Politics of a Schizophrenic War: New Age Islam's Selection, 29 February 2016
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
29 February 2016
• Politics of a Schizophrenic War
By Dr Fawad Kaiser
• Unresponsive State, Pakistan
By Hajrah Mumtaz
• Trump Nightmare
By Huma Yusuf
• Afghanistan Taliban: Can Talks Succeed?
By Ahmed Rashid
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Politics of a Schizophrenic War
By Dr Fawad Kaiser
February 29, 2016
Nobody knows what will happen next in Syria. Syria’s war is unique due to its conflicting military strategies, but it is not unique among civil wars generally. A threatening enemy, inflammable religious turf, and divided military strategies are making this war very confusing.
War has become more schizophrenic than ever. While the US, Russia, Iran, Turkey, and the Kurds make a de facto international coalition against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria, the strategic war features numerous other overlapping conflicts. Confusion is created because nine countries have participated in US-led air strikes against IS in Syria. Russia is conducting its own bombing against IS, and other rebel groups, in coordination with ground operations by Iranian and Hezbollah fighters.
Russia and Iran explicitly aim to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power, but the US-led coalition maintains that he has to go eventually. Both are focusing on defeating IS at the same time. In that sense, broadly speaking, Russia has intervened on behalf of the loyalists and the US has intervened on behalf of the rebels, though the US has tried to only help certain rebels, providing arms and training to “vetted” groups.
The US has sought to cooperate only with more moderate insurgents, not with the Syrian government, in fighting IS. Russia’s recent moves suggest that it is trying to position itself as the white knight in the Syrian conflict. Just as gravely, the decision to arm the rebels cannot result in the likelihood of a second peace conference taking place in Geneva. It is probable that this plan may fail largely because rebels would refuse to talk to the Syrian government while Assad remains in power. The new plan will simply funnel weapons through rebel leaders who are already in the fight.
The initial plan was dubious. The new one is hallucinatory, since Russia has significantly stepped up its military support of Assad’s forces. If replenished supplies of US, British and French arms tip the balance, the rebels will surely be encouraged to fight on rather than negotiate. The plan that the Syrian rebels will get just enough arms to keep their territorial gains, but not enough to advance, is conflicting. The US and its allies are sending mixed messages. It would be difficult to say that the US will suddenly succeed in finding rebel groups that subscribe to its restricted plan of defeating IS, but not joining the effort to topple Assad.
US policy here is one of the many contradictions in the Syrian war military strategy. The US wants Assad to go but is also fighting IS, one of the strongest anti-Assad forces in Syria, in defiance of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle. Russia’s approach on the other hand is less conflicting as it opposes all the rebel groups.
At present, IS is benefiting greatly from the strategic confusion among its opponents. Saudi Arabia appears more concerned with removing Assad and checking Iran’s influence in the region than with defeating IS. Turkey, likewise, seems more intent on removing Assad and putting down separatist Kurds than in defeating the terrorists on its doorstep. Russia and Iran remain intentionally blind to IS’s pillaging in their avidity to ensure Assad’s hold on power, while Iraq refuses to arm its Sunni tribes against the group for fear they may intimidate the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. The US and Europe want to remove Assad and have also made defeating IS their most important consideration, but that has put them at odds with all their potential allies and their conflicting agendas.
The political question is what do Syrian people want from this war? When does this end? With foreign involvement increasing on both sides, neither is likely to win or lose any time soon. The Syrian civil war is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, with over a quarter million killed, roughly the same number wounded or missing, and half of Syria’s 22-million population displaced from their homes. But more than that, Syria today is the largest battlefield and generator of Sunni-Shia sectarianism the world has ever seen, with serious implications for the Middle Eastern countries in the form of inevitable spread of ethnic conflict.
Getting out of the imbroglio in Syria may appear harder than it has ever been. But the only tenable solution remains a diplomatic breakthrough that leads to a shift of power in Damascus and paves the way for a consolidated campaign against IS. That will require resolving the differences between the US and Assad’s chief backers, Russia and Iran. Until then, they are unlikely to accomplish much beyond moving the frontlines back and forth, adding to Syria’s misery and despair.
