March has been started with it’s zeal and zest. I can feel the change in weather. I can feel the spring season has erupted. I can feel it in many different ways. Brassica flower I can feel the Spring in the fragrance of Brassica plant paling everything with its color and aroma.  Hays I can [...]

As Reported by The Economic Times

The reported move by the Pakistan government to phase out major restrictions on trade with India by switching to the negative list, and doing away with that too by the end of the year, is wholly welcome. Normalising trade relations with India will help establish a template of wider normalization of mutual ties.

An indication of deep-rooted animosities and suspicions which have stymied that goal can be seen in the opposition from quarters within Pakistan to Islamabad’s declared – and logical – aim of granting India the World Trade Organization-compliant Most Favoured Nation status next year.

But the arrangement to separate commerce from thornier issues like Kashmir and Pakistan’s actions against those accused of terror attacks against India can lay a foundation for minimising mutual distrust. For New Delhi, this would be in keeping with the idea of engaging various power centres in Pakistan, given the fractured power structure in that country.

While being perfectly aware that policy on India, like in other areas deemed to be ‘strategic’ by the military, is mostly determined by the latter, the aim should be to defang and isolate hardline elements by positing the real and tangible benefits enhanced mutual trade can offer Pakistan.

And there certainly is ample scope to do that: direct Indo-Pak trade is less than 1% of their global trade; annual mutual trade was around $2.7 billion through March 2011, which, despite being up 50% from the previous year is still measly compared to, say, India’s $60 billion annual trade with China or the potential.

But a beginning has been made with Pakistani industry backing the new move, which, in turn, can help allay fears that Indian goods will swamp Pakistani markets. What will happen is the ending of trade routed through third countries (mostly Dubai).

Legitimate mutual trade can lead to both countries envisaging cooperation in a wider trading entity comprising Afghanistan and Central Asia, with obvious benefits for regional stability. This might sound utopian for now, but mutually-beneficial commerce does have a way of tempering hostilities.

Filed under: Afghanistan, China, Desi, India, Pakistan, Peace Tagged: Afghanistan, China, Dubai, India, India Pakistan Trade, MFN, Most Favored Nation, Pakistan, World Trade Organization

Difa-e-Pakistan is an Urdu word meaning Defense of Pakistan. Difa-e-Pakistan Council means a council willing to/responsible for defending Pakistan. The semantics dictate that the said council should comprise of representatives of the armed forces, the para-military forces, domestic law enforcement agencies, defense ministry and foreign ministry. In fact, the esteemed council that has come to the fore recently consists of none of the above. In the words of the journalist Ejaz Haider, it’s a “circus”.
Much has been written about this mysterious group over the last few weeks by people much more well-read and experienced than myself, thus I would restrict myself to a basic understanding of this group and the online presence of DPC.

The website of DPC lists 36 parties as part of the council. It includes single-digit member parties like Muslim League Zia, Mohsinan e Pakistan, suspicious-named organizations like Pakistan Water Movement, Tehreek e Ittehad, Christian Community( of where?), Sikh Community,  Hindu Community Lahore and notorious people like a certain General® Hameed Gul, Hafiz Saeed, Malik Ishaq, Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman Khalil, Ahmad Ludhyanwi and last but not the least, representative of Imran Khan, Chaudary Ijaz.
General Hameed Gul, a former spymaster of Pakistan, was responsible for forming IJI(Islami Jamhuri Ittehad-Islamic democratic front) a similar group of religious organizations in 1988 to compete against Pakistan Peoples Party, turned against U.S when the funding for ISI was stopped, was an architect of starting insurgency in Occupied Kashmir, was removed from his position by Benazir Bhutto in 1989. Hafiz Saeed was a teacher of Islamic Studies at University of Engineering and Technology in the 1980s when he and a fellow Professor Zaffar Iqbal formed a new organization which came to be known as Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the pious). It was directly funded by Saudi money and collected donations across Pakistan. It was mainly involved in sending fighters trained by them to Kashmir for targeting Indian Military personnel and cantonments. It was declared a Terrorist Organization by both the United States and United Nations. Most Recently it was involved in the November 2008 Attacks on Mumbai.

Malik Ishaq is the leader and founder of Al Qaeda-linked Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. He remained in jail for 14 years facing a number of cases at the antiterrorism court in Lahore charging him with hundreds of murders. He was released from Jail on July 15 because “evidence against him gradually decayed and disappeared”. Molana Fazl ur Rehman Khaleel is a founder of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen(HuM) and current leader of Ansar-ul-Umma, which is accused of being a front organization of the banned HuM. Khalil was a signatory of Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa called the International Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Regarding the sudden arrival of this bunch, investigative journalist Mujahid Hussain wrote, “In November 2011, the ISI Chief asked the Lashkar e Taiba and Jaish e Mohammad to speed up their campaign against India and to mobilize Islamists across the country on the platform of Difa e Pakistan, so that a clear signal could be sent to the international community. Fellow travelers such as Shaikh Rasheed and Hamid Gull were reactivated. A real estate tycoon in Islamabad and some rich businessmen of Karachi were asked to offer inducements. Also, The Sunni Tehreek is being propped up by the ISI as a fully fledged political party and has been tasked to garner the Barelvi vote.”

