ISIS vs the Taliban The Battle for Hearts and Minds

ISIS vs the Taliban The Battle for Hearts and Minds

As America and the West continue their fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the Taliban is trying to prevent its rank and file from joining the jihadi group 
Authors: Sami Yousafzai, Sam Seibert 
Posted: 11/05/14 

The letter sounds like run-of-the-mill trash talk—until you consider who allegedly wrote it: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the most notorious jihadi alive.

This past summer, shortly after declaring himself “caliph” of the self-styled Islamic State (ISIS), Baghdadi sent a message to his former overlord, Al Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri. Nearly six months had passed since Zawahiri booted Baghdadi and his foot soldiers out of the terror network for their brutality and refusal to follow orders. Now the ISIS leader was on the rise and getting his revenge.

According to multiple sources—including a senior Taliban intelligence officer and an Afghan Islamist with ties to ISIS—Baghdadi urged the Al Qaeda leader to renounce his longstanding allegiance to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the founder and spiritual leader of the Afghan Taliban. In the letter, Baghdadi allegedly called the Taliban’s “commander of the faithful” an ignorant, illiterate warlord, unworthy of spiritual or political respect. He then advised Zawahiri to swear allegiance to him in return for a subordinate position in his makeshift state.

Zawahiri never replied, the same sources say. Instead he assured his Taliban allies that he remains committed to Mullah Omar. But he wasn’t the first—and certainly not the last—ally of the Afghan insurgency targeted by ISIS as a possible convert.

As America and the West continue their fight against Baghdadi and his army in Syria and Iraq, the Afghan insurgents are battling for hearts and minds within their own ranks. The Taliban’s ruling council, the Quetta Shura, recently declared a zero-tolerance policy for anyone under their purview who recruits for or enlists in ISIS. “I don’t think we should kill them or imprison them,” says a senior Taliban member who served as a cabinet minister when the Afghan group held power. But the former minister admits that he “can’t speak for our men who carry the guns.”

ISIS doesn’t appear to be taking the threat seriously. Promotional pamphlets for the jihadi group began appearing this summer in Peshawar and the Afghan refugee settlements along the border. Printed in Afghanistan’s two main languages, Dari and Pashto, the 12-page booklets call upon all Muslims to support ISIS, and promise that Afghanistan, Pakistan and even Iran will be brought into the group’s governance, as parts of a vast caliphate stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent and possibly beyond.

Even now, two Afghan converts to the ISIS cause are known to be canvassing the area for new recruits. And numerous Taliban sources say roughly 250 Afghans and Pakistanis have signed up with Baghdadi’s forces in Iraq and Syria. “At least two or three of my friends have gone to Syria with the Arab mujahideen,” says a commander in the Haqqani network, a close but independently run partner of the Taliban. Personally, he’s not ready to join them. As the U.S. troop pullout continues, the Taliban and its partners are conducting a major offensive to retake as much land as possible before winter. But things could change. “At the moment, my priority is Afghanistan,” the commander says.

At first glance, ISIS and the Taliban might look like natural allies. After all, both share a hatred of America. “I think ISIS’ men are good mujahideen,” says the Haqqani commander. “They’re fighting against the U.S. and its puppet regimes in the Arab world.”

But Baghdadi seems to be spoiling for a fight. The Taliban are particularly galled by his alleged insults to Mullah Omar and the way the ISIS leader is trying to usurp the title “commander of the faithful.” They bestowed that honor on Mullah Omar back in 1996, when he led them to victory over the rapacious warlords who then held power in Kabul. “As long as Mullah Omar is alive and does not relinquish his position, no one can remove him as commander of the faithful,” the former cabinet minister says.

Never mind the fact that no one has seen Mullah Omar publicly since late 2001, when U.S. warplanes drove him out of the country. “We have our Mullah Omar and don’t need anyone else,” says the Haqqani commander. Still, he confesses, “I deeply wish he’d come out of the shadows, as Sheikh Baghdadi is doing. It would relieve the doubts of some Taliban who are wavering in their commitment.”

Those doubts have created fertile ground for Baghdadi’s pair of Afghan recruiters. One of them, an Islamist preacher and website proprietor from Kunar province named Abdul Qahir Abu Yazid al-Khorasani, is known for his online sermons in praise of jihad and martyrdom. The other is his longtime friend Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost, a writer and Islamic scholar from Jalalabad who spent four years locked up at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay. Neither could be reached for comment because they’re in hiding, but several videos posted on YouTube seem to confirm their loyalties. The former cabinet minister says, despite their hardcore Islamist views, neither of the two ever joined the Taliban. Afghan sources who know them say they couldn’t tolerate the group’s close ties to Pakistani intelligence.

But the rise of ISIS has opened a new path to jihad, outside Pakistan’s control. The two Afghans contacted Baghdadi this summer to offer their allegiance, and the ISIS leader soon appointed them as his personal representatives in the region, according to a close friend of Muslim Dost. Baghdadi had to expect that American intelligence would attempt to infiltrate his group using recruits from Afghanistan and Pakistan. So Muslim Dost and Abdul Qahir were apparently tasked with making sure that no spies penetrated ISIS.
If the Taliban catches them, they could pay with their lives. In fact, the real question may be whether the two would be shot or hanged. “That wouldn’t be the official line,” says the former cabinet minister, “but some of the Taliban are very emotional regarding Mullah Omar.”

The risk, however, may be worth the reward for the ISIS recruiters. Even the most radical of the established Islamist groups in the region are starting to lose members to Baghdadi’s group. Abu Huda al-Sudani, a senior Al Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, announced his defection to ISIS back in March, and as many as half his men followed his example, according to one Taliban source. The militants collectively known as the Pakistani Taliban—the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan—are suffering similar attrition. Although the group’s leader, Mullah Fazlullah, recently affirmed his group’s loyalty to Mullah Omar, six prominent Pakistani Taliban members transferred their allegiance to Baghdadi in October. They probably won’t be the last.

ISIS’ popularity also seems to be growing among Afghan refugees. Taj Khan sells books, newspapers and Islamist videos from a tiny shop in the slums of Peshawar. He asked to use a pseudonym out of fear for his safety. But he likes what he’s hearing from Baghdadi’s group. “If they’re going to enforce Sharia, we should not oppose them,” Khan says. “I’m fed up with Mullah Omar. He doesn’t even dare to show his face. How can someone like that be commander of the faithful?”

The Taliban’s leaders are in a terrible bind. In some ways, they’re caught in the same trap as their longtime adversaries. “The more America and the West oppose ISIS, the more status the group gains in the Islamic world,” the former cabinet minister says. And yet: “They must be stopped,” he adds. “If we can’t do it by preaching, we may have to use force.”

Source: http://defence.pk/threads/isis-vs-the-taliban-the-battle-for-hearts-and-minds.342585/#ixzz3IEUXGG00

Why Kashmiris adore those who betrayed Kashmir, Dr Shabir Choudhry

Why Kashmiris adore those who betrayed Kashmir, speech of Dr Shabir Choudhry in a public meeting arranged by UKPNP to observe Black Day in Leeds, England, 22 Oct 14.

Mr Chairman, friends and colleagues aslamo alaikam and good evening.

I know I will upset some people with my speech, not because I want to, but because they are not yet ready to face facts. They still want to live in a fantasy world. They are still influenced by the propaganda of those who forcibly occupy us; and who have distorted our history to suit their interests.

I know people like to criticise India and the last Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir and by doing so they think they are loyal sons of the soil; and at times, they get rewards for that as well.  At times, they criticise Pakistan too, and think they have now ‘balanced’ it.

That should not be our approach, as we don’t have to balance anything. We must tell facts and expose the culprits whether they are Pakistanis, Indians or Kashmiris. Why we remain quiet when it comes to criticising the treacherous role of some Kashmiri leaders and army men?

Indeed, we are a strange ‘nation’, if that is the correct term. We adore those who attacked our motherland. We cherish those as ‘heroes’, who conspired with our neighbours and helped them to attack the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Is it not true that Jammu and Kashmir State emerged as an independent country after the lapse of the British Paramountcy on 15 August 1947; and Pakistan acknowledged that by entering in to a legally binding agreement called Standstill Agreement? Is it also not true that some Kashmiri leaders requested the tribesmen and the Pakistan authorities to attack Jammu and Kashmir?

Those politicians who helped the tribesmen and Pakistan in attacking Jammu and Kashmir should have been regarded as ‘traitors’, because they betrayed Jammu and Kashmir. Those Muslim soldiers, who took oath of loyalty to the Maharaja Hari Singh to protect borders of Jammu and Kashmir, betrayed their oath and changed sides to help the attackers. Is that not a treachery? They were wearing uniforms of the Maharaja’s army, they received salary from the government; and when it came to protecting the borders of the State they sided with the enemy of the State.

What we have done in so called Azad Kashmir is to admire these people who betrayed Jammu and Kashmir, and sided with enemy of the State as leaders and heroes. Criticising India and Pakistan is OK, continue to do it, but is it not our responsibility to criticise and expose those who helped to divide the State of Jammu and Kashmir?

We can find among ourselves, people who helped the attackers, who joined them to kill and loot non Muslim Kashmiris. In eyes of any civilised person and loyal sons of soil, these people committed a criminal crime, and we have not held them accountable for what they did, instead we admired them and gave them respect they did not deserve.

Base camp

It is tragedy that many of us still regard so called Azad Kashmir as a ‘base camp’ to liberate the remaining parts of Jammu and Kashmir. We need to be careful with terms we use. If we accept that areas of Jammu and Kashmir conquered by the tribesmen are independent and are a ‘base camp’, then we are also accepting and legitimising everything they did during this brutal and unprovoked attack which resulted in death and destruction, raping and kidnapping of our women, looting and arson.

The point you got to understand is that the government of Pakistan had a legally binding agreement with the government of Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani officials violated that agreement by stopping food and other essential supplies. Later on they attacked the State. Tribesmen were given free hand to loot, rape and plunder, as rulers of Pakistan were only interested in the land of Jammu and Kashmir. They almost succeeded in their plan, but the tribesmen were too busy looting, kidnapping and raping women in Baramula, and they wasted valuable few days there.

Forces of Maharaja of Patiala

Instead of condemning and exposing designs of the tribesmen and the Pakistani officials, who destroyed our Jammu and Kashmir, some writers and officials of Azad Kashmir fabricate stories and try to justify this attack by saying that:

•           The tribesmen came to ‘liberate’ Kashmiris;

•           They came to help us because the Kashmiri Muslims were killed in Jammu; The latest ‘obsession’ in this campaign of justifying the tribal attack is a false propaganda that forces of Maharaja of Patiala were in Jammu;

•           Later on they claimed Patiala troops were in Srinagar and protecting the airport.

Short replies to the above false notions:

If they wanted to help the Muslims of Jammu then they should have sent the army and the tribesmen from Sialkot which is only a short distance from Jammu, instead they chose a route which was more than 120 miles and which had overwhelming Muslim majority. Those who master minded this brutal attack, were only interested in capturing the Kashmir Valley, especially Srinagar, so they attacked the areas where there were no riots and Muslims were not under any threat, but that was the shortest route to the their dreamland – Valley of Kashmir.

Issue of troops of Maharaja of Patiala is a recent ‘fabrication’ - only highlighted in 1990s by some scholars who were close to Islamabad; and many believe that these people were hired to promote the cause of Pakistan on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir. Claim is that Pakistan and the tribesmen went towards Srinagar because troops of Patiala were there.

These genius people forget that the Ruler of Patiala acceded to India before the partition of India; and after legally joining India, there was no such thing as Patiala troops. In any case, let us assume for a minute that some so called Patiala troops were there, does that give a licence to Pakistani government to violate the Standstill Agreement, economically strangulate Jammu and Kashmir and send tribesmen and Pakistani troops to invade, kill, loot, rape and kidnap women?

Let us see what the Indian army officer who visited Srinagar to ascertain the military situation in Kashmir had to say on this topic. As a result of the tribal attack, when the beleaguered Maharaja Hari Singh requested help from India, VP Menon was sent to Srinagar to persuade him to accede to India and move to Jammu. Sam Manekshaw, the first field marshal in the Indian army, was a Colonel in the Indian army at that time. He also accompanied VP Menon to Kashmir to analyse the military situation and how India could help.

On the issue of accession whether it was signed in Srinagar or Jammu, he said,

‘I was at the cabinet (Defence) meeting presided over by Mountbatten when it was handed over....we'd got the Accession. I can't understand why anyone said that the thing was signed in Jammu, because we never went to Jammu’. 1

Sam Manekshaw was asked if there were troops of Maharaja Patiala in Srinagar before the Indian troops were sent; or did he see any other troops. His reply was:

‘If that had happened, I would have known. No. There were no soldiers of either the Indian or Patiala forces which had gone in earlier’. 2

He further explained that he was in the (Cabinet) defence committee meeting, and ‘remember getting out of that meeting and making arrangements’ for sending the Sikh Battalion, that was sent with Ranjit Rai. That was sent on the 26th’. 3

This account of events is explained by many prominent writers, researchers and scholars, but for some reason few Kashmiri writers like to go along with conspiracy theories propagated by those who occupy us to ensure that we remain confused and divided.

Mr Chairman

Before we can formulate a genuine strategy for unification and independence of our forcibly divided homeland, and layout foundations for a democratic and plural society where all citizens feel safe, we need to be honest with ourselves. We have to be pro peace and pro people. We must ensure that we defend and promote interests of Jammu and Kashmir and must not defend interests of India or Pakistan.

We have to accept that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is occupied; and occupiers have their vested interests in either maintaining the status quo or acquiring the entire Jammu and Kashmir, and this narrative clearly contradicts with our interests and our aspirations. Also we must acknowledge that those who have occupied us have deliberately and consistently distorted our history; and we have to correct historical facts and expose their designs.

True sons of the soil do not need to justify or provide excuses for contraventions of the pledges made to us, and invasion of Jammu and Kashmir. It is not our duty to provide excuses why Pakistan attacked Jammu and Kashmir. The fact is they violated the Standstill Agreement. They attacked Jammu and Kashmir which resulted in death and destruction, and forced division of Jammu and Kashmir.

Our struggle should be to regain our lost sovereignty, a sovereignty we enjoyed after end of the British Raj, and before the tribal attack and before the provisional accession. At least, I am not interested in any kind of accession to India or Pakistan; or justifying what they do in Jammu and Kashmir.

1/ ‘Kashmir 1947, Rival Versions of History’, by Prem Shankar Jha, Oxford University Press, 1996    http://m.rediff.com/freedom/0710jha2.htm

2/ibid.

3/ibid

Writer is a political analyst, TV anchor and author of many books and booklets. Also he is Director Institute of Kashmir Affairs. Email:drshabirchoudhry@gmail.com

India Pakistan spar over Kashmir at UNGA

India Pakistan spar over Kashmir at UNGA

New York: Sparring over Kashmir at the UN General Assembly, India and Pakistan have again exchanged verbal volleys over the issue with the Indian delegate dubbing the remarks of his Pakistani counterpart as "unsolicited comments" that were "factually incorrect".

According to a summary on the UN website of a meeting in the General Assembly's Third Committee that deals with social, humanitarian and cultural issues, Pakistani delegate Diyar Khan raised the issue of Kashmir by saying that he regretted that the people of Jammu and Kashmir had been "deprived of their right to self-determination."

Participating in the session on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and right to self-determination here yesterday, Khan said the right to self-determination must be exercised in an environment free from coercion or duress, as electoral processes held in situations of foreign occupation or alien domination did not reflect people's true wishes.

He said self-determination did not lapse with the passage of time and neither could it be "set aside" by charges of terrorism.

Indian delegate Mayank Joshi stressed that Pakistan's "unsolicited comments" pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir were "factually incorrect", according to the meeting's summary. He said free, fair and open elections were regularly held in that territory at all levels.

Joshi said India was a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society, fully committed to the goal of eliminating all forms of discrimination.

Exercising the Right of Reply, the Pakistani representative said that the Indian delegation had "alleged" that Jammu and Kashmir was part of India.

He refuted this assertion made by India saying that the UN Security Council had adopted several resolutions declaring Jammu and Kashmir as a "disputed territory".

Khan claimed that the elections in Jammu and Kashmir had been rejected by the United Nations and the Kashmiri people.

Resolutions had clarified that no electoral exercise conducted by the Indian authorities could be a substitute for a free plebiscite held by the United Nations, he said.

Speaking in the exercise of the right of reply, the Indian representative said the elections in Jammu and Kashmir had been held under the scrutiny of international media which had not faulted those elections.

Taking the floor for a second time, the representative of Pakistan said the elections held under foreign occupation could not be a substitute to impartial elections.

Joshi noted that the references of Pakistani delegation were out of context. 

PTI 

http://zeenews.india.com/news/india/india-pakistan-spar-over-kashmir-at-unga_1493749.html

Pakistan using militant groups to counter Indian forces, says Pentagon

Pakistan using militant groups to counter Indian forces, says Pentagon

4/11/14    Washington: 

In a blunt assessment of terrorist safe havens in Pakistan, the Pentagon has told the US Congress that the country is using militant groups as proxies to counter the superior Indian military.

"Afghan and Indian focused militants continue to operate from Pakistan territory to the detriment of Afghan and regional stability. Pakistan uses these proxy forces to hedge against the loss of influence in Afghanistan and to counter India's superior military," the Pentagon told the Congress in its latest six-monthly report on the current situation in Afghanistan.

"These relationships run counter to Pakistan's public commitment to support Afghan-led reconciliation. Such groups continue to act as the primary irritant in Afghan-Pakistan bilateral relations," the Pentagon said in the report running into more than 100 pages.

Referring to the attack on the Indian Consulate in Herat, the Pentagon said this was done just ahead of the swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister of India. "In May of this reporting period, the Indian consulate in Herat Province was attacked by a group of four heavily armed militants. The attack came three days prior to the swearing-in of the new Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Prime Minister Modi is perceived as being close to Hindu nationalist groups, a fact that may have played into the timing of the attack," it said.

"In June, the US Department of State announced that the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba was responsible for the attack. Following the attack, former Afghan President Karzai denounced the attack and made strong statements supporting relations with India," the report said.

The Pentagon informed the Congress that India continues to support Afghanistan, believing a secure and stable Afghanistan will benefit the region and facilitate economic corridors into Central Asia.

"India and Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership declaration in 2011, which formalised cooperation on governance, economics, commerce, education, public administration, and security and law enforcement," it said.

Subsequent engagements are reinforcing the positive relationship between Afghanistan and India, the report said. "India supports a variety of high-visibility projects and initiatives in Afghanistan. These ventures are focused primarily on major infrastructure projects, including electricity generation and transmission, road construction, and mining," it said.

"India has shown increased interest in Afghan security assistance, though activities in this area remain limited. India currently offers India based training to ANSF personnel across a number of specialties and the Indian government committed to expand this programme. India does not provide direct military support or training in Afghanistan," the Pentagon said.

http://m.firstpost.com/world/pakistan-using-militant-groups-to-counter-indian-military-says-pentagon-1786789.html

India Pakistan Relations - A Destructive Equilibrium By Jordan Olmstead

India Pakistan Relations - A Destructive Equilibrium
By Jordan Olmstead    November 02, 2014
Is there a way to avert the constant derailing of bilateral relations?
The seven-decade rivalry between India and Pakistan is often portrayed as intractable – with good reason. The countries were birthed out of a bloody partition that encouraged each to define itself in opposition to the other, and they have fought four wars since.

Even during peacetime, tensions are high. This year, though, encouraging overtures by newly elected prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi led some observers to cautiously hope that the two countries would step up cooperation on trade, energy, humanitarian, and environmental issues.

Unfortunately, other actors, most notably the Pakistani defense establishment and its terrorist proxies, are derailing the process. There are two reasons. First, they see further cooperation and integration between India and Pakistan as putting off negotiations to settle the Kashmir issue. Second, from a broader perspective, closer relations between India and Pakistan would undermine the perception, held by a substantial portion of the Pakistani public, that India poses an existential threat to Pakistan. Both the military and terrorists would lose their raison d’être if this were to occur.

Thus, a destructive equilibrium has emerged, in which both cooperative overtures and displays of deterrence by the Indian government have the potential to lead to a further deterioration of Indian and Pakistani relations. However, a new and more cooperative equilibrium could be achieved if India and reconciliatory elements within Pakistan’s government were able to establish patterns of cooperation on non-securitized issues, and prevent those issues from becoming securitized.

How did India and Pakistan arrive at this equilibrium? The answer starts, of course, in Kashmir, which has always been the primary point of contention between the two countries. Unfortunately, the Kashmir question is unlikely to be answered soon. While territorial disputes between states are usually bitter and persistent – states usually perceive competition over territory as a winner take all, zero sum proposition – Kashmir presents a particularly difficult case.

For India, its claim to Kashmir rests on three main arguments. First, during Partition the ruler of Kashmir “choose” India over Pakistan (albeit in distress), giving India a legal claim to the territory. Second, retaining control over Kashmir is essential to India’s identity as a secular democracy, which can accommodate different ethnic and religious groups across a wide geographic area. And third, if India lost control of Kashmir, it would encourage separatist movements across the country.

Pakistan counters that India’s claim is illegitimate because, as a Muslim country established for Muslims, Pakistan should control a region like Kashmir that is predominantly Muslim and that culturally shares more with what is now Pakistan than it does with India. Moreover, Pakistan refutes India’s claim to Kashmir on the grounds that India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru promised Kashmir a UN administered plebiscite in 1956. This promise was not kept, denying Kashmir the right to self-determination.

Unfortunately for Pakistan, Kashmir isn’t going anywhere. India has 500,000 soldiers in the region, and withstood a brutal insurgency in the 80s and 90s to retain control. Pakistan also lacks the military prowess to coerce India into ceding Kashmir, as evidenced by the wars Pakistan (largely) fought and lost in a bid to coerce India into making any substantive concessions on the issue.

Unfortunately for everyone else, Pakistan is unwilling to accept this reality. One of the few issues that a majority of Pakistanis rally around is Kashmiri independence. Adopting an unyielding stance on Kashmir helps tap into this popular support. However, the real problem stems from the Pakistani defense and intelligence establishment, and their terrorist proxies, exemplified by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

In her recent book Fighting to the End (The Pakistan Army’s Way of War), C. Christine Fair of Georgetown argues that “The ‘strategic culture’ of the Pakistan army is essentially unremitting hostility against India. The Pakistan Army believes that it is locked into a permanent, existential, civilizational battle against India.”

The Pakistani defense establishment is split between those who believe India merely seeks to undermine Pakistan and its security at every turn, and those who believe India has nefarious designs to “reunify” the subcontinent. The conflict in Kashmir serves as a salient symbol of this civilizational struggle; Pakistan’s loss of Kashmir to India plays a crucial role in the narrative that casts India as a threatening, unjust, and unreliable “other.”

More importantly, since Kashmir is such a potent symbol of India’s menace, it enables the Pakistani army to justify the massive amounts of resources devoted to it, and the outsized role played by the defense establishment in Pakistani society. Terrorist organizations like the LeT, which was established (and generously patronized by the Pakistani establishment) to wage covert war against India in Kashmir, are even more dependent on the conflict in Kashmir to justify their existence. Thus, even though Pakistan will never possess Kashmir, the Pakistani defense establishment and Pakistani terrorist groups have strong psychological and material incentives to continue the conflict there.

With the elections of Modi and Sharif, it seemed that Indo-Pakistan relations might turn a corner. Sharif, who expressed his “earnest hope” in a “brighter future” between India and Pakistan made normalizing relations with India a “central plank” of his platform, and attended Modi’s inauguration. When India cancelled talks between the foreign secretaries in retaliation for Pakistani meetings with Kashmiri separatist organizations Sharif sent a box of the “choicest Pakistani mangoes” to Modi in a bid to patch things up.

Unfortunately, “mango diplomacy” could not block the Pakistani defense establishment, which had been empowered after protests forced Sharif to beg for the army’s help, which he got in return for handing it control over the country’s defense and foreign policy portfolios.

The flashpoint, of course, was Kashmir. Many analysts, including Farahnaz Ispahani, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a former member of Pakistan’s parliament, argue that “[Sharif’s] moves towards better ties between India and Pakistan” angered the military and “may have resulted in the renewed clashes on the Line of Control.”

For its part, India is pursuing a “tit-for-tat” strategy, in which it is willing to cooperate if Pakistan shows the willingness, but will respond to aggression with aggression. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s defense establishment has no interest in cooperation.

The military will also use political means to stymie cooperative arrangements. For instance, while Sharif promised to extend Most Favored Nation trading status to India without preconditions, the agreement remains un-ratified; the Pakistani government now holds that India must restart a comprehensive “composite dialogue,” which includes the issue of Kashmir, before Pakistan will consider ratifying the agreement.

While populist protectionist impulses and distrust of India are partially explain this backtracking, a “substantial part of the business community, in particular small and medium sized enterprises fear being overwhelmed by cheap Indian goods.” Notably, many former Pakistani soldiers and officers own or are employed by these enterprises. Thus, the military has an incentive “protect their own” by pressuring the civilian government against ratification.

External factors also militate against movement towards a cooperative equilibrium. The NATO drawdown in Afghanistan is creating a space for increased competition between India and Pakistan, which both view Afghanistan as strategically important. Analysts also fear that the drawdown in Afghanistan will result in an influx of militants into Kashmir, something the Pakistani defense establishment may encourage, to prevent them from coming to Pakistan instead.

The recent incursion by the Pakistani military into North Waziristan pushed a variety of terrorist organizations, including the Punjabi Taliban, into Afghanistan, undoubtedly worrying India, as these organizations will work with the Afghan Taliban in their insurgency against the Indian-supported government.

Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent and the Islamic State also threaten to exacerbate conflict. Both groups are recruiting in Kashmir, and AQIS has threatened to launch attacks in India. Undoubtedly, increased militant activity in Kashmir, or Islamist terrorist attacks in India would deteriorate the relationship between India and Pakistan.

Glimmers of Hope

Still, there are glimmers of hope. Pakistan and India have managed to cooperate on “non-securitized,” non-zero sum issues like disaster response and energy, and the countries have made good faith efforts to deepen trade ties. India pledged relief to Pakistan after the latter’s devastating 2010 earthquake, and Pakistan reciprocated after recent floods in Indian administered Kashmir. The two countries have also discussed a proposal to share information about the level of rivers that run between the two countries to form an early warning flood system.

India and Pakistan also inked a gas sharing agreement, which encourages efforts to bind South and Central Asia together through the proposed TAPI pipeline, which would run through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. The pipeline could help alleviate Pakistan’s chronic gas shortages, which cost the country 6 percent of its GDP a year.

These areas present opportunities for small clusters of Pakistani and Indian officials, businessmen, and think-tankers to cooperate on low-profile issues, and discuss the benefits of, and terms for, deeper cooperation on more substantive issues. Small wins in Track II diplomacy settings could spill over and push India and Pakistan towards a more cooperative equilibrium. A landmark study by David Axelrod of the University of Michigan found that the introduction of small clusters of individuals committed to establishing cooperative equilibrium, with a sufficiently high expectation of cooperating again in the future, can push large groups from non-cooperative equilibriums to more cooperative ones. Why? Over time, small cooperative clusters create broader institutional change, because those who employ them are ultimately more successful than those who employ uncooperative strategies.

While a full explanation of this phenomenon requires a background in game theory and a bit of math, an oversimplified “toy model” for this context would predict that cooperation between Indians and Pakistanis on non-securitized issues would heighten expectations that the two countries would cooperate on more issues, and more frequently in the future. This would give players more of an incentive to choose cooperative strategies when interacting with their counterparts. The higher the likelihood of future cooperation, the higher the incentive to pursue cooperative strategies in the present, since pursuing an uncooperative strategy in the present would place you at a disadvantage in future interactions.

However, the parties involved must prevent nascent clusters of cooperation from becoming “securitized.” Issues of national security are traditionally viewed as “zero-sum”: One party gains from the other party’s losses. Thus, if diplomats or technocrats allow the Indian or Pakistani defense establishments to securitize issues like water sharing or energy cooperation, compromises will become that much harder to reach, as any concession will be painted as possibly undermining national security. Thus, discussions over these issues should be kept quiet (and preferably held in Track II settings like think tank symposiums) and achievements should be publicized little, if at all.

The United States could help create an environment that is more conducive to cooperation by maintaining the largest possible military presence in Afghanistan that its agreement with Kabul allows until 2016, dissuading Pakistan and India from exacerbating their competition there (at least in the short run).

While this may not end the enduring rivalry between India and Pakistan, it’s imperative for the prosperity and stability of the region that opportunities for cooperation be pursued further. The most pressing issue is climate change, a transnational threat that requires transnational responses. For instance, Pakistan’s water supply is expected to shrink by 30 percent over the next 20 years, while its population is projected to nearly double by 2050. 

This could severely strain the vital Indus Water Treaty, which governs water sharing between the two countries. India also stands to gain through greater cooperation: Climate change threatens to wipe out 8.7 percent of India’s GDP through an increase in floods and droughts unless adaptation and mitigation measures are taken. India could become more resilient to floods by sharing river level information with Pakistan to form an early warning system, and by discussing best practices for making land and communities more resilient to climate change. The two countries could also jointly lobby major powers to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions further.

While traditional overtures between India and Pakistan may not help the relationship, discreet and adept diplomacy between NGOs and technocrats on non-securitized issues like energy, humanitarian operations, climate change, and trade could establish patterns of cooperation that steer Pakistan and India towards a less antagonistic, more cooperative, strategic equilibrium.

Jordan Olmstead is a freelance writer and researcher for the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle Eastern Politics. His research focuses on institution building by armed, sub-national groups in South Asia and the Middle East.

Source: http://defence.pk/threads/india-pakistan-relations-a-destructive-equilibrium.342076/#ixzz3Hw2VEUnl

Leading in gender inequality, Dr Farzana Bari

Leading in gender inequality, Dr Farzana Bari

Pakistan is ranked at the 141th position in the Global Gender Gap Report (GGGR), 2014, the second lowest spot on a list of 142 countries. The report, produced by the World Economic Forum, assesses the magnitude of gender disparities in the four areas of health, education, economy and politics. Researchers and academicians may have reservations over the methodology used in conducting such an assessment, thinking of them as flawed. Nevertheless, the bottom position held by Pakistan in the world community certainly resonates with the ground realities of women in the country. 

The status of women in any society is linked to the overall socio-cultural, economic and political development of the country. Pakistan is faced with multiple social, economic and political crises. Crushing poverty, high unemployment, extremism, religious bigotry, sectarian conflicts and the breakdown of rule of law affect every citizen. However, the majority of women, especially those belonging to the working class and peasantry, are hit harder and suffer the most from societal conflicts and the erosion of the state because of their class and gender. The stark gender disparities in all spheres of life in Pakistan are the result of gender role ideology and the low investment in women’s human capital by the family and the state.

Women are the poorest of the poor. They lack access to the fundamental rights of education, health, employment, protection from violence and human dignity. Only 18 percent of women have reached secondary and higher education (UN Human Development Report, 2013). According to the World Development Report of the World Bank, 28 percent of women hold jobs in the formal sector of the economy. Some 70 percent of the labour force working in the informal economy, which is three times bigger than the formal economy, consists of women. The health status of women is extremely poor with the highest maternal mortality rate in the world.

As many as 250 women die every 100,000 live births. Every ninth woman in the country is at risk of getting breast cancer. Women’s voices are missing in policy making as they are hardly present in a decision-making position within community structures and also in public institutions. Out of 21 percent women in parliament, 17 percent have come indirectly on the reserved seats and not a single woman has the status of full minister in the cabinet.

Pakistan is considered one of the most dangerous places for women to live. The prevalence rate and the gruesome nature of crimes committed against women is nerve wracking. Women are frequently killed in the name of honour, sold and exchanged as commodities in marriages and to settle disputes amongst men. They can be killed for giving birth to female children, even for singing and dancing. Incidents of rape, gang rape, kidnapping, trafficking, acid throwing, sexual harassment, cutting off hair and chopping off facial features to punish and humiliate them are frequently reported in the print and national media.

There are two key reasons behind why the country is a most dangerous place for women: a) the existence of a legal basis to commit violence against women in legislation such as the Hadood Ordinace, Qisas and Diyat law, law of evidence and honour killing law that makes honour killing a compoundable offence, and (b) the culture of impunity in cases of violence against women. The conviction rate in gender-based crimes is negligible. Justice is even denied in the most high profile cases of violence such as in the case of Mukhtaran Mai and the Kohistan video. This clearly signals the state’s unwillingness to protect women from the oppression of private patriarchy. 

The lack of the state’s willingness to redress gender disparities is discernible from the discriminatory legislation that continues to be on the statute book. Pakistan is signatory to several human rights conventions and covenants including the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) that obligates state parties to bring domestic law into line with international human rights standards. Pakistan’s legal framework continues to treat women as second-class citizens.

Apart from the depressing ranking of Pakistan in the GGG report, the most striking feature in this report, for me, was to spot Rwanda at the seventh position on this list. It is a country riddled with ethnic conflict, a genocide and civil war in which an estimated 800,000 people belonging to the Tutsi and Hutu tribes were killed in 1994.  The social and economic fabric of this society was in complete shambles. And yet the country climbed to the seventh position in the GGG index in just one decade. It has 56 percent women in parliament, the highest in the world. 

There is a lot to be learnt from the experience of Rwanda. The most important underlying factor in making Rwanda a land of gender equality is the state’s commitment to gender equality and the recognition of women as key players in nation and state building. In addition to granting women legal equality, institutional targeting of women and gender accountability of state institutions helped Rwanda bridge the gender gap in such a short period of time. 

If we wish to be counted as a civilised nation, we need to treat our women as equals. The will of the state to remove disparities is the most critical. However, it should be clear that no state can achieve the goal of gender equality without removing the material and structural basis of gender disparities. In a class context, demanding gender equality means equality in sharing miseries, poverty, unemployment and the disadvantages of men. Thus, issues of gender equality must be linked with social justice in society. The fight for gender justice must be linked to social movements fighting for class justice. 

The writer is a human rights activist and director of Gender Studies, QAU. She can be reached at drfarzanabari@gmail.com and on twitter at@ @drfarzanabari

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/31-Oct-2014/leading-in-gender-inequality

'Pakistan's traitor is our hero', Senge Hasnan Sering

'Pakistan's traitor is our hero', Senge Hasnan Sering

'The people of Gilgit-Baltistan should know what November 1 stands for. Those who fought against the Dogras and liberated the land did not want to join Pakistan. It was Major Brown, the representative of the Imperialist colonial occupier, who wanted Pakistan to annex Gilgit Baltistan.
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So, if you claim to oppose imperialism and colonialism, then do not support something that Major Brown started, i.e. merger of Gilgit-Baltistan with Pakistan...
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If you love Colonel Hassan and others who got Gilgit her freedom, then stand against merger of Gilgit-Baltistan with Pakistan and help achieve a free Republic for its people.....
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Always remember.....
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Pakistan awarded Sitara-e-Pakistan to Major Brown...
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Pakistan jailed Colonel Hassan and tortured him for many years...
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Pakistan's actions speak for who they consider a hero and who they consider a traitor. Pakistan's traitor is our hero....Never forget...
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If you are one of those who follow the myth-industry of Pakistan, then read what Colonel Hassan said to Major Brown after November 1 (quoted from Major Brown's book, 'The Gilgit Rebellion'.
"We know of course that you are loyal to Pakistan - all British are - but it is not our intention to join Pakistan. We intend to set up an independent Islamic State called the United States of Gilgit and although we shall keep friendly relations with Pakistan; we shall in no way owe allegiance to that dominion”...