The News on Sunday (Encore, 5 section) Column February 26, 2023

As written by me:

TTP versus secular parties

 

Rashed Rahman

 

The re-emergence in strength of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Pakistani soil after being pushed by the military offensives against them following the Army Public School (APS) Peshawar massacre in December 2014 into Afghanistan, where they found safe havens thanks to the Afghan Taliban, represents the most serious threat in years to the leaders and workers of secular parties, in particular the Awami National Party (ANP), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The threat was explicitly delineated by the TTP in its message on January 3, 2023 when it warned these parties and their leaders of “concrete action” for “declaring war” on it. The context of this message was the decision by the National Security Council meeting on January 1, 2023 to show “zero tolerance for terrorism” in the wake of the Peshawar Police Lines suicide bombing that killed over 100 people.

Not that these parties have been immune from attacks by the terrorist TTP since its formation in 2007 in reaction to the Lal Masjid episode. The ANP in particular was picked out and targeted by the TTP consistently since then. Even a brief and incomplete rundown of the ANP leaders and workers killed or wounded since the TTP embarked on its bloody campaign indicates the consistent slaughter of a party representing secular Pashtun nationalism and that was in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) from 2008-2013. ANP leader Iftikhar Hussain’s 28-year old son Rashid Hussain was killed by the TTP in July 2010. Local ANP leader Mukarram Shah was killed and Masoom Shah wounded in TTP attacks in KP in April 2013. The famous Bilour family suffered the assassinations by the TTP of Bashir Bilour in 2012 and his son, Haroon Bilour, in 2018, along with scores of their workers. In 2013, they wounded Ghulam Ahmed Bilour in an attack on an ANP rally in Peshawar in which 15 people were killed. Hundreds more ANP leaders and supporters were killed by the TTP around the 2013 general election. In June 2019, Sartaj Khan, president of ANP’s Peshawar city chapter was shot dead in Peshawar literally in front of a police station. TTP time and again threatened secular parties like the ANP for supporting the military actions in the KP tribal areas and the ‘war on terror’. The ANP in particular has remained a target of the Taliban for two decades and lost more than a thousand leaders and workers in targeted suicide attacks.

One instance of PML-N losses at the hands of the TTP is the killing of the party’s Peshawar president Haji Sardar Khan Mohmand in 2013. And needless to say, the assassination of PPP’s leader Benazir Bhutto in 2007, ostensibly by the TTP, but which remains clouded in controversy, including the incomplete case against (late) General Parvez Musharraf, indicates not only the TTP’s terrorist credentials, but arguably also its long standing links with the deep security state.

The demands of the TTP revolve around the reversal of the merger of the erstwhile FATA with KP and the imposition of an ‘Islamic’ system in Pakistan according to its hardline interpretation of Islam. When these demands were rejected and the TTP asked to lay down their arms, they unilaterally ended an Afghan Taliban-brokered ceasefire in November 2022 and declared a ‘jihad’ against the ruling Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) coalition for working at the behest of the US, which lately has reiterated repeatedly its support for Pakistan’s anti-terrorism efforts. Washington has also underlined that the Afghan Taliban appear to be violating their commitment in the Doha Accords that ended the US war in Afghanistan not to allow their soil to be used for terrorist activities in neighbouring countries.

Our current troubles with the TTP, its suicide attack on the Karachi Police Office being the latest terrorist atrocity, of course have their roots in our involvement in the Afghan wars since the early 1970s. Those chickens have now come to roost. Hosting the Afghan Mujahideen in KP’s tribal areas infected local tribesmen with Taliban thinking and laid the foundations for the emergence of our own home-grown Taliban. The APS massacre evoked massive military operations against the TTP but they retreated into Afghan territory under battlefield pressure, where they were provided safe havens by the Afghan Taliban, especially the Haqqani Network. It should have been obvious that the coming to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021 represented a fresh threat of the TTP once again taking up arms against Pakistan. The inadequacy of follow through of the National Action Plan drawn up with across the board political and military consensus left the sleeper cells left behind by the retreating TTP largely intact. That has opened the door to facilitated terrorist actions all over the country (Peshawar and Karachi at opposite ends already).

Thanks to the pro-Taliban sympathies of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government, the TTP were ‘invited’ to return to Pakistani soil in 2021, fully armed and ready to go rather than seek peaceful resettlement. This evoked alarm throughout KP, whose people have not forgotten the nightmare of the TTP’s past ‘tender’ ministrations. The ruling coalition’s leadership, particularly its secular-leaning parties like the PML-N, PPP and ANP, will have to confront the existential threat of the TTP head-on. But the struggle against terrorism in this new phase (with arguably Afghan Taliban help, support and continuing safe havens on Afghan soil for the TTP) will probably involve a protracted, intelligence-based campaign to unearth and take out the TTP network rather than the military offensives of the past.