Traditionally, the parties that make up this pot-pourri are not known to be very modern or having an Internet presence. The interesting thing is that the council as a whole is more efficient in its online presence than the sum of all its constituents combined. This paradigm shift can be witnessed as DPC has its own website where all the speeches from their rallies are available and latest news related to their concerning issues are updated continuously, they have their own facebook page with 1459 Likes(till now) and a twitter account with 306 followers.
All of this fanfare is despite the fact that they are a “banned” organization(If you believe Interior Minister Rehman Malik).

The Facebook page of Difa e Pakistan Council tells us that
“Difa-e-Pakistan Council is an Umbrella Organization of more than 40 Religious and Political Organizations destined for the Defense of Pakistan and envisions the great nation as the Fortress of Islam.” It also informs us that “DPC Does not endorse the understandings and manifestos of organizations and entities that come under the umbrella of DPC. “Difa-e-Pakistan” is a single point cause to defend Pakistan by all threats it faces internally and externally.”

Upon a little digging, it is visible that the bigwigs of the council are not much involved in the Internet crusade rather it is a new batch of “Jihadis” or Internet warriors that are controlling the accounts of the council online. One particular ally is the hyper-nationalist website “Pakistan ka Khuda Hafiz”(Translation:- May God Protect Pakistan). The people behind PKKH website are Ahmad Qureshi, Shireen Mazari, Gen Hameed Gul and Maria Butt(fashion designer and recent convert to this ideology courtesy a Mr. Zaid Hamid). Ahmad Qureshi, Shireen Mazari and Zaid Hamid share a particular vision about Pakistan. They are fiercely Anti-American, Anti-India, Pro-Khilafat(Caliphate), Pro-Taliban and use the jargon of Islam to lure people towards their own agendas. They do not like democracy or politicians as a whole, and harbor sympathy towards Pakistan Army. They are known to be stooges of Military establishment and have always advocated a military solution to all problems.  Just to keep things in perspective, the following words were posted by “Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid [Official]” page very recently, explaining their philosophy in full,
“If the politicians are for sale and hostile powers are ready to buy them, to hell with this democracy. Let the country be ruled by a Benevolent dictator on the model of Khilafat e Rashida! Till that time, army and ISI must make sure that these treacherous politicians do not sell the country to hostile powers”.
Thus, while the Jalsas(meetings/processions) of  DPC are being filled by banned militant organizations, the Internet front is being held by Neo-Jihadis who are followers of Zaid Hamid, completing an “unholy alliance”. They oppose the MFN-status being awarded to India(without an iota of understanding about the WTO) and have a jingoistic attitude towards the rest of the world.

For the record, this is not the first time that establishment-backed forces have been joined together at a platform. It has happened previously in the 1970 elections, in the aforementioned 1990 elections when IJI was formed and in the wake of 9/11 when a similar-sounding “Afghan Defense Council” was formed which paved the way to formation of MMA(Mutahidda Majlis e Amal) in 2002.

The irony of this “internet war” is that most of the constituent parties have strong views about “Pictures” being Un-Islamic and they have, in the past, opposed Television and Radio, even Loudspeakers. The hypocrisy of it all cannot be ignored when the same people use loudspeakers all the time, to deliver hate-filled sermons, use Television for their own propaganda and now they have resorted to the internet, to attract the younger generation. These people are against the tenet of “Freedom of Speech” but they themselves are abusing their freedom of speech to spew hatred and bigotry. The focus of their efforts is to reach out to the Urban Middle class population of Pakistan which has got no clue about their own identity courtesy a paradox that is our “Religious Nation State”. Textbooks of Pakistan are filled with lies that cause narrowing of young minds from an early age, hatred against other religions is evident and ideologies are thrust upon immature minds resulting in a paranoid mental state. The textbooks re-enforce the image of this country not as envisioned by Jinnah but the one envisioned by General Zia(who can be considered Godfather of all the parties that today constitute DPC).

All hope, though, is not lost regarding the situation in Pakistan. The fact that almost 6 million Pakistanis using Facebook and only about 1400 like the DPC page and only about 1 lac people like the Official Zaid Hamid Page (where he has tried to re-invent himself as Syed) offers hope to the moderate factions of the society.  It is the responsibility of the moderate elements of civil society to coalesce and try to control these elements from going out of control by raising awareness and educating people. People should be educated about their role in a democracy. Efforts such as being done by Centre for Civic Education, PILDAT, Pakistan Youth Alliance, Teach for Pakistan and Youth Parliaments should be highlighted. Media has to play a very important role in this regard as well. They have to give equal representation to progressive forces and avoid excessive coverage of the trouble-makers. Government of Pakistan should also play its role by introducing necessary changes in the curricula (as has been proposed by SDPI) and taking effective measures against the “banned” organizations. This is a long war and it is not going to be easy.

