Intelligence Sharing between Pakistan and Afghanistan: New Age Islam's Selection, 09 February 2016
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
09 February 2016
• Intelligence Sharing between Pakistan and Afghanistan
By Musa Khan Jalalzai
• Campus Security
By Mohammad Ali Babakhel
• Fiction versus Non-Fiction
By Mohammad Jamil
• Women’s Veil to Mask Man’s Folly
By Jawed Naqvi
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Intelligence sharing between Pakistan and Afghanistan
By Musa Khan Jalalzai
February 09, 2016
Last week, Pakistani and Afghan intelligence chiefs held talks in Islamabad in an effort to boost intelligence sharing on terrorist networks operating across the Durand Line. The purpose of this meeting was to persuade the National Directorate of Security’s (NDS’) authorities to help in the arrest of terrorists involved in the Bacha Khan University (BKU) attack. The stance of the NDS is not clear, i.e. what does it want, what are its intentions and can the agency share intelligence with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) or not? But one thing is clear: when the Afghan spy agency is helpless to arrest a single terrorist leader or war criminal that channels weapons and funds to terrorist organisations in Afghanistan, how can it arrest the terrorists wanted by Pakistan? Intelligence agencies are the guardians of their states and provide sensitive, protective security for the interests of their own countries but intelligence can only be shared when mutual interests of the states are under threat.
The question is: how can the NDS, whose chief resigned in protest when President Ghani approached Pakistan for a joint fight against the Taliban, share information with the ISI? The answer is deeply complicated as the agency has various political and sectarian groups within its infrastructure that have embroiled it in a crisis of incompetence, corruption and multifaceted loyalties. Internal political rivalries within the agency make things worse as every faction wants the intelligence operation, information gathering, analysis and processes to take place according to their demands. Foreign involvement is another phenomenon, which has badly affected its operational capabilities.
Stakeholders and foreign partners are the real owners; without their consent the NDS is unable to respond to the request of the ISI positively. Just imagine the mindset of the NDS leadership: when President Ashraf Ghani approached Islamabad to resume the reconciliation process, the NDS chief, Mr Nabil, resigned in protest against his diplomatic move. Mr Nabil, who strongly criticised President Ghani, said in his letter of resignation that there had been a lack of agreement on some policy matters between the president’s office and his agency. As the present NDS chief is also bound to hear stakeholders, warlords and foreign partners, he is unable to act independently. The NDS leadership recently raised the question of Pakistan’s involvement in terrorism in Afghanistan. These perceptions of misunderstanding and conflicting signals have further strained the Pakistan-Afghan security relationship.
Given the re-emergence of terrorist networks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, FATA and Waziristan after Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the recent offensive by the Taliban and Islamic State (IS) against the Afghan government, and the establishment of another commando force by the Pakistan army to defeat terrorists, both the NDS and ISI are frustrated as their parameters of intelligence information gathering have shrunk in major portions of Afghanistan, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They have nothing to share or offer each other without grief, anger and compunction on joining the so-called war on terror. In May 2015, the NDS and ISI signed a memorandum of understanding but the NDS chief refused to share intelligence with Pakistan. Members of the Afghan parliament and former president Hamid Karzai hammered Ghani by issuing damaging statements.
However, on January 30, the Pakistani media reported that Latif Mehsud had revealed that RAW (Indian intelligence) and the NDS jointly directed terrorist operations inside Pakistan. On August 8, 2015, a truck full of explosives killed 400 innocent people in Kabul. The NDS accused the ISI while the ISI allegedly arrested more than 90 NDS agents from Peshawar, Gilgit, Karachi and Balochistan. However, Afghan intelligence claimed that the ISI was behind the attacks on the Afghan parliament. The NDS spokesman, Hasib Siddiqi, said that an officer of the ISI had helped the Haqqani terrorist network carry out this suicide attack. On February 1, 2016, Afghan army commander General Murad Ali claimed that Pakistani militants were fighting against the Afghan army in Baghlan province.
