Business Recorder Column April 20, 2021

TLP: the state’s continuing blunders

 

Rashed Rahman

 

The violent clashes in the past few days between the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) are the latest incarnation of the state’s flawed and blundering policy of relying on religious extremist groups for furthering dubious political agendas. The pattern over the last almost 50 years runs along the by now familiar lines of first creating and encouraging such groups against mainstream political and civil society, then attempting to appease them when they grow wings large enough to challenge the state itself, and finally, under pressure of circumstances, to attempt to crack down on them. Such has been the case in the creation, nurturing and support to the Mujahideen and Taliban in the Afghan context, which spawned religious extremist and sectarian groups inside the country, and the rest of the trajectory followed the path outlined above.

The difference though between the past efforts in this regard and the emergence of TLP is that the Afghan adventure and subsequent ‘favoured’ religious extremist groups internally relied considerably on the minority Deobandi sect. The TLP, however, is composed of the majority Barelvi sect, once known for its moderation, but now transformed into a violent stick- and arms-wielding threat to the state and society. Needless to say, flirting with a turning-to-militancy majority sect harbours within it even greater risks and threat than the past ‘reliance’ on a minority sect.

After three days of violent protests throughout the country following the arrest of the TLP’s chief Saad Hussain Rizvi on April 12, 2021, during which the much proclaimed ‘writ of the state’ appeared to have all but disappeared, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government finally abandoned its appeasement of TLP and cracked down hard on the group. According to Federal Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid, accompanied by Minister for Religious Affairs Nurul Haq Qadri, the talks that failed to persuade the TLP to give up its planned long march on Islamabad on April 20, 2021 (today) have finally been abandoned. According to Sheikh Rashid, the three-day violent protest by TLP reaped the grisly harvest of five people killed, including two policemen, 580 policemen injured, and 30 cars destroyed.

The corollary to this casualty/destruction count is the summary approved by the federal cabinet, after which a notification banning the TLP was issued. The summary states that the federal government has reasonable grounds to believe that the TLP is engaged in terrorism, is destroying the country’s peace and security, creating anarchy by intimidating the public, has caused grievous bodily harm, hurt and death to the LEAs and public, etc. Such an indictment surely should attract the strictest actions to scotch this evil.

However, there are no guarantees, based on experience, that even the harshest crackdown will necessarily mean the end of the TLP threat. Not only have such religious extremist outfits demonstrated in the past their resilience in the face of (belated, it must be said) repression, most have come back with a vengeance over time. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a good example. One has been consistently warning that the TTP threat, following the military operations in erstwhile FATA, have not scotched the snake but only wounded and ‘exported’ it. The TTP, under the pressure of the military’s all-out offensive, could not sustain its hold on bases in erstwhile FATA and retreated in classic guerrilla fashion to safe havens across the border on Afghan soil, where it could not logically stay without the Afghan Taliban’s explicit or implicit permission. One had warned that the apparent ‘victory’ over the TTP could turn out to be a pyrrhic one since it was logical that it had left sleeper cells behind and would, sooner or later, mount attacks across the border. That has happened, although not to the extent and level one expected. That does not mean escalation in TTP’s activities can be ruled out. Vigilance is key in this matter.

Whatever the outcome of the belated crackdown on TLP, which by no means can be taken to mean that the militants will not continue to hit back, another worry is developments in Afghanistan. With US President Joe Biden announcing the complete withdrawal of US troops by September 11, 2021, it seems only a matter of time before the Taliban are once more ensconced in power in Kabul. How that will affect the fortunes of the TTP can only be guessed at this juncture, but the portents are threatening. The nexus of religious extremist groups is a permanent fact of life. Even mainstream religious groups like Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) are opportunistically poised to join any TLP long march on Islamabad after his Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) long march hopes have come a cropper due to internal dissent in the PDM. Mufti Muneebur Rehman is leading a strike in support of the TLP in Karachi. Even the Jamaat-i-Islami is making reconciliatory noises that in the present confrontation bring comfort to the violent zealots of TLP.

With so much consistent experience of the trajectory of creation, nurturing, appeasement, and eventual confrontation with religious extremist groups birthed for dubious political and strategic reasons, is it not time for the worthies who actually run our state to cease and desist this long standing and, in the final analysis, disastrous flirting with religious extremism at the cost of the state itself and society at large? Hope and pray.

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Jail Faiz Mela: Political Session

 Amidst complaints by friends that the link (see below) for this does not open by clicking on it, I suggest friends copy paste it in Google: http://youtu.be/-eqEom4dHw

Rashed Rahman

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

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC)

Jalib Faiz Mela: Political Session

 Link to Jalib Faiz Mela: Political Session

http://youtu.be/-eqEom4dHw

Rashed Rahman

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

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC)

Amidst complaints by friends that the above link does not open by clicking on it, I suggest copy pasting the link on Google.

Rashed Rahman

Business Recorder Editorial April 10, 2021

Ghani’s peace roadmap

 

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani intends to present a three-phase peace roadmap to a proposed meeting in Turkey, seeking an agreement with the Taliban on a ceasefire as a preliminary step towards elections. The US has been pushing for the Turkey moot, with UN involvement, in April 2021 as the May 1, 2021 withdrawal deadline agreed in the Doha accord looms. Ashraf Ghani’s plan is seen as a counter to US proposals rejected by Kabul. The three-phase plan envisages drawing up a new legal system for an interim administration to include the Taliban. The “Reaching an Endstate” proposal includes, in the first phase, a consensus on a political settlement accompanied by an internationally monitored ceasefire. The second phase envisages a presidential election, the establishment of a ‘government of peace’ and implementation arrangements for the new political system. The third phase would focus on building a constitutional framework, the reintegration of millions of refugees displaced by the long running war, and development. Reports say President Ashraf Ghani has already shared the plan with foreign capitals. The Turkey conference is expected to take place in about two weeks. However, the path to it is still strewn with obstacles, one of which was expressed by the Afghan government and politicians when they said they would have to agree an agenda with the Taliban before the meeting. Amidst statements by the Biden administration throwing doubt on the US ability to meet the May 1, 2021 withdrawal deadline for ‘tactical’ reasons, the Taliban in March 2021 threatened to resume hostilities against the foreign forces that they had been avoiding attacking since the Doha agreement, focusing their military activities instead on the Afghan government and its security forces. US President Biden has, however, held out the promise that despite any delay, he did not see the US troops being in Afghanistan by next year. The Afghan government’s ‘feeler’ that the Taliban may be willing to extend the May 1, 2021 deadline and not attack the foreign forces if thousands of their prisoners held by the Afghan government were released was shot down summarily by Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem in Qatar, who said no such offer had been made.

The Taliban are so confident they have already proclaimed their ‘victory’. The Doha peace process had a glaring hole at its heart: it was more or less a bilateral agreement between the US and the Taliban and left the fate of the Afghan government hanging in the air, dependent as its survival now was on Kabul arriving at some political compromise with its implacable foes. President Ashraf Ghani and his Afghan government had reasons to feel ‘abandoned’ by Washington, intent as the latter was to end its involvement in what by now was clearly an unwinnable war in return for Taliban guarantees against a repeat of 9/11. What transpired after the Doha accord followed a predictable trajectory. The Afghan government, politicians and civil society kept bleating for the Taliban to agree an agenda for talks that would protect and keep intact the rights gained by hitherto marginalised ethnic and religious groups, women, etc. But the Taliban understandably were not interested in giving away their battlefield gains at the bargaining table. Hence the switch from hoped-for Afghan government-Taliban bilateral talks to multilateral forums such as the impending Turkey meeting. So, given this track record since Doha, is the ‘peace’ process salvageable? President Ashraf Ghani’s three-phase process to incrementally decrease violence and spur on the political process seems eminently reasonable and rational on paper. But with a triumphalist Taliban waiting for the US and foreign forces to leave before they tackle the Afghan government, the foreseeable result is a debacle in favour of the religiously-inspired warriors and the reimposition of their hardline governance as seen in their previous stint in power. The mere thought is enough to send shivers down the spine of all the anti-Taliban forces in Afghan society. As far as the US is concerned, its current emphasis on an ‘orderly’ withdrawal may save some face for it, but the end result may not turn out very different. If the Taliban do return to power after the withdrawal, the fallout could be very negative for Pakistan.

Business Recorder Editorial April 9, 2021

Shift in government’s narrative?

 

Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan, during a meeting on April 6, 2021 with the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf’s (PTI’s) spokespersons, termed the opposition ‘harmless’ and directed them to stop lambasting it and instead highlight the government’s achievements. While the first part of the PM’s assertion is understandable up to a point given the opposition Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) falling apart internally, the latter, highlighting the government’s achievements may prove a tall order. Even before he occupied his office, Imran Khan built his party around a round the clock castigation of the civilian governments of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) that preceded his entry into the corridors of power. However, what Imran Khan perhaps failed to realise is that dumping all the blame on past governments without much to show for your own is a strategy with a limited shelf life. Almost three years into the government’s term, this unrelenting rhetoric is by now sounding stale, unconvincing, humourless and yielding diminishing returns. Instead, the people’s suffering under the PTI government has gone up by leaps and bounds, centring on inflation, growing unemployment, and little hope for the foreseeable future.

The PTI government’s handling of the economy has by and large, except for a few measures here and there, been found wanting during its tenure so far. Take for example the unending rhetoric of the PM and his spokespersons regarding the ‘mafias’ that manipulate the market and prices. A less pejorative and understandable description would be a ‘market economy’, which operates by and large on the principle of supply and demand, peripheral manipulation and exploitation of ‘opportunities’ presented by shortages of goods notwithstanding. Markets seldom yield to, or can be well managed by, executive decisions. Take for example the sugar price issue. The government calculated the ex-mill price at Rs 80 per kilogram, and issued an executive order that the sweetener could not be sold higher than Rs 85 per kilogram. Predictably, the administration failed to successfully persuade traders to lower the current price of Rs 100-110. Now the Lahore High Court has stayed the lower price measure. So much for the campaign against the alleged satta(manipulative) mafia in sugar. The government’s approach to increasing poverty has centred around creating social security nets for the most needy. The concept of cash handouts though laudable has its own limitations notwithstanding the fact that it militates against the dignity, self-respect, and ability of the indigent to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. It is the old adage about the difference between giving a person a fish gratis and teaching him/her how to fish instead that applies.

Perhaps as a corollary to the desired policy shift, the government (and Speaker of the National Assembly) have been at pains to throw the door open to an estranged and resentful opposition to help bring in electoral and judicial reforms. There is little need to remind ourselves how the opposition has been subjected to rude rhetoric and worse since the PTI came to power. To now suddenly expect the opposition to let bygones be bygones and cooperate with the treasury benches in parliament is baying for the moon. Parliament itself has received scant respect from the PTI’s PM downwards, whether it is the former’s absence from the house or the verbal abuse of the opposition by the government’s ministers and spokespeople. Imran Khan once confessed after coming to power that he knew things were bad in the country but had no idea just how bad they were till he was confronted with the responsibility for running the country. If so, this underlines how poorly the PTI prepared or did its homework in anticipation of the day when it came to power. The niggling thought is that since the government’s spokespersons are likely to struggle to find the ‘achievements’ of the PTI in power to project or give a positive spin to, faced with criticism of such efforts, whether from the opposition (which is its right in a democracy) or other sources, how long will the ‘benign’ policy shift last?

Business Recorder Column April 6, 2021

PPP’s solo flight

 

Rashed Rahman

 

On the occasion of the 42^nddeath anniversary of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on April 4, 2021, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari carried on the war of words that has broken out in the ranks of the opposition Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) since the Senate elections and the elevation of the PPP’s Yusuf Raza Gilani to the slot of Leader of the Opposition in the upper house. However, he made a departure from the ‘normal’ to-and-fro rhetoric that the two sides have been exchanging since. Bilawal said the PPP is prepared to fight alone if necessary against the ‘selected’ government even without the support of the rest of the opposition. Whether this declaration is merely retaliatory, defensiveness, bravado or illusion, only time will tell.

What is beyond doubt is that the PDM is on the rocks. To add salt to the wounds, the scheduled meeting on April 5, 2021 of the PPP’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) to discuss the controversial issue of en masse resignations from parliament demanded by the other parties of the PDM has been postponed on the plea that the Senate session has been called on that day and not all members of the CEC will be able to make it to the meeting. Since no new date for the CEC meeting has been announced, this possibility must now be considered to have been consigned to the backburner.

Meanwhile five parties of the opposition, headed by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), have decided to sit as an independent opposition group in the Senate following their refusal to accept Gilani as the Leader of the Opposition on the grounds that he won the slot with the support of so-called independent Senators suspected of belonging to the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), aligned with the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government. The new opposition group boasts a strength of 27 Senators, not a force therefore to be sneezed at.

Bilawal’s claim that only the PPP knows how to run movements in a democratic manner contrasts sharply with the party’s recent practice. He also claimed the PPP knows how to fight the government and the establishment from both inside and outside parliament. He said the puppet government had been seriously challenged in the PPP’s rallies. One may be forgiven for questioning the veracity of these statements in the light of the PPP’s recent role in disrupting the PDM from within, questioning whether there is space for fighting from within parliament without some level of collaboration with the establishment, and the impact (not visible so far) of its rallies without.

One aspect of the PPP’s strategy within, according to Bilawal, was the ouster of the PTI Punjab government through a no-confidence motion, which would have cascaded into the departure of the PTI federal government. However, the numbers in the Punjab Assembly do not add up for the opposition, so this claim seems more hope than reality. While reiterating the PPP’s willingness to forget everything that has happened of late in the interests of the bigger cause, Bilawal did not shrink from making the case for Gilani’s re-entry into parliament since he was dismissed by the Supreme Court mid-term.

To cut to the chase, the PDM has collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions. The simple fact is that the PPP has stakes (the Sindh government) in the present dispensation, while the other parties do not. This is the fundamental divide that has now burst forth and arguably ruptured the alliance beyond repair, the expressed hopes for an ill Maulana Fazlur Rehman to patch things up notwithstanding. The maturity and restraint required to keep disparate alliances with a history of mutual recriminations united through thick and thin has been conspicuous by its absence since PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari’s tirade against Nawaz Sharif in a PDM meeting. The past, inevitably, has raised its ugly head in the wake of that exchange to haunt the PDM’s ranks. Clearly, the anti-PTI government bond that brought these parties together in the first place has proved insufficient to negotiate the shoals and reefs in the path of the PDM’s campaign, leading to shipwreck. 

The PTI’s expected delight at this turn of events has been surprisingly mild. One expected a tidal wave (tsunami) of exultation, only to witness an unexpectedly soft response. This could be considered the sobering effect of the PTI’s self-inflicted problems, which must be giving the party and its backers nightmares. Whether the sense of drift, punctuated by silly mistakes like announcing the opening of trade with India one day, only to reverse it the next, denotifying the South Punjab secretariat one day and rejecting the notification the next, or appointing a new finance minister one day and undermining him by inducting a banker and former finance minister to oversee the economy the next, can be salvaged remains open to question.

As for the PPP, its long journey betrays a sorry trajectory from the Left of the political spectrum to the Centre-Right, leaving the door open to defend its niche in the present power structure by some level of collaboration with the ubiquitous establishment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

The April 2021 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review is out

The April 2021 issue of Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) is out. Link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Contents:

1. Rashed Rahman: The colonial drain of wealth.

2. Professor Dr Qais Aslam: Crisis in Pakistan's Agricultural Food Production.

3. Zeus Hans Mendez: Repression and Revolt in Balochistan: The Uncertainty and Survival of a People's National Aspirations.

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review

Director, Research and Publication Centre 

Business Recorder Editorial April 2, 2021

PDM’s bleak future

 

The opposition alliance Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) seems to have fallen on dark days. The 10-party alliance headed by Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman came into existence after the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government came to power through the controversial 2018 elections. The Maulana lost his traditional seat in D I Khan in that election, although his party did not do too badly. Maulana Fazlur Rehman therefore felt hard done by at the alleged hands of the establishment, with whom he had enjoyed a long past of collaboration that proved extremely beneficial for him as long as it lasted. The other two major parties in the PDM, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), were differently placed after the 2018 elections. The PML-N was ‘out’, especially after former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification by the Supreme Court and subsequent jailing, a confinement from which he was ‘rescued’ by illness and travelled to London. The PPP on the other hand could be considered ‘half-in’ and ‘half-out’, given its government in Sindh and carryover strength in the Senate. However, both these parties were then subjected to the tender mercies of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on corruption charges against both leaderships. The PTI government swore itself blue in the face denying any role in this campaign, but given its overriding anti-corruption mantra, which arguably had finally persuaded the powers that be to back it, fingers of suspicion were, and continue to be, pointed at it for being behind what has been described as a political witch-hunt against the PML-N and PPP. The commonalities therefore that brought Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the PML-N and the PPP together on the platform of the PDM were their being targeted by the establishment through its chosen horse, the PTI government. Necessity they say is the mother of invention. No surprise therefore that these three opposition forces, with seven minor parties in tow, came together in the PDM to fight against this motivated targeting and to oust the incumbent PTI set-up. In this coming together, given the pressure on them, all parties were prepared to forgive and forget each other’s mutual transgressions of the past.

But it has taken barely two and a half years for the not so well hidden from view past differences to re-emerge with a vengeance and bite that reminds us of the sorry past of their up and down ‘relationship’. The stew began simmering over the issue of en masse resignations from parliament as a prelude to, or accompanying, the planned PDM long march on Islamabad, a combination the JUI-F and PML-N at least, believed would spell the end of the PTI government. Although this scenario may have reflected the triumph of hope over reality, given the lack of certainty and guarantees that these two ‘weapons’ would suffice for the country to see the back of the PTI government, it also failed, despite assertions that resignations were decided unanimously by the PDM, to take account of the PPP’s interests within the prevailing setup. It also signalled a failure to take account of the PPP’s Central Executive Committee’s (CEC’s) decision not to go for resignations immediately, but keep them in reserve as the ultimate weapon. Nevertheless the manner in which the issue was raised and discussed in the last PDM meeting, especially PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari’s needlessly rude barbs at Nawaz Sharif, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the PDM had split on the issue 9-1. This too may not have been seen as an irreparable breach, but what followed in the Senate Chairman election, which Yusuf Raza Gilani lost despite the entire PDM voting for him (those by now notorious seven ‘rejected’ votes), and the ‘snatching’ from the PML-N the agreed post of Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (handed to Gilani as a ‘consolation prize’), may prove the last straw that broke the PDM camel’s back. Ostensibly, the PDM chief announced an indefinite postponement of the long march until the PPP CEC meets to revisit its decision not to resign from parliament just yet, but realistically, that decision is unlikely to be revoked. The PDM therefore, is all but dead in the water. That may cause sighs of relief in the corridors of power, but it has the unintended consequence of shifting focus back on the non-performing PTI government.