For all of the discouraging news coming out of South Asia – Afghanistan’s escalating turmoil, the breakdown in U.S.-Pakistani relations, and growing political instability in Islamabad – there is one heartening development: India and Pakistan have restarted their peace dialogue following a three-year hiatus caused by the 2008 terrorist strikes in Mumbai. As a leading Pakistani daily puts it, “there is a discernible defrosting of relations with our neighbor to the east.”

The annals of India-Pakistan relations are filled with numerous false dawns and the current moves could well founder upon the sharp historical animosities that regularly bedevil bilateral affairs. But things may be different this time. Reports out of Islamabad indicate that the Pakistani government realizes the country is in desperate economic straits and that closer ties with its ever-richer sibling constitute a much needed lifeline. The military establishment is also said to understand that the eastern border needs to be stabilized so resources can be focused on combating rising internal security threats.

In a potentially significant development, Islamabad is reportedly even willing to put the perennially-inflamed dispute over the Kashmir region on the back burner. If these media accounts prove accurate – and if the beleaguered civilian government in Islamabad is able to sustain this stance in the face of vigorous domestic opposition – the event would represent an important breakthrough in the India-Pakistan rivalry. It would pick up where the intensive back-channel peace process both sides undertook in 2004-07 left off. Although those negotiations ultimately collapsed due to Pervez Musharraf’s political travails, they may have come tantalizing close to defusing the volatile Kashmir issue.

Things are already rolling along on the economic engagement front. Last summer, Pakistan’s Bollywood-esque foreign minister, the 34-year-old Hina Rabbani Khar, held unexpectedly warm talks in New Delhi, where she emphasized that a “mind-set change” was occurring among younger Indians and Pakistanis. This was quickly followed by a trip to New Delhi by Pakistan’s commerce minister, who brought with him a notably large business delegation.

The trip was especially productive. The two countries pledged to more than double their two-way trade flows – to the $6 billion annual level – by 2015. They agreed to ease visa rules for business travel and to open a new customs post at the Attari-Wagah border crossing that lies midway between Lahore and Amritsar. Islamabad also committed to extending “most favored nation” trade status to New Delhi, reciprocating the status India earlier conferred upon Pakistan. This last development promises to enliven the 2006 South Asia Free Trade Agreement which up until this point has been all but a dead letter. India’s commerce minister, Anand Sharma, captured the spirit of the meeting when he exclaimed that “only shared prosperity can bring lasting peace.”

Mr. Sharma, with his own high-profile business delegation in tow, paid a reciprocal visit to Islamabad earlier this month, where he signed several agreements to further reduce impediments to bilateral trade. The Indian and Pakistani central banks have announced plans to open branch offices in the other country, a move that will help facilitate cross-border transactions. Both countries have also advanced initiatives to enhance energy cooperation, including joint development of a natural gas field in Turkmenistan. Expert talks on expanding commerce in the electrical power and petroleum sectors are scheduled to take place in the coming weeks.

If enhanced trade ties were to develop between South Asia’s largest economies, they would produce significant commercial and (eventually) security dividends for both countries. Despite the common civilizational and historical bonds that permeate South Asia, as well as the unified market forged by the British Raj, the region today is remarkably fragmented economically. Trade flows between India and Pakistan, for instance, represent a miniscule fraction of each country’s overall trade portfolio. Attari-Wagah is the only vehicle crossing along the 1,800-mile-long international border. The two-lane road there is only open a mere eight hours a day and the cargo that passes through it must be unloaded and transferred to local trucks. Indeed, the crossing, which some refer to as the “Checkpoint Charlie of South Asia,” is better known for the Kabuki-like displays put on by the border guards than as an efficient transit point.

The pervasive barriers to bilateral economic cooperation have also spurred circuitous and highly inefficient trade patterns. A booming India requires cement for its construction sector yet is forced to import it from Africa instead of Pakistan, where the cement industry has excess capacity. Off-the-books trade – the value of which easily rivals official levels – is also conducted via third countries like Dubai, Singapore and Afghanistan. According to various studies, a more liberalized trade regime would increase bilateral exchange at least 20 times above current figures as well as boost economic prosperity in both countries. A new report by the Confederation of Indian Industries argues that cross-border trade could easily quadruple in just a few years if both governments moved to increase economic linkages.

(This commentator has argued elsewhere that the United States would be wise to reinforce the current stirrings by launching a Marshall Plan-like initiative geared toward bolstering cross-border economic cooperation between the two countries. This effort would dovetail well with the Obama administration’s “New Silk Road” initiative that is designed to ensure Afghanistan’s economic viability by building it up as a regional trade and transit hub.)

To be sure, there is a surfeit of factors that could derail the thaw in India-Pakistan relations, such as political upheaval in Islamabad or a major terrorist attack in India that emanates from Pakistani soil. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s government has a tense arrangement with the army leadership and is under increasing fire from an emboldened Supreme Court; indeed, Gilani may in the coming months find himself in jail on contempt of court charges. Still, the Pakistan Peoples Party is expected to do well in the March 2nd Senate elections and this should provide enough political reinforcement for the government to continue, at least in the short term, with the push for improved relations with New Delhi.