On February 7, 2016, Khaama Press reported the arrest of five ISI agents by the NDS military unit in Badakhshan province. Security officials in Badakhshan said the agents include two men and three women who had disguised themselves as health workers in Baharak and Kisham districts. The ISI accused the NDS of cultivating IS and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) inside Afghanistan. Pakistan complains that the Afghan government hosts strong intelligence networks of RAW and Mossad, which causes anxiety, intolerance and anger within the establishment of the ISI. This cold war has caused further conflagration between the two agencies.
Sectarian and political loyalties have divided NDS between different funding parties. The agency reports to various stakeholders (warlords, politicians, sectarian leaders and international masters) on the one hand, while on the other this way of intelligence operations has threatened the national security and territorial integrity of Afghanistan. However, the NDS is unable to provide security to Afghan army commanders in the war zone due to the high number of defections of its agents to the Taliban. Blaming the ISI for everything happening in Kabul is not the solution to the irritation and anger of Afghan politicians; they need to sincerely cooperate with neighbours on the security issue and provide what information they need because the security situation in the country is deteriorating by the day.
Every day, Afghans are killed, kidnapped and abused. Former warlords, members of parliament, Afghan army commanders, sectarian and political leaders have all become part of a shameless race to train, fund and arm the Taliban and IS. Under pressure from the president’s office, on February 6, 2016, the Afghan interior minister submitted his resignation. The president and chief executive were not satisfied with his performance as he had become part of the foreign intelligence war in Afghanistan. In his recent interviews, President Ghani warned that if talks with the Taliban fail his country will not survive in 2016. Political commentators point to too many internal failings like political division, sectarian affiliations, warlordism and corruption. Residents of Kunduz province have again protested against insecurity while the prolonged conflict in Baghlan has forced thousands of families to flee their homes. The Afghan defence ministry has warned that the Taliban have planted landmines in some districts of Baghlan province, which are slowing down military operations.
Musa Khan Jalalzai is author of The Prospect of Nuclear Jihad in Pakistan
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/09-Feb-2016/intelligence-sharing
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Campus Security
By Mohammad Ali Babakhel
February 9th, 2016
WITH the backdrop of the recent attack on Charsadda’s Bacha Khan University, the vice chancellors of universities in KP have demanded increased funds for security and the deployment of a quick response force. Would these be enough to ward off the danger? Campus security requires a thorough analysis of realities on the ground, the identification of loopholes, and administrative, legal and procedural preventive and detective measures.
In the developed world, campuses have their own police. The University of Cambridge in the UK is protected by the Cambridge University Constabulary. In the US, most campus police officers are commissioned through their state’s peace officer standards and training commission. Indeed, attacking soft targets like universities and schools has intensified and is a 21st-century phenomenon.
In Pakistan, recent years have witnessed a mushroom growth of private- and public-sector universities. This has increased security concerns. In the public sector, some 96 and in the private sector 63 universities are imparting higher education. During the last 15 years, 102 universities were established across the country. University education is no longer restricted to provincial capitals.
The guidelines issued by the Higher Education Commission for the establishment of a new university require the maintenance of “order, discipline and security” on campuses. However, the current situation warrants the inclusion of strict security measures. Rather than being merely a guideline, compliance should be binding.
In the developed world, campuses have their own police.
Campus security should not be left to the university administrations alone. Further, since campus security is very different to running a police station, merely establishing police stations or posts on campuses will not serve the purpose either. Technology-based solutions like the installation of CCTV cameras, metal-detector gates, X-ray machines and biometric devices may act as deterrents.
Within the 1,192-acre campus of the University of Peshawar, there are five universities, five centres of excellence, nine colleges and 12 schools. They have an enrolment of about 61,000. In 1987, the Campus Peace Corps was raised in the university with 380 personnel. But subsequently, these men were neither trained for new challenges, nor were their numbers increased.
On Feb 8, 1975, Hayat Mohammad Sherpao was assassinated in a bomb explosion at University of Peshawar. In 2010, the vice chancellor of the Islamia College University, Ajmal Khan, was kidnapped from the campus. The forum of the campus coordination committee that exists at the University of Peshawar needs to be strengthened; other universities could replicate the model. CCTV cameras are installed at the campus but a centralised monitoring system is missing.
