Failure Foretold: The Sunset of the US Adventure in Afghanistan and the Rise of Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan

The United States, for the most part, regards Pakistan as little more than a sordid stage on which the West is forced to act out one of the central dramas of its epic War on Terror.

However, Pakistan, a nation of 180 million people, is a lot more than that.  It is a fragile aggregation of ethnicities trapped—and split—between India and Afghanistan.  In 2008, I predicted that the Afghan surge would not work:

American planners originally hoped that Musharraf’s armies would be the anvil upon which Western forces crushed the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.

Pakistan is more like a rotten melon that will fly apart under the hammer blows of a U.S. counter-insurgency campaign in west Pakistan.

Case proven, I would say.

Below is the full argument, from a post I wrote in August 2008 titled America Drinks the COIN Kool-Aid.

The piece also anticipates the rise of Nawaz Sharif, who has recently taken the post of Prime Minister upon the victory of his PML-N party in the May parliamentary elections.  Sharif was a proponent of a non-US-centric strategy of conciliation with the various Talibans.  A lot of blood has flown under the bridge since 2008, and it is now an open question as to whether Sharif will be able to execute his disengagement strategy in a Pakistan that has become an economic and security omnishambles under the shadow of an emboldened and aggressive Pakistan Taliban.

Nevertheless, Sharif is doing his best to find a way out of Pakistan's economic and political crises, starting with outreach to China, which he sees as the keystone of his strategy to orient Pakistan toward economic development and integration, and away from counter-terrorism piñata.

I address Sharif’s recent trip to China—and regional developments that might encourage the PRC to place a big bet on Pakistan—in my most recent piece for Asia Times Online, China Takes Another Look at Gwadar and Pakistan, which can be read below the 2008 excerpt.

America Drinks the COIN Kool-Aid  

August 24, 2008 (excerpt)

American ignorance concerning Pakistani politics and society is profound. And, in the matter of the “surge” scheduled for Afghanistan for year-end 2008, it may be fatal.

U.S. observers, both on the left and right, view Pakistan primarily through the lens of the war on terror, in terms of Pakistan’s role in pumping military forces into its western frontier in order to help George W. Bush burnish his meager presidential legacy by getting Osama bin Laden’s head on a pike before he leaves office in January 2009; and to assist the West in rescuing its tottering political project in Afghanistan, the Karzai government.

As any responsible observer of Pakistan politics would tell you—all the Pakistani media majors all have English-language outlets—the Pakistanis view things completely differently.

They believe that unremitting American pressure on Pakistan is turning a serious but manageable problem—ethnic and Islamist extremism in the border regions—into an existential crisis that is ripping Pakistan apart.

In the days since Musharraf’s departure, Pakistan has been torn by a series of terrorist attacks, including a coordinated assault on Pakistan’s main armory near Islamabad, which left nearly 100 dead.

The attacks represent a highly persuasive demonstration by Taliban extremists that peace inside Pakistan’s central, urbanized core requires accommodation with the Taliban, and not participation in America’s escalating counter-inurgency campaign in Afghanistan’s east and Pakistan’s frontier provinces.

It is a message that Pakistan’s civilian, military, and intelligence leadership are ready to heed.

But it is a warning that America—including both its political and defense establishment and its two presidential candidates—are determined to disregard in the search for geopolitical advantage, multi-national military support, and votes.

Fatally, the supposed success of the troop surge in Iraq –and the desperate optimism and opportunism an apparent military panacea excites in American politics—is fueling calls for applying the same formula to the intractable Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

However, Afghanistan isn’t Iraq. And, more importantly, Pakistan ain’t Iran.

For Americans infatuated with the apparent success of the surge in Iraq—and its implied vindication of the comforting notion that the scientific application of American military might, brains, and money can succeed in even the most profoundly hostile environment—it is anathema to consider that the relative quiet in Iraq is not attributable to our astounding subtlety in paying off Sunni tribal leaders and malcontents who otherwise would be engaged in a doomed insurgency against U.S. rule and Shi’a domination.

Nope.

What’s probably standing between us and the continuation of our bloody debacle in Iraq is the fact that Iran has eschewed a strategy of political violence through its Iraqi proxies. Instead, it has decided to outwait the United State and secure its gains through the political ascendancy of the Shi’a.

…

American politicians look at the Iraqi surge and, by a flawed analogy, expect that an escalation of three or so brigades into Afghanistan by years’ end will tip the scales in our favor.

Barack Obama, eager to burnish his CINC qualifications by boosting our “good war” in Afghanistan, talks about pouring in troops. John McCain explictly links a troop increase in Afghanistan with the apparent success of the surge.

The analogies, however, founder, when it comes to the issue of the key western neighbor.

Compare and contrast Pakistan’s attitudes toward Afghanistan with Iran’s desire to stabilize Iraq on its currently favorable terms.

According to the U.S. think tank Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT), favorable opinions of Afghanistan are at an anemic 48% level.

Hamid Karzai and his U.S. backed regime simply aren’t very popular in Pakistan. Pakistani distaste for Karzai is eagerly reciprocated by the Afghan government and relations are pretty much in a deep freeze. The Karzai government will always be closer the United States and India, not Pakistan. The route to increased Pakistani influence in Kabul lies through the violent overthrow of the Afghani government by the Taliban, not by ensuring the Karzai regime’s continued survival and success.

The U.S. is responding to Pakistan’s lack of enthusiasm for saving Karzai’s bacon by unilateral military incursions into western Pakistan in order to root out the Taliban havens (and possible bin Laden hidey-holes) that Pakistan’s army and intelligence services have pursued so unenthusiastically.

However, escalating the violence in Pakistan’s border regions looks like a recipe for disaster.

…

American planners originally hoped that Musharraf’s armies would be the anvil upon which Western forces crushed the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.

Pakistan is more like a rotten melon that will fly apart under the hammer blows of a U.S. counter-insurgency campaign in west Pakistan.

The political will inside Pakistan to support the U.S. adventure in Afghanistan is virtually non-existent. According to TFT, opposition to the GWOT clocked in at a thumping 72% in June, with “strongly opposed” at 60.4%. At that time, admittedly before the recent wave of Taliban attacks, over 50% of Pakistanis blamed the US for violence inside Pakistan; the Pakistani Taliban were blamed by only 4.2%--behind India and Pakistan’s own ISI!

The salient development in Pakistani politics in the last three months has not been the democratization of Pakistan and an increased or even sustained determination to combat terrorism; it has been the collapse of the political fortunes of two would-be American clients--Pervez Musharraf and the leader of Benazir Bhutto’s PPP, her widower Asif Zardari—and the political ascendancy of Nawaz Sharif of the opposition PML-N, whose conservative, non-aligned policies have resonated with Pakistani voters since his return from exile last November.

China Looks Again at Gwadar and Pakistan

[This piece originally appeared at Asia Times Online on July 12, 2013.  It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]

In physics, every action has its equal and opposite reaction. In geo-diplomacy, "equal" isn't a given. China has responded to India's cozying up to Japan and Myanmar's slide into the Western camp by tilting toward Pakistan and Afghanistan.

With all due respects to the strivers of Islamabad and Kabul, China is getting the worst of the bargain in trading nascent global power India and South Asian resource and agriculture powerhouse Myanmar for "failing state" Pakistan (the characterization recently offered by Ahmad Shuja Pasha, head of Pakistan's own ISI security service) and landlocked and miserable Afghanistan, whose main domestic product and export are both violence.

And then there is the contrast between the soon to be completed but politically vulnerable twin pipelines from Rakhine State in Myanmar to Yunnan in China and the "Gwadar-Kashgar corridor", an US$18 billion road, rail, and energy corridor fantasy that involves tunneling through the Himalayan mountains and also requires passage through Balochistan, a Pakistan province filled with resentful Balochis ripe for anti-Chinese violence even without the encouragement of the United States and India.

Nevertheless, China has no alternative but to secure a set of costly contingencies in case hostility from India and Myanmar becomes overt.

The Chinese predicament is eased by certain South Asian elements that make engaging with Pakistan and Afghanistan marginally less costly and dangerous, and may even offer some genuine and valuable strategic advantages.

Pakistan ended its adventure with the haplessly pro-American and allegedly hopelessly corrupt Asif Zardari and his PPP party, which attempted to carry out Benazir Bhutto's bargain with Washington and turn Pakistan into an anti-terrorist bastion, and gave a parliamentary majority and prime ministership to the PML-N, headed by the Islamist-friendly, China-friendly, and not particularly US-friendly Nawaz Sharif.

Afghanistan's failed 10-year experiment in democracy and development through US-led counter-insurgency is winding down, and the local players are cautiously interested in what China has to offer and may be prepared to demand.

Sharif made his first overseas visit as prime minister to China for five days in early July. At his reception at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sharif exulted: "Our friendship is higher than the Himalayas and deeper than the deepest sea in the world, and sweeter than honey."

Sharif is in dire need of Chinese friendship to address the Pakistan crises that doomed Zardari and shadow his own political future. Pakistan's economic, political, and social dysfunction are embodied in its extraordinary electricity crisis. Pakistan is generating only about 70% of the power it needs, with the result that every corner of Pakistan is experiencing "load shedding" (the euphemism of choice for blackouts), with poorer and politically powerless rural areas experiencing blackouts of up to 20 hours per day.

This state of affairs was a major political issue in May, when Sharif triumphed in the parliamentary elections; it continues to occupy the center of Pakistani consciousness as citizens swelter through the 40-degree Celsius summer, are unable to sleep at night and, when they get to their shops and factories, struggle with intermittent power through the days.

Pakistan's notoriously intrusive Supreme Court has demanded data on whether load shedding is being implemented evenly and equitably throughout Pakistan, given the evidence that central government offices, foreign embassies, and prosperous neighborhoods in Islamabad are enjoying better than average access to electricity and air conditioning.

Sharif's brother, Shahbaz, chief executive of Punjab province, the family power base, has taken to holding his meetings in a sweltering tent to deflect potential criticism of elite privilege.

Pakistan's other heavyweight province, Sindh - stronghold of the Bhutto family and the PPP - complains that it is getting jobbed out of its fair share of electricity by the vengeful Sharif administration. Pakhtunkhwa, the mountainous frontier province, complains that it suffers load shedding even though it is a net supplier of electricity to the grid thanks to its hydroelectric capacity.

As for Balochistan, the miserable and impoverished home of both Gwadar port and the Quetta shura that directs the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan, it has been receiving only one-third of its electricity needs.

The main culprit does not appear to be generating capacity, a rickety distribution network, or extensive theft of electricity.

The fundamental problem appears to be revenue, $5 billion worth of missing payments and subsidies that, for reasons of direct theft, dishonest billing, and/or simple nonpayment are not making it back to the power companies, so the power companies can't buy the imported fuel oil needed to run the generators.

Sharif's plan is apparently to throw money at the power companies ($2 billion was disbursed to this purpose in late June) so they can import fuel and give the government some breathing space as it tries to impose the tariff, structural, and enforcement reforms that will prevent the crisis from recurring. A recent report on the debt crisis prepared by Pakistan's Planning Commission in co-operation with USAID identified "complete disarray between all entities at the policy level", "authoritarian attitude at the regulatory level", and "complete breakdown of governance at the [operating] entities level" as problems confronting reform.

Thoroughgoing reform of Pakistan's energy sector, economic policy, and business and consumer culture is perhaps beyond the ability of any mortal, even Sharif, the "Lion of Punjab" as he is styled. However, he is doing his best to nibble around the problem, and the People's Republic of China is doing its best to help.

Although Sharif's patron is Saudi Arabia - which sheltered him after Pervez Musharraf deposed him in a coup during his first stint as prime minister, in 1999, and sponsored his political comeback this time around, and Sharif has supported Riyadh's Sunni project, including an attempt to impose sharia law in his first term and an ongoing engagement with Islamist militants - it looks like Pakistan will have to look to itself for energy, and look to Central Asia - and China - instead of the Gulf for economic integration.

Energy was very much on the Sharif China agenda, as this report makes clear:

[Sharif] also mentioned a 969MW Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project, three power projects Karot, Kohala and Taunsa to add 2,000MW being executed by Chinese companies.

Nawaz Sharif said his government looked forward to Chinese investment in renewable energy sector particularly wind and solar with the country having accumulated potential of 60,000MW.

He said Pakistan was also rich of coal reservoirs of 185 billion tons having capacity to generate 100,000MW for 300 years.

During meeting with President of China Southern Power Grid (CSG) Zhao Jianguo in Guangzhou, the Prime Minister sought suggestions and assistance in curbing power line losses, theft and pilferage in Pakistan and got affirmative response from the company. [1]

Significantly, coal (Pakistan's energy planning now revolves around the idea of switching from gas and oil to coal-fired plants and exploiting a large domestic reserve of lignite, the Thar deposit), solar, and hydro are all domestic energy resources, indicating that Sharif has despaired of the difficulty of converting Pakistan into a high-productivity/high consumption economy that could expend billions in foreign exchange to sustain large imports of crude oil from Saudi Arabia, LNG from Qatar, or pipelined natural gas from Iran to meet its electricity needs.

The Sharif administration's reorientation of its diplomatic and economic focus also provides a welcome boost to China's heavy industry and contracting companies. The domestic infrastructure market is languishing as China attempts to restructure its economy and wean its financial system off the stimulus drug, and the opportunity to support China's infrastructure enterprises by supplying credits for offshore projects is undoubtedly welcome to Premier Li Keqiang's economic team.

One of Sharif's items of business on his China trip was to clear up the bewildering two-year delay in the construction of the Nandipur power project, which was to have been supplied, constructed, and partially financed by entities from China. The Zardari government had held up the sovereign guarantees required to release the financing without explanation, leaving the government open to the accusation that it was maneuvering for additional squeeze as a price for its action.

The Chinese contractor terminated the project and 1,700 tonnes of Chinese equipment "sat-rusting!" according to the indignant PML-N, for whose Punjab base the equipment was destined - and incurring expensive demurrage charges for over a year while the Law Ministry sat on the application.

As soon as he became prime minister, Sharif arranged the guarantees and, after his visit to China, the Chinese contractor, Dongfang Electric Corporation, made the handsome gesture of immediately dispatching engineers to Karachi to inspect the equipment and restart the project.

The public relations boost Sharif perhaps hoped to enjoy was quickly dissipated by a letter by a former managing director of the government electricity utility, PEPCO, advising the Supreme Court that somehow the cost of the restarted project had increased by almost $200 million while Dongfang was only asking for a contract adjustment of $40 million, implying, in the words of the aggrieved director, there existed "a well thought out, well-conceived and white collar scam to cheat the public exchequer of $149 million, the benefit of which will go to a select private sector party". Since the government had already stated its intention of privatizing Nandipur, perhaps the extra cash was arranged as some sort of dowry payment to the new owner. [2]

Nandipur also labors under the disadvantage of being gas-fired at a time when Pakistan has significantly depleted its own gas reserves and has no immediate source of imported natural gas, either by ship from Qatar or from Iran via the much-contested Friendship pipeline.

Hopefully, if privatized, it will also not be subject to the ruinous cost-plus guaranteed return provision for foreign-funded power stations that has saddled Pakistan with 50% of its generating capacity in plants that a) require imported oil that Pakistan can no longer afford to finance given its dismal foreign trade deficit and foreign exchange reserves situations and b) have no incentive to switch to cheaper sources of fuel, such as coal.

In addition to keeping Sharif's and China's heads above water in the matter of electricity generating equipment, China also generously offered support for the "Gwadar-Kashgar" corridor. In its most extravagant conception, the corridor will take the form of a high-quality road and rail link carrying goods and Gulf petroleum from the Gwadar port on the Indian Ocean through the Kunjerab Pass in the Himalayans over to the classical Silk Road entrepot of Kashgar in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in western China. Prime Minister Sharif referred to the corridor as "a game changer".

In an interesting example of the Internet's ability to amplify and propagate misinformation, it was widely reported that this project would involve the construction of a 200 kilometer tunnel; actually, as ILF, the European company that performed the feasibility study tells us, the entire project would include 100 tunnels with an aggregate length of 200 km; the longest would be 24 km. [3]

The corridor, though it also reeks of export promotion boondoggle, also has a significant and positive strategic component beyond the opportunity to tweak India (Gwadar port was financed and constructed by China, much to India's dismay; when the port - with no local manufacturing facilities and no inland links - failed to attract any cargo, the Singapore Port Authority terminated its management contract and China's China Overseas Port Holdings Limited picked it up, to India's vocal "string of pearls" horror).

Theoretically, Gwadar could serve as a transshipment point for Gulf oil destined for China if the Rakhine State pipeline project in Myanmar falls victim to anti-Chinese political populism - although the technical, economic, and security issues involved in trying to send trainloads of crude oil over the Himalayas to western China are, to say the least, non-trivial.

However, there are more immediate and practical advantages relating to the corridor.

The Chinese government has a Uyghur problem in the western region of Xinjiang, which manifests itself as discontent and resentment, with an alarming potential for separatism and terrorism as illustrated by the recent bloody eruption that claimed 35 lives. It appears that China would like to recapitulate its Tibet policy - stern repression and erosion of local identity under a Han economic onslaught - in Xinjiang.

A meaningful economic corridor between Kashgar and an invigorated Pakistan might mean that the Karakorum Highway would transport a steady two-way stream of goods and sober, avaricious businesspeople in addition to the destabilizing flow of militants, drugs, and HIV it allegedly brings into Xinjiang. A prosperous chain of towns and factories along the corridor would also give Pakistan greater resources and capabilities to crack down on Uyghur separatists training and operating in Pakistan (whom Sharif denounced in Beijing as the ETIM, the purportedly mythical - according to Xinjiang political activists - but quite possibly genuine East Turkestan Independence Movement).

As for Pakistan, it is anything but a favored investment destination at the moment and, under Sharif, would welcome the opportunity to receive investment from China, be it for strategic, security, or economic motives.

In Beijing, a fiber optic link following the Karakorum Highway out of China to Rawalpindi for $40 million will probably be built quickly, as will probably a significant improvement of the highway itself. The $18 billion rail link over the roof of the world (actually, through the roof of the world with those 200 km of tunnels) will probably come later, if at all; the time window in the Memorandum of Understanding is five years.

As for the extension of the corridor from central Pakistan down to the white elephant port of Gwadar, that will presumably depend on whether the Sharif administration can bring an end to the brutal, death-squad driven central government reign over Balochistan.

Sharif is anxious for reconciliation with Pakistan's many antagonists - the Balochis, the Pakistan Taliban, even India and Afghanistan - on terms that armchair Churchills inside and outside Pakistan will probably condemn as appeasement. However, if there is to be any hope that the complete corridor from Gwadar to Kashgar will become a reality, Pakistan will probably have to move beyond the detested suppression of local dissent in Balochistan by Pashtun's military and security services to an economically driven policy of engagement, economic development, and generous royalty payments and profit sharing with Balochi interests.

That is a tall order for an impoverished and incompetent civilian government whose control of its security and military apparatus is more notional and aspirational than actual. However, China - which has already experienced kidnappings and assassinations of its Gwadar personnel by Balochi militants - is unlikely to be party to an Afghan ISAF style counterinsurgency action in Balochistan, especially if conducted under the auspices of the Pakistani military. If Sharif is able to advance an accommodating policy in Balochistan, China can help by investing in economic activity in and around Gwadar that Balochis may come to regard as opportunities for employment and investment, rather than attack and/or extortion.

Similar flexibility - and Chinese support and buy-in - will probably be necessary to solve Pakistan's Pashtun problem. Historically, Pakistan would like to see its Pashtun problem become its Afghan opportunity, by encouraging militant Pashtuns - especially the irritating and aggressive Pakistani Taliban - to seek suitable arenas for their ambitions on the other side of the Durand Line, in the plains of Kandahar rather than in the mountains of Pakhtunkhwa.

Sharif - and China - are no exceptions. Recently the Sharif government elicited howls of indignation from Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul for allegedly raising the possibility of Afghan "federalism" - actually ceding the government apparatus in certain ethnically-Pashtun provinces of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Karzai's anger was probably accentuated by the suspicion that the United States - which is preparing to depart Afghanistan in 2014 and appeared quite happy to bypass Karzai's government and negotiate directly with a newly established Taliban office in Qatar - shares Pakistan's feelings.

The sense that Afghanistan is in play and Karzai's government is on the sidelines was reinforced by the appearance of Afghanistan's other bloody-minded Pashtun warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who enjoys the distinction of being the first non-9/11 related troublemaker to be targeted (unsuccessfully) for assassination by a US Predator drone back in 2002 - in a video interview with Britain's The Telegraph newspaper.

Hekmatyar called Britain's Prince Harry, currently serving in Afghanistan, a drunken "jackal" and sternly insisted that the US and UK leave his country, but threw the West the obligatory bone by declaring his support for female education (in separate facilities of course) to distinguish himself from the school-destroying and schoolgirl-shooting brutality of the Taliban.

Considering that back in the 1980s Hekmatyar reportedly carried a vial of acid around Kabul University to throw into the faces of co-eds he considered to be immodestly dressed, his commitment to women's education may be less than his desire to garner covert Western (and Chinese and Pakistani) support in the Pashtun civil war between his forces and the Taliban that will probably erupt after NATO draws down. [4]

China has allegedly remained in continual communication with Hekmatyar (whom it supplied with massive amounts of ammunition and weapons on behalf of the CIA when he was the leading figure in the anti-Soviet mujihadeen resistance), and is also apparently in communication with the Quetta Shura and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. [5]

Now that the pro-US/War on Terror policies of Asif Zardari have been sidelined, both Sharif and China would welcome a deal with the Taliban that would stop the politically polarizing (and retaliation-provoking) drone strikes on Taliban leaders inside Pakistan.

If the People's Republic of China, through Pakistan, can come to an understanding with both Hekmatyar and the Afghan Taliban to respect Chinese interests, including investments in copper and energy exploitation in Afghanistan, there may be beneficial knock-on effects - like peace and prosperity - in Afghanistan, Xinjiang, and western Pakistan.

Peace and prosperity don't come cheap, but neither is the alternative.

It is an interesting comment on the competing Chinese and American attitudes toward regional development and security that China is talking about spending $18 billion to create a zone of trade and prosperity linking Pakistan and China and that is, understandably, regarded as an enormous investment.

However, the total cost to the United States of the Afghan war is expected to exceed $2 trillion - for 10 years of invasion, counterinsurgency, and nation-building that will arguably leave Afghanistan little better than it was in 2001. Maybe Sharif and Li Keqiang can do better.

Notes:
1. PM's China visit: Bright hopes to end Pakistan's energy crisis, Business Recorder, July 11, 2013.
2. Wrongdoing allegations: Nandipur power project cost to be reviewed, The Express Tribune, July 11, 2013.
3. See here.
4. Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Counterpunch, March 9, 2013.
5. Why is China Talking to the Taliban, foreignpolicy.com, June 21, 2013.

Backgrounder on Bombing of Data Darbar Shrine in Lahore, Pakistan

The bombing of the Data Darbar shrine--tomb of the Sufi master Datta Ganj Bahksh--in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province, is a big deal.

It's like setting off a bomb in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Data Durban is at the core of Punjabi cultural identity.

When Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia to join the general election contest in 2008, one of his first acts was to pay a high profile visit to Data Darbar.  (For comparison purposes, Benazir Bhutto patronized a Sufi shrine at Qalandar in her family's power base in Sindh.)

The visit not only cemented Sharif's image as a son of Punjab--his electoral base.  It also showed that he was not in thrall to the anti-Sufi bigotry of his Saudi Wahabbi patrons.

The Deobandi school of Islam to which the Taliban subscribe view Sufi observance as a form of heresy.  Indeed, Deobandi doctrine emerged as a reaction to Sufism and still retains some Sufi elements, particularly in the areas of charismatic leadership (the Taliban expects miracles of living exemplars like Mullah Omar, not dead mystics).

Sufism also has its political element, since the guardians of Sufi shrines--the pirs--are a bulwark of the conservative power structure. 

The Data Darbar atrocity may have been committed by the little-known Punjab Taliban as part of an effort to shatter the religious and social foundations of the province.  Or it may have been a conventional Taliban operation to punish Pakistan for its acquiescence to US-led military campaigns and drone strikes on the Afghan frontier.

Interestingly, the Punjab Taliban disavowed responsibility for the attack, though this may have been simply a response the widespread revulsion the attack evoked throughout the province.  Via The News:

PESHAWAR: The Punjabi Taliban on Friday denied their involvement in the devastating terrorist attacks at the Data Darbar in Lahore and condemned the killing of innocent worshippers in the shrine and the adjacent mosque.

Also, the Urdu-speaking militants’ spokesman termed the suicide attacks as acts of intelligence agencies and the US security firm Blackwater aimed at tarnishing the image of Mujahideen.

“We cannot even think of taking the life of a single innocent human-being. This brutality to defame the Mujahideen should be expected from spy agencies and Blackwater,” Mohammad Omar, the spokesman for the Punjabi Taliban, stressed. Omar called The News from an undisclosed location to clarify the position of his militant organisation, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, about the Lahore attacks.

So did the Pakistani Taliban, according to the Daily Times:

TTP denies role in Lahore blasts

MIRANSHAH: The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Friday denied any involvement in a triple suicide bombing on the Data Darbar shrine in Lahore that killed 42 people and wounded 175 others. “We are not responsible for these attacks, this is a conspiracy by foreign secret agencies, you know we do not attack public places,” Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the TTP told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. “We condemn this brutal act. Our target is very clear and we only attack police, army and other security personnel,” he added. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack in Lahore, a cultural hub considered a playground for the country’s elite and home to many military and intelligence top brass.
If the attack was a Pakistan or Punjab Taliban plot to spark a sectarian war inside Pakistan, they've changed their tack pretty quickly.

No denials from the Afghan Taliban yet.

In any case, AP reported a remarkable deficit in Taliban-directed outrage.  Anger has focused on the security and policy shortcomings of the Pakistan government.

It might have something to do with a Pakistan perception that they are being asked to endure the consequences of religiously-defined Pashtun extremists, while unable to deal with the root cause of the problem.

Pakistani opinion seems to believe that a successful war of extermination against extremist Pashtuns, either in Afghanistan or in Pakistan's NWFP and tribal areas, is doomed to failure.  All things being equal, I think that they would prefer to struggle against Taliban extremism by unambiguously occupying the moral and tactical high ground of religious moderation in a purely domestic political and social struggle.

Currently, the anti-Taliban campaign in Pakistan is hopelessly tangled up with the U.S. effort in Afghanistan to prop up a government perceived as pro-US and pro-Indian in order to exclude the Taliban from power.

Given the conspicuous if temporary faltering of the US effort in Afghanistan, Pakistanis might be questioning if its worth enduring such savage blowback from US drone attacks and military operations just to give the Karzai regime a few more months in office until the whole US adventure collapses or, as appears more likely, he negotiates a political settlement with the Afghan Taliban.

I think many Pakistanis feel that, if the Taliban returned to Kabul, it might be bad for Afghanistan but good for Pakistan.  The Taliban, secure in Afghanistan and no longer needing havens in the Tribal Areas, would be able to accommodate their patrons in the Pakistani intelligence services and rein in the indigenous Taliban movements inside NWFP, Punjab, and Karachi.  Taliban extremism does not travel well beyond its Pashtun heartland, the theory goes, and could be sliced and diced, divided and conquered, and rolled back to the mountains.

This may explain why Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz, Chief Minister of Punjab, have yet to weigh in with an outraged denunciation of the forces suspected of executing the bombing.  Sharif's PML-N, though secular, pointedly distances itself from U.S. policy goals in Afghanistan and has been suspected of a willingness to work with and accommodate Islamic extremist parties.

I haven't seen any statements by Nawaz Sharif in the Pakistani press similar to the rather brave condemnation  he made of attacks on Ahmadis--an Islamicist sect explicitly disenfranchised by the Pakistan constitution for some spectacular and unpopular heresies-- by extremists on May 29.  Organized assaults killed 100--twice the number of fatalities as inflicted at the Data Darbar horror--at two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore.

The dominant confession in Pakistan's urbanized heartland is Barelvi--a pacifistic Sunni sect sympathetic to Sufism--not Deoband.

However, the minority Deobands punch far above their weight in Pakistan politics, thanks to government intelligence agency sponsorship (a by-product of the whole Pashtun/Afghanistan strategy), support from Saudi Arabia, and violent tendencies that, in the context of Pakistan's impoverished society and corrupted polity, resonate with too many unhappy people.

Local media reported that the Punjab police had succeeded in apprehending some miscreants involved in the May 29 attacks.  The extremists are astoundingly well-equipped.  Police seized 100 assault rifles, 18 suicide vests and more than 40,000 pounds of explosives during their raids.

Below the fold, more background on the religious landscape in Pakistan mined from two previous posts, Things Fall Apart (covering a similar attack on the most important Sufi shrine in NWFP, that of  Rehman Baba, in March 2009) and Blood on the Moon  (a discussion on how skirmishes over how to determine the appearance of the new moon and end of Ramadan reveal dangerous religious rifts within Pakistan).  Interested readers can click on the links for the full articles and hyperlinks.

Iran, China, and the Natural Gas Game

I have an article up at Asia Times on Iran’s natural gas diplomacy entitled Iran aims for an energy breakout. Iran is having good success in enticing Chinese and Indian energy companies to take blocks (known as “phases”) of the offshore South Pars gas fields.

Just as Secretary Clinton was jawboning the Saudis to give China energy assurances in return for Beijing's OK on sanctions, China National Petroleum Corporation reportedly finalized its $4 billion+ deal to develop South Pars Phase 11 and will begin exploratory drilling in March.

Iran is finding less success in getting a natural gas pipeline built to its east—the long-gestating Iran-Pakistan-India a.k.a. IPI or “Peace” pipeline--despite the fact that, from an economic point of view, the project is an absolute slam dunk.

India has effectively scuttled the project, citing security and transit cost concerns, but the real reason is probably its acquiescence to the United States’ implacable determination to deny Iran the economic, security, and diplomatic leverage a pipeline would provide.

Iran and Pakistan are trying to pull the project together themselves, and hope to sign the final agreement in Ankara by March 8.

However, Pakistan is flat on its back fiscally and financially and the United States has its boot rather firmly on Islamabad’s windpipe. Islamabad and Tehran have issued invitations to Beijing to get involved and replace India, but I don’t think the economic and geopolitical benefits are there for China.

As a result, Pakistan and India are being forced to go the liquefied natural gas by ocean shipment route (from Qatar) instead of getting less expensive natural gas by pipeline (from Iran).

Not a huge deal for prospering, coal-rich, and diversified India, but Pakistan is in the middle of a severe, structural energy crisis and it desperately needs Iranian gas.

To give China Matters readers an idea of the dimension of the problem, here’s a clip from AFP—which doesn’t mention the structural issue of the declining Pakistani domestic gas production, or the fact that Pakistan relies on gas for 50% of its energy needs—and an excerpt from my Asia Times article describing the importance of the pipeline and the U.S. diplomatic pressure and, possibly, financial engineering, being used to block it:

From AFP:

Since late December, Pakistanis have been suffering at least six hours a day without power, as a lack of rain to run hydro power plants exacerbates a long-running power shortage.

In rural areas and poorer city neighbourhoods, blackouts can last for most of the day.
…
Pakistan is only able to produce about 80 per cent of the electricity it needs, officials from the main power regulatory authority the Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) say.


From Asia Times:

Pakistan's desperation has also impelled it, albeit cautiously and equivocally, to defy the US on the issue of dealing with Iran.

Pakistan, without significant oil and coal reserves, relies on natural gas for 50% of its energy needs - one of the highest levels of natural gas dependency in the world. The deterioration of domestic gas production has translated directly into power shortages. Today, Pakistan faces a daily shortfall of one billion cubic feet, 20% of demand.

Pakistan's energy authority has signed contracts for Qatar LNG (and a storage and regasification facility at Karachi) that will take care of about half of the shortfall. The balance plus some extra for growth - about 750 million cubic feet per day - could be supplied by the pipeline from Iran.

However, Islamabad is not in a strong position to resist American pressure and finance its $1 billion section of the pipeline on its own.

High import costs and weak exports have combined to drain Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves; it is relying on an injection of more than $10 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sustain its position.

As it struggles through the global recession and domestic security and economic difficulties, Pakistan is also dependent on aid orchestrated by the US in order to patch over its government deficit - now over 5% of gross domestic product - and so keep the IMF happy.

For whatever reason, aid has been slow in coming.

A January filing with the IMF revealed that, of the $2 billion generously pledged by "Friends of Democratic Pakistan" in April 2009, exactly zero had been disbursed and only $100 million was expected by the end of the fiscal year in March 2010.

At the end of January, President Asif Ali Zardari also raised the issue of $1.3 billion in arrears in "Coalition Support Funds", the US subsidy covering Pakistan's war on terror-related expenditure, with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

…

As Pakistan's energy minister promised that the much-delayed final signing would take place in Turkey before March 8, it became clear that the US was quite willing to play hardball over Pakistan's energy shortage.

Dawn reported that, according to sources, "another reason for the delay was that [the] Pakistani government had been unable to allocate proper financing for this project and the US was not willing to give financial assistance in this regard".

Meanwhile, Asian News International reported: "According to sources, US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, during his meeting with Petroleum Minister Syed Naveed Qamar, said Islamabad would have to abandon its pipeline accord with Tehran in order to qualify for extensive American energy assistance, especially for importing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and electricity.

"Insiders said that in case Pakistan cancels its plan of importing gas from Iran through pipeline, the US would help Islamabad import electricity from Tajikistan through Afghanistan's Wakhan corridor."

For Pakistan to try to defy the United States on its pet issue of Iran, Pakistan must be pretty desperate. That’s something that American policymakers should be thinking about as they push Pakistan to the wall on the IP pipeline.

Obama’s Afghan Surge a Geopolitical Windfall for India

…and a Catastrophe for Pakistan and China

Well, I guess President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is going to go into the record books with a big, fat asterisk next to it.

I have an article up at Asia Times Online Beijing broods over its arc of anxiety addressing the implications of the U.S. plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

As long-time readers of China Matters know, I’ve consistently argued that Pakistan is the collateral damage in our Afghan policy.

Under U.S. pressure, Pakistan’s army is forced to go to battle a united Pashtun insurgency that would otherwise be split into murderous factions battling each other for control of the broad plains of southern Afghanistan and using Pakistan’s mountainous FATA as little more than a secure and inaccessible redoubt for rest, recreation, and resupply.

Instead, we expect Pakistan to go to war against its own Pashtun areas for the sake of the distinctly ungrateful Hamid Karzai.

For Pakistan, it’s an extremely difficult and costly battle with few tangible benefits. The dean of South Asia journalists, Syed Saleem Shahzad analyzes Pakistan’s problems with the current U.S. Afghan strategy—and America’s attempts to address them--in his Asia Times Online article, Pakistan at odds with Obama’s vision. It’s well worth reading.

The anti-Taliban war is dangerous for Pakistan as a nation because the Pashtun/Deoband/extremist nexus has a tremendous ability to make mischief throughout Pakistan by exploiting the enormous Pashtun underclass in Karachi, the vulnerability posed by the borderline-heretical character of the dominant Baralvi Islamic observance in Punjab and Sindh, and the smoldering resentment of the tens of millions of urban and rural poor throughout the country against the corrupt, pro-Western elites that rule them.

What might push Pakistan’s military over the edge and demand that the Pakistani government be reorganized and abandon the war is the awareness that India is not only profiting from Pakistan’s misery; it is actively encouraging the Obama administration to continue its ruinous involvement in Afghanistan and deny Pakistan the relief of a prompt withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces.

India, thanks to the “world’s biggest democracy” meme and the unpopularity of China’s Communist, Tibet-and-Uighur repressing single party state, gets an undeserved free ride from the Western press.

Actually, New Delhi is a serial and callous meddler in the matters of its neighbors (see Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Sikkim). It is impossible to view India’s involvement in Afghanistan (and the anti-Taliban war) as anything other than a conscious effort to exacerbate and prolong the miseries Pakistan is suffering as a result of the U.S. policy.

It is revealing that virtually the only nation egging on the Obama administration to stay the course in Afghanistan was India. A weakened Pakistan not only diminishes Islamabad’s ability and appetite to do mischief in India and Jammu/Kashmir; it deprives Beijing of an effective ally in China’s intensifying struggle with India along their long and disputed border.

As to why President Obama chose to surge Afghanistan, I think he recoiled from the idea that, come the 2010 elections, the Republicans could make hay with pictures of Taliban dancing in the streets of a reconquered Kabul.

Since the President is apparently a decent and intelligent man, he also shrank from the idea of racking up another 500 or so U.S. fatalities over the next 18 months just so the Democrats could limit their losses in the congressional elections.

So I think all the well-publicized debating and handwringing over the Afghan policy involved in-depth consideration (and, if there are any practitioners of the Chicago school of cost benefit analysis in the White House, literal calculations) concerning the lives saved and improved that would balance the scale against the increased number of U.S. dead and maimed the surge will bring.

But even if the United States is able to defy the demographic, political, and military forces driving Afghanistan toward a Pashtun triumph and achieve victory (or a bloody stalemate) every day the Pakistan is forced to support the U.S./NATO strategy, the greater damage it suffers.

The only nation that benefits clearly and immediately from the Afghan surge, it would appear, is India.

Blood on the Moon

In Pakistan, the intersection of religion, ethnicity, and politics is often marked by murder. The tense interaction between the Deoband adherents of the Pashtun North West Frontier Province and the Barelvi confession of the Punjab heartland has already been marred by violence. The Awami National Party’s mishandling of an Islamic calendrical controversy provides an unsettling insight into Pakistan’s sectarian vulnerabilities and the willingness of opportunistic politicians to exploit them.

Disputes about the timing of Eid al Fitr—the fast-breaking festival concluding the Muslim holy month of Ramadan—provide a vivid illustration of the sectarian and factional fissures undermining Islamic unity.

In Pakistan, the opportunistic insertion of the North West Frontier Province’s ruling party—the Awami National Party or ANP--into the dispute offers a perspective on the immense dangers that Islamic sectarianism can present to a vulnerable nation.

In 2009, uncertainty about when the holiday should occur provided dissidents in three geopolitical hotspots—Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan—with the opportunity to question the orthodoxy and legitimacy of the leaders charged with fixing the holy date.

Eid al Fitr is supposed to take place the day after reputable (Muslim) witnesses announce they have witnessed the crescent of the new moon in the night sky.

This simple formula became a recipe for controversy as Islam spread across the globe, split into sects, fragmented into nations, became linked by global communications technology—and was forced to deal with the astronomical reality that, in every year, the moon will first appear on different days in different parts of the Muslim world.

And in some years, the new moon will appear on different days in different parts of the Muslim heartland stretching from Egypt to Pakistan.

2009 was one of those years.

If you were in the Southern Hemisphere, say in South Africa, you would be able to observe the crescent of the new moon on September 19th and break fast on the morning of the 20th to celebrate Eid al Fitr.

If you were in Iran, Iraq, or Pakistan…well, you might have a problem.

Eid al Fitr-related controversies are almost pre-ordained in the Shia quadrant of Islam. Disputes about Eid allow imams and their followers the opportunity to flex their theological and political muscles at the expense of their competitors.

In Iran, as Brian Ulrich pointed out, reformist ayatollahs challenged Supreme Leader Khamenei’s Eid selection (the 20th) in order to underline his lack of authority in their eyes and even his legitimacy as a national religious figure in the eyes of the nation.

Iraq’s Shiite community displayed the same fissures. Ayatollah Sistani, perhaps in order to show his support for moderate reformers, plumped for the 21st, thereby incurring the criticism of the Sadrists, who probably feel more solidarity with the lumpen-fundamentalists of the Khamenei/Achminejad camp.

The Sunnis, with a strong interest in sustaining the global unity of Islam, have done only slightly better.

Many Sunni communities follow the lead of Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Judicial Council out of respect for the kingdom’s role as site of Islam’s sacred cities of Mecca and Medina. This year, the Shallah moon was sighted in the kingdom on the 19th and the Eid observance in Saudi Arabia took place on the 20th of September.

Other Sunni communities fix Eid al Fitr based on their local astronomical realities as determined by national or regional organizations or influential mosques; Eid in the United States is declared by ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America, for instance.

However, within the Sunni camp the issues involved in fixing the Islamic lunar calendar and the dates for Eid observances has provided the impetus for conferences, fatwas, and endless arguments fought out on Islamicist websites.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the most obvious candidate for font of legitimacy on this issue, has muddled its approach.

It entrusted the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology to come up with an astronomically-based calendar; however, the KACST revised its premises for fixing the lunar month three times in ten years and the Kingdom decided to apply its decisions only to the civil calendar.

Religious dates are still fixed by the Supreme Judicial Council based on human observation, thus placating the fundamentalists, to whom surrendering control of Islamic observance to astronomical elites, be they Muslim or non-Muslim, is apparently anathema. As a result, the Saudis still allow other communities significant leeway and fixing their Eid observances.

And then there is Pakistan, one of the largest Muslim nations, and largely Sunni.

The central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee (hereinafter RHC), endorsed by the Islamic government of Pakistan, made an astronomically orthodox observation of the appearance of the Shawwal moon on the night of September 20th and instructed the Muslims of Pakistan to celebrate Eid on the 21st, a day after Saudi Arabia.

However, the Committee was indignantly denounced by a self-appointed Ruet-e-Hilal Committee in NWFP, a collection of clergy centered at an influential Deobond mosque in Peshawar, Masjid Qasim Ali Khan. That committee called on the province to celebrate Eid on the 20th.

This was not an enormous surprise, since the NWFP RHC had already announced that it would follow the lead of Saudi Arabia in fixing Eid.

Unfortunately, then the NWFP Commission added a farcical note to the proceedings by insisting it had received in-person testimony from 44 eyewitnesses that the Shawwal moon had appeared over the province on the 19th.

According to a graphic that made the rounds of Pakistani internet forums accompanied by implicit eye-rolling at the NWFP bumpkins, the moon was invisible in Pakistan on the 19th.

Apparently, in the Middle East the new moon would have visible on the 19th only with optical aids (i.e. telescopes) and only in the very southern portion of Saudi Arabia—but it would not be visible in any part of Pakistan.

Certain Deobonds (it should be noted that few self-identified Deobandi adherents in Pakistan have completed the full curriculum of the highly respected Darul Uloom Deoband Islamic college in Deoband, India; instead they have received instruction in madrassahs in Pakistan associated with Deobandi teachings or have professed allegiance to a Deoband religious leader) appear to be obstinately literal and reductionist in their interpretation of the Quran, and in fixing Eid.

As a result they are hostile to any attempt to set the Islamic lunar calendar based on astronomical principles that may contain a Judeo-Christian or Western-scientific taint.

A fatwa by a self-identified Deoband cleric approvingly quotes the saying of Mohammed “We are an illiterate nation. We do not know how to read or count.” To be fair, the author of the fatwa works hard to infuse it with a spirit of informed skepticism beyond assertive ignorance that will not be unfamiliar to Westerners who have been exposed to Christian fundamentalists’ “evolution is just a theory” arguments.

The fatwa cites the testimony of non-Muslim astronomers to assert that the “Danjon Limit”—the 7 degree elongation of moon and sun deemed the minimum necessary to see the moon and the guideline adopted by the Greenwich Observatory to determine if the moon should be theoretically visible—is not an entirely dependable rule of thumb, thereby seeking to debunk the idea that an astronomically calculated new moon next to the sun’s disk (as the Shawwal moon was on September 19th in Pakistan) cannot be seen.

Indeed, it is clear that what really steams some Deobands in NWFP is the idea that the testimony of good Muslims can be disregarded if the astronomical calculations assert that the moon should be invisible.

Therefore, the NWFP RHC commission obstinately insisted that the new moon was visible all over the province.

The NWFP’s federally-appointed governor, PPP stalwart Owais Ghani, found it advisable to observe Eid in Peshawar on the 20th.

Pakistan’s top two political leaders, President Asif Zardari and PML-N boss Nawaz Sharif, fortuitously found themselves out of the country on the disputed dates and were able to distance themselves from the controversy.

The NWFP’s overreach might have been quickly forgotten as a piece of parochial clerical effrontery, but for the fact that the provincial ruling party, the Awami National Party, in the person of one of its leading figures, Ghulam Bilour, jumped in with both feet to support the local committee.

The ANP’s only Federal Minister in the national cabinet, Bilour went to the Qasim Ali Khan Mosque in Peshawar to announce and publicize its decision.

Bilour was not content to celebrate the astounding eyesight of the NWFP’s loyal citizens, or merely defend provincial pride and prerogatives.

Bilour declared after his (September 20th ) Eid prayers that those who were still engaged in their Ramadan fasts were “following the Rabwahites” instead of following Medina and Mecca.

As the version was retailed throughout Pakistan and the world, Bilour’s invective was taken to mean that Pakistanis who kept the fast on the 20th and celebrated Eid on the 21st were “standing with the Qadianis”.

As pkpolitics put it:

Minister for Railways Ghulam Ahmad Bilour has said those who are fasting on Sunday stand by the side of Qadianis and ‘we’ can only be Muslims if we celebrate Eid with Saudi Arabia… He was of the view it was a grave sin to fast on Eid Day.


Reflecting what might be a growing impatience with the nettlesome Pashtuns and their fundamentalist brand of Islam, some Pakistani websites hastened to place the least favorable construction on Bilour’s statement.

The liberal-minded website Let us Build Pakistan helpfully pointed out:

In fact the belief is that on Eid only Satan keeps the fast. The NWFP government joined its ulema in making the rest of the country look like the followers of Satan.


So what’s a Qadiani? And where is Rabwah?

Qadiani are a branch of the Ahmadyya sect of Islam. Ahmadis revere Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1839-1908). His teachings arose from the same ferment of embattled, anti-colonial Islam that produced the Deoband school. While the Deobands practiced a rigorous, back to basics brand of Islam that came to form a basis for the ideology of the Taliban (and the guiding theology for an extensive network of madrassahs in the NWFP), Ahmad went in the other direction, claiming he had received divine revelation, eventually declaring himself both the Mahdi and the last avatar of Vishnu.

Not surprisingly, the Qadiani are reviled by fundamentalist Muslims as nothing more than pseudo-Muslims.

Deobandi theologians of Peshawar have inveighed against the Ahmadite sect since the 1950s in order to assert their identity as the definers and protectors of Islamic orthodoxy in Pakistan.

In response to Deobandi agitation and in order to assert its pretensions as protector of Islam, in 1974 the government of Pakistan under Benazir Bhutto’s father constitutionally stripped Ahmadists of the right to call themselves Muslims, quote the Quran, or make the hajj to Mecca.

Ahmadists routinely serve as metaphorical and literal punching bags for politicians and clerics seeking to flaunt their orthodox credentials. Sunni bigots lead confrontational marches through the town of Rabwah, a center of Ahmadist observance in Pakistan’s Punjab.

There is an assiduously propagated rumor that ex-President Musharraf’s wife is an Ahmadist. Supposedly, this would taint Musharraf himself with apostasy and make him a non-Muslim. Conspiracy theorists go the extra mile to talk of a “Qadiani conspiracy” centered on Musharraf, hostile to Islam and in league with Israel and the United States.

Bilour’s screed was, therefore, conceived as a provocative orthodox statement meant to endear him to devout Muslims of Pakistan, or at least to appreciative Pashtun chauvinists of the NWFP.

Unfortunately for him, most of Pakistan apparently chose to construe it as a national insult.

Bilour found himself on the wrong side of a public relations debacle.

It was also pointed out that much of the NWFP observed Eid on the 21st, including the JUI Islamicist party, holder of the Deoband/Taliban brief, which decided to honor its electoral alliance with the PPP at the central level instead of supporting the NWFP RHC.

Bilour clarified that what he was saying was that those who fixed Eid on the 21st, not the vast majority of Pakistani Muslims who kept the fast on the 20th (some 150 million people) were actually doing Satan’s work.

Subsequently Bilour further walked back his statement; he had merely intended to insult the central RHC, and not all Pakistanis. Or maybe he wasn’t trying to insult anyone. Maybe all he wanted was for Pakistan to follow Saudi Arabia’s lead in fixing Eid al Fitr.

Finally, Bilour tried to turn his dilemma upside-down. He denounced the national committee for stirring up trouble and called for its head—apparently a less than impressive figure and Musharraf-era relic, Mufti Munibur Rahman--to resign and be replaced by the head of the NWFP RHC:

PESHAWAR: Federal Minister for Railways and the leader of Awami National Party (ANP), Ghulam Ahmad Bilour calling Mufti Munibur Rahman as the remnant of Musharraf, demanded dissolution of the existing central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee and suggested the appointment of Mufti Shahabuddin Popalzai of Masjid Qasim Ali Khan as the new chairman.


Bilour’s demand was briskly dismissed by the central government and apparently did little more than generate sympathy for the hitherto unnoticed and unloved mufti.

In light of the slanders concerning Musharraf, note the description of Rahman as a “Musharraf remnant”, dovetailing with the Rabwahite canard to reinforce the idea of Pakistan’s heartland being in thrall to apostates and thirsting for the spiritual refreshment of Taliban-esque Deoband orthodoxy.

Politicizing the Eid dispute serves as an example of the ANP's traditional pandering to Deoband clerics in the NWFP.

Letting the argument slop onto the national stage by allowing the ANP’s top federal official to act as spokesman represents, perhaps, a new low for the ANP, founded as an avowedly secular, democratic, and inclusive party but inclined toward political alliances with vociferous and prominent NWFP clerics and forced by the challenge of the Pakistani Taliban to present itself as the political face of Pashtun chauvinism.

Although the province it rules is known officially as the North West Frontier Provinces, the ANP refers to the NWFP in its party communications as Pakhtunkwa, the Pashtun homeland. The NWFP provincial government website also refers to Pakhtunkwa and occasionally attempts to employ the term at the National Assembly, provoking walkouts led by the PML-N.

Suspicious conservatives in the Pakistan security establishment use these demonstrations of Pashtun pride to accuse the ANP of conniving at more than its stated commitment to autonomy and working with India to combine the NWFP and FATA with the Pashtun regions of Afghanistan to create a united, independent Pashtun state.

Although it is unlikely that the ANP chiefs wishes to trade their positions as ruler of a province of Pakistan for citizenship in an impoverished and landlocked failed state under the gun of the Taliban, the ANP’s moves to position itself as champion of the Pashtuns are a justifiable source of concern.

The ANP lobbied the government vigorously for the disastrous institution of sharia law in the Swat valley in order to steal fundamentalist thunder.

It has contributed to the heightening of tensions in Karachi—the sprawling port city of in which Pashtun immigrants form an immense and aggrieved underclass—by threatening to mix things up with the thuggish MQM party that runs things there on behalf of the Mujahir majority and export political chaos to Sindh.

Ghulam Bilour himself is an unlikely champion of Islamic fundamentalism. He attracts scorn on message boards for the racy, un-Islamic programming he apparently permits at the theaters he owns in the NWFP.

Bilour, a pillar of the ANP with decades of service in the cause of Pashtun aspirations, is a member of one of those immensely wealthy grandee families that inevitably send their sons and daughters into politics in Pakistan. One brother, Bashir, is a senior minister in the NWFP; another, Ilyas, is a prominent local businessman.

The Bilour brothers appear skilled in the art of making enemies.

As the main power broker in the NWFP, the Bilour family should have been able to choose the chief minister of the province from its own ranks when the ANP won control of the provincial legislature in alliance with the PPP in 2008.

However, members of parliament on the PPP side adamantly refused to accept anybody from the Bilour family because of its suspected role in the murder of a PPP leader.

In 1997, Ghulam Bilour’s only son was killed in a vote-fraud fracas outside a polling station. The blood feud persisted, despite a personal intervention by Benazir Bhutto. Ten years later, his family was accused of orchestrating the revenge killing of the person they considered responsible.

The victim was no ordinary poll-watcher; it was the PPP’s senior vice president in the NWFP, Qamar Abbas. His murder created an undeniable awkwardness in Bilour’s relations with the PPP.

To Bilour’s displeasure, Ameer Haider Hoti was chosen as Chief Minister over Bilour’s brother, Bashir.

Hoti is the grandson of two founding ANP stalwarts, and also the nephew of the current ANP president, Asfandyar Wali—whom, it is rumored, Bilour intends to succeed as president of the ANP.

Election-related violence seems to dog the Bilour family, as this account indicates:

Both the influential political families of Peshawar city, agreed on exhibiting restrain and non-aggression against each other in future here on Monday. The conciliation between Bashir Bilour and Abdul Mannan was made due to the efforts of a traditional Jirga.

The two families were at the throat of each other since the killing of a nephew of Haji Abdul Mannan allegedly by the supporters of Bashir Ahmad Bilour during election campaign of February 18, 2008. The family of Haji Abdul Mannan and Bashir Ahmad Bilour are staunch political rivals and contest elections against each other.


It is interesting that two weeks prior to the reconciliation on March 24, 2009 Bashir Ahmad Bilour was the target of an unsuccessful bloody botch of an assassination attempt that killed six, including three bystanders—one that the provincial government publicly averred was not an instance of Taliban-on-government violence.

Beyond his wealth and sharp elbows, Bilour’s primary political calling card today appears to be his promotion of Pashtun chauvinism—a trend that has become more marked as the traditionally secular and progressive ANP struggles to compete with the Taliban.

Pandering to Deoband-inspired Islamic fundamentalism, even in the name of Pashtun pride, is immensely risky in Pakistan.

It’s not just an issue of picking on the tiny and persecuted Ahmadist/Qadiani minority.

As two high-profile outrages in 2009 demonstrated, religious practice and the power structure in Pakistan’s heartland provinces of Sindh and Punjab are strikingly vulnerable to assault by the Taliban under the flag of Deoband orthodoxy and working through Pashtun émigrés and assets.

The Punjab and Sindh are Sunni, like the NWFP, but largely practice Sunni observance on a foundation of Sufi evangelism.

In the 12th through 14th centuries, independent Sufi missionaries preaching a message of toleration, egalitarianism, and ecstatic mysticism offered the inhabitants of the Indus River valley an attractive alternative to the rigidities of the Hindu caste system and won the region for Islam.

Sindh and Punjab are dotted with purportedly miraculous Sufi shrines that attract hundreds of thousands of adherents to their festivals and serve as the focus of near-idolatrous worship and prayers for intervention and assistance. Influential local families descended from the Sufi saints—called pirs--derive local spiritual and political power and national influence from their control of these shrines.

Benazir Bhutto’s family is closely associated with the cult of Qalandar, in Sindh.

When Nawaz Sharif returned from exile to contest Pakistan’s general elections in 2007, he made a point of distancing himself from his austere Saudi patrons by paying a high profile visit to the tomb of Punjab’s pre-eminent Sufi holy man, Ali Hujwiri, at the Data Durbar complex in Lahore.

Although the Deobandi movement is Sufi in its traditions--as is Mullah Omar’s (himself a graduate of a Deobond-affiliated madrassah) exercise of charismatic leadership--Deoband practice represented a conscious effort to prevent the extinction of the minority Muslim faith within British India by asserting a distinct, separate Muslim identity through emphasis on adherence to sharia law and the orthodox Prophetic canon of Quran and Sunnah, and by purging the indigenous popular Sufi form of Islamic observance of corrupting non-Islamic elements.

Writing in a collection of essays entitled Sufism and the “modern” in Islam, (Martin van Bruinessen, Julia Day Howell, I.B.Tauris, 2007) Yoginder Sikan described the relation of Deobandi fundamentalism to popular Sufism:

Also branded as “un-Islamic” and occupying a central place in what Ilyas saw as “un-Islamic” customary tradition, was the entire domain of popular Sufism. This included practices related to worship at the shrines of saints, such as prostration at their graves, musical sessions, and unrestricted mixing of the sexes.

Equally condemnable was a range of beliefs and social practices relating to the authority of the Sufis, whether living or dead. The notion that the buried Sufis were still alive and could intercede with God to grant one’s requests was fiercely condemned as
un-Islamic” and as akin to shirk, the sin of associating partners with the one God.

…

Ilyas’ reformed Sufism…had crucial implications for the constitution of religious authority…[T]he TJ directly challenged the authority of the custodians of the religious shrine (sajjada-nishin)…who were seen as having a vested interest in in preserving popular custom for their own claims to authority rested on these.

…

[Ilyas] therefore effectively dismissed as ultimately of little worth the claims to authority of the sajjada-nishin, based on the reports of the miracles (karamat) performed by the saints whose shrines they tended. He stressed that punctilious observance of the sharia, and not karamat, was the only way to rise in God’s eyes.


In 21st-century Pakistan, the Deoband’s adversary is not only the cultural legacy of Sufism; there is an opposing school of Islamic jurisprudence as well.

Sufi-tinged Islamic religious practice in non-Pashtun areas of Pakistan—and indeed, in much of South Asia--is formalized in a largely pacifist and mystical strain of orthodox Sunni Islam known as Barelvi, named after the town of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, India..

Like the Deoband school, Barelvi observance emerged as an expression of religious thought in response to British colonial rule and the perceived crisis of Islam in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century India.

The Barelvi school’s founder, Ahmad Raza Khan guaranteed lasting hostility between his school and the Deobands by issuing fatwas declaring them--and for good measure Saudi Arabia’s Wahabis--to be apostates.

Globalsecurity.com describes the striking ethnic divide between the Deobandi practices of the Pashtun areas with the Sufi and Barelvi-related practices of Punjab:

The non-Pakhtun population of Pakistan is predominantly Barelvi. The stronghold of Barelvism remains Punjab, the largest province of Pakistan. By one estimate, in Pakistan, the Shias are 18%,Iismailis 2%, Ahmediyas 2%, Barelvis 50%, Deobandis 20%, Ahle Hadith 4%, and other minorities 4%. … By another estimate some 15 per cent of Pakistan's Sunni Muslims would consider themselves Deobandi, and some 60 per cent, are in the Barelvi tradition based mostly in the province of Punjab.


Although the Deobandi school may only represent the religious observance of one out of five Pakistanis and is concentrated in the poorest frontier regions, it presents itself as the arbiter of Islamic orthodoxy and legitimacy inside Pakistan.

The anonymous author of the Global Security profile stated:

…some 64 per cent of the total seminaries are run by Deoband is, 25 per cent by the Barelvis, six percent by the Ahle Hadith and three percent by various Shiite organisations.

Sufi and Barelvi practices that Deoband-affiliated Pashtun militants consider heretical--and the local power structure they support--present a tempting target to the Taliban as it seeks to capitalize on the poverty and anger roiling the immense underclass of Pakistan’s heartland.

In other words, the Deoband practice of Islam, especially in its harsh, militant, and politicized form in NWFP, and the widespread, Sufi-oriented Barelvi popular religion of Pakistan would seem to be on a collision course.

One of the most disturbing developments in a year full of disturbing developments in the NWFP was the bombing of the tomb of Rehman Baba, the province’s most revered Sufi saint, in March 2009. This explicit attack on a religious institution that had no strategic significance but was one that the Taliban consider heterodox, may well be a harbinger of violence—and politics of division-- to come.

If the conflict comes, the Barelvi are likely to be outgunned.

The Pashtun Deobandi are militant, supported by zakat (Islamic charity contributions) from Saudi Arabia, and have numerous friends and supporters within Pakistan’s security apparatus.

The pacifist, underfunded, and underorganized Barelvi—with the exception of the reliably violent MQM in Karachi—appear to be reliant upon Pakistan’s rickety and equivocal civilian government to take the battle to the Taliban.

When the Barelvi attempt to stand up to the Taliban themselves, bad things happen.

A brave Barelvi cleric and head of one of the largest madrassahs in Pakistan, Dr. Sarfraz Hussain Naeemi, organized twenty Barelvi Sunni organizations into Tahaffuz-e-Namoos-e-Risalat Mahaz (TNRM). TNRM was intended as a counterweight to the Deobands and to support Pakistan’s civilian government in its military campaigns against the Taliban in Swat and in other sections of the NWFP and FATA.

On June 12, 2009, Dr. Naeemi, who had coordinated a committee of Islamic clerics that declared suicide bombing as haram or forbidden by Islamic law (he had already issued a fatwa against suicide bombing in 2005 in his individual capacity), was himself murdered by a suicide bomber in his office at his madrassah in Lahore after Friday prayers.

Baitullah Mehsud’s Pakistan Taliban organization, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the murder, and for a near simultaneous suicide attack that pancaked a mosque in a garrison town near Peshawar and killed five.

The security lapses surrounding Dr. Naeemi’s death were described by the Pakistan Tribune in sufficiently circumstantial detail to give the impression that the government was, at best, asleep at the switch.


The police sources also confirmed to our sources lapses in providing security cover to the respected cleric. Police sources, requesting anonymity, disclosed that one ASI and 10 constables were sent to Jamia Naeemia every Friday to provide security cover to the worshippers. However, this Friday only two constables of the Muhafiz Force had been deployed there.

… according to sources, the police later wrote a fake report in the Roznamcha (official diary) of the Police Chowki Bibi Pak Daman…

… Dr Sarfraz had been receiving threatening calls for the past many days and ironically no security was provided to him as well as the place where he lived…

According to the Jamia administration, only two policemen were deployed outside the Madrassa for frisking the visitors coming for the Juma prayers. Both the policemen left the place right after the Juma prayers, providing the attacker an opportunity to enter the premises unchecked, alleged the administration.

Dawn’s report on Dr. Naeemi’s funeral provides the requisite ironic coda:

Strict security measures were taken in and around Nasser Bagh with the deployment of 1,000 policemen, while 5,000 cops were put on alert across the city to avoid any untoward incident. No politician or top government official attended the funeral reportedly because of security concerns.

While the demands and priorities of the Deoband establishment receive anxious attention from the federal government, the Barelvi appear to be ignored.

Dr. Naeemi’s ally and head of the Islamic JUP party, Sahibzada Fazal Karim, was one of the few voices to speak out against the proclamation of sharia in Swat, to no effect.

After the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistan Taliban has evinced a temporary disinterest in igniting sectarian religious strife in Punjab and Sindh by attacking Barelvi and Sufi-based leaders, institutions, and practices. This is no doubt attributable in part to the resilience and strongly-rooted local identity of the Belvari Sunnis in Punjab and Sindh and the potential for a national backlash against the Taliban.

However, Taliban reticence probably also relates to Mullah Omar’s tactical insistence on keeping a lid on things in the Taliban’s rear areas in Pakistan while he concentrates on the ultimate prize—Kabul.

If the Taliban acquires a politically secure position inside Afghanistan in the next few months, either through conquest or accommodation, it may find the temptation to mobilize the Pashtun diaspora (there are four million Pashtun in Karachi alone) to disrupt Pakistan’s non-Deobondi power structure irresistible.

This subtext makes Bilour’s posturing on Eide more worrisome.

It looks like something more than a simple attempt to pander to the NWFP’s provincial pride or curry favor with its Deoband religious establishment.

It also looks like an attempt to keep the ANP from appearing out of step with its main political competitor for Pashtun loyalty—the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan—by ostentatiously lining up with the Eid al Fitr policy of Saudi Arabia, the chief patron of fundamentalist Islamic orthodoxy.

Finally, Bilour’s inflammatory Eid statement probably represents his attempt to position himself as a rock-solid champion of conservative Pashtun religious forces both within the NWFP and on the national stage when he makes his move to assume the presidency of the ANP.

By inserting not only the ANP party but the NWFP government into the Eid debate—and by taking the dispute national with an attack on the central RHC committee--Bilour also threw the NWFP’s political and ethnic weight behind the Deobandi.

Perhaps inadvertently, Bilour ratcheted up tension and the stakes in the simmering confrontation between Deoband and Barelvi and raised the specter of a national conflict fueled by a convergence of ethnic mistrust, religious bigotry, and political calculation.

In the war of words after Bilour’s statement, Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rahman acidly remarked that the ANP had converted from a secular to a religious party, and they might as well put the head of Masjid Qasim Ali Khan, Shahabuddin Popalzai, in charge of the ANP.

In response, Bilour declared: “I’m a worshiper of Allah but proud to be secular, nationalist and progressive.”

It remains to be seen what additional turmoil Bilour’s cocktail of religious, ethnic, and political opportunism will bring to Pakistan.