A larger, if somewhat more distant, danger resides in the sharper security competition that is sure to erupt between the countries as the United States and its NATO allies hasten their departure from Afghanistan. Both India and Pakistan regard the country as a key theater for their strategic rivalry and the current defrosting in relations will likely be a casualty as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorates into a new civil war that has regional powers scrambling for influence.

Still, the present stirrings of peace demonstrate that despite its singularity intensity the India-Pakistan rivalry has always been a fluid admixture of cooperative impulses and competitive dynamics. Both governments would be smart to do what they now can to accentuate the former before the latter returns to the fore.

By Prof Farakh A Khan

(This is continuation of my last article.. It was felt that this subject requires greater depth since people in Pakistan have distorted view of our Fata issue. The origin and evolution of Jihadi Wahhabi movement has to be put in proper perspective)

Conflict in society is the oldest human response inherited from our evolutionary animal past. As human society graduated from sticks and stones as weapons of aggression to high explosives and air war the level of carnage increased dramatically. We are now entering phase of robotic war lased with nuclear technology where power of destruction has escalated to a new level. The level of misery caused by modern wars is not acceptable anymore. War in Afghanistan either by foreign forces intervention or internal conflict for the last 50 decades has left the nation in state of perpetual war. Since Russian intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 Pakistan still has 1.7 million Afghan refugees. The conflict in Afghanistan has spilled over into Pakistan where since 2004 estimated 35,000 people have been killed and many more disabled. The only winners of war are the manufactures of arms and ammunition. For Pakistan Federally Administrated Areas (Fata) formally called the Tribal Areas has been devastated and there is no end in sight. For Pakistan Balochistan is also an area in turmoil. The Americans are also pointing fingers at our Balochistan human rights record.

Pakistan’s religious and cultural hereditary ties with Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan and Middle East have always been strong. Any development in one country has its impact on others including Pakistan. Today we are caught in conflict in Afghanistan tomorrow we may be in a bigger mess if Iran is attacked by Israel/American forces. Attack on Iran will be most unpopular with the people of Pakistan and destabilise its leadership especially the army.

Endgame in Afghanistan

The Nato/American occupation of Afghanistan since 2001 directly impacted on Pakistan especially in Fata. People Pakistan actively volunteered to resist the invading army but was initially overwhelmed by the firepower of the American guns. Historically people of Fata has seen whole host of aggressors from the West and East. Each time aggressors have called people of what are now Fata and of Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa different names at different times of history labelled as terrorists, militants, rebels, religious extremists/fanatics or freedom fighters. The ten-year war in Afghanistan has taken toll of the American purse and its fighters. The French want to pull out by next year. On the other hand the Afghan people are constantly suffering. Both sides are in fatigue mode. The Americans are openly talking to Afghan Taliban leadership since November 2010 to end American occupation of Afghanistan. The talks are at a crucial juncture where a Taliban office is to be opened in Qatar. The Americans are considering release of five Taliban leaders from infamous Guantanamo prison to be stationed in Qatar. Team led by Marc Grossman from the American side and Qari Yousaf Ahmedi from Afghan Taliban side are in discussions (DeYoung, Karen. US links Taliban talks to Karzai’s consent. Dawn/Washington Post/ Bloomberg News Service. January 13, 2012). In Qatar talks the sticking point is release of Guantanamo Taliban commanders and timing of ceasefire. The Americans want ceasefire first before prisoner release but the Taliban want start of American troop withdrawal first (US, Taliban historic talks begin in Qatar. AFP. The News. January 30, 2012). Taliban has denied any talks with the US (Taliban deny talks with ‘puppet’ govt. AFP. The News. February 17, 2012).

The Americans with their many think tanks and experience of Vietnam and Russians bitter Afghan disaster perhaps made no impact on the American leadership. The arrogance of power overrides the long-term reality of war in Afghanistan. The British with long direct experience of wars in Afghanistan were also drawn into the conflict in 2001. Their famous war hero Lord Roberts of Kandahar after the Second Afghan War (1878-80) strongly advised Britain to avoid meddling in Afghan affairs. The Treaty of Gandamak (May 26, 1879) took away foreign affairs from Afghan rulers with fatal results. The right to foreign affairs was given back after the Third Afghan War (1919) following a treaty on November 22, 1921 (Shah, 2000). This was part of the Great Game strategy. But this was long time ago.

Besides American brokered talks with Taliban Afghanistan and Pakistan wants separate talks to be held in Saudi Arabia (Afghanistan seeks Taliban talks in Saudi Arabia: officials. AFP. The News. January 30, 2012). The Americans feel greater threat from Iran and want to windup operations in Afghanistan as early as possible. For Pakistan Fata is the key problem area. If Iran is attacked then the problem shall spread to rest of Pakistan.