The Bacha Khan University was established in 2012 and is located in a desolate area surrounded by fields of sugarcane; during the winters, there is usually dense fog. Apart from flaws in the security regime, the topography and weather were also effectively exploited by the militants. The police had thrice issued advisory notes to the university management directing the installation of metal-detector gates, CCTV cameras and the raising of the perimeter walls. But does merely issuing an advisory serve the purpose?
From the attack on this campus, it is apparent that measures such as the installation of alarm systems, sirens, better locks on doors, and a provision for mass text messaging in the event of an emergency could have reduced the losses. Mobile patrols around the campus could have engaged the assailants in the outer cordon of the university.
While the role played by the security guards posted on the main entrance was commendable, reportedly out of a total of 60 security guards 25 were absent. Did anyone ever think about the need for transparency in the recruitment and training of guards?
Ideally, campus police services should be the soft face of law enforcement, with intelligence-led back-up. After the Charsadda attack, the Balochistan government decided to set up a university campus security force, which will work under the administrative control of the provincial police. It will be trained and armed with the latest weapons. Sixty personnel of the force would be deployed at each university.
But merely an increase in deployment may not achieve miracles. Hence technological solutions, improved intelligence-gathering, vetting of employees (including vendors, contractors and suppliers), the issuance and display of identity cards and security passes for vehicles are needed.
A structured hierarchy of security within campuses warrants the establishment of ‘directorates of security’. A comprehensive strategy needs to be chalked out to purge hostels and staff quarters occupied by outsiders.
The challenge needs to be transformed into an opportunity to strengthen campus security. The gravity of the situation requires that the security of educational institutions, including campuses, be added to the National Action Plan.
Mohammad Ali Babakhel is a police officer.
Source: dawn.com/news/1238269/campus-security
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Fiction versus Non-Fiction
By Mohammad Jamil
February 09, 2016
Narrative journalism, also referred to as literary journalism, is defined as creative non-fiction, which contains accurate, well-researched information. It is a form of non-fiction that combines factual reporting with some of the narrative techniques and stylistic strategies traditionally associated with fiction. While a writer based on his imagination creates fiction, non-fiction journalism is based on facts. Carlotta Gall, in her recent article captioned ‘Pakistan’s hand in the rise of international jihad’, carried by The New York Times, and accused Pakistan of supporting the Taliban and ensconcing terrorist organisations. She wrote: “But experts have found a lot of evidence that Pakistan facilitated the Taliban offensive. Its intelligence service has long acted as the manager of international Mujahideen forces, many of them Sunni extremists, and there is even ‘speculation’ that it may have been involved in the rise of Islamic State.”
The author accused Pakistan of creating Jihadi organizations but forgot the US’s pivotal role in using Afghan sentiments against communism. The late Zia ul Haq had indeed used the opportunity to prolong his rule and also to continue Pakistan’s nuclear programme. In 2012, Gall claimed to have met madrasa (seminary) students who had come back from Afghanistan. She wrote: “Ahead of Pakistan’s 2014 operation in North Waziristan, scores, even hundreds, of foreign fighters left the tribal areas to fight against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Tribesmen and Taliban members from the area say fighters travelled to Quetta, and then flew to Qatar. There they received new passports and passage to Turkey, from where they could cross into Syria.”
There are of course responsible journalists and writers who criticise the US for its role in destabilizing governments and intervention in other countries. William Blum, in his book Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, wrote: “The CIA became the grand coordinator: purchasing or arranging the manufacture of Soviet-style weapons from Egypt, China, Poland, Israel and elsewhere, or supplying their own, arranging for military training by Americans, Egyptians, Chinese and Iranians, hitting up Middle-Eastern countries for donations, notably Saudi Arabia, which gave many hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year, totalling probably more than a billion, pressuring and bribing Pakistan to rent out its country as a military staging area and sanctuary.” He also gave a detailed account of the US’s interventions and adventures.
