Business Recorder Editorial May 27, 2021

Hafiz Hamdullah’s citizenship case

 

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has pronounced the National Database and Registration Authority’s (NADRA’s) cancellation of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F’s) Maulana Hafiz Hamdullah’s Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) in 2019 arbitrary, reckless, illegal, without jurisdiction, and contrary to the basic right of citizenship enshrined in the Constitution without considering the profound consequences of such a decision. The IHC verdict has also shone a light on similar actions by NADRA regarding citizens. The case pertains to NADRA’s October 2019 cancellation of Maulana Hafiz Hamdullah’s CNIC on the basis of intelligence reports, rejecting his documents presented as proof of his nationality as bogus and fraudulent. These documents showed Hamdullah was born in Chaman, Balochistan, and his father was employed in the education department in 1974. But NADRA dismissed these claims out of hand in deference to the information of sensitive state institutions and the executive. NADRA also wrote a letter to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) on October 11, 2019, as a consequence of which PEMRA ordered all TV channels to bar Maulana Hafiz Hamdullah from any appearance on television. Since then, he and some other petitioners approached the IHC to reverse NADRA’s decision. Now the court has found in their favour and taken NADRA to task for its arbitrary cancellation of a citizen’s CNIC on the basis of intelligence reports. The IHC has interrogated NADRA during the proceedings on whether this is a regular practice. The IHC also ruled that PEMRA’s order was an obvious misuse of authority. Logically too, PEMRA’s stand held no water since even a non-citizen is not barred from TV. Further, it goes without saying that depriving any citizen of their CNIC amounts to revoking that person’s basic human right of citizenship as well as economic, political and social rights, all enshrined in the Constitution. The IHC has declared NADRA has no jurisdiction to initiate such proceedings. We hope this will be the last word on this illegal practice, reportedly in play at the behest of the executive over the years.

Of course the case of Hafiz Hamdullah is not hard to understand. Why he attracted the unwanted attentions of the intelligence agencies, the executive and NADRA is not difficult to surmise. In October 2019, Hafiz Hamdullah’s party, the JUI-F, was poised to launch an Azadi(Freedom) March on Islamabad against the sitting Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government, which the JUI-F contended had been imposed through rigging the 2018 general elections. Hamdullah had acquired the status of the JUI-F’s face on numerous TV shows where he argued his party’s case. Negotiations between the PTI government and the JUI-F regarding the ‘Azadi March’ proved inconclusive. With one stroke, the executive stripped Hamdullah of his birthright citizenship and also ‘silenced’ him as far as the electronic media was concerned. A more obvious political victimisation would be hard to imagine, as Hamdullah argued at the time. It is a matter of satisfaction that the IHC has restored sense, legality and citizens’ rights against an overweening executive that is expected to show better sense regarding the laws of the land and what can or cannot be done within the framework of those laws. A wiser, more circumspect approach may have spared the executive the slap in the face administered by the IHC.

Business Recorder Editorial May 25, 2021

Faltering government

 

It is a consistent pattern of our politics that every government appears to falter mid-term. However, in the case of the present Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government, it is difficult to resist the notion that it has been in fact floundering since day one. Now on the eve of its penultimate budget, the PTI government is beset with the same problems as at the beginning of its tenure, plus some new self-inflicted ones. Amongst the former, handling of the economy takes pride of place. Admittedly, the difficulties the government was encountering before the pandemic have been exacerbated by the outbreak of the deadly disease, but there is not much to crow about in the pre-pandemic period either. With the third finance minister in three years installed recently, one struggles to detect the contours of a rational, well thought out economic strategy to meet the goals of economic growth and management of perennial, but increasing, problems such as the fiscal deficit. The contradiction at the heart of the government’s approach has been swings between correction and collection. Going into the IMF programme implied the former would hold sway, but various efforts regarding the latter have ended up with the country getting the worst of both worlds. The government’s ‘flagship’ social welfare programmes are little else but dressed up charity, which barely scratches the surface of endemic poverty and deprivation the masses suffer from because of financial constraints, and arguably ends up rendering the poor dependent on meagre handouts rather than being able to stand on their own feet with dignity intact. Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan sets the tone for this government, and the rest of the chorus of ministers, spokespeople and party leaders follows. Day in and day out, the government abuses the opposition as corrupt, then expects its bruised opponent to cooperate in parliament on consensus-based reforms such as the manner and mode of elections. When the predictable cold shoulder is felt from across the aisle, the government’s ordinance-issuing factory comes into action. Parliament is dysfunctional if not paralysed by such behaviour. The anti-corruption mantra, already sounding stale, has now been extended to the so-called ‘mafias’ by Imran Khan, who, according to him are out to either topple his government or pressurising it to get ‘NROs’ (another worn out cliché by now). The opposition may have got its (un)fair share of stick, but the ranks of the PTI too are not without scandals. The biggest one, in which PTI major figure Jahangir Tareen figures, is the sugar scam. This case has caught the PTI in a cleft stick. On the one hand, it cannot retreat from its oft-repeated public position that no one is above the law, while on the other the Tareen group of about 40 MNAs and MPAs has put the wind up the ruling circles by threatening to break with the government over the budget. In better late than never fashion, the disgruntled members of the group have been soothed by Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar by promising to address their constituency politics grievances. Although Imran Khan’s voice has been added to Buzdar’s assurances that no injustice will be done to Tareen or his family, this remains in the realm of the unknown and possibly explosive future outcome. The internal fault lines of the PTI that have emerged in this case have added to the stock of unresolved issues of economic management of a free market economy without resort to invective about ‘mafias’, democratic governance (including a functional parliament), and restoring the confidence and overcoming the paralysis of the bureaucracy, still reeling from the unwanted attentions of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

