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Blood on the rooftops

By Rohan Joshi on March 11, 2013 in Foreign Policy, India, Pakistan, Terrorism, United States

India and the West must reevaluate their positions on the continued persecution of minorities in Pakistan.

The attack on 150 Christian homes in Lahore’s Joseph Colony is the most recent in a series of attacks against minorities in Pakistan.  A mob of nearly 3,000 protestors pillaged through the community over alleged blasphemous remarks made by a Christian “sanitation worker” and set fire to homes and shops. Punjab police stood by and watched as the situation unfolded.  That no one died from this marauding rampage is less a consolation and more a miracle.  This image tells us a story of the anarchy that prevailed that day.

Two weeks ago in Karachi, a bomb ripped through a mainly-Shia community in Abbas Town. At least 45 people were killed and 150 wounded.  In the first two months of 2013, nearly 200 Shia were killed in Quetta in two separate bombings.  But the response from Pakistan’s leaders has been predictable.  The attacks in Quetta were a conspiracy.  The attack against the Christian community was also a conspiracy. There are no realities in Pakistan anymore; just conspiracies.

It is very likely that this disciplined and motivated assault on the minorities of Pakistan will continue.  There has been a deliberate attempt to portray this violence as a “sectarian conflict.”  But those who do so fail to recognize that a conflict requires two willing participants.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi — the terrorist outfit of the Ahl-e-Sunnat-wa-al-Jamaat (ASWJ) –  which claimed responsibility for the attacks in Quetta is based in the badlands of south Punjab, where the writ of the PML(N), rather than that of the PPP, holds sway.  The LeJ has very recently made it clear (اردو) that its mission is “the abolition of this impure sect and people, the Shia and the Shia-Hazaras from every city, every town, every village and every nook and cranny of Pakistan.”  And yet, the Pakistani state can (will) do nothing about the violence carried out against its citizens in its own sovereign territory.

Article upon article has been written arguing that Pakistan is a failed state.  But Pakistan today is not a failed state as much as it is a failed idea.  Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s vision is invalidated with each mounting attack on sectarian and religious minorities in Pakistan.  It remains invalidated by the preservation of legal cover though the likes of the Hudood and XX Ordinances which allow for the perpetuation of the “cleansing operation” currently under way in the Land of the Pure.

Jinnah’s Pakistan has ceased to exist.  What we have now instead is a different project, whose odious objectives should be amply clear to everyone.  Under this new project, anyone who is not of a particular identity favored by the state will be systematically eradicated.  The Hindus that remained in Pakistan after Partition have always had to endure the agony of a state-mandated program of intimidation, subjugation and extermination.  However, the implementation of this new project means that the Shia and Ahmedis are also wajib ul-qatal (fit to be killed).

What is left of this failed experiment is a state in our immediate neighborhood with a population of 180 million having no capacity or willingness to protect its minorities.  But how does one provide for the security of those persecuted?  If the state has decided that it is unable and/or unwilling to do so, it presents an ethical dilemma to India and the West.  But more importantly, it also presents a security dilemma to India.  India cannot afford to have a Bangladesh-like scenario on both its eastern and western boundaries.

Members of the Shia and Ahmadiyya communities who are financially capable of seeking better lives in the Gulf or the West will migrate, or have already done so.  Persecuted Hindus will seek refuge in India without going through the rigors of its convoluted immigration process. India will most likely turn a blind eye to their presence in the country if they choose not to return to Pakistan.  But what happens to the vast majority of Pakistan’s minorities, who on account of being systematically persecuted and ostracized, lack the financial means to escape their daily horrors?

It has perhaps been politically judicious thus far for the West to not press Pakistan hard enough on the issue of its treatment of minorities.  An opportunity to correct these wrongs exists after the U.S. and its allies extricate themselves from their entanglements in 2014.  Human rights NGOs and news media from the West and India must be encouraged to increase their coverage of abuses against minorities in Pakistan.  Additionally for India, this presents an opportunity to reevaluate and streamline its immigration policy and to formalize a legal framework to grant asylum to persecuted individuals in its neighborhood.