In a discussion on at the Karachi Literature festival on ‘Afghanistan and Pakistan: conflict, extremism and Taliban’ Dr Maleeha Lodhi claimed that Pakistan’s stand regarding Afghan solution to be achieved through dialogue was rejected by the US. Ten years later the US is trying to do the same (Ali, Imtiaz. US follows what Pakistan said 10 years ago: Lodhi. The News. February 13, 2012). In 1838 Maharaja Ranjit Singh faced a similar problem with the British intention of attacking Afghanistan. The British tried to persuade Ranjit Singh to join them in the attack. The clever illiterate Sikh ruler understood the people of Fata, then part of Afghanistan, better and politely refused but gave free passage to the British army to attack Afghanistan. The result in 1842 when the proud ‘Army of the Indus’ was annihilated as predicted by the Sikh chief.

In an address to US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence CIA Director David Petraeus claimed that Pakistan was supporting Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan, it was alleged, was supporting Haqqani Network, Commander Nazir Group and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan by providing sanctuaries and war materials. The allegation is not new but may be partly true although this was hotly denied by Pakistan (Iqbal, Anwar. Pakistan not putting sufficient pressure on Afghan Taliban: CIA chief. Dawn. February 2, 2012). On September 22, 2011 Admiral Mike Mullen claimed that ‘Haqqani Network is part of strategic arm of ISI’ (Krasmer, D Stephen, 2012). The report based on prisoner’s interrogation in Afghanistan called ‘State of Taliban’ was ‘leaked’ to the press. It implicated the ISI in helping the Taliban direct attacks against the Isaf forces in Afghanistan. The report admitted that once Nato forces leave Afghanistan the state will collapse and open it to return of Taliban (Secret Nato report accuses Pakistan of helping Taliban. The News. February 2, 2012). For Pakistan a stable Afghanistan is essential for solving Fata problem. Unfortunately its army determines Pakistan foreign policy.

There are reports that US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta is thinking of US forces combat mission to end by mid-2013, a year earlier than previous estimates (US plans to end combat mission by mid-2013. OC. Dawn. February 3, 2012). He has urged Pakistan to help stop IED attacks, which allegedly were manufactured in Pakistan and used in Afghanistan (Iqbal, Anwar. Pakistan urged to help contain IED attacks. Dawn. Dawn. February 16, 2012).

How will withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan impinge on Pakistan? Withdrawal of US forces and handing over security to the Afghans is not as simple as it was seen in Iraq. The cost of US withdrawal would be in billions of dollars every year for decades to come to sustain the Afghan National Security Forces and the Afghan economy (Sehgal, Ikram. Drawdown in Afghanistan. The News. February 9, 2012). It is interesting to note that think tanks all over the world blame America for leaving Afghanistan to its own devices after Russian army withdrawal in 1989. Now that the Americans are in full force in Afghanistan the same think tanks want them out.

Taliban who?

But let us first define what Taliban means? In our language it signifies a student. A movement was triggered by few madrassa students led by Mullah Omar and later joined by the majority of Afghan people against the corrupt warlords of Afghanistan all were later called Taliban including former warlords. In Pakistan Taliban is an ideological group supporting Afghan Taliban in supply of fighters and war material. It is debated whether Taliban are products of madrassas in Pakistan. Nevertheless jihadi literature is common in our madrassas. Poor socioeconomic conditions do promote recruitment to Taliban fold. In Fata the Taliban umbrella includes besides Pashtuns other nationalities as well. They have in their midst Pakistanis mainly from Southern Punjab, Arabs, Chinese Muslims, Uzbeks and Muslims from the West. These ethnic groups are bound by religious ideology of jihad against invading American and Nato forces (Gul, Imtiaz and Jaffar, Nabil, 2012). Punjab developed massive madrassas with government help during Gen Ziaul Haq’s time to produce mujahedeen to counter Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The fallout from jihadi madrassas spilled over into sectarian violence and attacks on soft civilian targets leaving 30,000 dead. Jihadi madrassas were in place in KP (Haqqania in Okara Khattak) as well as in Karachi (Madrassa Bonaria) (Hussain, 2012). Unfortunately most people in Pakistan are convinced that attacks on Pakistani people are the work of American, Israeli and Indian intelligence agencies.

Pakistani Jihadi Organisations

With retreat of the Russian troops the jihadi organisations turned their attention towards Kashmir and India for their terrorist activities. During Gen Musharraf’s Kargil disaster (May-July 1999) these mujahedeen were wrongly portrayed as leading the attack. When these Mujahids were prevented from meddling in Kashmir and India under international pressure they moved to Fata and carried out suicide attacks in Pakistani cities (Hussain, 2012). The monster created by our intelligence agencies started to attack our own civilian population and security forces. For a while these home grown Taliban conquered Swat and were poised to establish ‘Islamic’ system of government before army crackdown in 2009.

For the western media Taliban became associates of Al Qaeda in the leadership mode and after 9/11 were the target of the American might. Let us be clear that Taliban had no role in 9/11 beyond sheltering their leader Osama. Osama being an Arab had no leadership role in the tribal society of Afghanistan or Fata. For last six years of his life he was hiding in Abbottabad, Pakistan and had no role in Afghan resistance movement.

