In his statement Hakimullah said: "We want an Islamic state, if we get that then we will go to the borders and fight the Indians."
As Pakistan was rocked by bomb blasts, from Lahore to Peshawar to Kohat, Hakimullah Mehsud, the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban, issued a statement threatening to dispatch Islamic militants to India once an Islamic state had been established in Pakistan. In his statement Hakimullah said: "We want an Islamic state, if we get that then we will go to the borders and fight the Indians."
Hakimullah's statement is noteworthy for a variety of reasons. First, included among the volley of blasts that have hit the region in the past fortnight was one that targeted the Indian Embassy in Kabul for the second time. The blast, on October 9, 2009, killed 17 people including a top Indian diplomat and brought attention again to the extent of Indian involvement in Afghanistan.
The blast came days before the Indians completed a electric transmission line from Phul-e-Khumri to Kabul, one of several projects worth $1.6 billion, making India the fifth largest donor to Afghanistan. In addition to the electric transmission line, India has also helped construct the Zaranj-Delaram Highway, which was inaugurated in January of this year. They have also funded a hundred small development projects in rural Afghanistan, designed to provide quick respite to rural populations, and five medical missions that dispense medicines to over 1,000 people a day.
However, as the caustic debate over the Kerry-Lugar Bill has illustrated here in Pakistan, no amount of good deeds and development projects come without the aid grantors expecting geo-strategic advantages. India has constructed several consulates in Afghanistan, including ones in Mazar-e Sharif, Herat, and Kandahar. In the fallout from the second attack on their embassy in Kabul, Indian officials have also re-engaged in the debate over whether India needs to send troops to Afghanistan to take care of its investments. While the consensus in India is still against such drastic action, the Indian government and its allies within the Afghan government have made no bones about pointing their fingers at the ISI as possible perpetrators of the attack.
In turn, of course, Pakistani security agencies, in the aftermath of the bombings in Lahore on Oct 15, 2009, have begun pointing fingers at possible Indian involvement in the attacks, instead of blaming the more obvious Taliban. Lahore Commissioner Khusro Pervez blamed the Indian agency RAW for attacks in different parts of Pakistan. Interior Minister Rehman Malik cautioned that no speculation regarding Indian involvement should be engaged in without evidence.
Indeed, in the world of allegations and counter allegations that defines the India-Pakistan relationship, evidence may be the hardest thing to come by. What cannot be denied, however, is the fact that the Taliban and the Indians are currently engaged in a grotesque competition to be crowned Pakistan's worst enemy. In other words, the choice before Pakistan's security agencies is to pick one of the two on which to focus its limited security resources. As is well known, the United States is pressurising Pakistan to pick the Taliban and go on all out offensive against them in both the tribal areas as well as Afghanistan. Given the merciless targeting of security forces in Lahore and the recent attack on the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, this seems undoubtedly the reasonable option to stem the seemingly irrepressible tide of bombings that is currently plaguing the country.
The argument posited by the Americans, substantiated as it is by the bloodthirstiness of the Taliban is a good one: in the era of terrorism Pakistan should get over its obsessive fear of an Indian takeover and concentrate instead on eliminating the Taliban who pose an urgent and existential threat.
Yet while the argument is convincing from a normative standpoint, its naiveté represents the biggest hole in American strategy toward the region. This was pointed out in General McChrystal's leaked report which clearly states that increasing Indian involvement in Afghanistan a hurdle in getting Pakistan to fight the Taliban. Despite this acknowledgement, the United States refuses to take sides between India and Pakistan, continuing on one hand to maintain a close and amicable relationship with India while also expecting full co-operation from Pakistan on the war on terror.
In turn, Pakistan equally doggedly wants assurances from the United States that if it did indeed eliminate the Taliban from Afghanistan with the help of the United States, some guarantee would be provided against encirclement by India on the majority of its borders.
It is this missing assurance, one that the United States cannot and will not give, that is the root of its crucial failure in both Afghanistan and Pakistan today. The Americans simply continue to hope that the mayhem caused by the Taliban will be so debilitating that Pakistan will forget about its foes on the eastern border and concentrate on the mess to the west.
Pakistanis for better or worse realise that both choices before them are inherently bad ones. They can either choose to unequivocally support the United States against the Taliban even if a pro-Indian government is installed in Kabul, encircling the country on its eastern and western borders by hostile forces. Or, they can wait and hedge their bets that some of the Taliban can be co-opted into some form of pseudo-Islamic state that appeases both their lust for power and their zeal for literalist faith.
With the Americans refusing to take sides in any part of the conflict that doesn't suit their own national interests, little incentive remains for the Pakistanis to construct a strategy that would leave them without options after American withdrawal. Morality and reason aside, it is difficult to trust an ally that refuses to take sides against your enemy and hence the tragic reality that in a contest for most hated enemy, India may still win.
