Millat e Afghan dar ander aan paikar dil ast; Az kushaad e oo kushaad e Aasia; Wo az fasaad e oo fasaad e Aasia’. Tr: ‘Asia is the body (made of water and dust); (but) Afghanistan is the heart; In the ruin of the heart lie the ravages of the body; In Afghanistan’s peace (and) prosperity lies the peace (and) prosperity of Asia’!

It seems to those of us who have lived the Taliban horror through the 1990s that what the Pakistani Deep State is doing/is trying to do in Afghanistan can only bring ‘ruin of the heart’ to an already ravaged body.

Have a heart, sirs!

P.S.: Kudos to Raza Rabbani and his Committee for refusing to go to GHQ to be briefed by the COAS and the DG ISI. Generals go to parliament, not the other way around. You can’t keep a good man down…

Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/273270/aiders-and-abettors/

IMP: Crisis in ties with Afghanistan By Khalid Aziz

RECENTLY, President Hamid Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement with India in New Delhi. Among other things, it provides for the training of Afghan army officers in India.

Before departing for India, President Karzai had accused Pakistan of some involvement in the murder of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of the Afghan High Peace Council. Irrespective of the merits of such a claim, merely the charge may have serious consequences and isolate Pakistan further during the forthcoming regional conferences in Istanbul, Bonn and later in Chicago that have been called to work out the Afghan transition.

Investigations into the death of Mr Rabbani may solve the mystery of his assassination. However, the party most threatened by peace in Afghanistan may be Al Qaeda as it would come under extensive pressure to move out of the region.

Secondly, the haste of the Indian government in pleasing Mr Karzai at the risk of harming its relationship with Pakistan may mean that another zero-sum game is in the offing. Normally, India makes decisions with prudence and after doing its homework. Can it be assumed that the agreement was actually negotiated some time ago and signed now to suit the circumstances?

The Indo-Afghan agreement gives a clear indication that it is aimed at Pakistan`s purported sphere of influence in Afghanistan. Does that mean that the US, India and Afghanistan have decided to jointly mount pressure on Pakistan? If so, this portends yet another conundrum for Pakistan.

The Indian military recently began manoeuvres near the Pakistan border in Sindh and Punjab. The simultaneous move of sophisticated Su-30 fighter jets to the region lends credence to Pakistani worries that India may be on the threshold of executing another `Cold Start` exercise to place Pakistan under pressure.

Why India would generate pressure in the region now when it is at the threshold of huge economic growth is inexplicable. One possible explanation may be Indian suspicions of a jihadi attack inside India. The exercise may be a pre-emptive message to force Pakistan to act more responsibly.

If such an event should occur, it would prove disastrous for the whole region; thus, extra care and vigilance is required of Pakistan. India`s moves and the strategic agreement are clearly meant to put Pakistan on notice regarding acting against jihadi networks in the country.

In June 2009, the US secretary of defence directed Centcom to prepare a report advising the US government on how the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) could achieve its objectives in Afghanistan. The report was prepared by Gen McChrystal, the Isaf commander in August 2009.

It highlighted many issues related to the challenges facing the international coalition in Afghanistan. Although it was not followed in letter or spirit, the report was honest and realistic and drew some forthright conclusions that are worth revisiting.

Amongst other conclusions drawn by Gen McChrystal, an important one was that “The Afghan government has not integrated or supported traditional community governance structures — historically an important component of Afghan civil society — leaving communities vulnerable to being undermined by insurgent groups and power brokers”.

The breakdown of social cohesion at the community level has increased instability, made Afghans feel unsafe, and fuelled the insurgency. He further added: “The insurgency … is predominantly Afghan.”

If the Afghan government has been unable to increase its capacity due to various reasons, is it not possible that the death of Mr Rabbani may have been the result of ethnic rivalries or the dynamics of Afghan politics?

Then, Gen McChrystal had said that “Stability in Pakistan is essential, not only in its own right, but also to enable progress in Afghanistan. While the existence of safe havens in Pakistan does not guarantee Isaf failure, Afghanistan does require Pakistani cooperation and action against violent militancy, particularly against those groups active in Afghanistan”.

He cautioned about expanding India`s role in Afghanistan: “Increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India.”

International politics are based on realism: relations are based on competition and conflict rather than cooperation. Realists consider states to be concerned with their own security and act in pursuit of their own national interests in their struggle for power. International politics are characterised by active or potential conflict among states.

In the current situation, the US, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan are obviously following the realism route. Pakistan, however, must calculate the cost of confronting a mounting coalition against it for its alleged support to the jihadis, including the Haqqani group.

Clearly, the survival of the Pakistani state is more important than tactical preferences. The parallels of the current crisis with the East Pakistan situation in 1971 are too close for comfort.

Pakistan`s geography on the junction of Punjab with Sindh has remained its Achilles heel. To cover this weakness, Pakistan considered Afghanistan as within its legitimate sphere of interest, and resultantly the new strategic agreement between India and Afghanistan is viewed with alarm. However, realism teaches us to watch out, for there is greater danger lurking.

The pieces on the chessboard clearly do not augur well for peace or for an orderly withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2014. Common sense would suggest that the best strategy for bringing peace to the region would be to engage both India and Pakistan in a collaborative mode for the endgame in Afghanistan.

Such a result may best be achieved by the appointment of a special representative of the secretary general of the United Nations with a mandate to expeditiously consult the states concerned on how to create a regional consultative mechanism to ensure peace in Afghanistan and an orderly drawdown of forces by 2014 while also assisting in maintaining regional security.

The writer is the chairman of the Regional Institute of Policy Research in Peshawar.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/14/crisis-in-ties-with-afghanistan.html

US open to Afghan peace deal including Haqqani: Clinton

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday signalled that the United States remains open to exploring a peace deal including the Haqqani network, the militant group that US officials blame for a campaign of high-profile violence that could jeopardise Washington’s plans for withdrawing smoothly from Afghanistan.

“Where we are right now is that we view the Haqqanis and other of their ilk as, you know, being adversaries and being very dangerous to Americans, Afghans and coalition members inside Afghanistan, but we are not shutting the door on trying to determine whether there is some path forward,” Clinton said when asked whether she believed members of the Haqqani network might reconcile with the Afghan government.

“It’s too soon to tell whether any of these groups or any individuals within them are serious,” she said in an interview with Reuters.

Inclusion of the Haqqani network in a hoped-for peace deal — now a chief objective in the Obama administration’s Afghanistan policy after a decade of war — is a controversial idea in Washington.

Officials blame the group for last month’s attack on the US embassy in Kabul and a truck bombing that injured scores of American soldiers.

The State Department is facing heat from Capitol Hill for refraining, at least so far, from officially designating the Haqqani group, which US officials say is based in western Pakistan, as a terrorist organisation.

The White House has backed away from assertions from Admiral Mike Mullen, who was the top US military officer until he retired last month, that Pakistani intelligence supported the Haqqani network in the September 13 embassy attack.

But President Barack Obama and others have put their sometimes-ally Pakistan on notice that it must crack down on militants or risk severing a key relationship.

According to media reports, US officials have held meetings with Haqqani network representatives as part of their efforts — which have not yet yielded any visible results — to strike a peace deal, but the State Department declines to discuss details of the reconciliation process.

In recent months reconciliation has become a more prominent feature of Obama’s Afghan strategy even as US and Nato soldiers continued to battle the Taliban and Haqqani militants in Afghanistan’s volatile south and east.

Earlier this year, Clinton advanced a peace deal as a key plank of regional policy for the first time, saying Washington would support a settlement between the Afghan government and those militant groups that meet certain requirements, including renouncing violence and supporting the Afghan constitution.

Fighting, talking

Despite the conciliatory signals, Clinton said the United States would stick to its military campaign that the White House hopes will make militants more likely to enter serious negotiations.

“Now, it is also true that we are still trying to kill and capture or neutralise them (the Haqqani network),” Clinton said. “And they are still trying to, you know, kill as many Americans, Afghans and coalition members as they can.”

“In many instances where there is an ongoing conflict, you are fighting and looking to talk,” Clinton said. “And then eventually maybe you are fighting and talking. And then maybe you’ve got a cease-fire. And then maybe you are just talking.”

It is unclear how quickly a peace deal could be had, as it remains unclear how military commanders can achieve and defend security improvements as the foreign force in Afghanistan gradually grows smaller.

While parts of the Taliban’s southern heartland are safer than they were, Obama will be withdrawing the extra troops he sent to Afghanistan in 2010 just as commanders’ focus turns to the rugged eastern regions where the Haqqani group are believed to operate.

Clinton did not directly address the question of designating the Haqqani network as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation,’ but suggested the United States would want to keep its options open as it seeks peace in a region known for historic merry-go-round of political and military alliances.

“It’s always difficult in this stage of a conflict, as you think through what is the resolution you are seeking and how do you best obtain it, to really know where you’ll be in two months, four months, six months,” Clinton said.

“We are going to support the Afghans and they want to continue to see whether there is any way forward or whether you can see some of the groups or their leaders willing to break with others.”

http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/12/us-open-to-afghan-peace-deal-clinton.html

Guardian UK: Pakistan's madrasa reform 'stalls'

A majority of Pakistanis are in favour of English language teaching being introduced into the country's madrasa schools, according to a recent survey carried out by Gallup Pakistan. The nationwide poll indicates that 59% of Pakistanis want the language to be taught as part of the schools' traditional Islamic curriculum, with 31% of respondents against.

But a government campaign to combat Islamic extremism that is seeking to bring madrasas under closer state control and to broaden the range of subjects they teach is unlikely to deliver effective change, critics say.

While madrasas came to be characterised in the west as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism post 9/11, a decade on the US and other major aid donors say that reversing poor standards of education acrossPakistan's school system, and not just in madrasas, will have the most direct impact on inequality and social conditions that give rise to extremism.

However, attempts to improve the quality of teaching in madrasas appear to have stalled. The religious affairs ministry claims there are over 18,000 registered madrasas in Pakistan. But observers estimate that the actual number of schools could be as a high as 30,000.

According to the International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy, the US-based conflict-resolution charity, only 10% of madrasas complied with the government's voluntary registration programme launched in 2002.

Sardar Asif Ahmed Ali, a former education minister, said: "We were trying to introduce the madrasa reforms. Five madrasa federations had agreed to the establishment of a madrasa board under the ministry of education. They also agreed to introduce the general system of education, in vogue in Pakistan."

Ahmed Ali said that a madrasa reform bill was to be presented to parliament earlier this year but it had to be abandoned because of the devolution of authority to the provinces.

Some madrasas are modernising their syllabuses and have already introduced general subjects such as English, maths and computer studies. According to Tahir Ashrafi, chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council, a moderate umbrella group for madrasas, 20% of schools are teaching other subjects in addition to Islamic education.

But a focus on including English language teaching in madrasa classrooms is being questioned by some observers, who say the language could be used as a double edged weapon – to help deradicalise on one hand, and to enhance the effectiveness of terrorists on the other.

Ejaz Haider, a journalist and security analyst, says that during the Pakistan military's offensive against the Taliban in the Afghan border region of Bajur in September 2008, he saw captured material and manuals used for bomb making, mine laying, booby traps and explosives.

"These manuals were in English, Pashto, Dari, Arabic, Urdu. In fact, far from running away from English or militating against it, radical groups have been embracing it. Take for example al-Qaida's online English language magazine Inspire," Haider said.

"Because of the assortment of foreigners of various nationalities, there is an increasing practical need that Islamist cadres learn English. They understand the power of the narrative."

At present the national de-radicalisation programme has been taken over by the ministry of interior and a period of consultation with the provinces has begun. But there is no visible effect or improvement, says Ashrafi.

"I was an adviser myself during President Musharraf's time and the truth is they don't take this issue seriously – nor then, nor now. It is all just to show the outside world. They may be getting funds from the west but nothing new is happening; attitudes have not changed."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/oct/11/pakistan-stalls-madrassa-reforms-english

� p � ht ss=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:6.0pt;line-height:normal;mso-mirror-indents: yes'>Syria hailed last week's vetoes by China and Russia of a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at the Bashar al-Assad regime. But even though they opposed the U.N. initiative, both countries have called for changes in Syria.

On Tuesday, China exhorted the government to react properly to calls for change.

"We believe the Syrian government should respond to people's reasonable expectations and appeals, and resolve the issues through dialogue and consultations," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said.

Last week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his country wants an end to the bloodshed and is calling for the regime to implement changes, state-run RIA Novosti reported Friday.

"If the Syrian leadership is unable to complete such reforms, it will have to go, but this decision should be made not by NATO and certain European countries, it should be made by the people of Syria and the government of Syria," Medvedev told the Russian Security Council.

Many world powers have been outraged over the government's crackdown. The European Union and United States have already imposed sanctions against the regime.

The EU Monday demanded that al-Assad step aside, saying his government's crackdown on opposition demonstrations could amount to crimes against humanity.

CNN's Salma Abdelaziz, Jennifer Deaton and Amir Ahmed contributed to this story.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/11/world/meast/syria-unrest/index.html?hpt=wo_c1

Repairing frayed ties By Michael O’Hanlon

AFTER a year of calamitous turns in the relationship between Washington and Islamabad, many Americans are wondering how this troubled alliance can possibly be repaired. Even more may be wondering how we can simply extricate ourselves from it, finding other partners and other strategic options in South Asia.

Alas, Pakistanis have had similar doubts about America even longer, a fact that goes far towards explaining their hedging behaviour, as many in the nation’s military and intelligence services tolerate or even support the Haqqani network and Quetta Shura Taliban in ways that destabilise Afghanistan and lead to the deaths of Afghans as well as Nato troops.

Certainly it seems safe to conclude that Pakistan is America’s most complex ally since Stalin’s Soviet Union, a poster child for what a foreign ‘frenemy’ looks like for the United States.

To be sure, we need to arrest this downturn in US-Pakistan relations to the extent we can. But it is at least as important that we Americans help our Afghan partners rework their relationship with Pakistan. In fact, that may be the core essence of the problem we face, and progress on this front may prove the most plausible path to improved US-Pakistan relations as well.

This will not be easy. Ten years into this war, I must say that for many Americans, it is hard to believe any longer Pakistan’s explanation for its hedging behaviour — that it simply does not have enough troops to fully pacify its tribal areas, and that it also needs to keep some friendly proxies in place should Nato’s effort to stabilise Afghanistan fail.

As for the first excuse, while partly valid, it does not explain the active collaboration between some elements of the ISI and the Afghan insurgents. And the second is not justifiable when the United States and other foreign countries have proven their mettle with a 10-year effort in this conflict to date, as well as a promise to take three more years to leave Afghanistan gradually and responsibly.

Indeed, as we have repeatedly stated at various levels of government (with only Joe Biden going off message for a moment in recent months, but later correcting himself), the United States in particular does not intend to leave Afghanistan even after 2014. Americans need to keep driving home this message to Pakistanis until it sinks in. Indeed, in my judgment, the only likely way the Afghanistan effort could fail is if Pakistani actions lead it to fail.

But it may be even more productive to directly confront, and attempt to address where possible, Pakistani concerns about certain aspects of the relationship between Islamabad and Kabul. To the extent that Pakistan’s government worries about an India-friendly Afghan government that would create security concerns on its western borders, leading to a form of strategic encirclement of Pakistan by India as well as Indian allies, there are steps that Afghanistan supported by Washington can take.
They will not suffice to eliminate all such Pakistani paranoias, but they can make a difference — and even incremental steps can help in this situation.

Consider the following possible moves. They need not be made unilaterally, but can be offered by Afghanistan as quid pro quos for Pakistan agreeing to rein in the Haqqani network and the Quetta Shura:

— Building on the results of President Karzai’s recent trip to India, where New Delhi and Kabul agreed that India would help train Afghan security forces, promise Pakistan that such training will occur only under the auspices of Nato’s training mission in Afghanistan.

This will reduce Pakistani fears that India will develop close rapport with certain units of the Afghan army that might work in cahoots with traditionally pro-India Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance elements and leave Islamabad out in the cold.

— Ask India to kindly close its consulates in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

Pakistan sees these Indian outposts in Jalalabad and Kandahar as intelligence collection sites and covert action staging bases in disguise. I doubt very much that is the case. No matter; the consulates are not important enough to warrant the reaction they cause, and Afghanistan should be willing to ask India to shut them down.

— Promise to respect the Durand Line between the two nations as the effective border indefinitely, or at least for an extended period, say until 2050.

Afghans continue to resist simply accepting this admittedly arbitrary British-drawn line from more than a century ago as their formal boundary with Pakistan. But even if the Durand Line is arbitrary, it makes little sense for small, weak Afghanistan to pick a fight with its big neighbour over where the border should be, especially since what is at stake are remote mountain regions that are hardly the heartland of either country. Even if Afghans cannot bring themselves to concede the border permanently, it should be possible to take the issue off the table for the foreseeable future

— Establish an Afghan-Pakistan border management body with high-level government participation on both sides.

This body could address various means of enhancing economic cooperation. It could allow for intelligence-sharing and tactical military communication and cooperation near the border, where insurgents cross in both directions and threaten both countries. Importantly, it could also allow Pakistan a chance to convey its preferences about who among the Haqqanis or other major tribes might be accorded government jobs in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces.

Of course, Islamabad should not get to choose Afghanistan’s local leaders, but there is no reason to deprive it of a chance to advocate for certain interests. In fact, Afghanistan might do the same in reverse, pointing out its concerns and sharing its preferences for what Pakistan does in some of the tribal areas and other border regions of its own country.

It will not be easy to make progress across all these issues. But for those looking for a fruitful way to have peace talks in regard to Afghanistan, this sort of conversation between the two legitimate governments of the key countries at issue is a much more promising arena for diplomacy than are high-level peace talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/12/repairing-frayed-ties.html

WAR has raged between the Pakistani Army and Taliban forces for several years now, spilling over from the tribal areas and Swat into the plains and cities of Pakistan.

As a result, Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi have all borne the brunt of attacks on security targets, with Pakistan’s children being the most affected by the conflict.

Karachi-based psychologist Ishma Alvi explains the psychological effects of the war on terror and related violence on Karachi’s children. “There has been a marked increase in anxiety disorders, especially generalised anxiety disorder as well as agoraphobia, the fear of going to spaces where the sufferer might feel threatened, where there appears to be little escape and
where one might have a panic attack.”

She notes an increase in major depressive disorder, or clinical depression. “Not only have these disorders been appearing more frequently, they have been presenting in younger groups — teenagers to young adults.”

With 48 per cent of Pakistan’s population under the age of 18, and a small percentage of the budget allocated for education, chances are that extremism will continue to foment in the minds of young people faced with limited employment opportunities. According to Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, director of the Emmy-winning documentary Children of the Taliban, economic deprivation ensures that they will continue to turn to terrorism as a way of ensuring survival for their families.

Mindful of this ongoing threat, the Pakistan Army, during their 2009 operation in Swat, removed dozens of teenage boys who had been trained as suicide bombers from Taliban training camps. It enlisted Dr Feriha Peracha, a popular psychologist with a lucrative private practice in Lahore, to assess 12 of these boys. It was then proposed that she run a school aimed at rehabilitating them, and Dr Peracha agreed. Thirty-five children and teenagers were enrolled in this school, called Sabaoon, the Pushto word for the first ray of light in the morning.

The school was heavily guarded, and remotely located — security a top priority for such a delicate operation. The programme was administered by Dr Peracha’s organisation, the Unicef-funded Hum Pakistani Foundation. The programme included mainstream academic intervention and vocational training “for those who are unable to keep up with academics but continue with education at their own individual levels of achievement, starting with basic literacy”, says Dr Peracha.

Classroom education was supplemented with nature expeditions, art and drawing sessions and time to play sports, in order to give the boys a taste of the childhood that was snatched from them during the Taliban occupation of their villages and towns and their time in the training camps.

Religious academic and Swat University vice chancellor Dr Mohammed Farooq Khan visited the school once a week to teach the boys an Islam free from the distortions the Taliban had taught them. Undoing the damage inflicted upon the boys’ psyches — the five-point programme of indoctrination — was going to take months, if not years.

Rather than interrogating them or laying blame for their willingness to kill in the name of God, Dr Khan treated them as children who had undergone major psychological trauma, and attempted to educate and counsel them, helping them to understand how the Taliban had distorted their perceptions of religion and the West.

Sabaoon received media attention for its groundbreaking efforts and seemed to be off to a good start. Even the most severely indoctrinated children had begun to understand that the version of Islam previously taught to them was an ideology that encouraged death and destruction in their once peaceful valley. Then, one day in October 2009, the Taliban came to Dr Khan’s clinic and shot him in the head as he ate lunch with his assistant.

The murder has been linked to the ideological changes that Dr Khan had been attempting to institute in Swat University, which had become a hotbed of religious extremism during the days of the Taliban invasion of Swat, but his death had direct repercussions for Sabaoon and the boys in the school’s care.

“He was with me just two days before at the school,” says Dr Peracha, “and I had given some books to him about empathy training and requested him to use the parables and other narratives from the Quran to teach the same concept to the boys….”

Dr Peracha acknowledges the vacuum created by Dr Khan’s death, but it has not deterred her from her mission. She has hired another expert religious scholar as well as regular Islamic studies teachers to continue the work of Dr Khan, as she feels that the combination of religious education and psycho-social intervention is key to saving her charges from a path that no child should ever have to tread.

While danger continues to be a constant companion for Pakistan and its people, the key to surviving its psychological onslaught is to cultivate a place of safety within. Ishma Alvi urges parents to talk honestly to their children about the events and circumstances around them. She adds that parents must endeavour to keep calm in the moments of crisis that regularly erupt in Karachi and elsewhere in Pakistan’s restive cities. “That doesn’t mean they should fake calm, but that they should maintain calm despite fear.”

So many Pakistanis born in the age of the war on terror have died in these 10 years that it’s easy to imagine Pakistan as haunted by the children who never made it through the decade between Sept 11, 2001 and the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011. But after the ones that have died, including the 160 children the UK-based Bureau for Investigative Journalism claims have been killed in US drone strikes since 2004, it’s the children who lived through and still live within the conflict areas that are the hardest-hit victims of the war and its violent blowback throughout Pakistan.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/11/the-youngest-casualties.html

Kurram groups sign accord to open key highway

PARACHINAR: After about three years, rival factions again signed a peace agreement here on Sunday to restore peace in Kurram Agency after the government promised to provide security on the main highway in the region.

Under the accord which was first signed in Murree in October 2008, the Thall-Parachinar road would be made safe for travel for local people and internally displaced people would be rehabilitated in their areas.

The Thall-Parachinar highway linking the Kurram agency with the rest of the country has remained closed since 2007.

Officials told reporters that elders of various tribes representing rival sects had again signed the Murree accord in the presence of members of a reconciliation jirga and political agent Syed Shahab Ali Shah.

The earlier agreement signed in Murree could not be implemented for unknown reasons despite the fact that rival tribes had fully backed it and even the leader of banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan Fazal Saeed had also endorsed it last year. Fazal Saeed later quit the TTP after developing differences with his chief Hakimullah Mehsud and set up his own faction and named it Tehrik-i-Taliban Islami.

Under the new deal, all tribal elders agreed to ban display of weapons in the area and impose Rs1 million fine for any violation of the agreement. They also agreed to rehabilitate all IDPs in their areas.

It was decided that local people would set up village peace committees to check movement of terrorists and trouble-makers.

The government has decided to set up checkpoints on the main highway from Chappari at the point of entry to Kurram Agency and Tari Mangal, a village adjacent to the Afghan border.

After deployment of forces on the highway, the administration, in cooperation with the Fata Disaster Management Authority, will start the work of rehabilitation of displaced persons in their respective areas.

According to official reports, over 30,000 families were displaced after violence erupted in November 2007.

According to unofficial reports over 3,000 people had been killed and hundreds others wounded in bloody clashes.

Residents said that deployment of army and paramilitary troops had been started and checkpoints were being set up. Sources said that elders of upper and lower Kurram had been insisting on deployment of army troops on the main road.

A delegation of Turi-Bangash tribe held meetings with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Barrister Masood Kausar and other stakeholders last week and demanded deployment of regular troops.

Sources said the delegation was told that forces were overstretched because of security situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other parts of Fata. However, the delegation was assured that army would monitor the situation and more troops would be dispatched at an appropriate time.

One tribal elder said that the deal’s guarantors, including the Haqqani group, would be kept out of the process and the responsibility of maintaining peace would lie with the tribes.

“All issues among the tribes would be settled in the light of the Murree declaration,” said the elder, adding that outsiders, including Taliban groups, now had nothing to do with the matter.

Meanwhile, two paramilitary soldiers were kidnapped from Bagun in lower Kurram on Saturday, officials said. They said that they were going from Thall Garrison to Alizai Fort in a private car when gunmen kidnapped them and shifted to an unknown location. No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/10/kurram-groups-sign-accord-to-open-key-highway.html