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Urdunama: Saboot

By Rohan Joshi on December 2, 2012 in Lashkar-e-Taiba, Pakistan, United States, Urdunama

On December 1, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani-Khar told news channels that while there was “no evidence” to implicate Hafiz Saeed in the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, Pakistan would take action if India were to provide proof of his involvement.  A day later, Pakistan’s far-right Urdu newspaper Ummat interviewed Hafiz Saeed on 26/11, who lashed out against Ms. Khar, India and the United States, while proclaiming his innocence.  Excerpts of the interview follow:

On Ms. Khar’s statements promising action against Hafiz Saeed should India provide proof.

[If any allegations are brought forward,] we will leave the matter to the courts.  We have always opted to resolve issues via the court of law and will continue to do so. We would like to resolve all issues within the provisions of Pakistani law. We do not intend to pursue those actions that will create problems; we’re interested in solving problems, not compounding them.

[However,] it has been 4 years since the attacks in Mumbai. In these 4 years, India has been unable to provide any evidence against me in connection with the case. The documents provided by India as evidence could not stand in court and were dismissed by Lahore High Court as propaganda. A similar case was also made by the Supreme Court. A judicial commission was sent from Pakistan to India on the issue of the Mumbai attacks, and no proof of my involvement was presented to them. Despite this, Ms Khar wants to ask India to provide more evidence against me. She appears to be very eager to help India resolve the Mumbai case, but what has she done with regard to the Samjhauta Express attacks, where many Pakistanis were killed?

If Ms Khar says her government would like to resolve the Kashmir dispute through non-military means, can she tell us how successful her government has been thus far? We have about 2-3 issues with India on Kashmir, and her government has been completely unsuccessful in resolving these through non-military means. There is only one way to resolve the Kashmir dispute — jihad.

On why the U.S. pursues action against him.

U.S. allegations against me are both a conspiracy and evidence of the deepening India-U.S. relationship.  Al-hamdulillah, we have been very successful, through Difa-e-Pakistan Council, in bringing various organizations together and exposing the conspiracies of the U.S. and its ally India to the rest of the people of Pakistan. It is because of this that the U.S. and India want to silence me in any way possible.

On peace with India and the U.S.

The U.S. and India are not pursuing the interests of their people, but the interests of their own politicians. India, to this day, has not accepted Pakistan’s right to exist as an independent state. And yet our leaders go to India and grovel for trade. They want to improve trade ties with India and grant them “Most Favored Nation” status. The U.S. completely supports India in its hatred for Pakistan. The U.S. uses India in the subcontinent the same way it uses Israel in the Middle East. Both India and the U.S. are blinded by their hatred for Islam.

We are now in December. It was in December years ago that the very same India dismembered Pakistan.  Do we now seek to improve economic ties with the same country that divided Pakistan and continues to suppress Kashmiris? Every product that is exported from India to Pakistan will be tainted with the blood of Kashmiri Muslims. Our politicians do not understand that the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan and the mujahideen in Kashmir are fighting wars for the survival of Pakistan.

India unleashes state-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir, and dams rivers flowing into Pakistan; and yet our government wants to grant them “Most Favored Nation” status. If our leaders are incapable of empathizing with the mujahideen in Kashmir, fine.  But they must, at the very least, not get in their way. [روزنامہ امّت]

 

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General rhetoric

By Rohan Joshi on December 1, 2011 in Pakistan, United States

Gen. Kayani finds himself in a very unenviable position.

There is palpable anger in the streets of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi over U.S. airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani troops last Saturday.  The most powerful man in Pakistan, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani has been forced to swing into damage control mode.  Pakistan’s first haphazard response to the attacks involved closing NATO supply lines and demanding  that the U.S. vacate Shamsi airbase (allegedly used to conduct drone strikes in K-P).  It then withdrew itself from the Bonn conference on Afghanistan.  Then there was a vague attempt to block the BBC and other “Western channels” from broadcasting in Pakistan — a strange threat at best, and one that is unlikely to hurt anyone, except possibly, listeners of the BBC in Pakistan.