Interestingly, what appears to be growing frustration may have prompted Imran Khan’s remarks the other day about NAB’s failure to grab the ‘big fish’. NAB’s over two decades old record does not inspire confidence as to its impartiality, adherence to correct and lawful procedures, and restraint in considering an accused innocent until proved guilty. Imran Khan’s diatribe suggests NAB has not gone far enough down this road! To end on a sad note, despite all the blather from the government, the missing persons remain missing. Sad, but true.

Business Recorder Editorial May 21, 2021

Rawalpindi Ring Road controversy

 

The Rawalpindi Ring Road project has fallen prey to charges of its alignment having been changed to benefit private parties and interests. Special Assistant to the Prime Minister Zulfi Bukhari has resigned on the issue until his name is cleared. Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar held a press conference to deny any link with or role in the affair, which earned him Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ire for having jumped the gun. While the usual and expected war of words between the government and opposition has broken out on this issue too, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has been at pains to deny the involvement in the scandal of any cabinet member. The opposition on the other hand, in the person of Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, claims the government is protecting the guilty as they are connected to the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf in one way or the other. When the issue came to light that the length of the Rawalpindi Ring Road, intended to relieve the city of traffic congestion, had been increased to 23 kilometres to benefit a housing society and other potential estate developers in the area for which the government had to shell out Rs 20 billion to buy additional land, the government set up a three-member committee to hold an inquiry. Strangely, the committee submitted two reports, one by its head, Commissioner Rawalpindi Gulzar Shah, which laid most of the blame on bureaucrats who allegedly favoured some housing societies, and the other by the two other committee members, which claimed the changes were approved higher up. Now we hear the Rawalpindi Ring Road alignment is being carried out afresh, while the scandal has been referred to the Anti-Corruption Department by the government. The National Accountability Bureau too is gearing up to conduct its own inquiry. The issue has got clouded in recriminations and allegations, making arriving at the truth that much harder, a task not helped by the contradictory findings of the two (rather than one) inquiry reports submitted so far to the government.

The Rawalpindi Ring Road was conceived during the previous Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government and revised by the current Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf government. One of the lingering questions is, given transparency was not clear and adequate, why did Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar approve the summary? Why did a federal meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan approve funds for the tainted project? Zulfi Bukhari’s resignation to clear his name has set a good example, but what about others allegedly involved and in high positions? The opposition of course has pounced on the scandal to demand nothing less than the resignation of Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar. That may be a premature call, but the whole affair stinks, requiring a credible inquiry that would be free of partisanship and whose findings would prove acceptable to all sides. Given the tense relations between the government and the opposition, the latter is unlikely to give much credence to inquiries by bureaucrats, the Anti-Corruption Department, or the National Accountability Bureau. It would therefore seem inescapable that in the interests of credibility, acceptability, and the quest for the objective and untrammelled truth, a judicial inquiry should be ordered. The conclusions of such an inquiry should then form the foundation for appropriate punishment of all those involved in this second ring road scandal (the first occurred earlier in Lahore, but not much of it has been heard for some time).

Business Recorder Editorial May 20, 2021

New/old controversy

 

Our Foreign Office has summoned the Afghan Ambassador Najibullah Alikhel to deliver a strong demarche against what has been called the “irresponsible and baseless” allegations levelled against Pakistan by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib. The Afghan President, in an interview with Der Spiegel,said Pakistan operates an organised system of support for the Taliban, including logistics, financial support and recruitment. He pointed to the names by which Taliban decision-making bodies based in Pakistan are known, e.g. the Quetta Shura, Miramshah Shuraand Peshawar Shura, to back his claim that there was a deep relationship between the Taliban and the Pakistani (deep?) state. President Ashraf Ghani cited Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s assurance on his recent visit to Kabul that the restoration of the Taliban Emirate was not in Pakistan’s interest although some in the lower level ranks in the army still adhered to the opposite opinion. The Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib, in an address to an event shared by the official Twitter account of his office last week, made similar allegations against Pakistan and went so far as to argue that the Pashtun tribes were not happy with Pakistan (thereby resurrecting memories of the Durand Line controversy) and had revolted, the Baloch were also fighting for their rights, and those who left their wealth and livelihood behind in India (at Partition in 1947) and came to settle in Pakistan are now (or still?) called immigrants (mohajirs). The Pakistani Foreign Office has warned that such statements could undermine mutual trust and vitiate the environment between the two brotherly countries, disregarding the constructive role being played by Pakistan in facilitating the Afghan peace process. The Foreign Office also urged the Afghan leadership to utilise available forums such as the Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity (APAPPS) to address all bilateral issues.

This latest controversy is rooted in the history of Pakistan-Afghanistan relations. Afghanistan was the only country in the world that refused to recognise the newly created state of Pakistan in 1947, based on its rejection of the Durand Line and irredentist claims on the Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Subsequent relations over the years too have provided more than their share of ups and downs. Currently, as expressed by Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani during his recent visit to Kabul along with ISI chief Lieutenant-General Faiz Hameed, Pakistan has not only facilitated the US-Taliban talks in Doha that yielded the agreement on withdrawal of US and other foreign troops from Afghanistan, but also helped bring about the ongoing (resurrected after the brief Eid ceasefire) talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Pakistan has been at pains for some time to emphasise it supports an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peaceful political settlement of the Afghan conflict. This implies not an exclusive Taliban Emirate but some form of power sharing. This was precisely the import of General Bajwa’s assurance to President Ashraf Ghani. Although the latter responded positively to General Bajwa’s formulation at the time, his subsequent interview underlines the deep mistrust and suspicion about Pakistan and its motives amongst the ruling Afghan circles. What the Afghan leadership needs to examine is perhaps the reasoning behind Pakistan’s new tack. The Pakistani military of late seems to have woken up to the possible fallout for Pakistan post-foreign forces withdrawal if the Taliban push for total victory. Already, in tandem with the withdrawal process, the Taliban have pressed home their battlefield advantage in Helmand and in the north of the country. ‘Talking while fighting’ is a well known tactic, and it seems the Taliban have imbibed the advantages of taking this road. A Taliban general offensive could trigger a fresh refugee exodus, with Pakistan arguably the first destination for desperate people fleeing for their lives, a new phase of the civil war, more death and destruction, and the possible repercussions for US-Pakistan relations, already rocky because of Washington’s defeat at the hands of the Taliban. Pakistan’s interests lie in the wisest course of attempting a winding down of the war through a negotiated political settlement. However, this is easier said than done.

Business Recorder Column May 18, 2021

Betrayal of the Palestinians

 

Rashed Rahman

 

The current round of violence in Palestine was triggered by the Israeli security forces trying to quell protests during Ramzan in and around Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, considered Islam’s third holiest shrine, whose sanctity was thereby violated. The protests revolved around the latest round of expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem in favour of Israelis trying to grab those properties. The violation of Al Aqsa’s sanctity triggered Palestinian protests in the West Bank and Gaza, met with ferocious force by the Israeli security forces, a pattern familiar from the past. This led, almost inexorably, to the exchange of rockets from Gaza on Israel and Israeli retaliation from ground artillery and the air on Gaza. The toll so far in one week: 192 Palestinians killed in Gaza, including 58 children, 1,200 wounded, large parts reduced to rubble, including an airstrike on a building housing international media houses.

In Israel, 10 people have been killed, more than 280 wounded. Hamas fired 3,000 rockets, the highest rate ever, of which 450 fell within Gaza, and more than 1,000 were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system. Violence has also broken out between Jews and Arab-Israelis, with the deadliest clashes in the occupied West Bank yielding 19 Palestinians killed in one week.

True to form, the UN Security Council (UNSC), despite being chaired in rotation by China’s Wang Yi, could not take an unequivocal position on the Israeli aggression and use of disproportionate force because of Israel’s long standing main supporter, the US. It may not be out of place to recall that UNSC resolutions 242, 252, 259, 261, 271 and 2334, and UN General Assembly resolution 2253 regarding Israel’s occupation and annexation of Palestinian territories since the 1967 war and consistent and repeated attempts to change their demography by expelling Palestinians and installing Israelis in their place remain unimplemented because of the same US obstruction.

The Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Arab League have once again demonstrated in practice their toothlessness. High sounding condemnatory verbalising aside, neither has moved a finger to help the hapless Palestinians. If they have any self-respect, all those Arab states, past and recent, who have recognized Israel should be blushing with shame and embarrassment. The Palestinians have been betrayed and left to their own devices by the Arab and Muslim world again and again. The US-led west does not permit the UNSC to overcome its long standing paralysis on the issue. How have the Palestinians been reduced to this pass, and what does the future hold for them?

Israel is an imperialist dagger thrust deep into the heart of the Middle East. The mistreatment and oppression of Jews in Europe (not, one might add, in the Middle East or Arab world) instigated the Zionist movement that demanded a home for the scattered (since ancient times) Jews in what constituted Palestine, on the dubious revanchist argument of it being the ancient home of the Jews from which they were expelled or forced to flee. British colonialism held the Palestine Mandate after WWI, and Lord Balfour had already presented a Zionist drafted resolution in the British parliament endorsing this demand in 1917. Between the two world wars, the British Mandate authorities connived at Jewish immigration into Palestine to change its demography and give the Zionists a toehold on the soil of Palestine. The Nazi horrors against the Jews in WWII provided the emotional baggage that seemed to justify the enhanced immigration of Jews from all over the world to Palestine immediately after WWII. By 1948, when the state of Israel was established, Zionist armed gangs were expelling Palestinians (theNaqbah) and also, at least until 1948, fighting the British Mandate authorities. The great western powers then colluded in the UNSC to declare the partition of Palestine between the Zionist state of Israel and the rest of Palestine. But the latter territories were never in the control of the Palestinians. Instead, neighbouring Arab countries took control of those territories, which Israel nibbled away at in the 1956 war and completely occupied (and to some extent annexed) in the 1967 war.

Since then, despite restoring Gaza to Palestinian control while turning it into the largest open air prison in the world, and at least nominally allowing the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) control over the West Bank, Israel has been nibbling away at the latter territory through settling its people there. The East Jerusalem effort is only the latest such campaign.

The neighbouring, and even some distant Arab countries, have abandoned the Palestinian cause and left its people in dire straits. Not commanding any territory of their own, the Palestinian armed resistance that broke out in 1968 after the 1967 debacle suffered from a lack of secure base from which to conduct military operations. Jordan demolished the Palestinian base on its territory after Black September, 1970. Pakistan earned the distinction in that conflict of the massacre of Palestinian refugees in their camps in Amman, which were encircled and annihilated by the tanks of then Brigadier Ziaul Haq. Lebanon, where the bulk of the Palestinian fighters were forced to relocate, pummelled them at the hands of the Lebanese fascist movement Phalange, cooperated with and helped massacre Palestinian refugees in their camps during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and finally forced the Palestinian fighters and leadership to relocate to Tunisia and other Arab countries physically removed from Palestine. This virtually put an end to the Palestinian armed resistance.

Turning to diplomacy through the Oslo Accords of 1992 and US mediation between the Palestinians and Israel further weakened the Palestinian hand and afforded Israel the (continuing to this day) opportunity to carry out its expansionist ambitions piecemeal and virtually without serious demur from the world. The so-called two state solution is dead in the water. Only one state, and that too the Zionist entity Israel, exists, and likely will continue to exist for the foreseeable future. The hapless people of Palestine will have to find new, creative ways and means to confront the US-led west’s settler colonialist Israeli enterprise. Peaceful protest, including intifadas, has yielded nothing. The logic of a return to armed resistance is impeccable, but difficult.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Editorial May 17, 2021

Haste makes waste

 

Given the history of controversies surrounding general elections in our country, there is obviously a pressing need for electoral reforms if the democratic system is to take firm root and flourish. Inherently, such an exercise cannot be fruitful unless it enjoys consensus in principle and in fact across the political class. That implies the two sides of the aisle have to be on an even or minimally acceptable keel in order to even get the discussion on the issue going, let alone arrive at consensus decisions. The state of relations between the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government and the opposition on the other hand, is a case study in how not to run a parliamentary democratic system. The government is unrelenting in painting the opposition in the darkest ‘corrupt’ hues day in, day out, as its virtually sole political narrative. Given such an atmosphere, even discussions on genuine issues like electoral reform run aground before they can even reach the start line. The 2018 general elections are the latest case in point of the continuing controversies about our elections being fair and free. Even the 10 or so by-elections over the last almost three years have had their fair share of divisive controversies. While the PTI government’s needle is stuck in the groove of its ‘corruption’ mantra, widely seen as a political witch-hunt against the opposition, the latter has consistently rejected the 2018 polls as ‘engineered’ and the PTI government installed as a result ‘selected’. Wisdom would seem to dictate that a recognition of these ground realities would persuade the government to fix the toxic nature of its daily exchanges with the opposition if it genuinely aspires to bring the latter to the table for a meaningful discussion on electoral reforms. But the government in its ‘wisdom’ seems once again wedded to throwing a ‘casual’ invitation for talks on the issue, and then arbitrarily and one sidedly going ahead with measures yet to be discussed on the plea that the opposition is not interested. Even if this claim is true, the reasons for this state of affairs are as delineated above. The resort in hasty fashion to issuing Presidential Ordinances left, right and centre without bothering to seriously and in a civilised manner persuade the opposition to cooperate is once more in play on the electoral reforms issue. The Ordinance was issued just days after the National Assembly Speaker had constituted a committee to discuss the reforms needed, on the plea by the Information Minister that the opposition had rejected participation in the committee’s deliberations. Fawad Chaudhry went on to argue that once the Ordinance lapses, they have the strength to have a bill passed from parliament. What seems to have escaped the minister is how his argument negates the necessity for the hastily issued Ordinance if the issue has eventually (a mere few months down the road) to be settled in parliament. Whereas the Ordinance authorises the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to procure Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and enable overseas Pakistanis to vote in national elections from abroad, it has been promulgated by ignoring or overriding the ECP’s reservations on EVMs and without taking the ECP on board. The overseas Pakistanis’ voting issue requires a constitutional amendment, not an easy task given the arithmetic in parliament.

In sum, one cannot help feeling that the government’s approach is an exercise in futility. There was a need to reach out to and smooth the ruffled feathers of the opposition for a consensus reform that hopefully would rid us of the perennial election controversies. Instead, the government has acted with undue and unnecessary haste, which, as the saying goes, is likely to end up in waste. The opposition too of course needs to respond positively if the government reverses its daily diet of abuse and approaches the opposition with respect. The responsibility for fixing the flawed electoral system rests on both sides, but being in power, the government must bear the greater responsibility.

Business Recorder Column May 11, 2021

Religious extremist terrorism’s spread

 

Rashed Rahman

 

Recent events in Mozambique centring on religious extremist terrorists seizing Pemba, the capital of the northern province of Cabo Delgado, which triggered a mass exodus of local people and foreigners fleeing for their lives, has focused attention on the rise in the province of an allegedly Islamic State (IS) affiliated movement called Ansar al-Sunna. Mozambique is a Catholic majority country, a legacy of Portuguese colonialism from which the Mozambican people gained their independence after the 1964-74 armed struggle led by the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), partly helped by the ‘flower revolution’ of 1974 in Portugal that got rid of the fascist and colonial legacy of dictator Salazar. While Catholics constitute 60 percent of the population, a significant minority of 19 percent are Muslim, concentrated largely in the north of the country.

Cabo Delgado is the poorest province of the country. However, hopes for a better future have been fuelled by the discovery of off-shore gas that could propel Mozambique to the position of holding the fourth or fifth largest LNG reserves in the world over the next 30 years. In and around Pemba, oil and gas giants Total and ExxonMobil are developing these reserves and setting up plants to process the gas. However, in a feature eerily reminiscent of the situation in our Balochistan, the gas bonanza is unlikely to trickle down to the local inhabitants of Cabo Delgado. Although poverty and deprivation cannot be ignored as factors feeding into the Islamist insurgency in the north, the story has external dimensions that can only be ignored at one’s own peril.

Readers are no doubt familiar with the trajectory of religious extremist militancy and terrorism originating from the Mujahideen struggle against the Communists and later the Soviet Union in Afghanistan from the 1970s, which later, through many twists and turns, transmogrified into the present-day Taliban. The latter lost their hold on power after their ‘guest’, Osama ben Laden and his al Qaeda organisation attacked the US on 9/11. The Taliban, and as it later transpired, Osama sought safe havens in Pakistan and continued their struggle inside Afghanistan and the world at large respectively.

It is the latter spread of religious extremist ideology that confronts Mozambique, and many other countries in Asia and Africa today. For readers’ information, a brief diversion into Mozambican realities may help.

The 1964-74 armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism led by the Marxist FRELIMO was helped by the Soviet Union and its ally Cuba. But years after coming to power, FRELIMO faced a civil war with a rightwing movement first sponsored by the (colonial) Rhodesia Central Intelligence Organisation and formally founded in 1975 as the Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO) as part of an anti-communist movement against FRELIMO. That civil war finally wound down after a FRELIMO-RENAMO peace agreement in 1992.

Islam arrived in Mozambique in the 7^th-8^thcenturies and was concentrated in the north. It owed its rapid spread in the country to Sufi teachings and practices. The Portuguese colonialists considered Muslims a threat and excluded them from the process called assimilado(assimilation). This outcome was also due to Catholicism being the determining characteristic of Portuguese colonial culture and identity. In the north, the Portuguese colonial authorities aligned themselves with non-Muslim ethnic groups, thereby deepening long standing ethno-religious cleavages.

By the 1960s, Wahhabiism as enunciated by Saudi Arabia pushed Sufism back in the northern region. After independence in 1974, the Marxist FRELIMO government sought to secularise the state and society by banning religious teaching and leaders as ‘backward’. Islam in particular, given its increasingly radical Wahhabi leanings, was particularly targeted. During the civil war against RENAMO in the 1980s, the FRELIMO government loosened its stance on Islam to prevent RENAMO taking advantage of unrest in the north. But just six years after the civil war ended in 1992, a group of young Islamic radicals broke away from the northern Islamic Council supported by the government and formed Ansar al-Sunna, wedded to strict adherence to Sharia and anti-secular in outlook to the extent of opposing any group amongst the northern Muslims aligned with the FRELIMO government. Ansar al-Sunna’s ranks were fed by a radicalised faction of youth who had studied in conservative, if not openly Islamist institutions abroad in East Africa, Saudi Arabia, etc.

From January 2016, records show, Ansar al-Sunna embarked on an armed struggle that yielded 703 attacks till December 2019, of which 302 were in Cabo Delgado. The FRELIMO government’s initial response to this threat was tardy, but following an uptick in 2017 in the brutal attacks against government security forces (a source of captured weapons and ammunition) and civilians (74 percent of the attacks between January 2016 to December 2019), arrested a number of suspects. Of these, 189 accused were put on trial in October 2018 in Pemba. Three mosques set up by Ansar al-Sunna were closed, which may have further fuelled resentment in their ranks.

Ansar al-Sunna’s forays against government forces aside, the bulk of their attacks target defenceless civilians, including in the process beheadings, torture, rape and kidnapping of women, burning homes and destroying property and especially targeting teachers. The victims are non-Muslims or anyone who opposes the Ansar al-Sunna fanatics. How this behaviour and conduct can be justified in the name of Islam speaks of the tragedy of extremist distortion of its message and spirit at the hands of cavalier purveyors of barbaric extremism.

Mozambique is one of several African countries that are suffering from the spillover of extremist religious terrorism spawned initially by the Afghan wars and by now metamorphosed into a hydra that may not be organisationally one, but in thought, intent and methods is barely distinguishable. Meanwhile IS, after being uprooted from its conquered territory in Iraq and Syria, far from dead, is spreading its and its ideological collaborators’ message and methods to countries from sub-Saharan Africa to the Asia-Pacific region.

Welcome to the wages of the original sin of spawning and supporting fanatical religious extremist proxies for (in hindsight) extremely dubious purposes and their unintended consequences.

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Editorial May 7, 2021

A portent of things to come

 

As feared by informed observers, thousands of Afghans with their families have fled their homes in Helmand province on May 3, 2021 and taken refuge in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah as fierce fighting has broken out between government forces and the Taliban after the US military started withdrawing from the area. The US handed over a base in Helmand to Afghan government forces a day before. The latter claimed pushing back the Taliban on multiple checkpoints after they had fallen to the Taliban offensive, retaking them all and killing 100 Taliban and 22 al Qaeda fighters. The Taliban on the other hand claimed a large number of Afghan troops were killed in the fighting. Both sides are prone to exaggerating the other side’s casualties. Nevertheless, even after discounting the claims for being inflated for morale reasons, the fact remains that the expected Taliban push after the US withdrawal seems to have begun in the exact area where the US and British forces suffered their highest casualties during the war, reflecting the entrenched Taliban hold over Helmand. Fighting is also reported to have broken out in several other provinces, presaging a general offensive on all fronts by the Taliban. To save face, the Pentagon has attempted to downplay the fighting, but facts are stubborn things. The Taliban offensive has raised concerns that US troops may also be at risk as they pull out.

As US top military commanders have admitted, there are no good outcomes to look forward to as the US finally winds down its 20-year longest, and arguably least successful, foreign war. For the US, the only remaining question is the nature of the fallout from its ignominious retreat and what can be done to limit the damage to its reputation and image. The victims of the fresh civil war that is erupting and may end in a complete Taliban victory are, first and foremost, women, whose increased rights may be rolled back by a Taliban in power as witnessed during their stint in 1996-2001, and non-Pashtun ethnic groups that constitute what has been called the mosaic of nationalities that defines Afghanistan. Second, fears are being voiced that as the US forces withdraw and the Taliban tighten their grip on the country, including the capital Kabul, even US embassy staff may be under threat. In addition, Afghan translators and others who supported the US effort are at high risk, being dubbed ‘traitors’ by the Taliban. So far there appears little or no planning to help such elements escape the extremists’ wrath by relocating them and their families to the US or at least outside Afghanistan. Last but by no means least, despite soothing noises from Washington that aid for the Afghan military, development and civilian programmes will continue, this seems a hope flying in the face of the impending reality. Washington is also concerned at losing its intelligence gathering base in Afghanistan, with hints thrown around that other countries in the region may offer relocation of such facilities. All this seems to be wishful thinking at best at the moment, and the US is unlikely to avoid the ignominy of defeat.

Inside Afghanistan, the non-Pashtun ethnic groups such as the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Farsiwan of western Afghanistan are unlikely to go down without a fight. Each of these groups enjoys fraternal ties with their co-ethnic neighbouring countries such as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iran. Help and succour from these sources for the impending civil war is likely, threatening a prolongation of the bloodshed. As is being witnessed in Helmand, intensified fighting may trigger a fresh refugee exodus, with all neighbouring countries, especially Pakistan, being once again inundated with helpless people fleeing for their lives. Last but by no means the least, the sputtering Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) campaign that took the lives of two of our soldiers and wounded two others in a roadside bomb blast in Bajaur on May 4, 2021, may see an uptick as the Taliban gain ground since the TTP is now safely ensconced on Afghan soil, courtesy the Taliban. So much for our much vaunted ‘proxies’. Just as the US top brass sees little good coming out of the impending debacle in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other neighbouring countries too will be hard put to it to avoid the almost inevitable negative fallout of an eventual Taliban victory.

Business Recorder Editorial May 6, 2021

Electoral reforms impasse

 

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government’s unveiling of a comprehensive plan for electoral reform has sparked off another acrimonious exchange between it and the opposition. Federal Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry and Adviser to the Prime Minister on Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan invited the opposition parties for talks on the reforms in a press conference on May 3, 2021, but in the same breath, vowed to go ahead even without the opposition’s support on the basis that it had the needed parliamentary strength to carry out most of the proposed changes to the Elections Act 2017, but needed the opposition’s support for a couple of proposed constitutional amendments. Blowing hot and cold thus, the two cabinet members could not restrain themselves from blasting the opposition’s opposition to the reforms merely for the sake of opposition. Given the straitened relationship between the government and the opposition since the PTI came to power in 2018, such mixed messaging was hardly likely to induce a change of heart in the opposition. The envisaged reforms are by and large unexceptionable, perhaps even necessary to restore the battered credibility of the electoral process in our chequered history. They include the introduction of electronic voting machines (EVMs), changing the basis for delimitation of constituencies from population to registered voters, overseas Pakistanis being allowed to vote in elections, identifiable open ballots for the Senate polls, at least 10,000 members for the registration of a political party, all political parties to be bound to hold annual conventions, transparency and redressal mechanisms in the appointment of electoral staff and making it mandatory for elected members to take oath within 60 days. All these can in principle be carried out by a simple majority in parliament to make amendments to various clauses of the Election Act 2017. However, open identifiable ballots in Senate elections and allowing overseas Pakistanis to vote require constitutional amendments. The two cabinet ministers also committed to presenting their proposals to civil society, media platforms, bar councils, press clubs and other stakeholders to get their input on the suggested reforms

Not surprisingly, the opposition has shot down the invitation in no uncertain manner, reflecting the state of tension and conflict between the two sides. Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said there was no point to the suggested electoral reforms unless and until the establishment’s role in politics in general and elections in particular was overcome. He also scoffed at Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan’s offer to discuss the reforms, reminding his audience at a press conference that the PM was part of the alleged rigging in the 2018 general elections. Pointing to the unprecedented deployment of the army in that election, which made the institution’s role controversial amidst charges of rigging, Bilawal castigated the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N’s) demand to involve the army in the recount of votes in the recent NA-249 by-election in Karachi. He advised the PML-N to approach the Election Commission of Pakistan and not the military, since this could be seen as a betrayal of democratic principles for short-term expedient goals. The PML-N’s chief Nawaz Sharif reiterated his stance that the issue was not electoral reforms but respect for the vote. He pointed to the Results Transmission System (RTS) controversy in the 2018 elections to argue that the proposed introduction of EVMs would reproduce the RTS controversy unless the people’s mandate was respected by not changing victory into defeat and defeat into victory through manipulation and rigging.

The outcome of the government’s offer is hardly a surprise. The government and the opposition have locked horns since the day the PTI came to office, largely because of the so-called anti-corruption drive by the former that has seen opposition leaders in and out of prison and enmeshed in interminable cases and legal proceedings on charges of corruption that seem not to be yielding much result. This has so queered the atmosphere that parliament has been rendered virtually dysfunctional, civilised exchange between the two sides of the aisle virtually non-existent, and the descent into gutter language, invective and abuse, all of which precludes parliamentary proceedings. Having said that, and despite the unresolved controversies about the 2018 general elections and subsequent by-elections, it is perhaps wiser for the opposition to participate in and contribute to the debate about turning round our perennially contested electoral process into one that garners credibility and the acceptance of the results by all sides. After all, without a credible electoral process as the foundation, the democratic project hardly has a chance of taking off, let alone arriving at its desired destination. However, in this matter, the greater responsibility lies on the government to reverse the vitiated atmosphere and make it possible for the opposition to walk through the door it has held ajar, in the interests of forging acceptable democratic rules of the political process.

(Added by the paper) We urge all opposition parties to engage with the government on the issue of electoral reforms to strengthen democracy.

Business Recorder Column May 4, 2021

World Press Freedom Day

 

Rashed Rahman

 

May 3, 2021 passed as World Press Freedom Day in relative quietude given the damper on all aspects of life wrought by the Covid pandemic (May Day suffering the same fate this year). Nevertheless, media reports reflected on the state of press freedom in Pakistan, painting in the process a dark and worrying picture.

The International Federation of Journalists has ranked Pakistan the fifth most dangerous country as regards journalism, with 138 media persons being killed between 1990 and 2020. In 2021, three journalists have been killed while one, Absar Alam, has been wounded in a broad daylight attack in a public park in Islamabad. Journalists throughout the country are being targeted with impunity by state and non-state actors.

Freedom Network Pakistan’s latest report on press freedom says 148 instances of attacks and other forms of repression against journalists occurred between May 3, 2020 and April 20, 2021 across the country, an increase of over 40 percent over the 91 such cases in May 2019-April 2020. Amongst the current year’s crop were six assassinations and seven attempted assassinations. With the locus of media shifting incrementally over the years to the federal capital Islamabad, it comes as no surprise that it is rated the most dangerous place for journalists who are critical. Of the 148 cases mentioned above, 51 occurred in Islamabad. Sindh emerged as second most dangerous with 38 cases, complicated further by the nexus between feudal landlords (waderas) and the police, judicial system, administration, etc. A new breed of media-waderas(big landlords who have ventured into the media and ensure the protection of the interests of their class) has sprung up to exacerbate the woes of any journalist attempting to expose the cruelties, exploitation of poor peasants, and vested interest elite capture of state and society by this largely retrogressive class. Punjab is the third worst in this ‘race’, with 29 cases, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Balochistan contributed 13, nine and eight cases respectively during the period under review.

Whereas non-state actors such as feudal and tribal leaders and religious extremist organisations pose threats to the life and limb of any critical journalist, it is the national security state and its intelligence limbs that wreak the worst havoc on journalists with the temerity to attempt to speak truth to power (the essential role of a free press as the watchdog and tribune of the people’s interests). Of late, increasingly sophisticated methods have been evolved and implemented to keep such non-malleable journalists (a still important but dwindling tribe) on a leash. Such methods envelop a range of measures to silence such voices through legal cases (27 in the period under review), threats of murder or other dire consequences (26 instances), and at least 25 cases of arrest/detention. These three repressive categories represented 60 percent of the 148 violations of press freedom mentioned above.

The squeezing financially of the media by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government has wrought havoc as far as independent and free media in Pakistan is concerned. Media managements across the board have fired thousands of journalists, slashed the salaries of those still grateful to have saved their jobs, and implemented self-censorship so as not to annoy the powers that be. To add to the repressive panoply, news rooms in both the print and electronic media have acquired ‘handlers’ who are the ultimate arbiters of what can go and what cannot.

The national security state, with the military at its apex, has embarked on what has been dubbed fifth generation warfare to exercise hegemony over the national narrative. To this end, not only has the mainstream media been ‘subjugated’ as described above, any attempt by ‘discarded’ journalists to use social media to get their stories or point of view across runs the risk of organised mass trolling, abuse, and worse. Many such journalists/activists have had to flee the country for fear of the unwanted attentions of the national security state.

From this brief survey of the state of press freedom in Pakistan, it is easy to glean the conclusion that the space for freedom of expression is steadily, if not rapidly, shrinking. There is by now little need to explain the criticality of a free press for a democracy. But a media in chains cannot fulfil its duty as the fourth estate to speak truth to power, uphold and protect the people’s interests, and nudge state and society away from the predilections (most of which have proved disastrous in the past) of the national security state to the exclusion of the people’s freedom of expression and its concomitant struggle for rights. Governments as far back as one can remember (military, civilian, and military-dominated) have been trying to convince the people that a free press exists, in the face of the undeniable truth that this is an outright lie. The current PTI government, along with all its other ‘achievements’ will surely go down in history as the worst collaborator of the national security state in throttling the media and the people’s freedom of expression rights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Editorial May 1, 2021

Taliban intransigence

 

Media reports speak of Pakistan’s increasing frustration at the Taliban’s foot dragging regarding a political settlement with the Afghan government to ensure the country does not spiral into a fresh civil war following the US and NATO forces’ withdrawal by September 11, 2021. Although some reports say Pakistan is embarking afresh on persuading the Taliban to rejoin the sputtering peace process on pain of ‘tough actions’ by Pakistan, it is problematic what such measures, if any, could entail and what, if anything, they might achieve. It needs only to be recalled that at various points in time and facing dire circumstances, particularly after 9/11, the Taliban have refused to bend to Pakistan’s wishes. Currently, enjoying as they do the initiative on the battlefield and in control of considerable territory, the intransigent Taliban are unlikely to fritter away these advantages at the negotiating table. Pakistan seems particularly peaked at the Taliban boycott of the peace conference in Istanbul that followed US President Biden’s shifting the final date for withdrawal to September 11, 2021 instead of May 1, 2021 agreed under Trump. Pakistan’s Special Envoy on Afghanistan Ambassador Muhammad Sadiq travelled to Kabul on April 27, 2021 to reassure the Afghan government that Pakistan would try to persuade the Taliban to attend the postponed Istanbul conference as Islamabad believes the insurgents would be making a huge mistake if they stay out of the peace process. Long a supporter of the Taliban, Islamabad seems to have veered round to considering the Ashraf Ghani government and the Taliban equally unreasonable. Nevertheless, a Pakistani delegation is on its way to Doha to meet the Taliban leadership. Amidst deep seated and incremental fears about the ability of the Afghan military and security forces set up, trained and financed by the US to the tune of millions of dollars, to hold their own against the Taliban after the US/NATO forces depart, US Defence Secretary General (retired) Lloyd Austin has telephoned COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa to discuss the scenario and related matters. This may be interpreted as the restoration of the military to military relationship between the Pentagon and GHQ, badly battered by the events of the last 20 years in Afghanistan. It may also reflect the concern on both sides regarding the fallout of a Taliban post-withdrawal victory, not only inside Afghanistan, but in the region as a whole, of which Pakistan is first and foremost in the path of adverse consequences, including a fresh wave of refugees and a resurgence of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ensconced in safe havens on Taliban-controlled Afghan soil.

As US Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley has put it, it is not possible to predict Afghanistan’s fate after the US troops withdrawal, with the worst-case outcome a collapse of the Afghan government. Describing it as a tough situation, General Milley said there were no good answers to any of it. With due respect to the General, who may be trying to soften the blow of the US’s defeat in Afghanistan that many insightful analysts have been predicting for years, the outcome of Washington’s longest foreign war is obvious to all but the purblind or biased. Afghanistan has the distinction of being labelled the ‘graveyard of empires’, testimony to the unyielding character of Afghans towards foreign invaders and occupiers. That the defeat of the Red Army in this landlocked country was one of the reasons behind disintegration of the Soviet Union is a fact. The US is unlikely to suffer such a catastrophic fate, but it will almost certainly come out of its Afghan adventure with its nose askew, if not broken. The long-suffering Afghan people have little to look forward to except a possible fresh civil war (at best) after the withdrawal, with an eventual Taliban victory all but written in stone. Pakistan may well come to rue the day it created and unleashed the Taliban, the whole episode coming back to haunt us for years if Afghanistan reverts to hardline Taliban rule, with its concomitant consequences for democracy, women’s and ethnic groups’ rights inside the country, and a possible uptick in TTP activities inside Pakistan. Militancy may have proved ‘handy’ to attempt so-called strategic depth in Afghanistan, but time may prove how high a cost Pakistan has paid, and will pay, for its own Afghan adventure.