Deep trouble
Taliban militancy and organised violence against the state and society presents the most serious threat to national security.
Pakistan faces several complex internal security challenges today that require a comprehensive, holistic and national response. Not addressing these challenges immediately, in a serious and consistent fashion, may land the country and its peoples in serious trouble. So what are these challenges; wherein lie their roots; what can be done to tackle them efficiently and effectively?
Taliban militancy and organised violence against the state and society presents the most serious threat to national security. The grimness of this threat lies in its religious roots and radical worldview. The Taliban movement is a variant of political Islamism that has renounced democratic, constitutional and political paths to power and instead believes in the theory and practice of conquest in the image of medieval adventurists. The problem is that the national and international atmosphere today is different. We now live in territorial nation states and bounded political communities.
The Taliban and their allied religious groups reject the territorial state and maintain transnational political and ideological links that spread across the globe. They have a mutual support system, sanctuaries, and common sources of funding and share a common vision and project of terrorising, defeating and replacing the present state structure, which in their view doesn't represent Islam or the 'real' interests of Muslims. Their narrative of historic grievances against the local and global order and critique of the national ruling classes 'naturally' facilitates their political communication with the disempowered, unskilled, and unemployable youth in the socially and economically depressed regions of Pakistan.
Social structures that shape power relations, determine the social significance of individuals and groups and allocate political roles are neither just nor based on prudence and rationality. Dominant groups like the land-owning class, caste and tribal elites and the gadinasheens have monopolised the social and political spaces of value.
They could continue in their privileged positions, without a major challenge, were they to fulfil the role that similar conservative, status quo social groups in other societies have performed; being responsive to society and responsible in their exercise of power while pushing society forward through an emphasis on equity and equality. Even members of the middle class, which play a subordinate role in the dynastic party system, have joined in the rapaciousness of the ruling groups. This doesn't send a message of hope to the disenfranchised youth and disillusioned social classes.
The frustration of these classes has thus proved a fertile ground for the Taliban insurgency and Islamic radicalism.
Our focus on contemporary violence and its optics shouldn't divert our attention from a larger and more complex issue of the sociology of violence; the social conditions that promote and breed violent beliefs and practices.
The second and equally dangerous category of security challenges comes from sectarian groups. Communalism and sectarianism are rooted in the intolerance of difference and diversity of faiths. Much of the religious violence in the subcontinent and its more frequent eruption and persistence in Pakistan is rooted in unarticulated but easily discernable form of religious fascism.
The irrational logic that animates this universal brand is absolute self-righteousness and denial of the religious authenticity of other religious sects within Islam. Unfortunately, theological and philosophical debates around these issues have become politicised; so have the sectarian leaders who use sect and sectarian mobilisation to maintain power within the country and abroad. Sectarian groups live, hide, plan and execute sectarian violence from deep within society.
They work in multiple organisations, and it is the complex web of their relationship with 'ordinary' members of society that makes the security situation so intractable.
Militant ethnic movements in Karachi and Balochistan pose yet another set of internal security challenges. Ethnic feelings are natural and mobilisation of ethnic identity to stake a claim on national power and resources is neither an uncommon strategy, nor out of the fold of normal political discourses or processes.
But this can be done legitimately within the limits of law and the framework of peaceful political struggle. Violence by any ethnic group and any attempt to hold local populations political hostage must provoke a national security response. We have seen much ethnic violence in Karachi in the past and sporadically in Balochistan. Violence, ethnic or religious, starts when there is no room for argument; when the political process is seen as flawed or inadequate.
There are relatively easy remedies for ethnic violence. These remedies lie in the political realm; in understanding the ethnic and cultural pluralism of Pakistani society and devising a political order that accommodates the legitimate aspirations of all social groups.
The elected government at the federal level has not realised the seriousness of militant ethnicity and has failed to bring about constitutional reforms on which there is national consensus to grant greater rights to the provinces.
The lopsided distribution of power and resources between the centre and the provinces must not be allowed to linger on. Federalism is a dynamic process, and must be so especially in conditions of ethnic diversity, where adjusting and balancing the requirements of national cohesion with demands of the units for adequate power and resources is a pressing issue.
Another factor that has greatly multiplied troubles in Pakistan is the thirty-year-long war in Afghanistan, first against the former Soviet Union and now the United States. Contestation between foreign powers, apparently helping to rebuild Afghanistan, and the forces resisting them, has influenced Pakistan's national security in more ways than one. Our role in mobilising religion and nationalism to defeat the Soviets under Washington's cold war strategic outlook is now become the albatross around our neck.
To solve its multiple security threats, Pakistan needs to evolve a long-term strategy of social and political reconstruction; invoking national spirit and solidarity must rest at the centre of such a strategy. The focus must be on political institutions, openness, rule of law, and accountability of the political class.