Today, Gen Kayani apparently “upped the ante” by declaring that his troops would respond with “full force” to any future aggression by NATO or the U.S.:

“Be assured that we will not let the aggressor walk away easily,” the army chief said in a message for the troops and added that he had “clearly directed that any act of aggression will be responded with full force, regardless of the cost and consequences”.

He believed that the attack could have been retaliated effectively had the communications network not broken down. “Timely decision could not be taken due to breakdown of communication with the affected posts and therefore lack of clarity of situation at various levels, including corps HQ and GHQ.”

Gen Kayani further clarified that the troops could respond on their own, when attacked, without waiting for orders from the command. “I have full trust in your capabilities and resolve,” he stressed. [Dawn]

But this is all meaningless rhetoric for several reasons.  First, Pakistan is not the victim that it is claiming to be, but in fact the aggressor.  It has been reliably reported that it was Pakistan, not the U.S., that fired first, presumably in an attempt to aid the Taliban, which had come under siege from U.S. Special Forces.  This, of course, is not a new occurrence.  The Long War Journal catalogs at least eight occasions of unprovoked cross-border shelling by Pakistani troops in Mohmand Agency since September 2011.

Second, if the Pakistanis could have hit back at NATO or U.S. forces, they would have.  The fact that they didn’t indicates that they couldn’t.  Upon being initially challenged by the Pakistanis, U.S. Special Forces called in close air support from NATO, which proceeded to decimate the aggressors.  This is not an issue of a breakdown in communication between corps HQ and GHQ.  When you’re under attack and taking casualties, you don’t need “permission” from your Chief of Army Staff to defend yourself.

Third, bravado notwithstanding, how can the Pakistani army realistically “respond with full force, regardless of the cost or consequences?” Does Gen. Kayani not expect the U.S. to respond in kind to Pakistani military action? Is Pakistan really that stupid to get into a fight with the U.S. or NATO and trigger an uncontrollable chain of events?

The truth of the matter is that the proverbial noose around the neck of the current Chief of Army Staff is tightening since the humiliation of the Abbottabad raid in May.  Pakistan’s inability to respond to the recent “act of aggression” puts Gen. Kayani in a very unenviable position.  And the more that noose tightens, the more erratic Gen. Kayani’s actions will get.  There are already many Yahyas in Rawalpindi to Kayani’s Ayub. And as a restless nation bays for blood, Kayani is capable of attempting to placate them with little else than bellicose rhetoric.

Given the rather delicate situation that he finds himself in, Gen. Kayani in actuality should be praying for zero confrontation with NATO or U.S. forces in the short-term, rather than welcoming it. For should he find himself in a Salala-like situation in the near future, he might discover that the cost of backing down from another military confrontation with the U.S. outweighs its apparent benefits.

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Don’t feed the Cookie Monster

By Rohan Joshi on October 22, 2011 in Foreign Policy, Pakistan, United States

Forget Pakistan and move on.

I came across this article in Foreign Policy by Teresita and Howard Schaffer entitled “Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir: A grand bargain?“  Ambassadors Teresita and Howard Schaffer are true paragons of the U.S. foreign policy community and have extensive experience in the subcontinent (indeed, Mrs. Schaffer is fluent in Hindi and Urdu).  However, and as someone with tremendous respect for their contributions, I found some of  the recommendations in the article surprising.

The article calls for a review of U.S. strategic options with Pakistan and postulates a “grand bargain,” which essentially involves “giving” Pakistan what it wants in Afghanistan, but on two pre-conditions: first, making Pakistan responsible for preventing terrorism emanating from Afghanistan (yes, only Afghanistan), and second, getting Pakistan to agree on a settlement on Kashmir on the present geopolitical lines.  In all fairness, the article both recognizes the challenges inherent in such a plan, and accepts that the likelihood  of such a bargain coming to fruition is rather low.  However, there are elements in this “grand bargain” that I find either disturbing or infeasible.

The first element of this “grand bargain” involves accepting Pakistani hegemony in Afghanistan. Pakistan, not the civil administration in Afghanistan, will be empowered to undertake negotiations between Kabul and “whatever elements of the Taliban” to work towards a post-war settlement.  The article also envisages the U.S. accepting Pakistan’s demand of eliminating Indian involvement in Afghanistan.  Such logic should greatly concern New Delhi, which recently signed a “strategic partnership” with Afghanistan involving an enhancement of bilateral ties in education, economics and security. This article fails to explain why Afghanistan or India would ever entertain this, and how the U.S. and Pakistan feel they are in a position to transact such an arrangement without resistance from India and Afghanistan.

Next, in return for this “grand bargain,” the article recommends that the U.S. warn Pakistan that it would be held responsible for any act of terror originating from Afghanistan or Pakistan. The article doesn’t delve any further into how this fete is to be accomplished.  The Pakistanis have acted with an ascending sense of impunity in conducting sub-conventional operations in a region already dominated by U.S. forces.  If the U.S.’s strategy with respect to Pakistan’s proclivity for terror has failed to yield tangible results thus far, what other tools does the U.S. suppose it has to force Rawalpindi into compliance? And by the way, has the U.S. held anyone responsible for the discovery of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan this past May?

The third component of this bargain pertains to Kashmir. According to the article, the U.S. would “tell” Pakistan that it would publicly call for a settlement on Kashmir based on existing demarcations along the LoC and “give India advance notice” of the announcement.

Advance notice! One wonders if the U.S. thinks that it is in a position to orchestrate such a grand settlement especially at a time when its own power is fading relative to other actors on the global stage.  The U.S. would do well to  imbibe an espresso shot of reality here.  Where is the appetite for such an arrangement in a rabidly anti-India Pakistan?  Pakistan’s political parties created an uproar just last week in  response to the inconsequential issue of granting India the status of “Most Favored Nation.”  For a nation bred on the notion that Kashmir is rightfully theirs, any compromise on the issue will elicit a response that Rawalpindi and Islamabad will be incapable of dealing with.

And while India in very broad terms would like a settlement based on turning the LoC into a permanent border, it is in no particular hurry to make the move.  India today is focused on restoring relative peace to Jammu & Kashmir; to that end, it has encouraged dialog between the Centre and political parties of all hues in the Valley.  However, an external reconciliation of Jammu & Kashmir is just not a priority.

The weak coalition in New Delhi does not have the political capital necessary to conclude on such a significant transaction, even if it wanted to.  Simply, Kashmir is a “core issue” for India, and as the U.S. has already realized, is one where India is demonstratively inflexible. If an impoverished India of the past managed to stave off U.S. pressure on Kashmir, what makes the U.S. think that an ascending India will do otherwise?  Any expectation that India will march to the U.S.’s tune merely on being told to do so, is very far removed from reality indeed.

In the end, if the U.S. hopes to move on from its engagement in Afghanistan and ensure that the country does not return to a pre-9/11 jihadi haven, it must stop encouraging Pakistan’s institutional irrationality.  This involves recognizing that U.S. and Pakistan’s interests are divergent, and that Pakistan isn’t the solution, but the problem.  Further, it must realize that even assuming Kashmir is resolved  by some miracle, this will not necessarily mean an end to Pakistan’s obsession with India.

Pakistan’s problem is not Kashmir, it is India and India’s existence.  Pakistan’s quest for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan — an agenda duly entertained in the article — is directly tied to its preoccupation with India. If there were no India, there would be no need for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan.  Therefore, how does India attain peace with Pakistan, when Pakistan’s definition of peace involves India’s dismemberment?  Questions for the Schaffers and the U.S. to ponder over.

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