Taliban in western literature became synonymous with any religious organisation targeting the invading forces in Afghanistan and hence an enemy. The Western paranoia reached a stage where all Muslims and their religion Islam were designated as radical Islam, terrorists, militants, extremist or fundamentalists. Unfortunately other religions do not describe their ‘extremists’ in the same way as Islam. The Christian evangelists are just as radical as ‘ultra right’ Jews or ‘extremist’ Hindus. All religions have subset of people who claim to know the ‘true’ meaning of their religion but the issue is of imposing their views on others. The West should have recognised Taliban as freedom fighters against an occupying army. In fact Taliban designation covers a large number interest groups ranging from Jihadi ideologues to outright dacoits striving for loot through robbing banks or kidnapping for ransom. The Taliban do not have a standing army. The dress code has not changed over centuries, which include carrying arms, and we cannot distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. We also have to recognise that Wahhabi interpretation of Islam did not emerge with funding from Saudi Arabia during Russian occupation of Afghanistan. In fact Wahhabi Islam reached Fata area in 1824 and soon spread to Afghanistan initially as anti Sikh and later anti British platform to oust the infidels from the Muslim society.

People admire the bravery and tenacity of Pashtuns of Fata and Afghanistan and their place in history. They have been devastated and made paupers in the name of ‘gairat’. The Afghan leadership has also been eulogised for their farsightedness and sagacity. Nothing can be far from the truth (Siddiqi, Muhammad Ali. No Sandhurst no West Point. Dawn. February 16, 2012).

Emergence of TTP

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is not a single homogeneous body. TTP was formed under the leadership of Baitullah Mehsud in an agreement between 13 different armed groups in December 2007 against the Pakistani security forces, schools, mosques, markets and Nato forces in Afghanistan but it remains a loose federation of different interest groups. The Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Omar is striving to unite these groups to concentrate on on-going battle against the Nato forces in Afghanistan. A meeting organised by Afghan Taliban on December 11, 2011 in Datta Khel area, NWA the Afghan Taliban requested TTP to sink their differences and fight the Americans. Hakimullah Mehsud, Waliur Rehman, Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadur attended the meeting. Sirajuddin Haqqani was representing the Afghan Taliban. Two representatives of Quetta Shura along with Al Qaeda commander Abu Yahya al-Libi attended the meeting. It was decided to establish a five-member Shura-e-Murakeba (Observation Council) which was launched on January 2, 2012 to sort out differences and concentrate on fighting the Americans in Afghanistan rather than take on the Pakistani security forces (Murshed, S Iftikhar. A dagger at the heart. The News. January 30, 2012).

The TTP is also involved in suicide bombing in major cities of Pakistan. The basic resentment emerged as the basis of revenge against killing of their kith and kin by the security forces and drone strikes. Revenge is basic cultural trait of the people of Fata. On the other hand killing of innocent people in Pakistan alienated any sympathy for them and went against the TTP public popularity. It is not surprising that bombing of cities in Pakistan has been put on hold. There is the issue of cross border attacks on Nato forces by some organisations in Fata. Since the Pakhtun relations lived across the porous ‘border’ (Durand Line) the TTP and other organisations were duty bound to help their brethren in Afghanistan. This has been strongly resented by the Americans and tried to put pressure on Pakistan to stop these attackers. The other aspect of Taliban ideology is found in rest of Pakistan especially in Punjab and hence called Punjabi Taliban. The Taliban belief of war against West, India and Israel and pro Taliban jihad is rampant in religious and main political parties in major urban areas of Pakistan. Majority of Taliban jihadi ideology mind set in Pakistan do not subscribe to violence as a means of change in the society. We do fear a military intervention (coup) since they are the ‘saviour of Pakistan’ and custodians of its ideology? Gen Zia’s indoctoration of the Pakistan military has played a significant role in the mind change of previous set of military commanders. Gen Hamid Gul is the prime example of jihadi generals of the past now part of ‘Defence of Pakistan Council’ organisation based on hate America, India and Israel.

Nato Invasion of Afghanistan and its Aftermath

Up to 2001 Afghanistan was an insignificant state ruled by Wahhabi leaning semi literate bunch of nobodies living in the Stone Age with scant understanding of developments in the world. They imposed their version of Wahhabi Islam. The world had forgotten Afghanistan with retreat of Russian army in 1989 till 2001. The most powerful army ever seen in the world seething with rage decided to ‘take out’ Osama after the 9/11 attack by a group of Arabs mainly from Egypt-none from Afghanistan. It seemed that the Taliban in Afghanistan would be pushover against the might of high-tech American army and their 500lb bombs dropped by air. It was predicted that Taliban would be totally eliminated by American hammering and what would be left of them shall beg for peace on American terms. Little did they realise that ten years later they would be still trying to find a way out of Afghanistan. Unfortunately the world and Pakistanis know very little about the conflict area in Afghanistan or Fata. For the world and Pakistani Fata and adjoining Afghanistan became the ‘bad lands’ and ‘most dangerous place in the world’ after 9/11. For the British in India these places were always the ‘bad lands’ only fit to train their army and seek medals for valour of their fighters against improvised lands. We need to explore the background of resistance of the people in the area before we make sweeping judgments.

