Ahmed on Sharif Decision, Pakistan

Don't miss Manan Ahmed's important comment at our Global Affairs group blog on Pakistan's Supreme Court decision that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif may return to Pakistan.

See also Sameer Lalwani's comments at the Washington Note on the same issue.

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Getting Pakistan Right

Be sure to check out Manan Ahmed's "Getting Pakistan Right at our Global Affairs group blog. It is a powerful corrective to American tendencies to undervalue the democratic potential of the place.

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Rumors Musharraf will impose Emergency Laws in Pakistan
Islamabad blames Obama

Blogger acting up, affecting comments, archives. Should clear up soon. Sorry.

Rumors are flying in Pakistan that Gen. Pervez Musharraf may declare what amounts to martial law, responding to 'external' and 'internal' threats.

[Musharraf announced Thursday that he was not in fact going to declare an emergency. Some have speculated that he was posturing to get the Bush administration to back off pressuring him to crack down on fundamentalist Muslims in Pakistan.]

The Pakistani government is implying that the comments of US presidential candidate Barack Obama about bombing northern Pakistan to get at al-Qaeda are part of the impetus for the move, but that is self-serving.

Still, it won't do Senator Obama's campaign any good for him to be invoked as part of the reason for Pakistan moving away from democracy toward emergency rule. He should not have stuck to his guns on Sunday and subsequently; being able to fix a mistake gracefully is key to success in politics.

See also Manan Ahmed's comments at our Global Affairs group blog.
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Pakistani Editor: 'Tancredo has Expressed his Evil, inner Self'

At IC Global Affairs, the editors of major Pakistani newspapers reply to Tom Tancredo and Barack Obama.

The issue came up again at the AFL-CIO debate in Chicago last night, with Obama being generally criticized by the other candidates not so much for the policy but for the unnuanced way he articulated it.

Meanwhile, at the Napoleon in Egypt Blog, Gen. Bonaparte's letter to the Pasha of Egypt.
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Obama Sticks to his Guns

Senator Obama still can't see why it is controversial for him to threaten to violate Pakistan's sovereignty to get at the Arab al-Qaeda in Waziristan.

His comments of last week roiled US-Pakistani relations.

What he should be saying is that if he had an opportunity to deploy a Predator against Bin Laden he would do it, and that he is sure that Gen. Musharraf would cooperate. He is setting up an unlikely hypothetical, and in the hypothetical he is setting up an ally as essentially an enemy (implying that Musharraf is covering for Bin Laden or something).

His remarks suggested that he is attached to the Bush Doctrine of unilateral and preemptive military action, which violates the United Nations Charter. In the Republican debate, the candidate that sounded closest to Obama's stance on this was Rudy Giuliani. That should tell you something.

And he is angering the Pakistani public for no good reason. (I mean, if Musharraf, whom al-Qaeda has twice tried to kill with bombs, can't find them, how likely is it that Obama can?) His remarks are remarkably flat-footed for someone who has read the history of British colonialism in Kenya; isn't this just a variant of the White Man's Burden, a way of saying that the Wily Oriental Gentlemen aren't up to it?
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Pakistani Protests against Obama;
Clinton leaves Nukes on the Table;
Tancredo an Inspiration to the Criminally Insane that They, Too, Could run for President

I'm going to hear Senator Barack Obama on Saturday afternoon at the Yearly Kos convention. Will report back on Sunday about his remarks.

On Thursday, he said he would not use nuclear weapons against al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, then backed up and said "scratch that," there had been no discussion of nuclear weapons.

Hillary Clinton criticized Obama for (initially?) ruling out the use of nuclear weapons, saying that a president should not take any weapon in the arsenal off the table.

I really think the Democrats are misunderstanding the mood of the American people. Is Senator Clinton saying she would entertain the option of nuking Pakistan or Afghanistan? Wouldn't that kill a lot of innocents and spread radioactive materials around on the grass that cows eat, putting it into milk and thence into local children, increasing their chances of contracting cancer? Isn't Obama absolutely right that this is one instance in which nukes are useless for tactical purposes?