Frustrated by the resistance of IS, the military campaign against it remains untethered to any coherent strategy. By gradually increasing their combat role in an expansive, complicated battleground, all these countries are being sucked into a schizophrenic war. The US and its allies lack any real strategy. How to defeat IS, which for more than a year has been withstanding heavy bombing from the air? Is it possible to take on IS without supporting Assad? The US and its allies continue to oppose Assad remaining in power in Damascus. But on the very day that French President Hollande was visiting Assad’s main supporter, Russian President Vladimir Putin, to coordinate the fighting against IS, that assurance sounded rather void.
Public opinion and lack of political consensus continues to tie the hands of the US and its allies. IS won’t be decisively defeated until significant ground forces confront it in its Syrian and Iraqi strongholds. No country is currently prepared to openly send forces due to the “boots on the ground” anathema hanging from the last decade’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The expansion of British air strikes in Syria, better coordination and cooperation between the west and Russia, more forceful action from the US and allies against IS’s sources of funding are all strategies that will weaken it but won’t prevent it from continuing to hold large areas in insurgent regions of Syria and Iraq and using them as fertile grounds for terror attacks in the world.
Dr Fawad Kaiser is a professor of psychiatry and consultant forensic psychiatrist in the UK.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/29-Feb-2016/politics-of-a-schizophrenic-war
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Unresponsive State, Pakistan
By Hajrah Mumtaz
February 29th, 2016
IT may have been an unconventional form of protest, but it certainly echoes the frustration and helplessness many in Pakistan feel, especially if they happen to be cursed with an honest nature which in this jungle can often prove to be a hindrance.
On Thursday, a man named Alamgir Khan filled a trolley with rotting garbage and was arrested (he was granted bail later) as he was attempting to dump it in front of the Chief Minister’s House in Karachi’s ‘red zone’. This was his last-resort idea to try and attract the attention of the head of the provincial government to the unsanitary condition that plagues the city: the malodorous piles of waste in every locality, the inability of most citizens to walk down a street without being assailed by stench. Try and see how you like it, was no doubt his intention.
Had he succeeded in placing his consignment of filth at the city administration’s doorstep, where the great and the good wouldn’t help but trip over it, would such an extreme step have made someone take notice? Unfortunately enough, I doubt it. From some desk behind those high walls, a clean-up would have been decreed; and as those at the helm of affairs in administration zipped by in their cars with darkened windows, I don’t think they would have been paying attention.
The problem of garbage and sewage accumulation remains.
After all, this was not Mr Khan’s first attempt to draw attention to the state of the city and its infrastructure. His earlier efforts under the #fixit banner gained a lot of publicity; he had taken the novel approach of stencilling an image of Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah next to piles of garbage and some of the innumerable open manholes and potholes in the city, with the demand that it should be fixed.
That caused enough of a stir in official circles for Mr Khan to allege police harassment, and the chief minister took enough notice to warn the relevant officials to ‘fix it’, but we’re still waiting for the news that the slug of officialdom has finally been stirred into any sort of action.
So what does a person have to do to get the state to tune in and actually perform some of its duties?
Some traders in Karachi’s Saddar area must have been pondering over the same question earlier this month when they organised a ‘gutter fashion show’ in the lanes inundated by sewage where their shops are located.
One of the shopkeepers told the media that it had been three months since the area had been flooded, and that “hundreds” of applications to the chief minister’s office and the Karachi Water and Sewage Board had netted no response. Now, their customers had dried up and their incomes were badly affected. So they placed a commode in the filth, and a picture of the chief minister next to it, and people sashayed barefoot down the ‘catwalk’.
There is truth to what the president of the Karachi Tajir Alliance Association of Bohri Bazaar told the media: that elected representatives “feel proud of going to the fashion shows of the elite class whereas slum residents do not have clothes to wear and are forced to live amid overflowing gutters. So I decided to arrange a fashion show featuring the misery of the common man”.
After this became news, shopkeepers in the area did say that a sanitation team visited and the area has become less flooded. But elsewhere in the city, in other cities and towns, the problem of garbage and sewage accumulation remains. Does everybody have to resort to such humiliating inelegancies to get their administrations to do the work for which they were appointed?
In terms of Karachi specifically, part of the problem is that state inattention, and the civic status quo, have solidified into a long-term bad habit. The city administration doesn’t care, and hasn’t done so for so long that many citizens have even stopped expecting it to care. If, once in a while, by some miracle, something that benefits citizens in terms of city infrastructure does occur, the general feeling is that of surprise.