The past of Afghanistan is haunting the Americans today and we need to divulge the past to understand what is happening today. We need to explore the historical role of foreign fighters and Punjabi Taliban in present context. These foreign fighters never assumed leadership role in the tribal system. The phenomenon of people crossing into Afghanistan from India to fight is not a new one.

Afghanistan Invasions in History

The Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great (575 BC-530 BC) followed by Darius the Great (550-486 BC) included Afghanistan and part of Pakistan. Alexander’s objective was to conquer the Persian Empire and invaded Pakistan in 326 BC calling it India. He stopped at the banks of river Beas because beyond that was not India. This was a short Greek incursion of which the people of the area had no recollection. Bactrian Greeks ruled Afghanistan and northern Pakistan from 256 BC to 1^st century BC when Parthians finally defeated them. This was followed by invasion by Yuezhi (Kushan) and Scythians (Saka). The impact of invasion by different armies on local culture there is no documented evidence of change besides development of Indo-Greek sculpture used by Buddhists during Kushan period and adoption of Parthian dress of salwar kamiz by the people. In the middle of 4^th century AD Afghanistan was overrun by Epthalite branch of Huns. They finally managed to conquer most of northern India. Huns introduced title ‘khan’ into Afghanistan and Pakistan (Tanner, 2002). Besides invading armies over centuries different ethnic groups have silently moved across India from the west to permanently settle there. These migrating bands quietly integrated into the Indian society. Unfortunately these historical migrations have not been properly documented. In recent times war in Afghanistan has also displaced people. During the Russian invasion more than 3 million Afghans migrated to Pakistan. Today some 1.7 million Afghans refugees are still in Pakistan.

In more recent times the British invasion of Afghanistan by the ‘Army of the Indus’ to install a British puppet (modern American Karzai) as their ruler in 1839 led to annihilation of the army in its retreat in 1842. The Afghan invasion was pushed by the then Governor General Lord Auckland due to unfounded fear of Russian expansion into Afghanistan (this finally happened in 1979 when Russian army invaded Afghanistan). This was the time when Britain was the sole super power. British arrogance led them to disaster. To boost army’s morale Sindh was conquered in 1843. This was followed by annexation of Punjab in 1849. These British moves sent clear message about future British intentions to the hill tribes in the north west of the expanding British Empire. As early as 1847 Herbert Edwards as the British officer with the Sikh administration posted to Bannu as Assistant Resident, at that time border of ‘Eastern Afghanistan’, was able to subdue the valley and extract revenue for the Sikh Darbar (Obhrai, 1983). Starting in 1849 the British were regularly sending in punitive ‘expeditions’ into the Tribal belt. By 1857 British had launched 15 expeditions into the ‘Frontier’. By 1939 the ‘expeditions’ had increased to 58 (Barthorp, 2002). It is unfortunate to note that the British army in India used Fata as live training ground for its soldiers. But when the army faced well-equipped European armies during the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and WW I it was found to be sadly lacking in battle skills. It was highly unethical to use the people of Fata as a military training ground for fame and glory. But if you are all powerful then ethics do not matter.

Before Sikh invasion of Peshawar (1818) the city was the summer capital of Kabul ruler. The city was finally annexed by the Sikhs in 1834 and was ruled by Gen Paolo Avitabile. His reign of terror was known as ‘gallows and gibbets’ (Wikipedia, 2012). The first British envoy Mountstuart Elphinstone visited the Afghan king in Peshawar in 1807 (Schofield, 2003). During the Sikh Darbar the Sikhs held the plains but the mountains in the west remained independent. By 1818 the Sikhs had taken Peshawar valley but part of the territory was given as Jagir to three brothers of Kabul ruler Amir Dost Mohammad. Till 1834 the Afghans were ruling Peshawar as Jagirdars of the Sikhs before it was annexed. Peshawar was the summer capital of ruler of Kabul. The Sikh army under the dreaded general Hari Singh Nalwa defeated the Afghan army in Nowshera and in 1838 Sikh Kardars replaced the Afghan administrators. Sikh garrisons were placed in Peshawar, DI Khan, Kohat and Teri. After the First Sikh War under a treaty signed on December 16, 1846 British formed Council of Regency and Hazara, Bannu, Kohat, DG Khan and DI Khan were placed under the British Assistant Residents. Chief Commissioner ruled Punjab in 1849 and in 1859 by Lt Governor. North-West Frontier got its Lt Governor in 1932. In the districts British Deputy Commissioners were appointed. During the Sikh wars Amir Dost Mohammad of Afghanistan moved into the Peshawar valley up to the Indus in December 1848. He made a grave miscalculation by sending a contingent of cavalry to aid the dying Sikh rule against the British.