Immediately after Pakistan’s joining the war on terror, American policymakers and their advisers started doubting Pakistan’s intentions and accusing it of double-dealing. During the last 12 years a host of policy reviews and study group reports were published, and Congressional hearings were held. Many books had been written and published before the 2014 drawdown to end major combat operations by the US in Afghanistan. Much of this literature sees Pakistan as a problem and not the solution to the problem. Debate was also raging as to how to get Pakistan to do what the US wanted it to do. The US government and media have been painting Pakistan in the most ignoble colours and it’s military in the most humiliating shades.
However, it was not just their hubristic arrogance that set blood boiling; it was their outpourings’ imperialistic tone that hurt the soul and mind. They talk as if we are their vassal state, where they are the masters and we are the slaves. But what else can one expect when the nation’s elites have over the years been genuflecting before US adventurists? The perception had gained currency that the US and the west wished to denuclearise Pakistan because a nuclear Muslim state that could pose a palpable threat to Israel and the US’s strategic partner India was simply not acceptable to them. The ‘sinister plan’ seemed to be to declare Pakistan a state that sponsors terrorism and also a failed state, which could fall into the hands of militants. The US Navy Seals’ attack on Abbottabad compound and NATO’s attack on Salala check post were planned to lower the prestige of Pakistan’s military.
The fact of the matter is that in the 1980s, the Soviet army had to face stiff resistance by the Afghans as the US, on finding an opportunity to make Afghanistan the Soviet Union’s ‘Vietnam’, tried to channelise the Afghans’ energies and their passion for jihad to ensure the ouster of Soviet troops. The US and its allies also failed to subdue the Taliban during 13 years of occupation. Having realised that the military and police they raised and trained were not able to rein in the Taliban, they are in favour of talks with the Taliban. But no progress can be made unless Afghanistan’s Pashtun population, from whom the Taliban draw the bulk of their fighters and supporters, are given sterling guarantees of their rightful share in power. And there is reason to do so because 12 years’ resistance shows that the Pashtuns are not likely to shift their loyalties from the Taliban in any case.
There has been a rethinking on the part of some Taliban commanders who maintain that it was only after non-Afghans, especially Arabs, began to exert control over the movement in the late 1990s that the Taliban became more adamant and brutal. The majority appears to be in favour of talks with the Afghan government. There was realisation on the part of the Taliban even before 9/11 to end the civil war in Afghanistan. In October 2000, the Taliban’s leader, late Mullah Muhammad Omar, had agreed to open indirect negotiations with the opposition Northern Alliance through the UN in an effort to halt the civil war. It is true that the Taliban tried to export their ‘revolution’, which was not acceptable to neighbouring countries and, according to stories based on the interviews of Taliban commanders, some of them were unhappy over the way al Qaeda operated.
Mohammad Jamil is a freelance columnist.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/09-Feb-2016/fiction-versus-non-fiction
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Women’s Veil to Mask Man’s Folly
By Jawed Naqvi
February 9th, 2016
THEY should be claiming equal or greater share in political power, in higher education with pivotal jobs, in inheritance and conjugal rights, and other privileges arbitrarily cornered by men. How should we then regard an apparent surge of women seeking equal rights in mosques and temples, which, for better or worse, have been bastions of the male clergy? In fact, the male bit is vestigial, for clergy does usually denote men in common parlance. Would coveting their jobs by women be a progressive move?
My query follows from considerable commotion in India involving the judiciary, the legislature and the executive in recent days over a few Hindu women seeking the right to enter temples in Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra and in Kerala. (And some powerful men have unusually forcefully argued on their behalf.) There has been, not to forget, an older discussion among supposedly liberal Muslim women. They have craved equality with men in access to mosques. Neither the Hindu women nor their Muslim equals seem to accept that gender inequality has formed the mainstay of religion as it is practised.
It is tempting, therefore, to address the problem with two responses – one, inevitably, in a lighter vein, the other zealously serious. Let’s lean on both and question the women who hanker after ranks and ritual monopolised by the deservedly reviled men of unbridled hypocrisy.
