Business Recorder Editorial June 22, 2018

PTI workers’ ‘revolt’

The PTI angry workers from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been staging a sit-in at party leader Imran Khan’s Bani Gala residence since the party’s announcement of tickets for the upcoming general elections. Their complaint is that committed workers who have struggled for the party’s success for years have been ignored in favour of so-called ‘electables’. There are also demands that tickets should be given to workers who reside in the respective constituencies and not those from outside it, are not turncoats who have, as per their habit, switched sides just before the elections, nor should seat adjustments be sought with the PML-Q and Jamshed Dasti. The workers, fed on a rich diet of Imran Khan’s own rhetoric over many years that traditional politicians are corrupt opportunists and will be made an example of, ransacked Imran Khan’s party offices at Bani Gala on June 18, 2018, preventing in the process Jahangir Tareen from leaving the premises. Following the incident, Imran Khan addressed the protestors and swore he had not awarded a single ticket to his family members or close friends and all party decisions vis-à-vis tickets had been taken on merit. When this failed to satisfy the agitating workers, Imran Khan asked for three days to personally review all appeals against allegedly unfair ticket allotments. In response, the workers said they would vacate the area after three days when Imran Khan announces the reversal of the party’s parliamentary board decisions regarding the candidates they object to. Amidst media reports that police manhandled the protestors during the sit-in, the latter did not allow Arif Alvi, the party’s Karachi leader, to enter Imran Khan’s residence and vowed not to allow any leader in until their demands were met.

Imran Khan’s difficulties in quelling the ‘revolt’ by his angry workers is a classic case of being hoist by his own petard. Since forming the PTI more than two decades ago, Imran Khan has seldom let go of any opportunity to castigate our traditional politicians for being corrupt, opportunists, and open to many things illegal for their own benefit. His ‘revolutionary’ rhetoric that his party would not only reject such a political culture but change and overthrow it has now come back with a vengeance to haunt him. The months-long sit-in he mounted in 2014 against the PML-N government gave his committed workers a taste of street power. That lesson has now rebounded against Imran Khan. One can sympathise with his dilemma. The PTI fought the 2013 elections with this ‘purist’ attitude. Before the polls, they were carried away by their own rhetoric, firmly convinced they would win the elections. When the results fell far below these exaggerated expectations, albeit a better showing than their constituency-level support, electable candidates and the party machine to deliver the votes on polling day seemed to indicate, the narrative switched to alleged rigging. The sit-in followed, the rigging allegations were examined and rejected by none other than the present caretaker Prime Minister Nasirul Mulk who was the Chief Justice of Pakistan then, and the PTI retreated to lick its wounds. The crisis the ruling PML-N suffered in the aftermath of the Panama Papers resurrected the hopes of the PTI. This time the party decided to go the traditional political route of seeking electables, even those defecting from other parties despite unsavoury track records and characters. Naturally, there being only a finite number of seats up for grabs in the elections, committed workers had to be sacrificed in favour of the new entrants. All this was justified in the PTI leadership’s mind as necessary given the expedient needs of winning a sufficient number of seats to form a government. However, the PTI leadership seems to have underestimated the depth of the training received over many years from Imran Khan’s narrative. This contradiction has produced the present impasse. If Imran Khan is able to satisfy the demands of the angry workers, the party could once again find itself unable to reach the critical number of seats. If he cannot, the prospect of alienated workers sitting out the campaign could also damage the party’s prospects. Truly, Imran Khan is caught on the horns of a self-inflicted dilemma.

Business Recorder Column June 19, 2018

Convergence on Afghanistan

Rashed Rahman

Two days after COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa returned from a day long visit to Kabul on June 11, 2018, during which he met the Afghan and US military leadership, Mullah Fazlullah, chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and four of his top commanders were killed by a drone strike in Kunar province in northeastern Afghanistan.