During the Sikh rule Peshawar valley (Kabul River) up to Jamrud in the west was held with great atrocities. In 1849 the British took over the Sikh Darbar territories and established pickets (check posts) along the eastern banks of Indus and in Kabul River valley along the bases of mountains to restrain raids from tribes beyond in the mountains. The British were now in direct contact with Afghanistan and Persia. The first incursion of the British forces through what was Afghan tribal area took place when their army attacked Ghazni and Kabul in 1839 what became the disastrous 1^st Anglo-Afghan War (also called Auckland’s folly) (Barthorp, 2002). This was followed by revenge attack in August 1842 when the invading British forces (‘Avenging Army’) under Gen Pollock and Gen Nott brutally killed people of all ages and both sexes. This according to Duke of Wellington was ‘Restoration of Reputation in the East’. Kabul was sacked and bazaar burnt but this time the ‘Avenging Army’ retreated quickly.

Role of ‘Hindustani Wahhabi Fanatics’ in History

The origin of ‘Hindustani Wahhabi Fanatics’ needs to be explained. From times immemorial the Pakhtun belt now located between Afghanistan and Pakistan has not changed although they were Hindus at one time then converted to Buddhism and finally to Islam. Babar (early 16^th century) records his attack into Bonair to gather livestock and make a pyramid of heads of the local population (a Turkish tradition of Central Asia). At the time of Emperor Akbar, who held Kabul as a province of his empire, the Mughal policy was to pay some tribes for safe passage and to send expeditions to others. The unrest of Fata tribes instigated by Pir-e-Roshan (Sheikh Bazid Ansari) and his descendants, formally of South Waziristan Agency resident of Jalandhar (now in India) hence technically  ‘foreign fighters’, against religious doctrine of Deen-e-Elahi and occupation of Pakhtun homeland by Mughals was a severe test for Akbar’s armies. He sent in 15 expeditions to counter the jihadis in Tirah and Waziristan and after much bloodshed (including loss of his court jester Raja Birbal) he managed to make the area peaceful through diplomacy (Hosain, 1938; Shah, 2000). The tribes were in constant war with each other but united against any invader usually led by a religious figure. Nothing has changed since.

In more recent times Wahhabi cleric Syed Ahmed Shah moved from Bareilly, India, to what is now Fata to incite the tribes against Sikh rule in Punjab in 1824. In 1830 Syed Ahmed Shah, having not received any support from the tribes, was killed fighting the Sikh army in Balakot where he was buried.  His 300 surviving followers retreated to Sitana in Bonair and settled on the property of Syed Akbar Shah who became their Amir. The subsequent resistance movement was Wahhabi in nature. They were displaced from time to time but managed to establish ‘training’ centres in Tirah, Chamarkand and other places. Bonair became a serious problem for the British in 1852 when ‘Hindustani Wahhabi Fanatics’, as labelled by the British, with the help of Hasanzai tribe took over the Kotla fort belonging to Nawab of Amb. An expedition was launched against them in 1853 and the fort was taken back.  At the time of Mutiny of 1857 the Hindustani fanatics led by Maulvi Inayat Ali Khan caused some problems. Their village called Narinji was attacked in July and later in August 1857 by a British force and set on fire. According to Major Vaughan “Not a house was spared; even the walls of many were destroyed by elephants…Three prisoners were taken—one was a Bareilly Maulvi, second a Chamla standard-bearer and the third a vagrant of Charonda; they were all subsequently executed.” Next was attack on the village of Sitana led by Sir Sydney Cotton. The Hindustanis came into attack dressed in white in silence and ‘every Hindustani in the position was either killed or taken prisoner (Nevill, 1910; Wylly, 1912).

Hindustani Wahhabi in Bonair 1860s

The scenes of massacres were still fresh in the memory of the tribes when the British forces launched Frontier War in 1863. The idea of this war was to teach a lesson to the tribes of Bonair to stop raids into the settled areas under British control and to ‘Hindustani fanatics’ of Wahhabi Islam who considered the British as occupier of their lands across India making jihad legitimate. The British felt that ‘Hindustanis’ were also spreading Wahhabi Islam in Fata and had to be stopped (Albinia, 2008).

To oppose British occupation the ‘Hindustani Wahhabi Fanatics’ were receiving funds from ‘Southern’ Bengal’ with its headquarter in Patna in Bihar. The arms and ammunition was coming from the Gulf and Afghanistan. Later armaments were supplied from ‘Mesopotamia’. The Mulka village in Mahabun Mountains of Syeds of Bunair housed left overs of Syed Ahmed Shaheed (d 1830) uprising against Sikh rule, was eventfully burnt by the locals under a British detachment in 1863. Between 1850 and 1863 the British launched 20 expeditions into the mountains beyond the plains occupied by the British forces. Each time the number of invading forces increased. In Sitana campaign (1863) more than 5,000 troops were used and later enforced. The initial force was trapped in Ambela Pass and Gen Sir Sydney Chamberlain was evacuated with severe wounds. The cost of the expedition was worrying for the British administration. The opposing tribesmen had few matchlock guns and mostly relied on swords and hurling stones. Swords were used in close quarter action (Adye, John. