US Drone Attacks Cloaked in Secrecy – Asia Times Online

June 17, 2009
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON – The United States Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) refusal to share with other agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by remote-controlled unmanned Predator drones in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region, combined with recent revelations that CIA operatives have been paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, suggests that managers of the drone attack programs have been using the total secrecy surrounding the program to hide abuses and high civilian casualties.

Intelligence analysts have been unable to obtain either the list of military targets of the drone strikes or the actual results in terms of al-Qaeda or civilians killed, according to a Washington source familiar with internal discussion of the drone strike program. The

source insisted on not being identified because of the extreme sensitivity of the issue.

“They can’t find out anything about the program,” the source told Inter Press Service (IPS). That has made it impossible for other government agencies to judge its real consequences, according to the source.

Since early 2009, Barack Obama administration officials have claimed that the predator attacks in Pakistan have killed nine of the 20 top al-Qaeda officials, but they have refused to disclose how many civilians have been killed in the strikes.

In April, Lahore newspaper The News published figures provided by Pakistani officials indicating that 687 civilians have been killed along with 14 al-Qaeda leaders in some 60 drone strikes since January 2008 – just over 50 civilians killed for every al-Qaeda leader.

A paper published last week by the influential pro-military Center for a New American Security (CNAS) criticizing the Obama administration’s use of drone attacks in Pakistan said US officials “vehemently dispute” the Pakistani figures but offers no further data on the program.

In an interview with IPS, Nathaniel C Fick, the chief operating officer of CNAS, who co-authored the paper, said Pentagon officials claim privately that 300 al-Qaeda fighters have been killed in the drone attacks. However, those officials refuse to stipulate further just who they have included under that rubric, according to Fick, and have not offered any figure on civilian deaths.

What is needed is “a strict definition of the target set” and “a definition of who is al-Qaeda”, said Fick.

Press reports that the CIA is paying Pakistani agents to identify al-Qaeda targets by placing electronic chips at farmhouses supposedly inhabited by al-Qaeda officials so they can be bombed by predator planes has raised new questions about whether the CIA and the Obama administration have simply redefined al-Qaeda in order to cover up an abusive system and justify the program.

The initial story on the CIA payments for placing the chips by Carol Grisanti and Mushtaq Yusufzai of NBC News, which ran on April 17, was based on a confession by a 19-year-old in North Waziristan on a video released by the Taliban. In his confession, the young man said, “I was given US$122 to drop chips wrapped in a cigarette paper at al-Qaeda and Taliban houses. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.”

He goes on to say, “I thought this was a very easy job. The money was so good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money.”

The video then shows the man being shot for being a spy for the United States.

A US official told NBC news that the video was “extremist propaganda”, but a story in The Guardian on May 31 said residents of Waziristan, including one student identified as Taj Muhammad Wazir, had confirmed that tribesman have been paid to lay the electronic devices to target drone strikes.

The knowledgeable Washington source told IPS the Guardian article was consistent with past CIA intelligence-gathering methods in Afghanistan and elsewhere. “We buy data,” he said. “Everything is paid for.”

The implication of the system of purchasing targeting information for drone strikes is that there is “no guarantee” that the people being targeted are officials of al-Qaeda or allied organizations, he said.

Fick, who is a veteran of the post-9/11 military operations in Afghanistan and the early phase of the Iraq war, said that kind of intelligence for targeting is “intrinsically problematic”.

Although the CNAS paper by Fick, Andrew Exum and David Kilcullen does not explicitly call for ending drone attacks, it is highly critical of the program, charging that the use of drones represents a “tactic … substituting for a strategy”.

It concedes that, by “killing key leaders and hampering operations”, the drone attacks against al-Qaeda and some other militants in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas “create a sense of insecurity among militants and constrain their interactions with suspected informers”.

But it argues that the drone attacks have also “created a siege mentality among the Pashtun population in northwest Pakistan”, and likened them to similar strikes against Islamic militants in Somalia in 2005-2006. The net result of those earlier strikes, the authors assert, was to anger the population and make the Islamic insurgents more popular.

The drone strikes in Pakistan are having a similar impact, not only in the tribal areas but in other provinces as well, the paper said. In a panel discussing the paper at the think tank’s annual meeting last Thursday, Exum, a former officer in Afghanistan, said, “We are not saying that the drone strikes are not part of a solution, but right now they are part of the problem.”

The new CNAS criticism of drone strikes is of particular interest because of the close relationship between the think-tank and US Central Command chief General David Petraeus, who was the keynote speaker at Thursday’s conference. The new president of CNAS, John Nagl, is a former adviser to Petraeus and co-author of the army’s counter-insurgency manual. CNAS is widely regarded as reflecting the perspective of the Petraeus wing of the US military.