Surely there must be a limit past which it would not be possible for people to tolerate their filthy environs. But that limit has come and gone, it is possible to argue. The trouble is the old one: those who are in positions to force a change — either those in positions of administrations or those who form a powerful lobby by virtue of their positions in society — aren’t really affected.
That only leaves the option exercised by residents of Skardu on Friday: tired of waiting for the administration to fix potholes in major roads, about 50 people picked up pickaxes and got to work themselves. Again, people told the media that they had repeatedly called upon the authorities to do the needful, but in vain. Which leaves the honest amongst us thinking, yet again, what do we pay taxes for?
A placard held by one person there read: “The people will make roads, and will awaken the sleeping government.” But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Hajrah Mumtaz is a member of staff.
Source: dawn.com/news/1242561/unresponsive-state
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Trump Nightmare
By Huma Yusuf
February 29th, 2016
AFTER suffering a heavy defeat in the Nevada primary, Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz complained that “if Donald Trump became president nobody knows what the heck he would do… He doesn’t know what the heck he would do”. Many are beginning to wonder. Trump’s successive primary wins in South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada — and his near win in Iowa — are making the prospect of Trump becoming the Republican presidential candidate less remote. And with that comes the possibility of a Trump presidency.
A professor at Stony Brook University has predicted a 97 to 99pc chance that Trump will win the election (and his statistical model has got it right for every US election since 1912, bar one). So while the notion of a Trump presidency still feels more like a surreal reality television episode, it’s time to ask what it would mean for Pakistan.
Trump’s policies — to the extent he has any — are focused on the US economy. He has championed major tax cuts, protectionist policies such as spikes on import tariffs, and the renegotiation or disbandment of free-trade agreements. His strong anti-immigration stance is mostly ill-informed and xenophobic, but vaguely linked to the notion that clamping down on illegal immigration would create more jobs for Americans (not true, but never mind).
Trump’s economic platform has few implications for Pakistan. We were the US’s 56th largest supplier of imported goods in 2013 with exports totalling around $3.6 billion; that figure has stayed flat through 2015. Protectionist policies in the US would hit the textiles and leather sectors hard, but the overall economic impact would not be game-changing.
Pakistanis educated in US colleges would also struggle to get jobs there, as Trump has promised to increase the wage requirements for H-1B visas, which allow US employers to hire foreign professionals. Given that the majority of remittances flow from the Gulf states, this too would not result in an immediate economic blow (though there would be long-term ramifications of a reduced Pakistani diaspora in the US in terms of trade, investment and outsourcing).
Trump has promised to increase funding for the US military. As such, his presidency would signal a return to a familiar dynamic between Pakistan and Republican presidents: closer military-to-military cooperation at the expense of civilian engagement; more military aid, less civil society capacity building; more defence deals, less overall bilateral trade.
Trump’s vocal support for strongmen who can guarantee stability — including Qadhafi’s and Saddam Hussein — indicates that the US under his watch would turn a blind eye to growing transgressions by future army chiefs into Pakistan’s civilian sphere, were that to occur. One suspects that our men in boots may not be as horrified by the prospects of a Trump presidency as others.
On the subject of India, however, they would differ. In January, Trump declared “India is doing great”. Viewing the world through a real estate prism, and with two towers going up in Mumbai and Pune, he is enamoured by our neighbour. He also views Narendra Modi as a fellow businessman who can get deals done (that can be the only explanation for his comment in August 2014 that India’s “new PM has done a fantastic job of bringing people together”.) A US under Trump would likely gravitate towards India, giving Delhi more space to challenge Pakistan’s counterterrorism track record.
A Trump presidency would also impact the Pakistan-China equation. Trump has made taking on China the focus of his campaign. He has promised to expose its currency manipulations, renegotiate trade terms, crackdown on Chinese IP infringement and force it to adhere to labour and environmental laws, all with an eye to boosting the competitiveness of American manufacturers. Such measures would make Beijing bristle, and curtail future potential for cooperation between the two powers, recently demonstrated during the Iran nuclear deal and Afghanistan talks. Pakistan would have to juggle its ties with Washington and Beijing, and would likely grow closer to the latter given the roll out of CPEC.
But the main reason Pakistan should worry about a Trump presidency is its potential to trigger a surge in extremist violence. A jingoistic US president — one that has repeatedly made clear his suspicion and spite for Muslims, whether they be legal immigrants or refugees; one who believes Christianity is “under siege” and has vowed to protect it — will be the stuff of dreams for militant groups. What better driver of recruitment?
The clash of civilisations that has until now been a debunked academic argument would become the status quo. And a surge in radical extremism will hit the Muslim world, including Pakistan, before it affects the US. For that reason alone, a Trump presidency would be bad for Pakistan, for the US, and the world.
Huma Yusuf is a freelance journalist.
Source: dawn.com/news/1242567/trump-nightmare
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Afghanistan Taliban: Can Talks Succeed?
By Ahmed Rashid
February 29, 2016
Countries involved in the Afghan peace process say direct talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban are expected to take place in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, in the first week of March.
It would be the first such meeting of the two sides since July when Kabul-Taliban talks were held — also in Pakistan — but soon fell apart. Since then the quadrilateral group (Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US) has met several times — while in Afghanistan the Taliban have stepped up their offensive even through the harsh winter months.
As the Afghans and other nations have made clear, a successful outcome for these talks to lead to an eventual ceasefire and a detailed political roadmap will heavily depend on how far Pakistan is prepared to go to put pressure on the Taliban leadership to compromise. Most Taliban leaders and their families have been ensconced in Peshawar and Quetta since 2001 when they fled there after the US-led alliance drove them from power.
The risks of not pressurising the Taliban leaders are obvious and hold much danger for Pakistan too. Afghanistan is facing a multi-dimensional civil war with the Taliban now being aided by a plethora of groups such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Chechens and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
On 28 January, Lt General John Nicholson Jr, President Barack Obama's choice to become the new commander of US forces in Afghanistan, agreed with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who described the security situation in Afghanistan as "deteriorating". More US special forces, drones and aircraft have been deployed to southern Afghanistan, which faces the greatest Taliban threat.
However Afghan, American and NATO officials all agree that the bulk of Taliban supplies (arms, ammunition, food, and clothing) is still coming from inside Pakistan, as are large numbers of recruits from the 2.5 million Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan — even though it is clear that such supplies are not being given by Islamabad. Instead, the Taliban are buying such goods locally or importing from the Gulf States and trucking them into Afghanistan via Pakistan. Pakistan has done little to curtail this traffic or block the border passes used by Taliban transport.
Pakistan's army chief, General Raheel Sharif, has pledged to fight terrorism on all fronts, not to be selective towards groups the army once favoured and to foster peace in Afghanistan. He has already been successful in undermining some militant groups in the south and north of Pakistan.
Clearly the Pakistani authorities are strategically committed to ending all sources of terrorism on their soil but tactically there is still a long delay in dealing with the Afghan Taliban and the multiple extremist groups in Punjab province who are mainly targeting India.
So far the army has dealt lethal blows to the Pakistani Taliban on the border with Afghanistan and addressed the issue of militancy and criminality in Karachi. On 24 February General Sharif gave orders for the final push into North Waziristan to eliminate all Pakistani Taliban from what is the most difficult terrain along the common border. The army has been fighting the Pakistani Taliban in this region for nearly two years. However, there is no such pressure on the Afghan Taliban living in Pakistan. They should now be told to either seek peace with Kabul or leave Pakistan.
At the same time many Pakistani Taliban have escaped across the border and are now living under the protection of the Afghan Taliban in eastern Afghanistan. These groups periodically cross back into Pakistan and launch vicious attacks. By letting Pakistani Taliban shelter within the ranks and territory of the Afghan Taliban, Pakistan's authorities are allowing a direct assault on the country's interests. But it is this realisation which is still missing from the military's calculus.
Unless Pakistan moves more swiftly to pressure the Afghan Taliban to hold a serious and productive peace dialogue with Kabul, the worsening military situation in Afghanistan is likely to have an impact on Pakistan as well.
The Taliban are on the verge of capturing the southern province and heroin-growing centre of Helmand. They successfully cut all electricity to Kabul for a month by blowing up pylons in Baghlan province that brought power from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Morale is desperately low among local Afghan officials and troops.
In at least three eastern provinces bordering Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban are also fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS) group, which is trying to recruit among dissatisfied Taliban members. It wasn’t until the end of January that US Special Forces in Afghanistan were given authorisation to go after IS fighters in the country — one reflection of how lackadaisically the Pentagon is responding to the crisis there.
From afar, it may seem good that the extremists are fighting among themselves but such fighting is claiming the lives of many civilians and also could easily spill over into Pakistan, where IS is also trying to establish its presence.
Most Pakistanis want to believe General Sharif that the army is serious about eliminating all forms of terrorism, while the Afghan government is equally keen to see signs that Pakistan is putting pressure on the Afghan Taliban on its soil.
The outcome of the talks in March will be critical because if they fail then we can expect a massive Taliban summer of violence in Afghanistan which will also spill over into Pakistan.
Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist and author based in Lahore. His latest book is Pakistan on the Brink — The Future of America, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Earlier works include Descent into Chaos and Taliban, first published in 2000, which became a bestseller a version of this article appeared in BBC.com on February 27, 2016
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/29-Feb-2016/afghanistan-taliban-can-talks-succeed
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Stand Up, Be Counted
By Kamal Siddiqi
February 28, 2016
It has been decades since we had a proper census. The good news is that we have been told that ahead of a meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI), the military has assured the government it will review the number of troops it can commit for monitoring the population census, rekindling hopes the much-awaited headcount could begin with a slight delay.
We had planned to have a much-delayed census conducted in March 2016. Our last census was held in 1998. It has been nearly two decades since then. The 1998 census was conducted under a cloud. One hopes this time around there will be more transparency.
The national census is important not only for the distribution of resources in a country but also for a number of other equally important reasons. Not only do we need to know how many people we have, but also what is their composition in terms of age, gender and area of residence. We do not know how many people in Pakistan are under 18, for example. We have been relying on estimates for the past two decades.
The General Headquarters has committed 100,000 troops, which is about one-fourth of the initial requirements pitched by the Federal Bureau of Statistics to monitor and supervise the census and maintain law and order during the exercise.
Why cannot we make better use of technology? For example, in some countries the census is conducted by making everyone stand out in the open at a certain day and time and a satellite from above took pictures. This is also outdated today and more strides have now been taken.
As important as counting the number of people in our country is also how fairly and accurately this is done. A census is a very complicated affair. In many countries, outside parties have been contracted to do this. We are not sure how competent the Federal Bureau of Statistics is to conduct this.
There is a lot of politics involved. The question is – how do we conduct a census that is acceptable to all. In this, we have to be mindful that just like the national elections, a number of interests are at play. We need to be honest in our approach and fair in our work. Can the present government do that?
The redistribution of wealth in terms of provinces is just one aspect of a census. We also have to look at the representation in parliament. We cannot continue to have a prime minister of Punjab. We need a prime minister of Pakistan. As things stand, other provinces are under-represented. And it seems all the development work is being done in the bigger province.
In the last census we were able to gauge that there were more women than men in Pakistan. This needs to be kept in mind when reserving jobs and seats for women, who should ideally have a larger share.
We also now need to do away with the outdated and discriminatory quota system that our premiers continue extending for decades. Government recruitment must be done on the basis of merit, and not birthright.
While the introduction of the quota system in government recruitment several decades back did help address the imbalance in the representation of different ethnic groups in government service, it has today outlived its utility. For us to move ahead, merit should be the sole criteria. This quota system may suit some people, but it is an unfair system and has scared away many of our best and brightest.
As things stand today, 50 per cent of government jobs are reserved for Punjab and 40 per cent for the rest of the country, with only ten per cent on merit. This kind of system rarely exists outside Pakistan. In some countries under-represented communities have some reserved seats. But to run the whole government’s recruitment on the basis of reserved seats defies logic.
One of the reasons quoted by observers for delaying the census in the country has been because certain provinces do not want a reallocation of resources. But we need to know how many people live in which province. We are told that the earlier assumption of 50 per cent of the population lives in Punjab does not hold true anymore. So we have to look ahead.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1056064/stand-up-be-counted/
URL: https://newageislam.com/pakistan-press/politics-schizophrenic-war-new-age/d/106494