Grand Trunk Road

In 2002 Newsline reported on the death of Riaz Basra, a vital member and one of the founders of Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ)

“Reportedly, the timing of his death was no coincidence: it is believed that the LJ has of late been providing shelter to Arab terrorists, their erstwhile comrades-in-arms in Afghanistan, who have fled to Pakistan in the wake of the US bombing across the border. With the operation against militants in full swing in the northern areas, some Arabs are said to have made their way to the teeming slums of Karachi, and the elimination of Basra was meant as a deterrent to terrorists across the spectrum. However, notwithstanding the closure of the training camps in Afghanistan, one wonders whether, given the large turnout at his funeral, and the numerous additional cross-currents that have recently come into play on the political landscape, this deterrent has come too late.”

Interestingly enough, the LJ and the Sipah-i-Muhammad Pakistan (SMP) are reportedly making a comeback in Karachi. Azharul Ashfaque’s much quoted report in DAWN adds that “Compared to the SMP, the sources termed the LJ militants more dangerous because of their links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban… while the LJ militants have links with some religious parties, some local leaders of a major political party were allegedly patronising the SMP militants…even though a neighbouring country and militants fighting in the Kurram Agency are supporting the SMP activists, the LJ has safe havens in the rest of the tribal areas, particularly in Waziristan.”

Near the tail end of the article the sectarian nature of the parties, particularly the LJ, segues neatly into the issue of a wider militancy in Karachi. It reminds me of LJ’s purported involvement in targeting foreign nationals in Karachi in 2002, a surprise to commentators because it traditionally targeted Shia Muslims. If LJ is linked to the recent militant attacks in Karachi then the nature of sectarian politics in Karachi – examined warily since 9/11 – will probably be wearing new colours. Theoretically it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise since non-secular politics seem generally to be perceived as channels of resistance against a status quo. It is not what they stand for, which seems to be fluid and ritualistic but what they stand against.

Syed Saleem Shehzad (the knitter of grand narratives no matter how limited the facts) said that

“The militants on Sunday showed their muscle in their second home after the Waziristan tribal areas - Karachi, the financial hub of the country. A container truck carrying two armored personal carriers out of Karachi port was attacked by about 25 armed youths and set on the fire. The carriers were on their way to North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Afghanistan as part of one of the largest NATO consignments - 530 containers - to have arrived from Jabal-i-Ali in the United Arab Emirates en route to Afghanistan. (Asia Times Online broke the story that al-Qaeda planned to defeat NATO by cutting its supply lines in Karachi. (See New al-Qaeda focus on NATO supplies August 12, 2008.)

Asia Times Online has learned that top Taliban shura (council) commanders, including leader Mullah Omar’s deputy, Mullah Bradar, Ameer Khan Muttaqi and Akhtar Mansoor recently visited Karachi, and some of them remained in the city to plan further attacks.”

Interestingly then, Jang reports on the attacks in two universities in Karachi this week carries assertions by a student leader blaming the killings directly on the accumulation of weaponary under the ‘Talibanization’ of Karachi.

Summed in up four words: wrap up and leave. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Star Trek, but in this time of madness his column sounds like one of those broadcasts from an alien ship from the other side of a wormhole:

The first step in rethinking Afghan strategy is to think seriously about the lessons of a recent opinion survey of ordinary Taliban fighters commissioned by the Toronto Globe and Mail.* Two results are striking: the widespread lack of any strong expression of allegiance to Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership; and the reasons given by most for joining the Taliban – namely, the presence of western troops in Afghanistan. The deaths of relatives or neighbours at the hands of those forces was also stated by many as a motive. This raises the question of whether Afghanistan is not becoming a sort of surreal hunting estate, in which the US and Nato breed the very “terrorists” they then track down.

I looked up his 2004 book “America Right or Wrong:An Anatomy of American Nationalism” on Amazon, because it sounded interesting. He argues that there are two traditions in American nationalism: a high-minded civic nationalism and a xenophobic and aggressive Jacksonian tradition (sorry, that sounds pompous, but I’m just summarizing the reviews!) The Bush administration managed to draw from the worst aspects of each tradition while formulating its post 9/11 foreign policy.

Rather hilariously, I found a perfect example of this strange schizophrenic approach to foreign policy right there in one of the reviews of his book. So I colour coded the two different nationalisms. Red for bad Jacksonian, blue for good old fashioned love of freedom:

It’s happening again. Same pattern of behavior. Ironically, many of the same players (communists/socialists, anarchists and islamofascists). There is a difference, however, the major power in the world today is the US. And we are a hell of alot tougher to fool than our european friends. We simply will not allow this new form of nazism to rise to power…NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE SAYS. As anyone who has bothered to become educated on what actually happened in Iraq (as opposed to listening to communist propaganda), OUR behavior is one of extreme restraint, but overwhelming might when it is needed. Far from being “jingoistic ” or “militaristic”, the US focuses on the MINIMAL amount of force to get the job done, followed by extreme efforts to replace the twisted and evil regime of someone like Hussein with an enlightened democracy that serves its people….that gives THEM the ability to choose their own destiny. In short, we freed them, with minimal causalties and DAMN few civilian deaths. Our intervention in Iraq wiped out the funding for terrorist organizations (and Hussein WAS the PRIMARY funder of Al-Queda and very much behind the attacks on our country) and wiped a great many of these scum off the face the earth before they could harm any more people. More importantly, it freed millions of people from the yoke of tyranny and has given hope to millions more in the rest of the middle east. That is the truth of Iraq and the truth of the US. We are good people who do good things in the world. And we will NOT stand idle in the face of evil….especially if you are stupid enough to bring it to our shores.

Bakhtar News Agency reports that the Afghan government has once again rejected Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani’s plan to put barbed wire and control machines on the Pak-Afghan border:

Sultan Ahmad Bahin said: “The best solution for the struggle against terrorism is to have co-ordination among the areas’ countries, especially between Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Putting barbed wires on the border will cause the people of both countries to separate, who have lived together for many years and even have common families. This is not the solution.” Bahin said the Pakistani foreign minister will visit Kabul in the near future and that the installation of barbed wire will be discussed with the Afghan authorities. This is not the first time the barbed wire plan has been proposed by the Pakistani authorities. Last year, President Pervez Musharraf also made such a plan and even took some practical steps in southern Afghanistan, but the Afghan authorities, including president Karzai, reacted strongly against the measures.

Government rejects barbed wire border plans. Bakhtar News Agency. May 27, 2008.

Massoud Husseini, an Afghan reporter, goes on an embed with the US Marines¹ to see what Garmser, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand province, looked like after the US Marines operation there.² It seems that he was pissed off by the Marines and they were pissed off by him but it’s an interesting report to read mainly because I’ve never read anything by an Afghan reporterembedded with the US military.

¹ Husseini, Massoud. Garmser: Ghost city after U.S. military operation. Kabul Weekly. May 21, 2008.
² U.S. Marines launch Afghan operation. CNN. April 28, 2008.

This NPR report ¹ by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson describes the difficulty the Afghan government faces in getting international funding for its $50 billion strategy to rebuild the nation. Western officials are wary of simply handing over funds to the Afghan government due to allegations of corruption and mismanagement. An illustration:

Yet how some Afghan contractors hired by the ministry spend international aid money raises serious questions. For example, one contractor in Kandahar province recently agreed to pay $100,000 to a local Taliban commander to ensure his men would leave the project alone.

The builder claims he and other contractors have no choice but to cut such deals to protect their projects in high-risk areas such as Kandahar.

He allowed NPR to listen to, but not tape, his negotiations by speakerphone with the Taliban leader. He also sent the Taliban commander a copy of the contract to prove he wasn’t making more on the project than claimed.

¹ Nelson, Soraya Sarhaddi. “Afghanistan Unveils Ambitious Development Plan”. NPR. May 21, 2008.

Baitullah Mehsud talked to reporters on Saturday¹ and denied his involvement in the Benazir Bhutto assassination and the kidnapping of Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan.
Zardari talked about a “difference of opinion” between Pakistan and the US on how to deal with active militants in the area²:

“There is a position in America which (Democratic presidential front-runner Barack) Obama holds that if they have actionable intelligence, they should have a right to strike,” Zardari said.

“We disagree with that position and we just want to make sure that if there is actionable intelligence available, then we will strike. That’s where there is a difference of opinion. That’s something I’d like to work upon,” he told PTI in an interview.

This column³ in The Post by Musa Khan Jalalzai discusses the impact of the increase in violence in Pakistan on the security of Afghanistan. According to him, the fighting in Waziristan and Kurram agency have compelled thousands of people to flee from those regions to either Afghanistan or Punjab.

This column⁴ in The News by Khalid Aziz is from May 19, but it has a lot of interesting insights into the situation. He argues that the Pakistan government needs to develop a more holistic counter insurgency strategy like the US or India and that by 2006, the Pakistan military was certain that there was no purely military solution to the problem in the tribal areas. He contrasts the negotiations in Swat, which are taking place step by step, with the military’s unilateral actions in Waziristan which have resulted in the release of many prisoners without a written agreement being signed. About Swat, he has this to say:

The former Wali of Swat had built an elaborate system of governance based on cooptation of religious scholars in the judicial system. He was a wise statesman; he employed the religious scholars for dispute resolution and as consultants to the normal Swat courts. It was ensured that cases were disposed quickly through summary proceedings. Redressal of wrong was quick and the process was comparatively cheap.

The people of Swat lost all this, when the state was merged. During the negotiations, the militants requested to be helped in getting a quick and a cheap dispute resolution system more in tune with their past experience and were thus willing to adopt the 1999 Adal Regulation, which is already on the statute books.
[...]
Unfortunately, there is a large gap in the civil-military relationship in Pakistan. Once this is recognized and steps taken to reduce it, Pakistani society would be able to develop a COIN strategy. Existence of such a framework would not only better manage the insurgency but will also permit Pakistan’s allies to recognize the local issues and act collaboratively.

Today, unfortunately the policies of Pakistan and her allies play into the hands of the militants. The future does not lie in acrimony and accusations but in developing a robust strategy which looks at insurgency regionally. There is still time for them to withdraw from the precipice and the deal with the problems holistically. Islamabad must not commit the folly of ignoring the equally important life and death struggle arising from the raging insurgency because it is dealing with other matters.

¹ “No link with BB murder, Ambassador’s kidnapping: Baitullah”. Online International News Network. May 24, 2008.
² “Pak, US differ on tackling militants in tribal belt: Zardari”. The Hindu. May 24, 2008.
³ Jalalzai, Musa Khan. “Pak-Afghan security situation — I”. The Post. May 24, 2008.
⁴ Aziz, Khalid. “The march of folly”. The News. May 19, 2008.

There are two op-eds by Zeenia Satti in the Pakistani press — one in The Dawn¹ and one in the News.² The best order to read them is probably Dawn first, the News second. Her Dawn op-ed summarizes the causes of the current crisis, arguing that it is largely the consequence of Operation Enduring Freedom on the NWFP. She argues that the Afghanistan-Pakistan border should have been sealed before OEF, that modern technology has made it possible to seal the border,and that now it is too late because “As a direct consequence of this oversight, instead of decimating terrorism in Afghanistan, an expanded regional version of it has been created and Pakistan has been engulfed in it.”

The key argument of her op-ed in the News is that there is a very strong chance of massive US-led airstrikes on FATA and that the federal government, distracted by the post-election political maneuverings, is completely ignoring this possibility. The consequences of such airstrikes will be devastating to Pakistan’s security. Additionally, she is skeptical that Pakistan can unilaterally negotiate peace with the Taliban.

As Damadola exemplifies, Pakistan’s peace deal with the militants in FATA is meaningless if Islamabad cannot ensure the security of FATA against US aerial attacks. Removing its forces from the area means nothing if a much larger force, allied with Pakistan, is going to strike with far more lethal weapons instead. Troop withdrawal in such a situation in fact jeopardizes Pakistan’s sovereignty. The situation calls for Pakistan to approach the matter of peace in FATA in a multilateral manner through engaging General McNeil, General Patreus and Hamid Karzai, along with Baitullah Mehsud and the Taliban representatives in a multilateral process that satisfies NATO as well.

Satti had a much longer article in Energy Bulletin³ in February in which she presents several scenarios concerning Pakistan’s long-term future. One such scenario presented in the article clarifies her position on why US airstrikes in NWFP present such a threat to Pakistan’s future:

Scenario two could plausibly entail heavy bombardment of Pakistani tribal areas by the U.S forces, causing a flood of internal migration, which will also mean the spread of militants into the Pakistani mainland. This could provide the U.S with a reason to lead an international demand, possibly through the U.N Security Council, for Pakistan’s denuclearization.

In all of these articles, she stresses the fact that it is unlikely that the Frontier Corps, with its strong ethnic links to the Taliban militants, will be able to successfully neutralize the Taliban. On this issue, she has the following to say:

The operation against tribal militants is a Catch 22 for Pakistan’s military. The Frontier Corps, due to its ethnic affinity with the Taliban, has no faith in this battle, hence it is unfit for the purpose. The deployment of Punjabi battalions, or overt military collaboration between the U.S and Pakistan, will be perceived as a genocide and could lead to a Mukti Bahini-like insurgency for Pakistan’s military in the NWFP and Baluchistan, augmented by the street mood in the rest of the country where economic grievance is widespread. Under the postulated circumstances, Pakistan military’s strategic capacity to resist U.S led international demand to relinquish its nuclear arsenal will decrease by the day.