Another co-author and former Petraeus aide, Australian David Kilcullen, who was also a senior fellow at CNAS last year, had already come out strongly against drone strikes as politically self-defeating.

However, Nagl himself told IPS that he disagrees with the CNAS paper’s position on drone strikes. He said he believes the benefits of the strikes are greater than have been publicly communicated by the administration, and suggested the failure to release any more figures on the results could be attributed to a “culture of secrecy”.

Petraeus made no mention of the issue in his presentation to the CNAS conference on Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Washington Post reported on June 1 that Petraeus wrote in a secret May 27 assessment, “Anti-US sentiment has already been increasing in Pakistan … especially in regard to cross-border and reported drone strikes, which Pakistanis perceive to cause unacceptable civilian casualties.”

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

Originally Published in Asia Times Online

Filed under: 1 , Carol Grisanti, CIA, Drones, Mushtaq Yusufzai, NBC News, Pakistan

The Procrastination Code of Da Vinci

“Dimmi, dimmi se mai fu fatta cosa alcuna.” (”Tell me, tell me if anything ever got done.”)
— Attributed to Leonardo

On his deathbed, they say, Leonardo da Vinci regretted that he had left so much unfinished.

Leonardo had so many ideas; he was so ahead of his time. His notebooks were crammed with inventions: new kinds of clocks, a double-hulled ship, flying machines, military tanks, an odometer, the parachute, and a machine gun, to name just a few. If you wanted a new high-tech weapon, a gigantic bronze statue, or a method for moving a river, Leonardo could devise something that just might work.

But Leonardo rarely completed any of the great projects that he sketched in his notebooks. His groundbreaking research in human anatomy resulted in no publications — at least not in his lifetime. Not only did Leonardo fail to realize his potential as an engineer and a scientist, but he also spent his career hounded by creditors to whom he owed paintings and sculptures for which he had accepted payment but — for some reason — could not deliver, even when his deadline was extended by years. His surviving paintings amount to no more than 20, and five or six, including the “Mona Lisa,” were still in his possession when he died. Apparently, he was still tinkering with them.

Nowadays, Leonardo might have been hired by a top research university, but it seems likely that he would have been denied tenure. He had lots of notes but relatively little to put in his portfolio.

Leonardo was the kind of person we have come to call a “genius.” But he had trouble focusing for long periods on a single project. After he solved its conceptual problems, Leonardo lost interest until someone forced his hand. Even then, Leonardo often became a perfectionist about details that no one else could see, and the job just didn’t get done.

A friar named Sabba di Castiglione said of Leonardo, “When he ought to have attended to painting in which no doubt he would have proved a new Appelles, he gave himself entirely to geometry, architecture, and anatomy.” Leonardo worked on what interested him at the moment, cultivating his energies and insights, even when those activities were not directly related to his current commissions.

Leonardo, it seems, was a hopeless procrastinator. Or that’s what we are supposed to believe, following the narrative started by his earliest biographer, Giorgio Vasari, and continued in the sermons of today’s anti-procrastination therapists and motivational speakers. Leonardo, you see, was “afraid of success,” so he never really gave his best effort. There was no chance of failure that way. Better to “self-sabotage” than to come up short.

Of course, the therapeutic interpretation of Leonardo — and, perhaps, of many of us in academe who emulate his pattern of seemingly nonproductive creativity — has a long history. Leonardo’s reputation spread at exactly the right time for someone to become a symbol of this newly invented moral and psychological disorder: procrastination, a word that sounds just a little too much like what Victorian moralists used to call “self-abuse.”

The unambiguously negative idea of procrastination seems unique to the Western world; that is, to Europeans and the places they have colonized in the last 500 years or so. It is a reflection of several historical processes in the years after the discovery of the New World: the Protestant Reformation, the spread of capitalist economics, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the middle classes, and the growth of the nation-state. As any etymologist will tell you, words are battlegrounds for contending historical processes, and dictionaries are among the best chronicles of those struggles.

The magisterial Oxford English Dictionary presents a wide range of connotations for “procrastinate,” ranging from the innocuous “to postpone” to the more negative “to postpone irrationally, obstinately, and out of sinful laziness.” The earliest instances of procrastination do not carry the moral sting of the later usages. To procrastinate simply meant to delay for one reason or another, as one might reasonably delay eating dinner because it is only 3 in the afternoon. For example, in 1632 someone described “That benefite of the procrastinating of my Life.” In other words, sometimes delay is good; it is a good idea — in this case — to delay the arrival of death.

Somehow it is not surprising that the first notable shift in the moral weight of the term is found in relation to business and the building of empires. In his 1624 account, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, Capt. John Smith — adventurer and founder of Jamestown — wrote of his gang of shiftless cavaliers, “Many such deuices [devices] they fained [feigned] to procrastinate the time.” It was, no doubt, owing to this procrastination — not tyrannical leadership and impossible conditions — that Jamestown’s early years were so unsuccessful. Eventually, Smith developed the policy of “He that will not worke shall not eate,” since eating seems to be one of the few things about which one cannot procrastinate for long. It’s a telling moment when procrastination becomes a crime against the state potentially punishable by death.

As time wore on, and the pace of life accelerated, the exhortations against procrastination in the English-speaking world rapidly became stronger. By 1893 we find someone not being accused of procrastination or warned against it, but accusing himself of the shameful vice: “I was too procrastinatingly lazy to expend even that amount of energy.” The rhetoric of anti-procrastination — constructed by imperialists, religious zealots, and industrial capitalists — had become internalized. We no longer need to be told that to procrastinate is wrong. We know we are sinners and are ashamed. What can we do but work harder?

Like the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we live our lives with regret for what we have not done — or have done imperfectly — instead of taking satisfaction with what we have done, such as, in Coleridge’s case, founding English Romanticism in his youth and producing, throughout his life, some of the best poetry and literary criticism ever composed, including his unfinished poem “Kubla Khan.” But that was not enough; always, there was some magnum opus that Coleridge should have been writing, that made every smaller project seem like failure, and that led him to seek refuge from procrastinator’s guilt in opium.

One thing about this dalliance with the OED is reassuring: If words emerge and evolve over time, it is possible to get behind them, to disconnect the relationship between “signifier” and “signified” so to speak. Since procrastination emerged from a specific historical context, it is not a universal and inescapable element of human experience. We can liberate ourselves from its gravitational pull of judgment, shame, and coercion. We can seize the term for ourselves and redefine it for our purposes. We can even make procrastination — like imagination — into something positive and maybe even essential for the productivity we value above all things.

In 1486, when Leonardo was still struggling with the Sforza horse, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola gave his famous “Oration on the Dignity of Man,” encouraging artists to become divine creators in their own right. In this vision, God encourages Adam not to embrace human limitation but to lift himself upward into the realm of the angels.

It was this dream of human perfectibility that animated artists like Michelangelo, and, perhaps, forever rendered Leonardo unable to relinquish voluntarily any of his more serious artistic projects. As Vasari writes, “Leonardo, with his profound intelligence of art, commenced various undertakings, many of which he never completed, because it appeared to him that the hand could never give its due perfection to the object or purpose which he had in his thoughts, or beheld in his imagination.” Through his many episodes of alleged procrastination, we see an artist who engages with the irresolvable conflict between unlimited aspiration and the acknowledgment of human limitation.

If Leonardo seemed endlessly distracted by his notebooks and experiments — instead of finishing the details of a painting he had already conceptualized — it was because he understood the fleeting quality of imagination: If you do not get an insight down on paper, and possibly develop it while your excitement lasts, then you are squandering the rarest and most unpredictable of your human capabilities, the very moments when one seems touched by the hand of God.

The principal evidence for that is, of course, Leonardo’s notebooks. He kept those notebooks for at least 35 years, and more than 5,000 manuscript pages have survived — perhaps a third of the total — scattered in several archives and private collections. Leonardo’s known writings would fill at least 20 volumes, but if one includes the lost materials, he probably wrote enough to fill a hundred.

Some of Leonardo’s entries are short jottings; others are lengthy and elaborate. The notebooks give the impression of a mind always at work, even in the midst of ordinary affairs. He returned to some pages intermittently over many years, revising his thoughts and adding drawings and textual elaborations. Several compendiums have been compiled from his notebooks, but, like so many of us, Leonardo never used his voluminous private writings to produce a single published work.

For the most part, his notebooks — like the commonplace books that were kept by students in the Renaissance (Shakespeare’s Hamlet had one, for example) — were a polymath’s workshop: a place to try out ideas, to develop them over time, and to retain them until circumstances made them more immediately useful.

Leonardo’s studies of how light strikes a sphere, for example, enable the continuous modeling of the “Mona Lisa” and “St. John the Baptist.” His work in optics might have delayed a project, but his final achievements in painting depended on the experiments — physical and intellectual — that he documented in the notebooks. Far from being a distraction — like many of his contemporaries thought — they represent a lifetime of productive brainstorming, a private working out of the ideas on which his more public work depended. To criticize this work is to believe that what we call genius somehow emerges from the mind fully formed — like Athena from the head of Zeus — without considerable advance preparation. Vasari’s quotation of Pope Leo X has rung down through the centuries as a classic indictment of Leonardo’s procrastinatory behavior: “Alas! This man will do nothing at all, since he is thinking of the end before he has made a beginning.”

If creative procrastination, selectively applied, prevented Leonardo from finishing a few commissions — of minor importance when one is struggling with the inner workings of the cosmos — then only someone who is a complete captive of the modern cult of productive mediocrity that pervades the workplace, particularly in academe, could fault him for it.

Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind. It is safe and threatens no one. Nothing will be changed by mediocrity; mediocrity is completely predictable. It doesn’t make the powerful and self-satisfied feel insecure. It doesn’t require freedom, because it doesn’t do anything unexpected. Mediocrity is the opposite of what we call “genius.” Mediocrity gets perfectly mundane things done on time. But genius is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. You cannot produce a work of genius according to a schedule or an outline. As Leonardo knew, it happens through random insights resulting from unforeseen combinations. Genius is inherently outside the realm of known disciplines and linear career paths. Mediocrity does exactly what it’s told, like the docile factory workers envisioned by Frederick Winslow Taylor.

Like so many of us in academe, Leonardo was endlessly curious; he did not rely on received wisdom but insisted on going back to the sources, most important nature itself. Would he have achieved more if his focus had been narrower and more rigorously professional? Perhaps he might have completed more statues and altarpieces. He might have made more money. His contemporaries, such as Michelangelo, would have had fewer grounds for mocking him as an impractical eccentric. But we might not remember him now any more than we normally recall the more punctual work of dozens of other Florentine artists of his generation.

Perhaps Leonardo’s greatest discovery was not the perfectibility of man but its opposite: He found that even the most profound thought combined with the most ferocious application cannot accomplish something absolutely true and beautiful. We cannot touch the face of God. But we can come close, and his work, imperfect as it may be, is one of the major demonstrations of heroic procrastination in Western history: the acceptance of our imperfection — and the refusal to accept anything less than striving for perfection anyway.

Leonardo is just one example of an individual whose meaning has been constructed, in part, to combat the vice of procrastination; namely, the natural desire to pursue what one finds most interesting and enjoyable rather than what one finds boring and repellent, simply because one’s life must be at the service of some compelling interest — some established institutional practice — that is never clearly explained, lest it be challenged and rejected.

Academe is full of potential geniuses who have never done a single thing they wanted to do because there were too many things that needed to be done first: the research projects, conference papers, books and articles — not one of them freely chosen: merely means to some practical end, a career rather than a calling. And so we complete research projects that no longer interest us and write books that no one will read; or we teach with indifference, dutifully boring our students, marking our time until retirement, and slowly forgetting why we entered the profession: because something excited us so much that we subordinated every other obligation to follow it.

If there is one conclusion to be drawn from the life of Leonardo, it is that procrastination reveals the things at which we are most gifted — the things we truly want to do. Procrastination is a calling away from something that we do against our desires toward something that we do for pleasure, in that joyful state of self-forgetful inspiration that we call genius.
Source: Written as How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci by W.A. Pannapacker in The Chronicle Review

Filed under: Excerpts & Quotes, Misclaneous, Philosophy & Simplosofy , Chronical Review, Gift, Inspiration, Leonardo Da Vinci, Procrastinate

Imran Khan – Rightist or Leftist?

Originally published as “In Defense of Imran Khan: Who is a Liberal?“
By: Khawar Shamsul Hassan
Orlando, Florida, USA
PTI Coordinator.

“If you wish to converse with me”, Voltaire said, “Define your terms”. Pakistan is a funny country where we excel at changing the meaning of the words to use them for our own benefit. Business is now the equivalent of fraud and scams. Intelligence is the ability to lie and cheat. Integrity and honesty are equivalent to naivety and foolishness. Politics is just another name for raw, crude and naked opportunism.

As a result we have politicians claiming religion and espousing policies totally anathema to it and liberals who don’t know what liberalism means. First of all it is a matter of context, the term liberal in a university setting could mean different than when used in a talk show or political rally.

Mr. Najam Sethi has taken a swipe at Imran Khan for lambasting the “liberals” in his speech at the Rawalpindi Bar on March 7th. Mr. Sethi forgot to mention that Imran Khan also lambasted Maulana Fazal ur Rehman by name, and other politicians who pedal religion in general. Leaving that aside for a moment, lets delve into who is a liberal and what it means to be a liberal.

A liberal, according to Alan Wolfe, is some one who stands for personal freedom, rule of law, free but responsible markets, mutual toleration and equal concern for all. Even the most disgruntled critics of Imran Khan have to agree that he and his party, PTI, are most law abiding, peaceful and not having any goon squads. He has shown equal concern for all, including the missing persons, abused women and minorities.

Please some one explain how can any one call themselves liberal when they are rooting for killing “terrorists of Lal Masjid” without affording them due process of law? How can one call themselves liberal and support indiscriminate aerial bombing against one’s own countrymen? No matter what their crimes, they all deserve their day at the court to defend themselves. A state cannot react to vigilante squads by engaging in vigilante behavior itself. Rule of law must be upheld, and that is what Imran Khan has supported.

Please some one further explain that how can anyone call themselves liberal while supporting the most rightwing conservative policies of the Bush neocons? The same policies and wars that were opposed by true liberals in all Western countries. What would you call George Calloway, Imran Khans’ biggest supporter in UK? Or Barak Obama?

Mr. Sethi, I think a rethink is on. Please do not equate supporting US policies with liberalism. Just like Islam is being misused by the Al-Qaida and their ilk for their purposes, Liberalism is being misused by the Maghrebzadehs.

I can understand your and other journalist’s confusion regarding Imran Khan. He cannot be labeled and pigeon holed because he is his own man. He ponders over an issue and takes a stand based on what he thinks is right. It might be right of center some time and left of center at other times. It might be politically incorrect at the time as well.

The reason that Imran Khan is still popular with the liberals is because they recognize that he is a true liberal at heart. Like Mohammad Ali Jinnah, whose politics was principle based and issue oriented. Like Allama Iqbal, whose interpretation of Islam earned him fatwa of kufr. That is why he is popular with liberals like me because his politics is based on right and wrong, not right and left.

Filed under: Excerpts & Quotes, Politik , Imran Khan, Insaf, Left, Liberal, PTI, Right

On CJ and a Vibrant Civil Society

Ishtiaq Ali Mekhri has written a brilliant piece for Khaleej Times for its 16th march publication regarding the deposed Chief Justice issue as well as the corresponding ongoing struggle of Pakistan’s politically smarter, evolving civil society.

Pakistan’s deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry may not be infallible. But he has now attained the status of a messiah – in whose reinstatement an overwhelming number of Pakistanis see their hopes in the rule of law, justice and democracy!

What makes them believe so is the word ‘No’ that Justice Chaudhry uttered before a dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, on the fateful day of March 9 two years ago. That unprecedented moment as well as the action, to sack the chief justice, in Pakistan’s history has drawn the line between those who stand for the supremacy of the constitution and those who don’t mind a tailor-made democracy propped up by the civil-military establishment.

March 9, 2007, for many was a revolutionary day in Pakistan when somebody – who was himself a part of the establishment, stood tall to make the difference felt. The day when a dictator at the zenith of his power was made to bite the dust, and was told ‘enough is enough’. For many others, it was a day when the process for a sustained evolution, leading to democratic reawakening, had begun in a country, which has seen chequered eras of military rule and quasi-democracy.

The courage, however, exhibited by the deposed chief justice was the beginning of a long drawn struggle which would make his countrymen realise the dream of a Pakistan where the rule of law shall be supreme. Nonetheless, there is no dearth of critics who are against the restoration of judiciary. And, primarily, they are the people who seek solace and refuge in the condemned doctrine of necessity – which validates every unconstitutional measure of military dictators – enshrined by the judiciary itself way back in the 1950’s.

Similarly, it is argued that why take a stand and struggle for the sacked chief justice when he himself had taken oath under a military dictator after the coup in 1999, which overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Such arguments are not devoid of substance. But what makes Justice Iftikhar a source of enduring hope for the people is the manner in which he dispensed justice as the lord of the apex court. Thousands of suo moto notices were issued in public interest and hundreds of habeas corpus petitions were heard by the chief justice. He repeatedly summoned the high and mighty to question about the whereabouts of hundreds of missing persons-who apparently became a fodder of the war on terror. Apart from the row that ensued following the chief judge’s sacking and subsequent dismissal of the entire judiciary in November 2007, along with the promulgation of Emergency, a blessing in disguise for the country has been the birth of a vibrant civil society movement in Pakistan.

At the same time, the lawyers’ movement also called the bluff of the so-called democrats of our times.

The lawyers have created history by persisting on this agitation path for almost two years now – campaigning for the restoration of the judiciary and supremacy of the constitution.

And joining them are civil society groups and political forces considered as of peripheral importance. The only major political force to support the cause of sacked judiciary is Muslim League (Nawaz), which perhaps saw an opportunity to axe the grind against General Musharraf by throwing its weight behind the lawyers’ movement.

Similarly, the Peoples’ Party, the largest political party, too found in the lawyers’ movement a convenient platform to subdue the reigning dictator. Yet it was non-committal on the restoration of the judiciary and has exercised dual standards. The only exception has been the remarks of late chairperson and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who vowed to reinstate the chief justice, and see to it that the national flag is hoisted atop his residence once again.

Today, as the lawyers fight for justice on the streets, one thing is crystal clear: they will not rest without reaching their goal: the restoration of judges and rule of law. They braved the heat for two full years. One year under the despotic government of General Musharraf and, one more year under the umbrella of a democracy – which has more than two-third majority in parliament. The lawyers’ movement, and the courageous stance of brother judges along with their chief Iftikhar Chaudhry, cannot be shrugged off as merely a power struggle. It has cast Pakistan’s civil society and democratic forces against the forces of status quo.

The government’s going back on its commitment to restore the judiciary has landed itself in a predicament of sorts. President Asif Ali Zardari, a democrat by all means, and one who has gone through trials and tribulations of dictatorship and languished in prison for 11 long years, cannot brush the issue under the carpet. It will come to haunt him as a credibility crisis – and might register him in history as one who preferred political expediency to democratic norms.

Deposed chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and his brother judges, who have refused to take oath under Emergency Promulgation, are today the heartbeat of an evolving society in Pakistan that foresees its ideals in rule of law and democracy. Restoring them would never be an anti-thesis of political supremacy. Rather it will be in conformity with the mandate the people of Pakistan delivered in the general election on February 18 last year.

On the other hand, failing to restore them will inevitably reflect contempt for public verdict on part of all those at the helm of affairs. There can’t be a sovereign country without a vibrant and assertive judiciary. A free judiciary is the essence of democracy. The government of Pakistan doesn’t have a choice. It has to take this route…and restore judiciary will full honours.

Ishtiaq Ali Mehkri is KT’s Assistant Editor. He can be reached at mehkri@khaleejtimes.com

Filed under: Excerpts & Quotes, Politik , Civil Society, Justice, Lawyers, Long March, Movement, Pakistan

Militancy and Black Economy

Syed Irfan Ashraf
Sun, 22-Mar-2009

There is a symbiotic relationship between the ‘business’ mafia and the militants for whom funds is an integral part of efforts to keep their ‘ideology’ alive. — AFP

While analysts cite ‘ideology’ as the chief factor responsible for the rising militancy in the country, it is unfortunate that little attention is being paid to the nexus between militants and the black economy.

Smugglers and businessmen engaged in dubious trade foster anarchy in the northwest of Pakistan to further their vested interests. They invest money and energy in the so-called process of Talibanisation — that is how they protect their illegal businesses at the expense of the state’s writ.

Taking its cue from its centre in Swat, the influential timber mafia in other parts of the Malakand Division stands accused of sponsoring extremism to keep government authorities at bay. In the 1990s, the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM) chief Sufi Mohammad organised a sit-in to rechristen Kufar Dara and give it the name of Islamdara in Lower Dir. Even elements close to the TNSM chief believe that many front-runners in this religious campaign were anti-social elements.

They included gangs of car-lifters and farmers who had been given vast swathes of land during the era of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and now feared that the local chieftains (khans) would get these. More importantly, these elements included the powerful timber mafia living in the huge forest reserves of Swat, Dir, Shangla and Kohistan.

Before the start of the Swat military operation in 2007, a militant commander arranged a visit for some journalists to show them medical camps set up for injured comrades inside spacious houses. This writer was taken inside a sprawling bungalow which housed a huge timber godown divided into different sections to accommodate beds and extend treatment facilities to militants. The start of the military operation and the ensuing conflict in Swat and Shangla ‘coincided’ with the ruthless felling of timber in the surrounding hills blanketed with pine forests.

No journalist had the time then to report on this devastation, and only one parliamentarian from Shangla district raised the issue in the Senate, blaming the timber mafia for the destruction of rich forest resources. In fact, perhaps to save his own neck, the JUI senator gave only part of the picture without mentioning the involvement of militants in this illegal business.

Towards mid-November 2007, the militants headed towards Shangla district and a heavy battle followed at Belay Baba. Denizens of the troubled town of Alpuri and its adjacent thickly wooded green valleys fled to escape the heavy artillery shelling from the bordering Swat district. Many, while ascending the five-kilometre dirt route from Alpuri to Shangla Top, would stop at the sound of trees being cut in the nearby mountains. A gentle night breeze spread the scent of the newly felled pine trees across the area. Truckloads of ‘war booty’, looted from Alpuri Bazaar, would thread their way towards Shangla Top under the protection of the Taliban whose attention was not in the least diverted by the sound of the thick pine forests being felled.

Officials who served and lived in the area believe that subversive elements gave their blood and sweat to the TNSM since its formation in 1988. That is why militants mostly served as ‘cavalry’ for the powerful timber mafia in the districts of Swat and Dir, and they rode on the success of the militants, swooping on the verdant pine mountains spread over 600 square miles like vultures. A recent survey conducted by the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy reveals that a loss of over Rs8bn was incurred by the forest sectors of Swat alone during the last 16 months. Being shrewd investors, the timber mafia is believed to have spent part of its dividends to sponsor militancy.

Huge sums are involved in the business which has expanded to the hills bordering Afghanistan. Recalling his visit to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 1998, an NWFP parliamentarian said, ‘The then deputy governor of Kunar province, Abdullah Jan, complained that timber agents from Swat had ruined the thick forests in the bordering areas lying close to Pakistan’s Dir district.’ The Afghan governor said that the Taliban administration of Kunar province had arrested a few members of the mafia; however, they were released after they promised never to return.

Besides the exploitation of thick pine forests, precious emerald mines and archaeological artefacts have also been a huge source of revenue for the local black economy. As the media wrestled for news emerging from the recent Swat peace agreement, militants captured the emerald mines on the outskirts of the main town of Mingora and in the Shamozai area in Kabal tehsil. Subsequently, heavy excavations started in which over 200 labourers took part to extract precious stones, with the Taliban taking one-third of the total share. Other plunderers have also had a field day thronging to the mines (where finds are of excellent quality) one of which had earned the government about Rs90m through a single auction in the past.

No different is the plight of over 22 official archaeological sites, where illegal excavations have continued unabatedly in the absence of government action against such activity. It is hard to obtain information about who is getting what in the loot and plunder of natural and archaeological resources. However, it is certain that part of the share is reinvested to extend support to subversive causes in the bordering districts.

Monetary interest has a significant part to play in driving the ‘ideological struggle’ in other troubled spots also. Last year, when the federal government formed a jirga to initiate a peace agreement with militants in Waziristan, one of those involved was a business tycoon with investments in North Waziristan.

The militants have demanded the removal of security check posts along the main routes in North and South Waziristan. It is an open secret that a web of smugglers and criminals operates from the bordering areas with Afghanistan. Moreover, smugglers have flooded Punjab and Sindh with sophisticated vehicles on which duty hasn’t been paid. One ring leader from Bannu called Hukumat Khan still remembers the huge profit he used to earn, while paying Rs10,000 to a driver for ensuring that the smuggled vehicles got past a check post safely. Though Hukumat is no more active as the Taliban have replaced his ilk in the local power centres, he admits that the trade (tribesmen do not consider smuggling a crime) involved billions.

Syed Irfan Ashraf is Peshawar based journalist and University teacher.

Originally published as Militancy and Black Economy in Dawn.

Filed under: Excerpts & Quotes, Politik , Black Economy, mafia, Peace, Smuggling, Swat, Taleban

Kareem Mangta – A Funny ‘Documentary’

Courtesy: Geo TV’s Program Ulta Seedha

Filed under: Excerpts & Quotes, Humor & Sarcasm , Documentary, Funny, Kareem Mangta, Loans, Pakistan

Misogyny, Patriarchy and Imperialism – Abira Ashfaq

¤¤¤ Guest blog by Abira Ashfaq posted via the Peoples’ Resistance Mailing List; Copied from Awab Alvi’s www.teeth.com.pk/blog ¤¤¤

“I reacted with horror, and resisted seeing the flogging video on youtube, only to be bombarded with it later on television. I got angry with my mother who recounted the scene with full emotionalism, saying it brought tears to her eyes. I said it was upsetting me too much. By evening I was a bit more objective. But not really. The violent and ferocious messaging in the video was clear. Wars are carved on the bodies of women. Women are raped, tortured, and beaten to further military objectives. Only months ago, news surfaced about Zarina Marri’s torture in a military prison in Baluchistan. And now this whipping. The trauma of the girl is fathomable as the video’s purpose is to make you fathom what fate awaits the women of Pakistan: A naked and public display of fanatical male rage, backed by an authoritative and brutal ‘Islamic’ state.

Is the fear real?

Is this what will happen to Karachi? Our beloved Karachi — the city of lights, tambolas, musical evenings, film festivals, and dharnas? The reality is that Karachi is a schizophrenic city which contains class apartheid, and a gender one too. Most women of our city are in “closed doors” economic apartheid. There is rampant Islamization– the liberal kind that does not conflict with privatization, and the offensive kind that seeks to seclude women further in Hijab and the home.

This offensive kind is still the palatable extremism, one grown familiar on us since the 80s; the overt and militant kind displayed in the video is what we really dread. Is the fear real? Saqib is just back from Mithi in Thar, and reports of a new phenomenon of fresh madrassas with foreign students walking all over the place. A tidbit, sure. But perhaps the fear of it reaching Karachi is not a remote one.

Why then does the MQM’s hate campaign portray working class Pashtuns as Talibans? Many of these Pashtuns have no links with the Taliban and have been settled in Karachi for decades. Why are they manufacturing a fear against them? You should not need a mythical fear if the fear is genuine. Perhaps, the ethnic tensions find root in other turfs, and they are simply free riding the fear of militancy.

What acts of violence do we allow people to see?

Zarina Marri’s case was never verified after the initial article. There was no video footage and no statement on the record. Similarly, there are daily acts of violence committed by our military, our government officials, and our American friends, which are invisible in the media. Why are we protected from their horror? Where are the images of the bodies they burned? 12 lost just yesterday in a US drone attack. The hundred million cries of the disappeared, many of them refugees of Bajour, locked away in military prisons.

Our reaction to the video

We are offered glimpses of the devastation of suicide bombing, and now this. The reaction to the flogging video is rightfully one of anguish and outrage. It is just that our conscience is shocked, and we are moved into action. But who is the culprit here and against whom are we protesting? Which enemy are we condoning, and which one are we villainizing? Can it be that we are being asked to villanize the enemy of the United States? — The need for which is dreadfully personalized by the ugly image of a woman being beaten in broad daylight – the imagery of a rogue state sanctioning a gang rape.

Our demands vary – some demand that the floggers be tried, that our administration renege on the Swat deal, the court stamp it as unconstitutional, and some that the military take stiff and expedient action. Many of us question the legality of US drone attacks on our sovereign nation, but are not angered enough to rally against them. Many of us regret the plight of refugees from FATA, and the civilian losses in the war in FATA. We sympathize with the disappeared persons DHR (Amina Janjua’s group) advocates for, but we are not joining in the cause. Many of us get turned off because reactionary forces also support the missing persons. But does that make an illegal detention any less illegal?

Very few of us are asking for a heavier bombing campaign in FATA. Is this video supposed to sway heart and minds to that — a genocide of the people there? Are we supposed to be enraged by the suicide bombers flouting our powerlessness with daily attacks on police and other state apparatus? Nine para military officers were killed in a SB in Islamabad today. We are already adrift a river of war. Which current will we ride after the flogging?

The United States has an interest in the region, and in Pakistan. How does militancy service or disservice U.S.’s geo-political economic interests? (Say even the innocuous one like coal in Thar). Who is funding and politically backing the militants? If we are truly fighting the militants, then why are we not working to cut off their funding and their radio signals? We know a portion of the funding is from crime and weapons trade, but who is interested in a contorted Sharia rule in FATA, and how does it serve their ideological or economic purposes? What news are we being distracted from? What news are we being shown and is it to build consensus on the war?

Endless joining of dots. Endless.

What rights then are we fighting for?

Shouldn’t we then just identify with the oppressed? The Pashtuns who are targeted for ethnic violence, the missing persons, the Zarina Marris, the Moazzam Begs, the Afia Siddiquis,the women of Swat, the women of Baluchistan (12,000 disappeared Baluchis), Bajour, Waziristan — the hundreds of women who walked miles to refugee camps last fall to escape shelling in their villages in Bajaur — the potential victims of this neo vice and virtue committee emerging in Swat and elsewhere. The women of Karachi, the cities, the villages…

Asma Jahangir is right that this is a flogging on all of us. We need to ultimately build a feminist movement, which is strongly anti imperialist, anti military, and pro independent judiciary. George’s wife, Kiran, was present at the flogging protest at KPC today a friend tells me. It is not surprising that she was upset with the anti American sloganeering, and that issues should not be conflated. Its time we conflated issues. The analysis does not stop at the flogging.”

Alternative URL: http://cli.gs/9gap7V

Filed under: Excerpts & Quotes, Politik , Flogging, Pakistan, Swat, Taleban, Video, War on Terror