Pakistan, by the way, is a) an ally, b) a nuclear power in its own right, c) a major Muslim country of 160 million, the population of which will soon equal that of the United States, and d) an opinion leader among other Muslim states. Most Pakistanis are not fundamentalists but rather Sufis, traditionalists, mild reformists or secularists. Or at least that is the case now. If US presidential candidates push them to the wall, they can after all decide to turn radical.

(The certifiable Tom Tancredo is talking about holding Islamic holy sites Mecca and Medina hostage to nuclear blackmail. Can't one of Tancredo's family members have him committed, sign the papers and get rich off his estate while he is in a padded room for a few years?)

As for the mostly sane Democrats, could we please stop talking about whether we are going to nuke our allies? I mean, I know that Obama and Clinton are afraid that their Republican rivals will talk tougher than they and will depict them as soft on terrorism. But I can't imagine that the electorate wants to hear that nukes are on the table with regard to the tribes of northern Pakistan!

And if you were Iranian and heard the Clinton and Tancredo remarks, wouldn't you tell your nuclear scientists to start putting in overtime? Wouldn't such talk actually spur nuclear proliferation in the Muslim world?

Ironically, Mitt Romney and John McCain are making hay with charges that Obama is too gung ho and his remarks would interfere with US attempts to build coalitions against terror groups in the region!

It is early in the campaign, and it is not too late for Obama to recover, but it seems obvious that he made a serious error in his speech on Wednesday regarding northern Pakistan.

Reactions from Pakistan continue to roll in regarding the remarks of US Democratic presidential hopeful Obama that he would order unilateral military action in northern Pakistan if there were actionable intelligence on al-Qaeda and the Pakistani government refused to act on it.

The governor of Baluchistan province, Owais Ahmed Ghani, said that Obama's remarks hindered the war on terror. Ghani pointed out that Pakistani troops are the ones doing the hard fighting against extremists in the north (Pakistan has captured over 700 al-Qaeda operatives, more than any other US ally). Dawn writes, 'The governor said the Pakistanis watched their soldiers being killed in the fight against militants, and they say “if that is the sort of signal that is coming out of Washington, why bother? . . Nothing must be said or done which will undermine the vital public support that Pakistan needs, the world needs."

Earlier, about 1,000 tribesmen rallied in Miranshah in the north, pledging to defend themselves if attacked by foreigners. "Hundreds" demonstrated in the capital, Islamabad, against Obama. A small demonstration of 150 was held in Karachi.

Pakistan's foreign minister, Khursheed Kasuri, told AP, "It's a very irresponsible statement, that's all I can say . . . As the election campaign in America is heating up we would not like American candidates to fight their elections and contest elections at our expense."

It is highly undesirable for a presidential candidate to spark this sort of reaction in a country allied with the US. In my view, the episode derives from inexperience on foreign policy and from bad advice from campaign managers and speech writers.

The question is, can Obama repair the damage or was this the moment when the Democratic grassroots decided he is not ready for prime time?
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Pakistani Army Invades Red Mosque

The Pakistani military invaded the Red Mosque and seminary complex early on Tuesday morning. As I write, Aljazeera is reporting that the army has 85% of the complex. Some 40 Muslim militants inside the mosque have been killed, as have 3 Pakistani soldiers.

For the background of this crisis, see Manan Ahmad's comments at our group blog.

The Pakistani government has faced protests in the north of the country, in Malakand and Waziristan, over the Red Mosque crisis.
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Musharraf Warns Militants of Death

See Manan Ahmed's excellent analysis of the crisis in Pakistan at our group blog. He points out that the militant Red Mosque was an ally of the United States and the Pakistani government in the 1980s, when they were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

On Saturday and early Sunday, Pakistan's military kept blasting away at key points in the seminary-mosque complex, apparently with the intent ultimately of making a frontal assault through the breaches and rescuing any hostages the militants may take. A high-ranking Pakistani officer was killed by a militant sniper during such a blast operation. Gen. Pervez Musharraf has demanded that the radicals surrender, and threatened them with death if they do not.
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Pakistani Army Moves in
Takes Faridia Seminary
Standoff at Red Mosque

Pakistani troops took the Faridia Seminary attached to the Red Mosque on Friday. On Saturday morning, the army continued to move in on the mosque itself, amid sounds of explosions. The clerical leader there, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, has been talking about fighting to the death, and told the seminarians with him during Friday prayers that he had "written their wills." Do they have Kool-aid in Pakistan?

Pakistani troops also removed walls and barriers in front of the women's seminary attached to the mosque, in what could be a preparation for a rescue mission.

Pakistan's exiled civilian politicians, such as former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, appear to view the current turmoil in the capital as an invitation to defy the military government by returning to Pakistan to contest the elections scheduled for this fall. Some high Pakistani officials are now saying that Ms. Bhutto would not be arrested on her arrival in the country, contrary to earlier threats issued by Gen. Musharraf.

The proliferation of madrasahs or Muslim seminaries in Pakistan, which offer K-12 and college-level education, is enabled in part by the government's refusal to spend money on opening and supporting new civil schools throughout the country. Last I knew, half of the Pakistani budget went to the military, and spending on education was something like 2%. For its first few decades of existence, Pakistan spent %50-%60 of its budget on the military. In the 2006-2007 budget, "defense" was $4.2 billion of the $21.7 bn. federal budget. Moreover, the military has tended in recent years to spend beyond its budget allocation. And, expenditures, procurements and programs actually military in character were spread through the rest of the budget, and the true total dedicated to the military is likely actually higher. Both the Pakistani public and the international donor agencies had demanded reduced proportions of military spending in the budget, so, presto, things were reclassified as not military. Sherry Rahman observes:

' When parliamentarians or donors read the allocation for defence over the next fiscal year, it will not include the military pensions, which now run into 35.6 billion rupees. Nor will the defence outlay include Rs 1.4 billion demanded separately for the combatant accounts of the defence division which include the Maritime Security Forces and others with dotted line or direct reports to the military, Rs 40, 723 million in salaries for defence production, Rs 7.2 billion spent on the civil armed forces, Rs 3.7 billion for the Pakistan Rangers, Rs 1.5 billion for the Frontier Constabulary, Rs 359 million for the Pakistan Coast Guards, nor the one billion rupees set aside for military schools, cantonments and other residuals. The Atomic Energy Commission too, which falls under the control of the Strategic Plans Division, has been allotted separate funds, yet the two billion rupees demanded this year is charged to civilian expenses under the cabinet division.

For a developing and relatively poor country, giving the military this enormous proportion of the national budget is criminal (the same is true for India, by the way). With regard to the proportion of Pakistan's GDP devoted to education, at around 2% it was in the bottom 12 of the 187 countries in the world in 2004-2005.

It was alleged that the plane of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, came under small-arms fire as it was taking off from Islamabad.

Video from Friday:

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Government Troops advance on Red Mosque

Pakistani troops moved in on the Red Mosque complex early Friday morning, engaging in fierce gun battles with the remaining militants within

On Thursday, the standoff between the militants within and the Pakistani government had continued. About 50 of the several hundred remaining hold-outs had surrendered, and the leader, cleric or maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi seemed to show weakening resolve in interviews. But the Pakistani army seemed to have been making preparations for an assault, at one point using explosives to creat a large breech in one of the seminary's walls.

Video from Thursday:

The USG Open Source Center analyzes the Pakistani press reaction to the operation against the Red Mosque militants. It finds that the press is supportive of the government, despite severe recent government-press tensions over the firing of the Pakistani supreme court chief justice.

OSC Analysis 7 Jul: Pakistan: Media Back Government Restraint, Action at Red Mosque Pakistan -- OSC Analysis Thursday, July 5, 2007 Pakistan: State Media Highlight Government Restraint; Private Media Back Government Action at Red Mosque Pakistani state media underscored remarks by top level Pakistani officials on the government's offers to protect seminary students who surrender amidst clashes between law enforcement agencies and a group of fundamentalist clerics and students at Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), which was taken over by the students approximately six months ago. The private media supported the government's action. In an apparent attempt to garner public support for government actions, state media highlighted Pakistani leaders' expressions of commitment to minimize loss of life and protect seminary students who wish to surrender. In addition, they noted the local clerics' support for the government's operation. According to state-run news agency APP, Pakistani President Musharraf directed security agencies to be patient in carrying out the operation to ensure a safe exit for female students; similarly, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz stated that the "protection of people and property is the government's top priority" (4, 5 July). APP quoted Federal Minister for Political Affairs Amir Muqam as saying the government has demonstrated "tolerance and patience in a bid to minimize...losses to human lives" (5 July), and according to PTV World, Minister of State for Interior Zafar Iqbal Warriach asserted that no action would be taken against those who surrender (4 July). In addition, APP twice reported on local cleric support for government actions and condemnation of the clerics and students of Lal Masjid (5 July). APP also portrayed leading Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz, in an interview after his arrest, as having "urged the students and clerics of Lal Masjid to surrender, saying they will not be able to resist the operation" (5 July). In the interview broadcast on PTV, Abdul Aziz said that the students "should get away quietly or if they want to they can surrender" (5 July). While the private electronic media were observed to carry only factual reporting of the incident, private print media expressed support for the government. Moderate Daily Times noted that the operation was "right but late," but suggested that President Musharraf's hands "could have been tied" due to disunity in the ruling PML-Q party (5 July). Islamic daily Nawa-e-Waqt called the operation a "logical conclusion," but urged the government to settle the issue "once and for all" (5 July). This OSC product is based exclusively on the content and behavior of selected media and has not been coordinated with other US Government components.

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Red Mosque Leader Arrested in Burqa

Dawn reports,

' Maulana Aziz was caught after a group of 50 burqa-clad women from the mosque started screaming as they were taken to a nearby school for security checks after giving themselves up, saying the procedure was un-Islamic.

“Our officers spotted his (Aziz’s) unusual demeanour. The rest of the girls looked like girls, but he was taller and had a pot-belly,” an official said. '

Dawn says that the cleric, Abdul Aziz Ghazi, had holed up and refused to surrender unconditionally, then attempted to slip out when women caught in the siege were permitted by police to leave:

' “After all the things he has said and all the oaths he took from his students that they should embrace martyrdom with him, look at this man,” Minister of State for Information Tariq Azeem said.

Another 1,000 or seminarians and other persons at the mosque were captured, but several hundred holdouts remained inside Thursday morning, when loud blasts were heard.

Authorities fear that the remaining jihadis, may use the women and children with them as human shields.

Most of the militants appear to be ethnic Pushtuns and from the neo-Deobandi school of South Asian Islam that also produced the Taliban. Islamabad and Rawalpindi are largely Punjabi in ethnicity, and most Muslims there belong to other schools of Islam, including the milder reformist strain of the Barelvis. Last I knew, there were few Deobandi mosques in Punjabi cities such as Rawalpindi and Lahore, and the few that existed were not influential.

Dawn is talking about the government giving many of the seminarians bus fare back up to the Northwest Frontier Province, the largely Pushtun province in the north that has come under heavy neo-Deobandi influence through seminaries such as the Haqqaniya. Most Pushtuns are not fundamentalists, but there is now a higher proportion of fundamentalists among them than is common in other Pakistani ethnic groups, such as the Punjabis, Sindhis, and Urdu speakers.

The major protests against the government's crackdown on the mosque appear mostly to have been held in towns and cities with big Deobandi and/or Pushtun populations, such as the northern town of Mingora, or in Quetta, where there are a lot of Deobandi seminarians and clerics. A protest was held by the Ashrafiya Mosque in Lahore, a southern Punjabi city, but it doesn't seem to have been that significant.

It is said that the image of the pot-bellied mawlana in a burqa has provoked a good deal of mirth among the Pakistani populace as a whole.
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Massive Street Battle in Pakistan's Capital
Army versus Muslim Militants

Dawn reports on the fierce fighting in the streets of Islamabad between radical fundamentalists and the army loyal to secular general Pervez Musharraf, which left 21 dead (including one soldier) and 150 injured. The government's Interior Minister had recently warned of the spread of Taliban-type activists through the country. The seminarians at the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) have been accused of bothering local merchants in Islamabad, including video stores. On Tuesday, they were calling for jihadis to rally to their side from nearby madrasahs, brandishing automatic weapons, and threatening suicide bombings against the government.

' ISLAMABAD, July 3: Paramilitary Rangers and riot police fought a daylong running gunbattle with hundreds of heavily armed and well-entrenched militants around their stronghold of Lal Masjid as a six-month-long standoff between mosque’s radicals and the authorities exploded into a major clash on Tuesday, leaving at least 10 people dead and more than 150 injured.

Dozens of the injured suffered multiple bullet wounds, and the condition of some of them being critical, doctors feared the death toll might rise.

It was perhaps the worst, and the bloodiest, incident in Islamabad’s history as never before such a large number of armed militants had taken on the authorities — and that too in the heart of the capital.

The trouble started around 11.30am with some madressah militants trying to occupy a nearby government building, and within no time a fierce clash broke out between the armed seminary students and security troops. Sporadic clashes had continued till past midnight when unconfirmed reports suggested a massive security operation to sweep the Lal Masjid of armed militants, raising the possibility of more armed clashes and larger casualty. '

Zee TV reports that the government is demanding an unconditional surrender of the clerics, and arrested a senator for his efforts to find a negotiated settlement.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has been under pressure from the middle classes and civil society organizations over his dismissal of the country's supreme court head, his crackdown on the press, and his refusal to take off his uniform before seeking another term as president. Some analysts suspect that the dramatic action against the fundamentalists is an effort to distract the public from the other issues. The evidence appears to be, however, that the fundamentalists started the shooting.

Despite their reputation in the West as fundamentalists, most Pakistanis are actually Sufi mystics, or mild traditionalists, or secular, with fundamentalist activists being a minority that is somewhat feared, especially by many urban youth and women.

For those with leisure to watch it, the recent briefing on Pakistan at the New America Foundation by Anatole Lieven and Peter Bergen, who had just visited the country, is very worthwhile.

For the other side, the USG Open Source Center translates an interview conducted on Tuesday with the cleric in charge of the Red Mosque, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, as well as with an independent analyst, Kamran Khan.

Geo News TV Talks to Red Mosque Cleric, Analyst on Today's Events From the "Newsday" program Geo News TV Tuesday, July 3, 2007 At least 10 people are now confirmed dead after a standoff between law enforcers and the Lal Masjid erupted into violence. (passage omitted on details of the report, including dispatches by correspondents on the losses and situation, already covered through various reports filed earlier) Earlier, in the day, we spoke to Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the head cleric of the Lal Masjid. We asked him what triggered today's events in his opinion and this is what he said. (Begin recording) (Ghazi) We have been asking them that you should not come very close because it can create problems with the students. But today in the morning they came very near and started erecting their pickets with sandbags and then our some students went and they have I mean quarrel with each other and then they started shelling and our students young, small kids (two words indistinct) were wounded and then that is how it started. (Jaffer) (word indistinct) Maulana, how many people according to him were dead or injured inside the seminary? (Ghazi) Now, they have I mean targeted with snipers. They are using the snipers from the buildings just in front of the mosque and they are using sniper and they are targeting our students and they have so far hit about eight persons who have martyred. (Jaffer) Yes, Maulana, lastly, whether any women were among the injured and those who were killed? (Ghazi) One woman, I am hearing but I am not sure. I am on the other side and (word indistinct) sure about it. (Jaffer) Mr Ghazi, now, you have made statements earlier on about the weapons that were possessed by the Lal Masjid students as for being licensed. Now, footage is showing automatic weapons in their possession. Where are these weapons coming inside the seminary from? (Ghazi) We have told it that these are our gun mans and you know that that is the reason we are still on defensive that is why our casualties are on very higher side and the government had mood to do it and they have done it because they have cordoning the... rangers were cordoning the area and we have been asking them and we have been saying that they should not do it. But if they have mood to do it that is they have done it. (Jaffer) Maulana, you also made statements about a suicide attack if there was any operation on the Lal Masjid. Now, what we are seeing looks very much like that. Are you going to follow through on your statements from before about a suicide attack? (Ghazi) So the thing that the government is in a mood to make bloodshed in the capital ∧ in the mosque and that would be I mean very dangerous for the country. That was the question and answer session we had with Maulana Abdul Rahid Ghazi, the head cleric of the Lal Masjid, earlier today. (end recording) To talks about the implications of the developments in Islamabad in a greater context, we are now being joined by a senior analyst Mr Kamran Khan. (Begin recording) (Anchor Owais Jaffer) Mr Khan what do you think will be the political fallout of this move considering that the elections are just round the corner and the judicial crisis is at its peak? (Khan) Obviously, the timing is very difficult for the government and for Gen Musharraf because only yesterday Supreme Court had passed a very strong ruling against the intelligence agencies and the Supreme Court's observations were a major setback for the government's case and this wouldn't have come at a worse time. It is really difficult time for the government and this development today we don't know whether we can call it an operation or not but this development today has come at a very difficult time and we don't know actually what is going to be political fallout because we don't exactly know what is going to happen in the next few hours and next few days. Initially, people are watching with keen interest and I think country is not much divided. There is a growing consensus in the country that the government should take action. Government should go forward. Government should have a major crackdown on these elements. But I think the cost going to be very heavy for the government if government goes for a direct action or if the security forces launch a massive operation which could lead to major major (repeat the word major) casualties and a lot many people may got killed. So probably it is too early to say whether there will be political fallout or not but I am sure that the government is very very (repeat word very) cautious at this moment. (Jaffer) Mr Khan, we have seen the number of casualties coming into PIMS. Now, keeping everything in context, how real is the threat of a social backlash from seminaries around the country now. (Khan) Actually, if it really turns out to major event in the sense that we see more casualties, if we see more people getting killed and we see a direct action resulting in the death of many students of this seminary and Lal Masjid, obviously, it will have a repel effect and seminaries all over the country would have sympathy for the students who may get killed here or who may get wounded here and if the size is really big, if the number of causalities is lot more than we expect then obviously it will have a major fallout and we may see that it may probably trigger a backlash from the seminaries and students may get out they may confront the law enforcing agencies. There may be a major violent challenge to the government. (Jaffer) Mr Khan, you said that this incident started out because with the shootout from elements inside of the seminary and Ranger's official getting killed. Now, why do you feel in your expert analysis this particular day was chosen by those elements. (Khan) I think the government was tightening the noose around this area. And probably these guys inside the mosque, they were under psychological pressure. They probably thought that the action is coming and they probably thought that the action is coming any moment. Secondly, as I said earlier, that yesterday's Supreme Court ruling has put government on the (word indistinct). These are very embarrassing moments for the government. Probably, they may have this also in mind when they initiated today's shoot out. Probably, they thought that the government is in very week corner and more importantly they wanted to pick their own timing to start this provocation. (Jaffer) Mr Kamran Khan, senior analyst, thank you very much for talking to us on Newsday. (end recording) As expected condemnations of today's clashes between security forces and Jamia Hafsa students have started coming in with Jamia Binoria seminaries criticizing the government and calling the clashes an assault on the Lal Masjid. (Begin recording) (Unidentified correspondent) Jamia Binoria alleges that the government has not kept its promises with the Lal Masjid. Sudents from Jamia Binoria believe that the government should negotiate with the seminary otherwise the situation could worsen. (Unidentified student, in Urdu with simultaneous translation in English) The government was looking for an excuse to eliminate seminaries and once it had made a case, it assaulted Lal Masjid. I appeal to government to be patient otherwise number of people could die. (Unidentified student, in Urdu with simultaneous translation in English) Our training does not allow us to disobey the government and I always pray for peace and for success. (Unidentified student, in Urdu with simultaneous translation in English) The government should not do it this way. They should adopt a sensible method and settle this through negotiations and consensus. (Correspondent) The seminaries of Jamia Binoria are demanding that the government should immediately stop its assault on Lal Masjid because it could further aggravate the situation, while they also asked government to fulfill its promises made with Lal Masjid authorities. This is Farhan Ahmed reporting for Newsday, Geo News. (end recording) Those were the latest developments on the situation unfolding in Islamabad. For the latest developments as they unfold keep on watching Geo News.

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