As Pakistan was rocked by bomb blasts, from Lahore to Peshawar to Kohat, Hakimullah Mehsud, the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban, issued a statement threatening to dispatch Islamic militants to India once an Islamic state had been established in Pakistan. In his statement Hakimullah said: "We want an Islamic state, if we get that then we will go to the borders and fight the Indians."
Hakimullah's statement is noteworthy for a variety of reasons. First, included among the volley of blasts that have hit the region in the past fortnight was one that targeted the Indian Embassy in Kabul for the second time. The blast, on October 9, 2009, killed 17 people including a top Indian diplomat and brought attention again to the extent of Indian involvement in Afghanistan.
The blast came days before the Indians completed a electric transmission line from Phul-e-Khumri to Kabul, one of several projects worth $1.6 billion, making India the fifth largest donor to Afghanistan. In addition to the electric transmission line, India has also helped construct the Zaranj-Delaram Highway, which was inaugurated in January of this year. They have also funded a hundred small development projects in rural Afghanistan, designed to provide quick respite to rural populations, and five medical missions that dispense medicines to over 1,000 people a day.
However, as the caustic debate over the Kerry-Lugar Bill has illustrated here in Pakistan, no amount of good deeds and development projects come without the aid grantors expecting geo-strategic advantages. India has constructed several consulates in Afghanistan, including ones in Mazar-e Sharif, Herat, and Kandahar. In the fallout from the second attack on their embassy in Kabul, Indian officials have also re-engaged in the debate over whether India needs to send troops to Afghanistan to take care of its investments. While the consensus in India is still against such drastic action, the Indian government and its allies within the Afghan government have made no bones about pointing their fingers at the ISI as possible perpetrators of the attack.
In turn, of course, Pakistani security agencies, in the aftermath of the bombings in Lahore on Oct 15, 2009, have begun pointing fingers at possible Indian involvement in the attacks, instead of blaming the more obvious Taliban. Lahore Commissioner Khusro Pervez blamed the Indian agency RAW for attacks in different parts of Pakistan. Interior Minister Rehman Malik cautioned that no speculation regarding Indian involvement should be engaged in without evidence.
Indeed, in the world of allegations and counter allegations that defines the India-Pakistan relationship, evidence may be the hardest thing to come by. What cannot be denied, however, is the fact that the Taliban and the Indians are currently engaged in a grotesque competition to be crowned Pakistan's worst enemy. In other words, the choice before Pakistan's security agencies is to pick one of the two on which to focus its limited security resources. As is well known, the United States is pressurising Pakistan to pick the Taliban and go on all out offensive against them in both the tribal areas as well as Afghanistan. Given the merciless targeting of security forces in Lahore and the recent attack on the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, this seems undoubtedly the reasonable option to stem the seemingly irrepressible tide of bombings that is currently plaguing the country.
The argument posited by the Americans, substantiated as it is by the bloodthirstiness of the Taliban is a good one: in the era of terrorism Pakistan should get over its obsessive fear of an Indian takeover and concentrate instead on eliminating the Taliban who pose an urgent and existential threat.
Yet while the argument is convincing from a normative standpoint, its naiveté represents the biggest hole in American strategy toward the region. This was pointed out in General McChrystal's leaked report which clearly states that increasing Indian involvement in Afghanistan a hurdle in getting Pakistan to fight the Taliban. Despite this acknowledgement, the United States refuses to take sides between India and Pakistan, continuing on one hand to maintain a close and amicable relationship with India while also expecting full co-operation from Pakistan on the war on terror.
In turn, Pakistan equally doggedly wants assurances from the United States that if it did indeed eliminate the Taliban from Afghanistan with the help of the United States, some guarantee would be provided against encirclement by India on the majority of its borders.
It is this missing assurance, one that the United States cannot and will not give, that is the root of its crucial failure in both Afghanistan and Pakistan today. The Americans simply continue to hope that the mayhem caused by the Taliban will be so debilitating that Pakistan will forget about its foes on the eastern border and concentrate on the mess to the west.
Pakistanis for better or worse realise that both choices before them are inherently bad ones. They can either choose to unequivocally support the United States against the Taliban even if a pro-Indian government is installed in Kabul, encircling the country on its eastern and western borders by hostile forces. Or, they can wait and hedge their bets that some of the Taliban can be co-opted into some form of pseudo-Islamic state that appeases both their lust for power and their zeal for literalist faith.
With the Americans refusing to take sides in any part of the conflict that doesn't suit their own national interests, little incentive remains for the Pakistanis to construct a strategy that would leave them without options after American withdrawal. Morality and reason aside, it is difficult to trust an ally that refuses to take sides against your enemy and hence the tragic reality that in a contest for most hated enemy, India may still win.
