Business Recorder editorial July 19, 2016

Timely recovery Barrister Awais Ali Shah, the son of the Sindh High Court (SHC) Chief Justice (CJ), has been recovered and returned home after a dramatic operation in which three kidnappers were killed. According to the media briefing of DG ISPR Lt-General Asim Bajwa, Awais was recovered after a shootout when the vehicle in which he was being transported was challenged at a check point near Tank in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). When the vehicle did not stop, the driver was shot dead and then the two other terrorists who came out of the vehicle firing their weapons were also killed. Awais Shah was found bound and gagged in a burqa in the vehicle. He was then transported by a special plane to Karachi and reunited with his family under tight security. Lt-General Bajwa said the successful rescue was made possible through an intelligence-based operation (IBO) conducted by the ISI. Lt-General Bajwa also revealed that a splinter group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and al Qaeda were responsible for the kidnapping. It is being speculated that the purpose may have been to exchange Awais Shah for some incarcerated militants. It may be recalled that Awais was kidnapped in broad daylight from Clifton, Karachi, on June 20. Both Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and COAS General Raheel Sharif called the SHC CJ to congratulate him on the safe recovery of his son. They also had high praise for the intelligence and security services for the safe and relatively quick recovery of Awais Ali Shah. The recovery of Awais Ali Shah bears consideration. For one, it must be considered fortuitous that he escaped unscathed in the exchange of firing between his kidnappers and the security forces since he was immobilised inside the vehicle. Two, he was rescued by an IBO just one month after being kidnapped and then spirited across Sindh, Punjab and part of KP. ISPR says he was being conveyed to Zhob in Balochistan on the way to Afghanistan. This has long remained the modus operandi of kidnappers belonging to criminal gangs or militant outfits. The other option of secreting kidnapped victims in the militants’ safe havens in FATA is no longer available after Operation Zarb-e-Azb cleansed the tribal areas of this malign long standing presence. The remnants of the TTP and other militant groups were forced to flee across the border into Afghanistan under the pressure of the Operation, where Mullah Fazlullah’s TTP is said to be enjoying the hospitality of the Haqqani network. Although the effect of this cleansing is palpable in the decreased incidence of terrorism all over the country, so long as these remnants are alive and well, and receiving the support of the Afghan Taliban in the shape of the Haqqani network as well as al Qaeda, there is no letting our guard down, as the Awais Shah incident indicates. It also highlights the need for better security coordination amongst the provinces and the federal authorities. Three, the IBO to rescue Awais Shah was facilitated by the clearing of the ground in the tribal areas and KP, leading to better and more timely intelligence. The tracking of the vehicle carrying Awais Shah in KP, far from the start of the journey, is a reflection of this new reality. We only need to cast our mind back to the kidnappings of late Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s son Shahbaz Taseer and former Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s son Ali Haider Gilani to see how things have changed. Shahbaz Taseer was kidnapped in broad daylight on his way to office in Lahore, and it took more than four years and the declining fortunes of his kidnappers in Pakistan and Afghanistan for him to return unharmed to his family. Equally, it took three years for Ali Haider Gilani to return to his familiy’s bosom. Compared to barely one month for Awais Ali Shah’s return, the coefficient of kidnappees’ families’ mental and emotional torture has improved beyond description. However, these happy outcomes, eventual earlier, quicker now, should not lead us into complacency but point us in the direction of redoubled efforts to cut the ground from under the feet of those indulging in this notorious ‘trade’ and eliminate their ability to inflict such suffering.

Business Recorder Editorial July 16, 2016

Coup attempt in Turkey An attempted coup by a faction of the military in Turkey has failed because of decisive action by the loyal military command and the determined unarmed resistance of the people. On July 15, Turkey and the world were shocked by the announcement by the military coup makers that they had overthrown the government of President Tayyip Erdogan and assumed control, ironically in the name of protecting the democratic order and maintaining human rights, existing foreign relationships and the rule of law. The state-run Anadolu news agency reported that the chief of military staff was among hostages being held in the Ankara military headquarters. Both President Erdogan and Prime Minister (PM) Binali Yildirim reacted swiftly in asserting that the attempted coup had been put down, with the former’s appeal to the people to come out in resistance on the streets producing extraordinary scenes of protestors facing off against tanks and thereby inducing the surrender of some of the rebelling soldiers. PM Yildirim declared that the elected government was still in charge and would only go when the people said so. He promised that the coup makers would pay the highest price. By the time he addressed a press conference the next day, it was clear the coup had collapsed, leaving a death toll of 104 soldiers from amongst the coup makers, 41 loyalist police and two security forces’ personnel, and 47 citizens. Almost 3,000 arrests and one military helicopter shot down while firing on citizens rounded off the score. One helicopter with military personnel on board escaped to neighbouring Greece and these rebels promptly demanded political asylum. Other than that the putsch claimed relatively little damage, a reflection perhaps of the narrow base of support within the military for the coup makers. The army chief, five Generals and 29 Colonels have reportedly been sacked in the aftermath of the attempted coup, presumably for their failure to head it off, which also points to an intelligence failure. The Turkish government announced that July 15 would be celebrated every year as Democracy Day. It also accused dissident self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen of being behind the attempted overthrow. Once an ally of President Erdogan, Gulen has fallen foul of the AK Party government and been accused repeatedly of running a ‘parallel structure’ of his supporters within the judiciary and administration. Gulen, however, has denied any responsibility for the coup attempt. It goes without saying that the attempted putsch set off alarm bells in the west as well as the region. Turkey has the second largest army in NATO, with the İncirlik air base serving as the launch pad for western air raids against Islamic State (IS) fighters in Syria and Iraq. Turkey under Erdogan, PM from 2003 till he was elected President in 2014 and attempted to shift executive powers to the latter traditionally ceremonial post, has of late been changing its policy of turning a blind eye to (if not cooperating with) IS in its obsession to get rid of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, because IS has bitten the hand that fed it by attacking Turkey, the horrendous Istanbul airport attack two weeks ago that killed 40 people being the last straw for Ankara. Erdogan has also tilted into a war once again with Turkey’s Kurds. His ruling AK Party has long had strained relations with the military and nationalists apprehensive of his attempts to alter Turkey’s founding secular state character in the direction of greater Islamisation. Turkey’s military has historically regarded itself as the guardian of Turkey’s secular state and not hesitated in the past to take over when dissatisfied with civilian governments. But it seems the long years of democracy under Erdogan, differences notwithstanding, has demonstrated its efficacy in pitching Turkey’s rapid development as a model for Muslim countries. Besides, we in Pakistan would have little difficulty in recognising that military coups, when they inevitably give way eventually to democratic, representative rule, leave more problems behind than those the coup makers set out to tackle. Not only that, the interruption of continuity weakens institutions and forces countries to go back to the drawing board every time to literally start from scratch to undo the malign effects of military rule and restart the democratic journey. If more current proof of this is needed, one need only cast a glance at the outcome of the Egyptian military coup that overthrew an Islamist government and is now faced with extreme unrest and discontent because of its authoritarian repression of the forces that fuelled the Arab Spring in that country. We in Pakistan, when we start to air our discontents with democracy, should keep in mind that military rule has only exacerbated our problems and slowed down, if not sabotaged, the project of incremental systemic institutionalisation, not the least because of covert and not so covert pressures exerted by the military. Turkey’s people and armed forces are to be congratulated for their successful defence of democracy against an ill considered and unacceptable military putsch. Pakistan too needs to learn the appropriate lessons from this event, which includes our civilian rulers paying greater attention to more effective governance and the strengthening of democratic institutions in the interests of the people.

Business Recorder Column July 19, 2016

CPEC and Balochistan Rashed Rahman Balochistan has long complained of deprivation of its rights as a federating unit and its people of deprivation of their rights as citizens. Nothing has served better in recent days to remind us of that fact and focus minds on these continuing complaints than the controversies surrounding the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). To highlight these controversies, the Balochistan National Party organised a seminar in Islamabad on July 12 entitled “CPEC: Development or Exploitation?” A panoply of speakers delineated the contours of the project from different angles, with the theme of Balochistan’s deprivation in the past and apprehensions about a similar outcome of the CPEC dominating the discourse. The speakers were chosen from a wide array, including journalists, academics, lawyers and experts in their respective fields. While most speakers dwelt at greater or lesser length on the legacy of the unjust treatment of the province and its people, some common themes resonated throughout the presentations. First and foremost amongst these themes was the history of injustice reflected in Balochistan’s place in the federation and in its people being abandoned to poverty and a barely subsistence existence. The die of a strained Baloch relationship with the newly created state of Pakistan was already cast on the eve of independence by the Kalat State’s claim that it enjoyed the status of a Treaty State with the British Crown and therefore had the right to self-determination when Britain withdrew from the subcontinent. The Kalat State represented a tribal confederacy of the people inhabiting the area. Kalat’s argument was that after advancing British colonialism fought a series of wars with the Baloch during the 19th century in an effort to carve out an alternative strategic route to Afghanistan, where the British Empire was in contention with the Czarist Russian Empire, they opted for signing treaties with Kalat that brought an end to those wars. These treaties conceded a strategic corridor to the British running from Shikarpur, through the famed Bolan Pass to Kandahar. The Shal Valley provided the British with an ideal location for a cantonment close to the Afghanistan border, which grew over time into the city of Quetta. In return the British agreed to respect the internal autonomy of the Kalat State and its confederating Baloch tribes, provide funding for a Levies force recruited from the tribes and charged with keeping the peace within the tribal areas, and sweeteners in the form of purses for some of the tribal chieftains. This arrangement, in which the British did not interfere in the internal affairs of the tribes in return for unimpeded access to Afghanistan, evolved into what later came to be called the Sandeman system after a British officer whose name still adorns a town in the province (Fort Sandeman). This system Pakistan inherited at independence. Ironically, before independence Kalat engaged one of the most accomplished constitutional lawyers of the day, one Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to argue its case before the British Crown, up to and including the high forum of the Privy Council. Ironic because it was Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah who as the first Governor General of the newly created independent state of Pakistan, presided over the forcible accession of the Kalat State to Pakistan. This event needs to be located in the context of the tensions and pressures accompanying independence, particularly the disputes that arose between the two successor states of Pakistan and India. Nevertheless, this development coloured the subsequent trajectory of the relationship between Balochistan and the Centre. Seventy years later, in the midst of the fourth nationalist insurgency in Balochistan since Pakistan came into being, it is worth considering why the restive Baloch have felt compelled to take up arms again and again in defence of their rights, dignity and self-respect. The litany of grievances is by now familiar to informed observers. The seething resentment over the events surrounding the 1948 accession was added to in subsequent years by the perception that the postcolonial state of Pakistan was practicing what could only be described as internal colonialism. The fears and apprehensions of the ruling post-independence elite and the overdeveloped state institutions such as the military and bureaucracy vis-à-vis the threat from India fed into a siege mentality that transmogrified over time into the mindset of a national security state. Such a state argued for a strong Centre to meet the challenges from a larger neighbour, if necessary at the expense of the weaker federating units. Thus East Pakistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then called the NWFP) felt the state’s priorities tilting towards the pre-eminence of Punjab, from which the military and bureaucracy were overwhelmingly drawn. The One Unit adventure was an attempt to nullify the numerical majority of East Pakistan by abolishing the provinces of West Pakistan, merging them into One Unit in the western wing and constructing a ‘parity’ of representation thereby with East Pakistan. In the early 1950s, gas was discovered in Sui in the Bugti tribal area. Although this natural resource fuelled the industrialisation and modernisation of commercial and domestic life throughout the country, the deprivation of Balochistan by not supplying the province of origin with its own gas, added to by little or no financial benefit to the province or its people, ignoring the local denizens in employment etc, set the tone for similar practices and their concomitant complaints and discontents where the natural mineral resources of the province, including gas (and potentially oil), copper and other minerals were concerned. The Saindak and still to be developed Reqo Dik copper and gold projects exhibit all these characteristics of the Centre rather than the people of Balochistan being the beneficiaries. These experiences inform the sentiment of the people of Balochistan vis-à-vis the CPEC. As reflected in the speeches at the seminar alluded to above, the Baloch as well as right thinking people throughout Pakistan critique the CPEC as non-transparent, oriented more towards the development of the already developed provinces (the Eastern route) rather than being seen as an opportunity for breakthrough development and modernisation of the underdeveloped provinces (the Western route), excluding local people in the employment opportunities presented by the CPEC and the development of the Gwadar Port, and altering irreversibly the demography of a large but sparsely populated province against the interests of the Baloch. These sentiments feed into support, overt or covert, for the nationalist insurgency once again simmering in the province. The powers-that-be suffer from both a lack of imagination as well as practicing Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Given that insurgency has gripped every generation of the Baloch over the last 70 years, perhaps the time has come to revisit the assumptions on which the security forces are operating once again in Balochistan. The allegation that the insurgency is purely India-driven and financed is oversimplification to the point of absurdity. This is a charge that has been used to castigate every previous insurgency in the province as well. Although no proof is available for the charge, even if for the sake of argument it is accepted, is it not axiomatic that the foreign hand can only fish in troubled waters? If your house is in fire, outsiders can take advantage of the conflagration. The contrary argument should be obvious. What is needed is a political approach to the Balochistan problem, rather than a reliance once again on driving the people of the province into paradise at the point of a bayonet. Separatism may not be acceptable to the state, but short of that many of the long standing and new grievances of the Baloch are arguably capable of being addressed within the ambit of the constitution and law. The benefit: peace within and along the CPEC route/s, which even the special security force being mooted to protect the CPEC may not be able to guarantee. To take maximum advantage of the CPEC, Pakistan needs peace within, especially in Balochistan, and peace without (meaning an end to proxy wars against neighbours). Is there the vision available for such a potentially shining future? rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

Business Recorder editorial July 9, 2016

Televangelists and radicalisation The Maharashtra government in India has initiated an inquiry into the possible inspiration provided to the terrorists who slaughtered 20 hostages, most of them foreigners, in Dhaka recently, by the speeches of televangelist Zakir Nair. Bangladesh has revealed that at least two of the terrorists cited Dr Naik in their posts on social media before the attack. The good doctor has defended himself by arguing that 90 percent of people in Bangladesh know him and 50 percent are his fans, but every fan may not follow everything he says. He alleges that his speeches are often doctored, thereby distorting his comments. He therefore rejects the accusation that he may have inspired the Dhaka or any other terrorist attack. This is, to put it mildly, a strange defence. Dr Naik has an Islamic Research Foundation in Mumbai, purportedly to present ‘true’ Islam, and a satellite TV channel Peace TV, on which he is constantly seen. Peace TV is banned in India but aired nevertheless by some cable operators. While Saudi Arabia highly praises him and has even bestowed awards on him, he is reportedly banned from entering the UK and Canada. It is alleged that his views offer a defence of Osama bin Laden. One difficulty for India is that Saudi Arabian support for Naik becomes a delicate matter since India has of late been wooing the kingdom (and other Gulf countries). The issue is also entangled with Indian domestic politics, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) criticising the opposition Congress Party’s senior leader Digvijaya Singh for sharing hugs and the stage with Dr Naik at an event to promote communal harmony where he praised Naik. Hindu preacher Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has also whaled into Naik for quoting the Vedas out of context during a public discussion with him on Hinduism and Islam. Meanwhile Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, castigating Naik’s speeches as “highly objectionable”, has said the home ministry will take appropriate action after studying the speeches. Whether one goes along with the emerging accusations against Naik of inspiring terrorist attacks through his speeches, the radicalisation of Muslim youth all over the world, not just in Muslim countries, is a phenomenon with wider dimensions than just one televangelist’s influence. On the one hand, received wisdom until recently was that poverty and deprivation provide the fertile soil for terrorist recruitment. While there is truth in that perception, evidence is mounting (including in the Dhaka attack) that youth from well off backgrounds and the best education are not impervious to radicalisation along extremist and terrorist lines. Apart from televangelists like Zakir Naik, the internet and social media have provided terrorist recruiters with a rich source of cannon fodder whose mindset has been altered through propaganda. The central theme of these messages is that the historical wrongs against Muslims (e.g. Palestine, Kashmir, etc.) and the collaborative structures in Muslim societies that serve the interests of the west dictate war against western interests and their satraps in the Muslim world. Added to this poisonous brew is the sectarian notion of declaring it justified to attack and kill members of all Muslim sects differing from their strict, literalist, distorted interpretation of Islam. The rash of terrorist attacks in Ramzan and around Eid in Bangladesh, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invokes in some quarters the spurious argument that ‘no Muslim could do this’. This mistaken notion that leads to the conspiracy theory that forces inimical to Islam are behind such actions needs to be laid to rest once and for all. It must be recognised by now that the perpetrators of such massacres (mostly, it must be said, of Muslims) are very much from within the Muslim fold, albeit so far down the deviant path as to be justifiably seen as outside the pale of Islam. While the Muslim world must tackle the roots of terrorism by addressing widespread poverty and deprivation in its societies through inclusive democratic systems that can wean youth away from atavistic, irrational, ‘other world’ solutions, the appeal of the extremists to educated and well off youth also needs to be tackled by a narrative that places centre-stage the message of peace of Islam and the broader enlightened humanitarian view of shunning and overcoming the barbaric aberration that the terrorists’ version of Islam has evolved into, arguably fuelled indirectly if not directly by seemingly ‘moderate’ preachers such as Naik.

Business Recorder editorial July 5, 2016

Deplorable irresponsibility The Foreign Office (FO) has refuted claims in the Indian media that Pakistan’s ISI was behind the Dhaka carnage in an uptown café on July 2. The attack on the café by gunmen belonging to the Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) saw about 35 people taken hostage, of whom 20 were slaughtered with machetes, most of them foreigners. Six of the gunmen were eventually killed by security forces after an 11-hour siege, while one was captured alive and is being interrogated. Pakistan had condemned the terrorist atrocity and expressed its solidarity with the people of Bangladesh and the victims of the incident. It is all the more deplorable therefore that a section of the Indian media pounced upon the opportunity to malign Pakistan by ascribing imaginary statements to a Bangladeshi government advisor blaming Pakistan and the ISI for the planning of the attack. The advisor, Professor Gowher Rizvi, immediately denied the reports, particularly an interview with him claimed by Indian NDTV that he says never took place, let alone the statement blaming Pakistan attributed to him. He went further in castigating the motivated report as “proof of the Indian media’s malicious intent”. Not just that, Professor Rizvi informed Pakistan’s High Commissioner in Dhaka of the correct position and requested the clarification be conveyed to the Pakistan government to avoid any misunderstanding between the two countries. The sensitivity surrounding this episode needs to be seen in the context of recent tensions between Islamabad and Dhaka regarding the former’s castigation of the hangings of Jamaat-i-Islami’s (JI’s) leaders charged with genocide during Bangladesh’s independence war in 1971. The Pakistani FO sprang into action in the wake of these developments to reiterate its condemnation of the terrorist attack and express sympathies for the families of the victims. The FO called the allegations of Pakistani involvement “baseless and unfounded”, “highly regrettable”, “irresponsible and provocative”. The last phrase in particular sums up the blinkered approach of sections of the Indian media, never loath to exploit any opening to whale into its favourite whipping boy, the ISI. While Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency has earned a fearsome and not always enviable reputation in the past, on this occasion it is found to be more sinned against than sinning. While Pakistan and Bangladesh have officially cleared the air with each other over the false reports in the Indian media, this may not be the end of the matter. Bangladeshi Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu could not resist the temptation to swim against the current of Professor Rizvi’s clarification by raking up old accusations of the Pakistan government’s continuing to patronise and support the JI, which had caused Pakistani diplomats to be withdrawn time and again. And in an interview with CNN, Mr Inu said his government was still looking into whether the ISI had played a part. For one, the Bangladesh government, in its own interests and in the interests of the relationship between the two countries, should refrain from issuing contradictory statements by different spokespersons. Second, the Indian media responsible for such irresponsible, unethical and motivated reporting should revisit its preconceived notions that seek to cast Pakistan always in a negative light even when the facts do not support it. The issues surrounding the Dhaka attack deserve a more serious approach than the one adopted in knee-jerk fashion by the Indian media. JMB, an outfit banned over a decade ago, claims to represent Islamic State (IS) in Bangladesh. That itself, along with the airing of photos of the attackers and details of the attack by IS should ring alarm bells throughout South Asia. IS is clearly establishing a foothold in the region through local terrorist groups. This calls for a realization on the part of governments and the media that they should not, consciously or inadvertently, provide grist to the IS mill, but instead make efforts to bring South Asia together to combat the common threat from terrorism in general, and now IS in particular. While the Indian media responsible for false reporting has rightly been exposed and castigated, we in Pakistan should also be critical of similar tendencies in our own media of preconceived, off the cuff, uninvestigated reporting that further muddies the waters rather than impelling South Asia towards cooperation in the common fight against terrorism.

Business Recorder editorial July 2, 2016

Culture of goofing off There was a time when Pakistan had just two Eid holidays, the day itself and the following day (Taru). Over the years, the tendency to treat the occasion as an excuse for increasing these holidays has grown to the point where it has seriously eroded our work culture (itself weakened by many other factors). This year, as has become the norm, the federal government has announced four holidays from Tuesday, July 5 to Friday, July 8. Judging by past experience, this effectively means that the entire working week will be lost, since most government (and private) employees will take off for their native abodes on Sunday, July 3, and only return to work (if we are lucky) on Monday, July 11. The bureaucrats (as well as a great many ordinary citizens) in Islamabad are not natives of the capital. They therefore naturally wish to spend as much time as possible on the occasion of Eid in their home towns and villages. This is the main explanation for the phenomenon of extended Eid holidays, which are then taken advantage of by government and private employees to unilaterally exploit the ‘concession’ by further absenting themselves to their own convenience. This ‘sleight of hand’ is then followed by the provincial governments, which have to (happily?) follow the Centre. In the provincial capitals and towns too, a similar exodus is in evidence around Eid, largely the result of the urban pull of the big cities as centres of employment and other opportunities. The country as a whole therefore, barely emerging from a month of functioning at half speed and energy because of Ramzan (especially, as this year, when it falls at the height of summer), completely grinds to a halt for one whole week or more. Can Pakistan afford such ‘luxury’? The country is beset with a raft of serious problems, including terrorism and law and order. The economy is still struggling despite the government’s tall claims. Governance, both internal and in foreign policy, appears adrift. As far as the economy is concerned, despite the government’s ‘trumpeting’ of its stabilisation and recovery claims and the endorsement of the international lending agencies, the glass is still half-empty. Investment is lagging; growth, though marginally better, is still low and unlikely to meet the budgeted target; the much touted foreign exchange reserves of over $ 23 billion comprise 75 percent borrowed funds; agriculture is in crisis, with lower cotton production impacting the textile sector and therefore exports, already reeling from energy shortages and other problems. The government’s claim of meeting the tax collection target this year also needs to be tempered by the realisation that this has been achieved reportedly by withholding tax refunds, largely (61 percent) from indirect taxes, withholding taxes and advance taxes from the oil and gas sector that will have to be adjusted in the years to come. Expert critics of the economic performance of the government therefore have weight in their argument that the government is misleading the country by manipulating the facts and figures and highlighting only the ‘glass half-full’ side of the picture. Given the still fragile state of the economy and the myriad other problems on the country’s plate, what we need is to remind ourselves of the Quaid’s admonition at the birth of the country to “work, work, work”. In other words, what the country needs is an ethic and culture of hard work and not encouragement of a culture of goofing off on the slightest, most spurious excuse. If the bureaucracy has persuaded the government to adopt the latter course, it is in its own and the country’s interests to reverse this unjustifiable lacuna.

Business Recorder column July 5, 2016

The IS footprint Rashed Rahman The Islamic State’s (IS’s) footprint is expanding. First, an area where it originally arose and still has a formidable battling presence, Iraq. An IS suicide car bombing on Sunday, July 3, in Baghdad’s Karrada shopping district, busier even than normal because of crowds of Eid shoppers, killed 119 and wounded more than 140 people. This was the deadliest attack in a long line of attacks since January in the Iraqi capital. It came just one week after the recapture of Fallujah from IS by a resurgent Iraqi army. Mosul now is the only city left under IS control. The bombing in Baghdad is being viewed as IS’s riposte against civilians for its recent military reverses. IS has claimed responsibility, reiterating that the action was aimed at Shias, as have its past such strikes in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. The Baghdad bombing came just one day after the incident in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka. There, an IS group slit the throats of 20 people with machetes, the favourite weapon it seems of terrorists in that country. Gunmen took customers at a café popular with foreigners near the diplomatic quarter hostage, sifted Muslims who could recite the Quran from those who could not, spared the former and slaughtered the latter. Thirty hostages were wounded in the incident. Two policemen died in an initial exchange of fire. After an 11-hour siege, security forces stormed the café, killing six of the attackers and capturing one alive, who is under interrogation. The Bangladesh government offered a strange explanation for the incident. Denying that the attackers had any affiliation with IS, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said the killers were well-educated members of a homegrown militant outfit Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) who found extremism “fashionable”. JMB was banned by Bangladesh more than a decade ago. Although IS claimed responsibility for the atrocity and its news agency Amaq published extensive details and photos of the attack, the Bangladeshi authorities stuck to their version, probably fearing that an acknowledgement of IS’s footprint in the country would frighten off foreign investors. Some of the foreigners killed were reportedly buyers involved with Bangladesh’s garments export sector, second only to China’s globally and on which the Bangladeshi economy heavily depends. Some others were involved with Japan’s aid agency JICA’s projects in Bangladesh. The fallout for Bangladesh’s economy could be devastating, hence the government’s reluctance to admit that IS was behind the massacre. Despite the Bangladeshi government’s head-in-the-sand denial mode, IS’s own claim of responsibility clinches the argument. Additionally, the government of Sheikh Hasina has been indulging in misplaced concreteness. Since last month, the government has launched a crackdown that has netted some 11,000 suspects, but analysts say these arrests smack of arbitrariness and seem to be aimed largely at the political opposition. The main target therefore comes out as Begum Khalida Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its ally the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), some of the latter’s leaders having been imprisoned and others hanged on charges of genocide during the country’s 1971 independence war. The JI has been banned since these controversial trials and executions. IS attacks in countries as far apart as France, Belgium, the US, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, north and west Africa and now Bangladesh point to the spreading ripples of this most ruthless of the terrorist groups in the field globally. What the Bangladesh government is not willing to acknowledge in an unlikely to succeed stance is that like its predecessor al Qaeda, IS does not function with a centralized command structure. It is enough for any extremist terrorist group anywhere in the world to pay obeisance towards IS and its self-proclaimed Caliph of its declared Islamic State, al-Baghdadi, to be recognized and awarded the IS ‘franchise’. This enterprise is now flourishing and spreading like never before. The world is in turmoil as a result and its reasons and the present trajectory have their roots in the Afghan wars since the 1980s. The US-led west’s cold war obsession with defeating communism persuaded it to utilize the opportunity afforded by the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union in 1979 in support of its Afghan communist allies. This translated, in Brzezinski’s phrase, into a campaign to ‘bleed’ the Soviets through the agency of the Afghan Mujahideen. The west succeeded in this venture in spectacular fashion, forcing thereby the Soviets to finally retreat from Afghanistan in 1989 and suffer an internal collapse just two years later in 1991. With the cold war won and the Soviet Union not only vanquished but dismembered, the west now turned its back on ‘backwaters’ like Afghanistan, mistakenly thinking that no great strategic interests remained for it in that part of the world. This left the field open in Afghanistan for the local and regional players to fill the ‘vacuum’. Through the collapse of the Afghan communist government, the twists and turns of the Mujahideen civil war that followed and the eventual rise of the Taliban, the west is now learning to its cost what a blunder that was. As though having learnt nothing from the disaster of 9/11, the US invaded and occupied Afghanistan (where it still has a precarious toehold), then Iraq, and under a ‘peace’ President Obama, destabilized Libya and Syria through proxies. Withdrawal from Iraq opened the door to the rise of IS. The rest, as they say, is history. While IS can by now boast ‘franchise’ or affiliated groups stretching from South East Asia through South Asia and the Middle East into northern, western and eastern Africa, with local groups able to strike as far as the west itself, there is no countervailing international anti-terrorist architecture available to conduct the necessary coordinated struggle on the military, security and political-ideological front worldwide. This allows IS and similar terrorist goups to wriggle through the gaps of states’ national considerations and perceived interests and strike far and wide in a random pattern that is difficult to predict let alone stave off. The struggle against the antediluvian delusions of IS and others of its ilk promises therefore to be long and bloody. Whether the will and consensus exists internationally to bring the superior military might and resources of the world to bear on the task is a question whose answer still goes abegging. Pakistan had better beware of the possibility of the IS franchise arriving on our soil (there have been relatively weak claims of IS affiliation by some existing terrorist groups here too). We already have enough on our plate without the resources of IS being thrown into the equation in support of terrorist groups we are struggling against.