Terrorism Is the Wrong Focus: New Age Islam's Selection, 09 June 2016

New Age Islam Edit Bureau

09 June 2016

•  Terrorism Is the Wrong Focus

By Harlan Ullman

•  Council of Islamic Ideology Reform a Priority

By I.A. Rehman

•  Official Silence on the Killing of Mullah Akhtar Mansour

By Iqbal Khattak

•  Zarb-E-Azb: Clear Policies Needed For Final Victory

By Imdad Hussain

•  A Secular Man?

By Johann Chacko

Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau

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Terrorism Is the Wrong Focus

By Harlan Ullman

09-Jun-16

Bucharest, Romania: With the arc of crises spanning from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean and the Islamic State (aka IS or Da’esh) still dominating much of the news beyond the bizarre presidential campaign in the US, what to do has so far proven an impossible question to answer. In the case of Syria and Iraq, the West and its allies of sorts face two polar choices: get in or get out. Getting in will require tens if not hundreds of thousands of troops for extended periods that could reach into decades.

Getting out means leaving. Both options are unachievable. No one wants to commit the necessary resources for a mission that could fail as did interventions in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. In the US, domestic politics would crucify any administration on the grounds of abandoning a vital region. The result is what the Obama administration is doing — splitting the difference by relying on air and drone power and limited use of special forces in so-called non-combat roles even though several have been killed in action.

The corollary is terrorism and the misplaced declarations of war against it and against terrorists who wage it. The reality is that no one will ever win a war against terror. Much as wars against drugs, crime, poverty and illiteracy have proven unsuccessful, the reason why this effort will not work is because terror and terrorism are tactics and tools. Unless causes of terrorism are understood and made the targets of policy, no strategy will be effective against only symptoms and means rather than ends.

Last month, the Moscow International Security Conference expressly concentrated on fighting global terrorism. And Bucharest’s Middle East Political and Economic Institute held a conference last week examining terrorism and critical infrastructure. Many conferences have and will aim at exploring “terror and terrorism and the consequences for fill in the blank.”

Aside from a common theme, this conference had two other quite unique aspects noted below and not necessarily raised in other fora. But about terrorism, a strong caution is vital. The issue is not terror or terrorism per se. Terror and terrorism are NOT existential threats to the West or to most countries. Existential are the conflicts raging in much of the world from Afghanistan to Libya with Iraq, Syria and Yemen in between. Hundreds of thousands are dying and many millions displaced. A bit of history makes this point about placing excessive focus on terror and terrorism that are tools and symptoms not causes of the real dangers.

In 1905, an attempted revolution failed to overthrow Czar Nicholas II. The Communist Party was outlawed and its members branded terrorists to be mercilessly hunted by the Czar’s secret police, precursors to the feared Cheka, MVD and later KGB. After Lenin returned to Russia aboard the sealed train in 1917, the revolution succeeded and the Bolsheviks finally seized power. But it was not terror that was existential: it was the Communist Party and its leadership that became the threats to Russians under the Soviet Union. In a similar parallel, this conference underscored the ideological differences between al-Qaeda that sought to spread its roots globally, and the IS that instead declared a localised caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Recall Lenin’s demand for revolution in one country while Trotsky pleaded for a “permanent revolution” elsewhere.

A corollary trap is exaggerating the vulnerability of society to terrorist action. The usual suspects for this vulnerability include nuclear reactors, electrical power grids, airplanes and transportation networks, and the banking systems. Terrorists would clearly hack into infrastructure as the US did with Stuxnet to cripple Iran’s centrifuges creating wide spread disruption and havoc. But it was a tsunami that crippled Japans Dai-ichi reactors and Hurricane Sandy that disabled much of New York’s infrastructure not terrorists. And the financial weapons of mass destruction that created the crises of 2008 were credit default swaps and excessive debt not a terrorist or criminal hacker slashing away on a keyboard. Perspective is needed.

Two other insights from the Bucharest conference concerned Iran. The conference was sponsored in part by the Iranian embassy in Romania. And many of the participants included senior Iranians from a deputy foreign minister to the ambassador in Bucharest. The opportunity for civil and useful dialogue was real and important. One certain conclusion was to expand this dialogue to official government channels either discreetly or even publicly.

One of the briefings on safeguarding infrastructure from terrorists included reference to the Tehran Disaster Management, Control and Planning Centre. Initiated a decade ago with support from Japan, Iran has created a world-class capacity for dealing with disaster both manmade and nature. Moreover, this capacity has expanded throughout the country. Space precludes greater discussion and a glance at the website (www.entdmmo.tehran.ir) is quite instructive.

Several overarching conclusions were evident. In an increasingly globalised and interconnected world, protecting the inherent vulnerability and fragility of infrastructure is increasingly a commonly shared interest. Humanitarian needs are apparent. And disruption in one area such as to financial or energy distribution networks clearly has far reaching consequences elsewhere.

Second, a sounder intellectual framework for addressing the causes and not the symptoms of the challenges and potential dangers facing mankind is essential and must be created. In that context, as Lenin bluntly explained, “the purpose of terror is to terrorise.” It is the political motives and plans of those who weld terror that must be the object of policy analysis and not more focus on the tools. George W Bush fell into this morass by declaring “a global war on terror.” And too many other governments and institutions have likewise blundered into this swamp.

Finally, Churchill argued for “Jaw, jaw not war, war.” No matter how politically incorrect or difficult, dialogue between and among competing and even adversarial states is vital if conflict is to be minimised or avoided. But will we ever learn? That, not terror, may be our major vulnerability!

Harlan Ullman is UPI’s Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist. He serves as Senior Advisor for Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the Atlantic Council and Business Executives for National Security and chairs two private companies. His last book is A Handful of Bullets: How the Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Still Menaces the Peace. His next book due out next year is Anatomy of Failure: Why America Loses Wars It Starts

Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/09-Jun-16/terrorism-is-the-wrong-focus

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Council of Islamic Ideology Reform A Priority

By I.A. Rehman

June 9th, 2016

THE issues raised by the Maulana Sheerani-led Council of Islamic Ideology’s keenness to ensure that wife-beating does not end in Pakistan will be solved neither by protests by women activists nor by the growing storm on social media. The real issue is whether the Muslims of Pakistan can afford to be led by the nose by a state institution determined to prevent their release from concepts unjustly described as Islamic.

No informed Pakistani should have been surprised by the CII’s latest broadside because the council has been proclaiming its love of retrogression quite regularly. Its liking for corporal punishment in schools and child marriage, its rejection of co-education in post-primary institutions and women’s working with men in offices and factories, and its closed mind on the rights of non-Muslim Pakistanis have long confirmed it as the champion of narrow-minded conservatism. What it has done now is to sum up its case for denying women’s basic rights.

These efforts of the CII have off and on revived debates on the justification for its existence. It has often been pointed out that the CII opposes the Muslim people’s right to interpret Islam so as to enable them to face the challenges of the age and defreeze the Islamic Fiqh, an objective for which Iqbal had called for a Muslim homeland in the subcontinent. Iqbal had also specifically opposed the creation of a body of Ulema to advise democratically elected representatives on religious issues on the grounds that parliaments alone were competent to rule on religious questions as well as on other issues.

Further, the need for an Islamic research body to help Muslims get rid of concepts and practices rooted in superstition or feudal culture has often been recognised. At one stage, Dr Fazl ur Rahman, the great scholar who fell foul of Ayub’s dictatorial regime, had conceived of the CII as a national body presiding over the work of provincial research and reform councils that could help the country benefit from Ijtihad. Perhaps it is time to retrieve the Fazl ur Rahman plan and reconstruct the CII as a dynamic institution to rid Islam in Pakistan of its un-Islamic accretions.

Those who demand disbandment of the CII rely on Article 228 of the Constitution, which describes review of the existing laws as the council’s primary function, and Article 230, which requires the CII to submit its final report within seven years of its appointment. The council completed the task of examining the existing laws many years ago. As for fresh legislation, the need to end the council’s encroachment on the rights of parliament as advised by Iqbal is manifest.

However, the CII is not going to be dissolved soon because no government is likely to give up, in the foreseeable future, the policy of appeasing the religious orthodoxy. Besides, Muslims in Pakistan, as a whole, have not even begun to realise the horrible consequences of mixing religion with politics. Thus, neither the state nor society is in a position to appreciate the harm a CII dominated by retrogressive elements could cause to their future. Realism demands that, while waiting for the rise of a secular Pakistan, priority should be given to restructuring the CII so as to enable it to better serve Islam and the people’s interests.

First of all, it is necessary to re-examine the principles that should guide the government while selecting CII members, especially the body’s chairman. (This issue will acquire additional importance in December this year when Maulana Sheerani’s second term as CII head comes to an end.)

Considerable confusion has been caused by the authors of the Constitution by providing for the CII immediately after the article that calls for bringing all laws in conformity with Islamic injunctions and prohibits the making of any law that is repugnant to such injunctions.

This has tended to limit the CII’s functions as the final authority for determining the legitimacy of laws, and this impression is further strengthened by the language of Article 230 which defines the CII’s functions. It also extends indefinitely the period of the council’s encroachment on parliament’s authority to decide upon legislative measures’ repugnancy or otherwise to Islam.

The CII was never intended to be dominated by traditionalist Ulema. Its members are to be chosen from two groups: “persons having knowledge of the principles and philosophy of Islam” and those, having an “understanding of the economic, political, legal, or administrative problems of Pakistan”.

The council must comprise eight to 20 members, and it is reasonable to expect that the two groups referred to here should be evenly represented on it. Further, it is not necessary that the CII should be headed by a traditionalist aalim. In fact, various governments have avoided appointing tradition-bound ulema as CII chairmen, except for Allauddin Siddiqui, Maulana Kausar Niazi and Maulana Sheerani. Out of the 12 heads the CII has had, five were retired judges, three non-traditionalist scholars (Prof Halepota, Dr S.M. Zaman and Dr Muhammad Khalid Masud) and one lawyer-politician (Iqbal Ahmad Khan).

If the CII is to work towards freeing the Pakistani people from the effects of a ‘frozen Fiqh’ and enable them to reinterpret their faith through Ijtihad, a few changes in its composition are absolutely essential.

First, the CII head should be a scholar who understands the socioeconomic problems of Pakistan and can engage the Ulema in a progressive discourse.

Secondly, the Ulema, should be chosen from both traditionalist and progressive schools.

Thirdly, the quota for women members should be raised to at least one-third (if not 50pc) of the total membership. For every two women appointed to the council, one of them must represent the forward-looking woman.

At some stage, the government may consider giving the National Commission on Human Rights, the National Commission on the Status of Women and the National Commission on Minorities (whenever it is set up) observer status at the CII.

Source: dawn.com/news/1263639/cii-reform-a-priority

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Official Silence on the Killing of Mullah Akhtar Mansour

By Iqbal Khattak

June 9th, 2016

THE story of the killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a US drone strike in Balochistan last month remained on the media’s radar for barely more than a week. Pakistan traditionally remains immune to such events, despite their high-profile nature. In the US, Osama bin Laden’s killing was followed soon after by an action-packed Hollywood account of the hunt and killing of the Al Qaeda leader.

In Pakistan, both cases registered more displeasure than actual reporting on the events for the sake of keeping the nation informed. The public looked on with bemusement at the apparently inadequate or dysfunctional communication protocols, wondering which ministry or minister would come forward to release available information or make an official statement.

When news broke of the US drone strike which killed a high value target in Pakistan, no official statement, at any level, came for over 24 hours. There appeared to be a total breakdown of communication between the government and its public over this issue. The most active official Pakistani Twitter channel, responsible for disseminating information, also remained inactive that day. And it wasn’t until the evening of May 22 that the Foreign Office released a statement condemning the drone strike for breaching Pakistan’s sovereignty — rather than sharing any details it may have gathered since the incident occurred. On May 23, while on an official visit to Vietnam, President Obama confirmed the killing of Mullah Mansour.

Still, Pakistan continued to shy away from corroborating the news. The day following President Obama’s statement, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan became the first Pakistani official to speak in public – breaking his silence 72 hours after the drone strike. He informed the nation that Mullah Mansour’s death would only be confirmed following a DNA test. Before the results of those tests came in, however, the Afghan Taliban announced on May 25 that their leader had, in fact, died in the US strike in Balochistan.

That same day, the Pakistani military also joined in the chorus to condemn the drone strike when army chief Gen Raheel Sharif, voiced his ‘serious concerns’ to the US envoy in Pakistan. Again, rather than providing first-hand information as to what precisely happened that day, displeasure was aired.

“All indicators confirm that the person killed in the drone strike was Mullah Mansour, who was travelling on a fake identity,” said foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz at a news conference on May 26, without waiting for the aforementioned DNA results. Finally, on May 29, DNA testing confirmed that the person targeted in the drone strike was none other than Mullah Mansour.

The Mullah Mansour saga reveals how Pakistan appears to exist with black holes of information — clearly apparent in hindsight and from a distance — when it comes to the state machinery responding to crisis-like situations, such as the events of May 21. There seem to be no communication protocols designating which official will be speaking on which subject. It appears that when it comes to officially responding to events or disclosing information roles and responsibility are not clearly defined.

For example, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s health issues were treated as though they were simply the family’s concerns, which they are not; they are also the state’s concerns. It ought to have been a government spokesperson’s responsibility to keep the nation informed of the prime minister’s condition, and not his daughter’s through tweets.

The government’s role is to officially report on incidents occurring in the public sphere to avoid rumour-mongering. Understandably, it takes time to collect and verify information, but at the very least the government could have told the public: we have information that a drone targeted a vehicle and we will share details as we get them. Such statements are oft repeated by spokespersons around the world. Our neighbour, Afghanistan, even has trained spokespersons appointed at regional levels. What is the problem with ours?

An abundance of airwaves and bandwidth do not qualify a country to call itself media or information-friendly. It is the degree of official reporting and information made available to the public that qualifies a country to be declared so. A blind defence of government policies by politically motivated spokespersons will help neither the state nor its people. Pakistan needs to step away from its culture of public relations management. Provided there even are any, information-sharing tools and mechanisms need to be upgraded.

Currently, Pakistanis look to the rest of the world for information about their own country. Public anxieties and concerns aren’t just grown by inactions on ground — the sheer lack of information contributes significantly. Official reporting makes a country stronger, not weaker. Credible information sharing will rebuild the public’s trust and confidence in their state.

Iqbal Khattak is senior media analyst.

Source: dawn.com/news/1263636/official-silence

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Zarb-E-Azb: Clear Policies Needed For Final Victory

By Imdad Hussain

June 8, 2016

The writer is an Islamabad-based journalist specialising in diplomatic and security issues imd_04@yahoo.com

Although Operation Zarb-e Azb and other actions against terrorists from Khyber to Karachi have delivered much, their complete success and total elimination of terrorism remain a dream, which require clarity in our internal and external policies. The country’s policies in this regard, however, remain shrouded in confusion. Contradictory statements by Pakistani officials over the US drone attack and the killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mansoor indicated chaos within the policymaking circles. The handing over of the Angoor Adda border crossing to Afghanistan and then the controversy over this action was another manifestation of this institutional muddle.

The government states that Islamabad wants friendly ties with all neighbours, including India, but the poor state of relations with that country as well as with Iran, Afghanistan and Bangladesh is a reflection of our contradictions. Pakistan has so far failed to effectively deal with the India factor in diplomatic terms — Pak-Afghan ties are marred by the India factor as are our ties with Bangladesh. With the India factor barring Pakistan from establishing stronger friendly relations with its neighbours and intelligent diplomacy being absent in tackling the situation, our interests in the region have been damaged. This has led to mistrust in our relations with regional countries as well as with the US. Gaps among regional countries have given space to terrorism to flourish.

We need to understand that an effective foreign policy is not just a set of wishes; it needs to be fully thought out and implemented through a clear course of action. The role that effective diplomacy can play in modern geopolitics cannot be understated. In contrast, Pakistan lacks diplomatic effectiveness in important areas, such as the issue of the Coalition Support Fund, and the controversy over the F-16s with the US. Our domestic policies are also in disarray. A lack of interest and delay over Fata reforms, the poor implementation of the National Action Plan and the delays in rehabilitation of IDPs have been debated in the media for long. Several months back, the situation prompted the ISPR to issue a statement urging that increased attention be paid towards protecting the gains of Operation Zarb-e-Azb. At the same time, we see unnecessary delays in making Nacta a functional institution. This situation provides evidence of the lack of focus in implementing our internal policies effectively so that serious national crises can be tackled. We still haven’t seen any concrete steps being taken towards addressing corruption and instituting good governance, which are important if we are to tackle the root causes of terrorism. Pakistan cannot afford such confusion while facing complex challenges. On the one hand, RAW agents confessing to sabotage activities in Pakistan are being arrested, while on the other, al Qaeda, TTP and their numerous factions, foreign militants, as well as groups with sectarian motives, still pose a grave danger to our security.

Despite all these complexities, the armed forces have been able to control the violence in Fata, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh. Since March, a decline in incidents of terrorism was noted in Balochistan although fatalities have increased a little bit. Similarly, while the March suicide attack in Lahore caused an upsurge in fatalities in Punjab, the number of terror and violence affected districts reduced from 24 to 19 in the province. Since June 2014, when Operation Zarb-e-Azb was launched, a steady decline in terrorism and fatalities due to violence has been observed. Observers maintain that incidents of terrorism have shrunk by 65 per cent in the last two years. This year, fatalities due to violence dropped by 36.8 per cent as compared to the first quarter of the last year. Suicide attacks do not occur as a matter of routine anymore, militants do not occupy any territory, and though we still witness isolated incidents of terrorism, the situation is certainly not as bad as before.

In order to preserve this momentum, a revamp of our policies is essential. Approval of policies by both houses of parliament, backed by input from relevant ministries and institutions, is crucial. Every policy that has popular backing will succeed. A nation is the aggregate of its citizens, and interests of the citizens are termed as the national interest. Policies need to be drafted keeping in mind the interest of the ordinary citizen — in the sense that the security of life, property, economic well-being and social protection remain the foremost interests.

Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1119135/zarb-e-azb-clear-policies-needed-final-victory/

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A Secular Man?

By Johann Chacko

June 9th, 2016

THE Council of Islamic Ideology has recently drawn enormous attention for its reactionary statements on everything from women’s rights to the Panama Papers. If you had to guess when Pakistan was saddled with the CII, whose very title embodies the explicitly political role of religion in the state, you might think Gen Zia ul Haq’s time. You’d be dead wrong; it was the 1963 first amendment to the ‘secular’ Ayub Khan’s constitution. So just how did those changes come about, let alone survive his fall as well as Yahya Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and yes, Zia?

Today, you might associate Islamic ideology with Maulvis and madrasas, but it wasn’t always so. The Objectives Resolution of 1949 which lodged it in the new state’s DNA was introduced by Liaquat Ali Khan, and championed by highly articulate, university-educated figures of standing in the Urdu intelligentsia’s right wing.

Perhaps intimidated by the scale of its ethnic and religious diversity (only exceeded by Indonesia), this circle feared that Pakistan, unlike other Muslim-majority countries, could not survive with ‘normal’ territorial nationalism. Instead, they called for an Islamic ideology, manufactured and policed by the state.

Of course, it took time to win the professionals over. The military, civil service and judiciary developed doubts over the politicians’ Islamic project after the mullah-led Punjab Disturbances of 1953. Despite this, less than a year after taking power, Ayub had come around to the rightist intellectuals’ views, and the army was not far behind its field marshal. With the president’s personal backing the Central Institute of Islamic Research was established in September 1959.

Then in February 1960, the committee (chaired by Gen Yahya Khan) overseeing the creation of Ayub’s new capital selected ‘Islamabad’ as its official name. By November, he came right out and declared the guiding principle behind this national rebranding exercise: “This [the Islamic ideology] is the foremost justification for our existence and we cannot be true to Pakistan without being true to this ideology.”

Let us pause to appreciate just how radical these words are. Pakistan was no longer its land, with its rich history, or its diverse peoples; it was reduced to whatever ideology the state propagated. That history and that diversity would have to be written out of the story, and if necessary disciplined into submission. Meanwhile, religion was impoverished, reduced to political ideology — a way of thinking that has far more in common with the divisive philosophy of Maududi and the Jamaat-i-Islami than the civic nationalism of Jinnah in August 1947.

You say, what about the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance? Didn’t it upset the Ulema by raising the marriage age and limiting polygamy? Unfortunately, neither conflicts with the clergy nor their personal lifestyle made Ayub, Yahya or Bhutto secular. Many people — including ‘liberals’ — often need reminding that secularism is much more than a matter of lifestyle; it means defining political communities in a way that is inclusive of people of all backgrounds and faiths. This was certainly not the path that Pakistan found itself on under these regimes.

By 1966, Ayub Khan was jotting down in his diary that the real source of tension with East Pakistan was that it was too Hindu to be receptive to the Nazariya-i-Pakistan. This ideologically driven misdiagnosis of the province’s grievances was widely held in the military high command and played a major role in driving tensions to the breaking point in 1971.

The failure of Islamic ideology to hold Pakistan together should have given pause, but instead the establishment doubled down. Bhutto, in a March 1972 address, asked his people to “make this beautiful country an Islamic state, the biggest Islamic state, the bravest Islamic state and the most solid Islamic state”. Four years later in 1976, he proposed the introduction of Pakistan Studies into the school curricula to help achieve this, which Gen Zia’s government went on to make mandatory.

The Islamic parties deeply resented exclusion from a process initially dominated by intellectuals, civil servants and generals; over time, they have been granted increasing power to define national Islamic ideology by a deep state that needed support fighting endless wars at home and abroad.

Today, those parties ensure that this ideology remains embedded in the educational curriculum, poisoning young Pakistani minds against their fellow citizens. Musharraf’s attempts to institutionalise ‘enlightened moderation’ and reverse the process failed because the original project has been too successful. In a democratic age a confused and half-hearted establishment cannot simply order ordinary Pakistanis to reject the ideas they have been fed from birth without being accused of being sell-outs themselves.

This, above all, is why Pakistan’s educated classes must consciously embrace the transition from an ideological state to a territorial one if they are to ever break the power of the extremists that they now fear and hate.

Johann Chacko is a researcher and a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Source: dawn.com/news/1263637/a-secular-man

URL: https://newageislam.com/pakistan-press/terrorism-wrong-focus-new-age/d/107574