Fazlullah, who earned the epithet Mulla Radio for his hate-filled, vitriolic broadcasts on FM radio while he terrorised Swat, had a long and interesting trajectory as a religious extremist and jihadi. Of humble origins, he rose through the ranks of the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-i-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM) led by his father-in-law Sufi Mohammad, eventually replacing the latter after he was imprisoned. Both son-in-law and Sufi Mohammad fought in Afghanistan after the US invasion and occupation of that country in 2001. Fazlullah was arrested on his return to Pakistan. After being released and taking over the TNSM, he unleashed a reign of terror in his home area Swat in the name of a strict implementation of so-called sharia.

Those on whom the wrath of Fazlullah was visited were strung up and killed in public squares. Anti-polio campaigners, educationists, schools, nothing modern escaped the medieval mindset of Fazlullah. After the Lal Masjid operation and the emergence of the TTP in 2007, Fazlullah merged the TNSM into the TTP and was declared the TTP Swat chief. By 2009, Fazlullah’s bloody ‘reign’ in Swat was no longer tolerable and a military operation during the PPP-led coalition government in power then was successfully mounted in 2009. The operation forced Fazlullah and his comrades to flee across the border and take refuge on Afghan soil. It was rumoured since then that his reported hideouts in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces were in the control of the Haqqani Network, without whose blessings and support he could not have found safe havens there. This was, to put it mildly, ironic, since the Haqqani Network was believed to be the most deadly proxy in the war in Afghanistan. If such a proxy was sheltering Fazlullah and company, this shed an unsavoury glaring light on the claim that the Haqqanis were ‘our boys’.

Even in his exile in Afghanistan, Fazlullah’s malign shadow dogged events inside Pakistan. The October 2012 near-fatal attack on Malala Yousafzai was traced to him. In November 2013, the TTP chief Hakeemullah Mehsud suffered the same fate as his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud, both being killed in drone strikes. Mulla Fazlullah was then made TTP chief, though not without controversy and misgivings within the TTP ranks. The basic reason for these was the passing of the TTP leadership torch from the Mehsuds to Mulla Fazlullah. As TTP chief, Fazlullah masterminded the massacre of school children in the Army Public School (APS), Peshawar in December 2014.

This horrendous massacre led to the National Action Plan and Operation Zarb-e-Azb in FATA. The APS massacre and the civil-military consensus on action against the TTP silenced the critics of drone strikes against terrorists within Pakistan (tacitly, it was alleged, carried out with the support of our authorities) and advocates of negotiations with the terrorists such as Imran Khan. The all-out military campaign in FATA succeeded in clearing the tribal areas of the terrorist presence (including foreign jihadists in the area since the Afghan wars started) but ‘exported’ the problem across the Afghan border rather than completely eliminated it. The presence of the TTP across the border and its sleeper cells inside Pakistan still provide the means to continue terrorist attacks inside the country.

As though to illustrate the truth of this statement, attacks from Afghanistan were mounted on military outposts on the North Waziristan border that resulted in five attackers and three of our soldiers being killed two days after Fazlullah’s death. These attacks appeared to be revenge for Fazlullah’s fate. However, such pinpricks, even if they continue, should not be given more weight than is their due. In fact the remarkable turnaround and drop in terrorist incidents inside Pakistan since Operation Zarb-e-Azb and its follow up Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad has now been crowned with the taking out of Fazlullah.

While Fazlullah’s elimination is cause for satisfaction, it should not be allowed to become grounds for complacency. Battered and knocked back on its heels, the TTP cannot just be written off as a threat yet. It retains fighters on Afghan soil, underground cells inside Pakistan, and the will, determination and wherewithal to continue a low intensity campaign for the foreseeable future. Letting one’s guard down therefore is not an option.

The more significant aspect of the Fazlullah elimination is that the TTP has blamed the Afghan National Security Directorate (NDS), the premier Afghan intelligence agency, with tipping off the US as to Fazlullah’s whereabouts. If so, this indicates the slowly but surely emerging convergence between Pakistan on the one hand, and the US and Kabul on the other, towards a common strategy for eliminating/accommodating the Taliban phenomenon. While the TTP is unlikely to be spared, the Afghan Taliban could well be nudged by Pakistan towards the negotiating table.