An earnest assertion came from Majaz Lucknavi, a serious poet often seen as a self-destructive man with a brilliant mind. Majaz saw women not as beings of uncertain social status but as comrades, rebels and leaders. “Tere Maathey Pe Ye Aanchal Bahot Hi Khoob Hai Lekin/Is Aanchal Se Tu Ik Parcham Bana Leti To Achha Tha,” he told his sweetheart. (Take off the veil from your forehead, though it looks lovely, and turn it into a flag of revolt.)
Akbar chortled that the veil though cast away by the modern woman had found its use with men — to mask their innately softer brains.
Humorist-poet Akbar Ilahabadi penned an acerbic quatrain that poked fun at men, using the women’s veil as a metaphor. “Beparda Kal Jo Aaee’n Nazar Chand Bibiya’n/ Akbar Zamee’n Mei’n Ghairat E Qaumi Se Garh Gaya/ Poochhaa Jo Unse Aapka Parda Wo Kya Hua/ Kehne Lagee’n Ki Aql Pe Mardo’n Ki Parh Gaya.” Akbar chortled that the veil though cast away by the modern woman had found its use with men — to mask their innately softer brains.
An observation by the late journalist Khushwant Singh would describe the state of play in the subcontinent. He discovered in a televised India-Pakistan cricket match in Lahore, when sporting ties were newly revived in the Vajpayee era, that the stadium was packed with beautiful and bedecked women — all evidently Pakistanis. Only one wore the burqa, and that was an Indian bowler’s mother. The Taliban, on their part, brought up in hatcheries in Pakistan with fanfare, are clueless about the battles that (the original) Malalai of Maiwand had led, without her veil, in fierce battles with British troops.
In some Indian cultures the veil and the purdah system have been keenly practised as a privilege of upper caste elites. India’s first president Dr Rajendra Prasad found access to his wife only in the pitch dark of her unventilated boudoir. A housemaid in the prosperous Kayastha family of Bihar accompanied him with a lamp to the threshold of the wife’s room. The maid then walked away with the light, leaving the master alone with his wife “without giving me a chance to see her,” he wrote in his autobiography. Custom required him to return to the men’s section of the mansion before daybreak.
The isolation of women from the men’s quarters is believed to be an upper crust tradition from mediaeval India. In Kerala, however, the subjugation of women took a bizarre and opposite form. A custom was enforced on Dalit women to not cover their breasts, and if they did, they would have to pay a tax. Juxtaposed with the upper caste recourse to the purdah, this law became all the more barbaric.
As the law did not allow Dalit women to cover their breasts, the tax was meant to add insult to their injury of being easily identifiable in the most demeaning way. The rulers ensured that the lower castes stayed in debt with laws against the poorest, imposing taxes on things as trivial as the right to wear jewellery and, for men, the right to grow a moustache.
It was then that one woman named Nangeli became the lightening rod for revolution. Her defiance brought about a simple yet far-reaching change that helped abolish the tax. As young women clamour for equal rights with the priestly classes, not many in Kerala seem to remember Nangeli, an Ezhava woman from Cherthala, who belonged to a family that could not afford to pay the prescribed taxes.
In a testing act of rebellion, Nangeli is said to have refused to uncover her breasts whenever it was demanded of her. When the tax collectors of the province came to her home, Nangeli did something unbelievable to defy them with a final blow. She cut them off and presented them to the collectors in a banana leaf. The tax collectors fled in fear as Nangeli bled to death at her doorstep, and the news spread across the state like wildfire.
In a matching act of protest, her husband jumped to his death on her funeral pyre. This was apparently the first recorded instance of a man committing sati instead of a woman.
Following her death, the crown annulled the tax in Travancore. And the land where she lived came to be known as Mulachiparambu, or, land of the breasted woman, in her honour.
Nangeli’s protest stands out in stark contrast with women clamouring to join the male bastions of ritual and tradition. She rejected the unequal system of privilege and abuse whereas they look poised to embrace it.
Jawed Naqvi is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Source: dawn.com/news/1238270/a-veil-to-mask-mans-folly
URL: https://newageislam.com/pakistan-press/intelligence-sharing-between-pakistan-afghanistan/d/106277