As printed by the paper:

Threat to secular parties

 

Rashed Rahman

 

The re-emergence in strength of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Pakistani soil after being pushed by the military offensives against them following the Army Public School (APS) Peshawar massacre in December 2014 into Afghanistan, where they found safe havens thanks to the Afghan Taliban, represents the most serious threat in years to the leaders and workers of secular parties, in particular the Awami National Party (ANP), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The threat was explicitly delineated by the TTP in its message on January 3, when it warned these parties and their leaders of “concrete action” for “declaring war” on it. The context of this message was the decision by the National Security Council meeting on January 1, to show “zero tolerance for terrorism” in the wake of the Peshawar Police Lines suicide bombing that killed over 100 people.

Not that these parties have been immune from attacks by the terrorist TTP since its formation in 2007 in reaction to the Lal Masjid episode. The ANP, in particular, was picked out and targeted consistently by the TTP. Even a brief and incomplete rundown of the ANP leaders and workers killed or wounded since the TTP embarked on its bloody campaign indicates the slaughter of a party representing secular Pashtun nationalism that was in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) from 2008-2013. ANP leader Iftikhar Hussain’s 28-year old son Rashid Hussain was killed by the TTP in July 2010. Local ANP leader Mukarram Shah was killed and Masoom Shah wounded in TTP attacks in April 2013. The famous Bilour family suffered the assassinations by the TTP of Bashir Bilour in 2012 and his son, Haroon Bilour, in 2018, along with scores of their workers. In 2013, they wounded Ghulam Ahmed Bilour in an attack on an ANP rally in Peshawar in which 15 people were killed. Hundreds of ANP leaders and supporters were killed by the TTP around the 2013 general election. In June 2019, Sartaj Khan, president of ANP’s Peshawar city chapter was shot dead in Peshawar literally in front of a police station. The TTP, time and again, threatened secular parties like the ANP for supporting the military actions in the tribal areas and the ‘war on terror’. The ANP has lost more than a thousand leaders and workers in targeted suicide attacks.

One instance of PML-N losses at the hands of the TTP is the killing of the party’s Peshawar president Haji Sardar Khan Mohmand in 2013. Needless to say, the assassination of PPP’s leader Benazir Bhutto in 2007 pointed to the TTP’s terrorist credentials. The episode has remained clouded in controversy, in part on account of the unconcluded case against (late) Gen Pervez Musharraf, pointing to the TTP’s alleged links with the security forces.

The TTP demands revolve around a reversal of the merger of the erstwhile FATA with the KP and the imposition of a sharia system according to its interpretation of Islam. When these demands were rejected and the TTP asked to lay down their arms, they unilaterally ended an Afghan Taliban-brokered ceasefire in November 2022 and declared a ‘jihad’ against the ruling Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) coalition accusing it of working at the behest of the US, which lately has reiterated repeatedly its support for Pakistan’s anti-terrorism efforts. Washington has also underlined that the Afghan Taliban appear to be violating their commitment in the Doha Accords that ended the US war in Afghanistan not to allow their soil to be used for terrorist activities in neighbouring countries.

Our current troubles with the TTP, its suicide attack on the Karachi Police Office being the latest terrorist atrocity, of course, have their roots in our involvement in the Afghan wars since the early 1970s. The APS massacre evoked massive military operations against the TTP but they retreated into Afghan territory under battlefield pressure, where they were provided safe havens by the Afghan Taliban, especially the Haqqani Network. It should have been obvious that the coming to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021 represented a fresh threat of the TTP once again taking up arms against Pakistan. The inadequacy of follow through of the National Action Plan drawn up with across-the-board political and military consensus left the sleeper cells of the retreating TTP largely intact. That has opened the door to facilitate terrorist actions all over the country (Peshawar and Karachi at opposite ends already).

Thanks to the pro-Taliban sympathies of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government, the TTP were ‘invited’ to return to Pakistani soil in 2021, fully armed and ready to go rather than seek peaceful resettlement. This evoked alarm throughout the KP, whose people have not forgotten the nightmare of the TTP’s past ‘tender’ ministrations. The ruling coalition’s leadership, particularly its secular-leaning parties like the PML-N, the PPP and the ANP, will have to confront the existential threat of the TTP head-on. But the struggle against terrorism in this new phase (with arguably Afghan Taliban help, support and continuing safe havens on the Afghan soil for the TTP) will probably involve a protracted, intelligence-based campaign to unearth and take out the TTP network rather than the military offensives of the past.

The writer, a veteran journalist, has held senior editorial positions in several newspapers

Ninth screening in Season of World Cinema at RPC

Research and Publication Centre (RPC) in collaboration with Filmbar (on Instagram) announces the screening of the ninth film in its Season of World Cinema: Gautam Ghose's "Paar" (1984).

When a Dalit wins the elections for mayor in his small village in northeastern India, deadly rioting forces an impoverished couple to escape to Calcutta where they can hopefully find work. Instead, they end up sleeping on the streets until they have a chance at earning a little income – a man has asked them to take his herd of pigs across a fast-moving river. The current is dangerous, and worse, the wife is pregnant and this would not be an easy task even if she were not. Undaunted and desperate, the couple accept the job and enter the river to face their destiny.
The film will be followed by a virtual discussion with Naseeruddin Shah about his work.

Timing: Friday, February 24, 2023, 5:30 pm at Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom).

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook) 

RPC and Filmbar's Season of World Cinema is intended to bring to Pakistani audiences films that are otherwise not available in Pakistan. Screenings are normally held every Friday, 5:30 pm. Entry is free. Tea is served after the show. All friends are welcome.

Business Recorder Column February 21, 2023

Time to wake up

 

Rashed Rahman

 

What had been forecast by this writer after the post-APS military operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP’s) tribal areas in 2014 has come to pass. Not being able to sustain the unrelenting firepower of our military against them, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) retreated into Afghan territory in order to live to fight another day. For the next seven years, they continued to enjoy the ‘hospitality’ of the Afghan Taliban, particularly the Haqqani Network. Although the armed militants had retreated across the Afghan border to relatively safe havens, they had left behind a whole network of sleeper cells in anticipation of the day when their fortunes would turn.

That day has now arrived. The attack on the Karachi Police Office (KPO) in Karachi on February 17, 2023 came as a shocking, violent jolt. Three terrorists armed to the teeth (including suicide jackets) entered the compound relatively easily through the rear where police residential quarters are located. Throwing hand grenades and firing their weapons, they easily overcame the thin security at the gate of the residential quarters, cut the barbed wire on top of the wall separating the residences from the main KPO building, and entered the complex brimming with police staff on duty. The reaction of the police, Rangers and army commandos in winkling out the terrorists after a severe battle is commendable. Two terrorists were shot dead, one blew himself up. Four deaths (one civilian) and about 18 wounded on the law enforcement agencies’ (LEA’s) side indicate the ferocity of the clash.

Pakistan should have foreseen the revival of the TTP on our soil and carried out sustained and unremitting intelligence-based operations against the remnants and sleeper cells of the TTP left behind after they retreated into Afghan territory seven years ago. Unfortunately, the advent in 2018 of Imran Khan’s government proved a setback since those who know him recognise that he is a (not so secret) Taliban sympathiser. Proof if needed of this statement can be garnered from his government’s policy regarding the Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani counterparts. When the US ignominiously accepted strategic defeat and withdrew in shambolic fashion from Afghanistan in 2021, clearing the way for a relatively easy takeover by the Afghan Taliban, Imran Khan stated: “The Afghans have broken the shackles of slavery.” Perhaps he should be encouraged to revisit his triumphal statement by asking the non-Pashtun nationalities and women of Afghanistan whether they have not in fact been shackled even further in the Afghan Taliban’s new/old medieval system that has little to do with the liberatory spirit of Islam.

Alarm bells should have rung in the corridors of power in 2021 that the advent of the Afghan Taliban to power would inevitably encourage and embolden the TTP to revive its terrorist campaign. Instead, Imran Khan’s government opened the door to the return to Pakistan of the 30-40,000 TTP fighters lodged in Afghanistan. General (retired) Faiz Hameed, then ISI chief, is said to be the chief architect and facilitator of the return of these enemies of the state. The only alarm bells that did ring out were those of the inhabitants of KP, whose memories of what they had been through at the hands of the TTP prior to 2014 produced fresh nightmares when armed TTP fighters appeared in the province, seemingly without let, hindrance or fear of being checked, since 2021.

We must shed our unending ability to mislead ourselves as a country. Even after the Peshawar Police Lines mosque bombing in which about a hundred people died, some ‘optimists’ amongst us were still prattling on about the inability of the TTP now to strike beyond KP. Lo and behold, the KPO attack has shredded this complacency. The fact is that the TTP network of sleeper cells and facilitators is spread out all over the country. They have the natural advantage of choosing when and where to strike. Their concern is not that their fighters will be killed. They are clear these are suicide missions, from which few if any will return. Whatever damage and casualties they are able to inflict in such actions are not the strategic aim. It is the buzz created by such bold actions that feeds the TTP cause with the oxygen of unprecedented publicity in today’s media (mainstream and social) saturated world. The KPO attack is likely to go down, even more than the Peshawar Police Lines one, as the arrival once again of the terrorist TTP. In a statement after the KPO attack, the TTP has warned our frontline anti-terrorist force, the police, to stop defending the ‘un-Islamic’ state of Pakistan and beware of continuing alleged extra-judicial killings of their cadre on pain of severer punishment.

The TTP has reportedly been bolstered by the stock of weaponry and equipment left behind by the US in Afghanistan, a part of which appears to have been generously gifted to the TTP by their Afghan Taliban ‘elder brothers’. Modern weapons aside, they now boast thermal imaging telescopic sights on their guns that give them a big advantage in night operations over our relatively poorly armed and equipped police, particularly in small towns and the rural areas.

But the real weakness in our response to a resurgent TTP is the lack of a central coordinating intelligence structure that can match the united efforts of the enemy and help pre-empt attacks through timely intelligence-based operations. Intelligence agencies by their very nature guard their information closely. Add to that the gulf (if not mistrust) between the military intelligence agencies and our civilian ones, and you have an intelligence structure with plenty of holes the terrorists can wiggle through. NACTA may not have achieved the hopes that resided in it that it may prove the apex coordinating body of our post-2014 National Action Plan, but a revived NACTA or some other body is the need of the hour, since the struggle against the TTP now is not going to be of the nature of the post-2014 concentrated military operations but the protracted, difficult, intelligence-based winkling out of an underground terrorist organisation operating not from some recognisable base area (KP’s tribal areas in the past) but operating through small group terrorist attacks throughout the country.

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Eighth screening in Season of World Cinema at RPC

Research and Publication Centre (RPC) in collaboration with Filmbar (on Instagram) announces the screening of the eighth film in its Season of World Cinema: Mirch Masala (1987).

A woman decides to fight against her powerful oppressor. When the guard of a chilli factory helps her, the women and the teacher of the village join them to openly defy the prevailing repression.

Timing: Friday, February 17, 2023, 5:30 pm at Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom).

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook) 

RPC and Filmbar's Season of World Cinema is intended to bring to Pakistani audiences films that are otherwise not available in Pakistan. Screenings are normally held every Friday, 5:30 pm. Entry is free. Tea is served after the show. All friends are welcome.

Karachi visit February 9-16, 2023

 I will be in Karachi February 9-16, 2023. Friends can contact me on my cells: 0302 8482737 & 0333 4216335.

Rashed Rahman

Business Recorder Column February 7, 2023

The untouchables

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Our culture respects the dead. Condolences pour in from near and far, even from ‘enemies’. The faults of the departed are either completely ignored, or mentioned in an elliptical manner to soften the blow. Something like this best describes the reaction to the passing away of military dictator Pervez Musharraf on February 5, 2023, following a prolonged and incurable illness. The sum of objective, truthful, critical comment and summing up Musharraf’s legacy therefore boils down to attempts to discover some good in what has come down as a disastrous episode in our chequered history.

Musharraf was a brash, undisciplined military officer when young. Twice he came perilously close to serious disciplinary action, including perhaps having to face a military court. He was rescued by his role in the 1965 and 1971 wars with India. From there on, he seems to have lived a charmed life that finally saw him elevated to Chief of Army Staff (COAS) in 1998. The context of his elevation was the resignation of his predecessor over the suggestion for a formal (political?) role for the military in the national security architecture. That episode involved then Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif, and no doubt was uppermost in the military’s mind when Sharif tried to dismiss Musharraf in the wake of tensions over the latter’s sabotage of the peace initiative with then Indian PM Atal Behari Vajpayee by launching the secret Kargil operation without Sharif’s knowledge or consent. In reaction and instead, the military overthrew Nawaz Sharif and installed Musharraf in power in the fourth (and hopefully last) military coup in Pakistan’s history.

Ironically, the peace saboteur of Kargil turned into a peace activist when in power, suggesting what appeared to be an eminently sensible path to solving the Gordian knot of the Kashmir issue with India. However, despite Vajpayee’s graciousness in conducting negotiations with Musharraf while overlooking the ‘stab-in-the-back’ of Kargil, his credentials as warmonger-turned-peacemonger failed to cut it with Indian media and public opinion. The peace attempt failed.

Musharraf’s nine years in power (1999-2008) can best be summed up by the major events and turning points of his stint in power. First and foremost, after the ousted Nawaz Sharif was jailed and eventually allowed to go into exile in Saudi Arabia (no doubt due to the latter’s influence), a strange phenomenon overtook Pakistan. ‘Liberals’ not only embraced Musharraf, who mercifully did not impose martial law unlike his three previous military coup makers, they virtually leapt lemming-like over the cliff into the lap of a perceived ‘liberal, secular’ military dictator. This development was a Godsend for the consolidation of Musharraf’s grip on power. Further, the Supreme Court (SC) not only endorsed the coup (in a long line stretching from Chief Justice Munir’s infamous ‘doctrine of necessity’), it went so far as to empower him to amend the Constitution without even being asked to do so! The judicial guardians of the Constitution once again demonstrated their expedient interpretation of the supreme law of the land in favour of military dictators.

Despite the superior judiciary being once again hand-in-glove with a military usurper of power, it eventually fell foul of him for his sacking first Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry (evoking thereby the Lawyers’ Movement) in 2017 and his subsequent second ‘coup’ of sacking and confining the SC judges and suspending the Constitution. He was belatedly charged (after he was out of power) with treason for this suspension, but never held accountable for the 1999 coup, which the SC had legitimised.

9/11 became both a test and opportunity for Musharraf. Having bowed to US pressure (“You are either with us or against us”), he milked the Americans for aid (mostly military) while continuing to practice a policy of duality: ostensibly supporting the US in its campaign against al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban while secretly supporting the Afghan Taliban resistance to US occupation. The post facto results are before us in the return to power of the Afghan Taliban and ignominious retreat of the US in 2021.

Long before the developments outlined above on the judicial front, he initiated the policy of enforced disappearances and ‘kill and dump’ to combat the nationalist insurgency in Balochistan that had revived in 2002 after a frustrating hiatus in resolving the province’s grievances of 25 years. His reliance on a military crackdown rather than political negotiations to resolve an essentially long standing political problem led to the assassination of Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006, after which the Baloch insurgency widened and spread throughout the province.

In 2007, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Musharraf got away with murder despite being belatedly accused of the crime. When he was eventually deposed in 2008, he never answered to these charges of the two most heinous prominent assassinations on his watch, nor for the charge of treason for his second ‘coup’ against the judiciary. Naturally, as a COAS, he was protected by his institution to the point where he was eventually allowed to leave the country in 2016 for medical treatment. He was fated never to return.

But then this denouement is consistent with our abject failure to hold accountable all our military coup makers, from Ayub to Musharraf. Pakistan’s history is awash with open and indirect interventions by the military establishment in politics, none of which have yielded good results. It makes sense therefore to include former COAS General Bajwa’s ‘Project Imran’ as the latest unmitigated disaster in this long list. We hope and pray that the military establishment will learn the right lessons from this long and tragic history of military interventions in politics and leave the political democratic system alone to evolve through the difficult process of continuity, with all its roadblocks, concerns and difficulties.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Seventh screening in Season of World Cinema at RPC

Research and Publication Centre (RPC) in collaboration with Filmbar (on Instagram) announces the screening of the seventh film in its Season of World Cinema: Luis Bunuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972). 

In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satirical masterpiece, an upper middle-class sextet sits down to a dinner that is continually delayed, their attempts to eat thwarted by vaudevillian events both actual and imagined, including terrorist attacks, military manoeuvres, and ghostly apparitions. Stringing together a discontinuous, digressive series of absurdist set pieces, Buñuel and his screenwriting partner Jean-Claude Carrière send a cast of European film greats — including Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audran, Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Cassel and Bulle Ogier — through a maze of desire deferred, frustrated and interrupted. The Oscar-winning pinnacle of Buñuel’s late career ascent as a feted maestro of the international art house, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is also one of his most gleefully radical assaults on the values of the ruling class.

Timing: Friday, February 10, 2023, 5:30 pm at Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom).

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook) 

RPC and Filmbar's Season of World Cinema is intended to bring to Pakistani audiences films that are otherwise not available in Pakistan. Screenings are normally held every Friday, 5:30 pm. Entry is free. Tea is served after the show. All friends are welcome.