This long awaited but still remarkable convergence has emerged because of a number of factors. First and foremost, with the advent of US President Donald Trump, the heat has been turned on Pakistan to cooperate in the endgame in Afghanistan. The pain inflicted on Pakistan or waiting in the wings revolves around security and military aid being suspended by the US, hidden pressures being applied by the latter on international financial institutions vis-à-vis Pakistan’s anticipated asking for an economic bailout after the elections, and the prospect of alienation of Pakistan from the US-led western alliance.

No one knows better than the Pakistani military that China or Russia are no substitute for the US where access to state of the art military weapons and equipment and the level of finance required next financial year (estimated to be in the region of $ 25 billion) and thereafter are concerned. Trump is poised to hit Pakistan in its weak underbelly, the economy, a prospect as worrying for GHQ as the civil side because the military budget too could be affected.

Pressure, subsequent engagement with the US and Kabul, and Washington’s conceding the need to accommodate Pakistan’s demand for action against the TTP in Afghanistan, all seem to have produced the convergence emerging lately. The wisdom finally seems to be sinking in that an unstable Afghanistan means an unstable Pakistan. Here, neither the civil nor military sides of our power structures seem to have any appetite left for perpetuation of the endless Afghan war. This is a very good development for all parties concerned.

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Business Recorder Editorial June 19, 2018

India nailed

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has said he would ask the UN Human Rights Council starting its session from June 18, 2018 to consider establishing a commission of inquiry – the UN’s highest level probe – to investigate human rights violations in Indian Held Kashmir (IHK). This statement came on the heels of the launch of the first ever UN report on the human rights situation in Kashmir that pointed to impunity for rights abuses and lack of access to justice in IHK. Mr Hussein went on to say the Kashmir conflict had robbed millions of their basic human rights and continues to inflict untold suffering. The UN report on both parts of Kashmir noted that its focus was on the happenings in IHK from where reports of widespread human rights violations were received between July 2016 and April 2018. This was the period of the latest phase of the uprising in IHK in the wake of the killing of Burhan Wani by the security forces. Since then, the report cites civil society estimates that 130-145 civilians were unlawfully killed by the security forces using excessive force to quell the uprising. This approach also led to a very high number of injuries, especially due to the use of pellet shotguns, in which many protestors were blinded. The report discusses other elements of Indian repressive tactics including arbitrary arrests and detention (even children were not spared), torture, enforced disappearances, violations of the right to health, restrictions on the right to freedom of expression, reprisals against human rights defenders, restrictions on journalists, violations of the right to education, and sexual violence. It said the Indian security forces enjoyed virtual immunity under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1990. It also recommended investigation of alleged sites of mass graves. The report did examine the situation in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan but drew a line of distinction between human rights violations there that it said were of a different calibre and more of a structural nature. In the end, the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a meaningful dialogue on Kashmir.

The UN report emerged out of the refusal of both India and Pakistan to allow the UN unhindered access to both sides of Kashmir in the wake of the killing of Burhanuddin Wani and the heightened clashes and conflict in IHK that followed. Its launch now punctuates heightened clashes and ceasefire violations for many months on the Line of Control. The responses to the UN report follow the expected script, with Pakistan welcoming it as substantiating its efforts for some time to draw the attention of the world and the UN to the situation on the ground but rejected any interpretation of equivalence between the report’s section on Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan with the situation in IHK. India rejected the report as a selective compilation of largely unverified information that sought to build a false narrative that, according to it, violated the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This last is the subterfuge India has been resorting to for many years in denial of the fact that the Kashmir dispute is still  on the US Security Council’s agenda (albeit frozen). Interestingly, Indian army chief General Bipin Rawat appears to have mellowed his hardline view not so long ago that the Kashmiri youth cannot counter India’s guns and power. He now states that it is necessary to give peace a chance through dialogue, since the events of the last two years in particular indicate a growing recruitment to the ranks of the armed militants despite (or perhaps because of?) all the repression let loose on them. He said proxy war infiltration can be controlled but killing militant youth only provides more recruits to the insurgency. General Rawat may be using the camouflage of ‘proxy war’ to show his country and armed forces in a batter light, but his admission clearly points in the direction of the widening of the insurgency. Neither India nor Pakistan can wrest the whole of Kashmir by force, especially since both are by now declared nuclear weapons states. There is therefore no option but dialogue, including the Kashmiri people, to find a peaceful solution. Territorial changes are unlikely, therefore all sides must strive for a historic compromise that may leave the dividing lines as they are but soften the separation of families and people on either side, and encourage trade and peaceful interaction. When confidence grows, incremental demilitarisation could ensure peace returns to the conflicted land. But for this, the Modi government in India needs to abandon its hardline approach of repression and no dialogue. As General Rawat has pointed out, this is only perpetuating and making worse the troubles.

Business Recorder Editorial June 15, 2018

Bajwa’s hope

COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa led a high powered military-civil delegation to Kabul on the first day of the temporary ceasefire announced by the Afghan government and Taliban. According to an ISPR statement after the day-long visit was over, General Bajwa had meetings with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, and US commander General John Nicholson. Although not much detail was provided in the ISPR statement, it said the discussions dealt with the whole array of military, security and other issues of concern to the two countries. General Bajwa expressed the hope that the ceasefire would pave the way for an end to the protracted conflict. It is widely believed that Pakistan facilitated the ceasefire as part of further confidence building measures on the cards. The recently agreed Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Stability (APAPPS) still awaits the creation of five working groups, the most important being military and intelligence, to steer the relationship out of the vicious cycle of outrage, distrust and recrimination. General Bajwa during his talks attempted to dispel Afghan concerns about the fencing of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border by explaining it was meant to prevent terrorist attacks from across the border and not to erect walls between the people of the two countries.

The sweet talk in Kabul by both sides notwithstanding, General Bajwa’s sentiments appear more the triumph of hope over reality than the glad tidings they imply. There are still many obstacles to the temporary ceasefire (with all its exceptions and caveats) triggering peace and reconciliation in the war-torn country. If proof of this were needed, it was provided on the very first day of the ceasefire while General Bajwa was visiting. Clashes were reported across Afghanistan, with the governor of the northern Kohistan district in Faryab province killed in an ambush along with eight others. His district was reportedly then run over by the Taliban. Intense fighting was reported from Faryab and Sari Pul provinces, with unspecified casualties. Similar reports were received from Ghazni. Whether these attacks across the country are owed to the ceasefire-excluded groups such as the Haqqani Network and Islamic State or factions within the Taliban ranks who no longer adhere to the Quetta Shura’s directions at all times and places is not clear. But the fighting once again highlights the fragility and precariousness of even announced temporary ceasefires in the troubled country. The Taliban leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, reiterated his demand for direct talks with the US, which the latter consistently refuses to countenance, advising its adversary to instead talk to the Kabul government. This is unacceptable to the Taliban, who have dubbed the Ashraf Ghani government a ‘puppet’. Haibatullah Akhundzada also warned leading clerics who had issued a fatwa the other day condemning suicide bombings as against the teachings of Islam that they were being used by the occupying forces and Kabul. This warning could have a chilling effect on the clerics supporting peace and reconciliation since their meeting at which the fatwa was issued was bombed.

Pakistan of late has been bending its back to appear reasonable, rational, and a peacemaker vis-à-vis Afghanistan. But all these efforts continue to run aground again and again on the rock of the accusation that it still harbours the Taliban and other insurgent Afghan groups and allows them to operate from Pakistani soil. Pakistan denies this, but the world tends to take this denial with a huge pinch of salt. It has become the bugbear of relations with the US too after President Donald Trump came to office. Difficult as the task is, Pakistan must adhere to a policy that is in its best interests, i.e. using whatever leverage it possesses to bring the combatants in Afghanistan to the negotiating table. Recently, the US authorities have been making sympathetic noises regarding Pakistan’s core concerns, which translate into the immediate problem of terrorist attacks from across the border by the displaced Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the longer term concern about having a friendly regime in Kabul to ensure the security of its western border. The ceasefire may only have been an attempted temporary balm, and not consistently successful, but hopefully it would act as the first drops of rain onto the scorched earth of Afghanistan, with the possibility of peace providing huge dividends to the war weary populace, stability for Pakistan and the region, and the closure of a bloody chapter in history.

Business Recorder Editorial June 14, 2018

The striking contrast

Nawaz Sharif has once again produced a litany of complaints in a press conference on June 11, 2018 about the way he is being treated in the cases against him after his counsel Khwaja Haris withdrew. The counsel found it impossible to represent his client to the best of his ability after the Supreme Court (SC) ordered an extension of one month to the deadline for wrapping up the references against Nawaz Sharif and his family in an accountability court, admonishing in the process Khwaja Haris for being unwilling to comply with the SC’s orders for hearings to be held seven days a week in order to meet the deadline. Although there exists a perception that Nawaz Sharif has been attempting to delay the proceedings (at least until after the July 25, 2018 general elections), Khwaja Haris painted a picture of cooperation with the accountability court, not asking for adjournments, and pointing out that it was the prosecution that had failed to proceed with the urgency inherent in the SC’s deadlines, with, according to him, the unprecedented monitoring of the accountability court cases by a SC judge, an assertion that is not correct. While the SC has allowed Nawaz Sharif to engage fresh counsel if Khwaja Haris cannot be persuaded to continue, this fresh process implies the very delay the SC order sought to avoid. Whatever the merits of Nawaz Sharif’s defence that is primarily based on procedure to the exclusion of any paper trail of transactions, the new counsel will have to acquaint himself with the voluminous case record before being able to do justice to his client’s cause. The emerging scenario suggests that the fresh SC deadline may well end up not being met either, and arguably the cases could drag on till after July 25.

Defenders of the extraordinary lengths to which the SC has gone to ensure Nawaz Sharif and family cannot take advantage of the alleged packing of all state institutions with their loyalists over the decades of being in or close to power may well have a point. However, there is also another extraordinary thrust by the SC in allowing former dictator Pervez Musharraf to return home after his blocked CNIC and passport are restored, guaranteeing he would not be arrested if he appears before the SC. The SC wishes to hear Musharraf regarding his appeal against being disqualified from participating in the coming elections. It should not be forgotten that this extraordinary concession and kid gloves treatment is being offered to a coup maker (ironically endorsed by the SC), a constitution-breaker (the Emergency in 2007), an accused in the murder cases of Nawab Akbar Bugti and Benazir Bhutto, a proclaimed absconder from justice whose properties have been ordered expropriated (which has yet to be given effect), etc. The caution and zeal with which the judiciary is pursuing Nawaz Sharif and family’s cases contrasts sharply with the wriggle room to a fugitive from justice who went abroad ostensibly for medical treatment and promised to return, but has since flouted his own commitment and the law by cocking a snook at Pakistan’s justice system. The SC may well be motivated in both instances by its interpretation of the Constitution, statutes and laws, but the striking contrast in approach has most legal luminaries and concerned citizens scratching their heads. It behoves the SC to take account of the seemingly mixed messages its contradictory jurisprudence may be sending out, and attempt a course correction so as not even unintentionally erode the dignity, respect and credibility of the judiciary. Particularly on the eve of a controversial and likely to be hotly contested election, the SC and the judiciary as a whole need to look beyond to preserve their critical role in a state and society that must abide by the rule of law, but in a consistent manner and ensuring due process.