¹ Satti, Zeenia. (May 21, 2008). Will Fata’s truce succeed?. The Dawn.
² Satti, Zeenia. (May 21, 2008). Peace that unleashes war. The News.
³ Satti, Zeenia. (February 11, 2008). Pakistan problem: Washington’s perspective. Energy Bulletin.

An even better account of a trip to Damadola after the missile strikes is that of Syed Saleem Shehzad in today’s Asia Times¹ The Bajaur Agency borders Kunar Province which is of significance to the US because it is likely that Osama Bin Ladin and Zawahiri are or were in hiding in the forests of Kunar or Nooristan. Shehzad explains why the region is also of strategic significance to the Taliban:

Unlike in Helmand province, in Kunar the Taliban do not independently run districts. However, among the craggy outcrops and lush green forests, they have established safe havens and also have the support of large sections of the population. This allows the Taliban to maintain an edge against the American forces in the area by launching daily attacks on their bases, as well as those of the Afghan National Army and intelligence centers.

Kunar and Nooristan provinces also serve as the start of a natural route up to the northeastern province of Kapisa, from where, ultimately, the Taliban hope to enter into Kabul.

All regional intelligence agencies are certain that bin Laden and Zawahiri are still in this area. The US considers it pivotal for the success of the “war on terror”. The Taliban on the other hand have built all their resources all around this region.

And neither side wants to give up ground.

In January 2008, Shehzad also reported² on the recently completed US base in Kunar (on the Afghan side).

KARACHI - Another piece of the United States’ regional jigsaw is in place with the completion of a military base in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, just three kilometers from Bajaur Agency in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Pakistani intelligence quarters have confirmed to Asia Times Online that the base, on a mountain top in Ghakhi Pass overlooking Pakistan, is now operational. (This correspondent visited the area last July and could clearly see construction underway.[...]

¹Shehzad, Syed Saleem. (May 22, 2008). Ducking and diving under B-52s . Asia Times.
²Shehzad, Syed Saleem. (January 30, 2008). US homes in on militants in Pakistan. Asia Times..

If you’re frustrated by the lack of news from Afghanistan, you might want to read this four-page article¹ in The Age by Brendan Nicholson about the latest news from the Australian troops in Afghanistan. The most interesting part of the article to me was Nicholson’s coverage of Australian Defence Force head Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston’s visit to Islamabad.

Covering the visit, I was standing outside the Serena Hotel in Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave when two Pakistani officers approached.
They offered me a lift to the airport and we followed Houston’s well-guarded convoy as it wove through the streets towards the local air force base.
For 20 minutes the officers dissected Pakistan’s situation. They were convinced that the war in Afghanistan would last 15 to 20 years and there could be no military solution.
[...]
They rejected suggestions their country was encouraging the Taliban, saying they had paid a heavy price with 1200 soldiers killed in counter-terrorism operations.

[...]
[Houston] has also warned NATO that Australia is not providing an open cheque and Australia will not be sending more troops until NATO members increase their contributions.

In Oruzgan Province, the Australians are working with a much larger Dutch force that provides air and artillery support. The Dutch are likely to pull out most of their forces in 2010 and a key issue is what happens if Australia is asked to increase its force to fill that gap. It may have to deploy its new attack helicopters, if they are ready by then, jet fighter-bombers and a force similar to the 550-strong group that is about to be withdrawn from Iraq.

¹Nicholson, Brendan. (May 19, 2008). “Lore and Piece”. The Age

Following US missile strikes on Damadola village, a militant stronghold in Bajur tribal region near the Afghanistan border, Faqir Muhammad, a top Taliban leader vowed revenge on the US. The attacks were also condemned by the governor of the NWFP. The NWFP government has been involved in peace talks with the Taliban and it is feared that these missile attacks will derail those talks. Later Thursday, several thousand protesters attended rallies called by Islamist political parties in Damadola and Khar, Bajur’s main town. Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq denied that Pakistan had given the US permission to target foreign militants on Pakistan soil.

Article: Top Taliban leader vows revenge on America
Author: Habibullah Khan
Publication: The Associated Press