Deep trouble
Taliban militancy and organised violence against the state and society presents the most serious threat to national security.
Pakistan faces several complex internal security challenges today that require a comprehensive, holistic and national response. Not addressing these challenges immediately, in a serious and consistent fashion, may land the country and its peoples in serious trouble. So what are these challenges; wherein lie their roots; what can be done to tackle them efficiently and effectively?
Taliban militancy and organised violence against the state and society presents the most serious threat to national security. The grimness of this threat lies in its religious roots and radical worldview. The Taliban movement is a variant of political Islamism that has renounced democratic, constitutional and political paths to power and instead believes in the theory and practice of conquest in the image of medieval adventurists. The problem is that the national and international atmosphere today is different. We now live in territorial nation states and bounded political communities.
The Taliban and their allied religious groups reject the territorial state and maintain transnational political and ideological links that spread across the globe. They have a mutual support system, sanctuaries, and common sources of funding and share a common vision and project of terrorising, defeating and replacing the present state structure, which in their view doesn't represent Islam or the 'real' interests of Muslims. Their narrative of historic grievances against the local and global order and critique of the national ruling classes 'naturally' facilitates their political communication with the disempowered, unskilled, and unemployable youth in the socially and economically depressed regions of Pakistan.
Social structures that shape power relations, determine the social significance of individuals and groups and allocate political roles are neither just nor based on prudence and rationality. Dominant groups like the land-owning class, caste and tribal elites and the gadinasheens have monopolised the social and political spaces of value.
They could continue in their privileged positions, without a major challenge, were they to fulfil the role that similar conservative, status quo social groups in other societies have performed; being responsive to society and responsible in their exercise of power while pushing society forward through an emphasis on equity and equality. Even members of the middle class, which play a subordinate role in the dynastic party system, have joined in the rapaciousness of the ruling groups. This doesn't send a message of hope to the disenfranchised youth and disillusioned social classes.
The frustration of these classes has thus proved a fertile ground for the Taliban insurgency and Islamic radicalism.
Our focus on contemporary violence and its optics shouldn't divert our attention from a larger and more complex issue of the sociology of violence; the social conditions that promote and breed violent beliefs and practices.
The second and equally dangerous category of security challenges comes from sectarian groups. Communalism and sectarianism are rooted in the intolerance of difference and diversity of faiths. Much of the religious violence in the subcontinent and its more frequent eruption and persistence in Pakistan is rooted in unarticulated but easily discernable form of religious fascism.
The irrational logic that animates this universal brand is absolute self-righteousness and denial of the religious authenticity of other religious sects within Islam. Unfortunately, theological and philosophical debates around these issues have become politicised; so have the sectarian leaders who use sect and sectarian mobilisation to maintain power within the country and abroad. Sectarian groups live, hide, plan and execute sectarian violence from deep within society.
They work in multiple organisations, and it is the complex web of their relationship with 'ordinary' members of society that makes the security situation so intractable.
Militant ethnic movements in Karachi and Balochistan pose yet another set of internal security challenges. Ethnic feelings are natural and mobilisation of ethnic identity to stake a claim on national power and resources is neither an uncommon strategy, nor out of the fold of normal political discourses or processes.
But this can be done legitimately within the limits of law and the framework of peaceful political struggle. Violence by any ethnic group and any attempt to hold local populations political hostage must provoke a national security response. We have seen much ethnic violence in Karachi in the past and sporadically in Balochistan. Violence, ethnic or religious, starts when there is no room for argument; when the political process is seen as flawed or inadequate.
There are relatively easy remedies for ethnic violence. These remedies lie in the political realm; in understanding the ethnic and cultural pluralism of Pakistani society and devising a political order that accommodates the legitimate aspirations of all social groups.
The elected government at the federal level has not realised the seriousness of militant ethnicity and has failed to bring about constitutional reforms on which there is national consensus to grant greater rights to the provinces.
The lopsided distribution of power and resources between the centre and the provinces must not be allowed to linger on. Federalism is a dynamic process, and must be so especially in conditions of ethnic diversity, where adjusting and balancing the requirements of national cohesion with demands of the units for adequate power and resources is a pressing issue.
Another factor that has greatly multiplied troubles in Pakistan is the thirty-year-long war in Afghanistan, first against the former Soviet Union and now the United States. Contestation between foreign powers, apparently helping to rebuild Afghanistan, and the forces resisting them, has influenced Pakistan's national security in more ways than one. Our role in mobilising religion and nationalism to defeat the Soviets under Washington's cold war strategic outlook is now become the albatross around our neck.
To solve its multiple security threats, Pakistan needs to evolve a long-term strategy of social and political reconstruction; invoking national spirit and solidarity must rest at the centre of such a strategy. The focus must be on political institutions, openness, rule of law, and accountability of the political class.
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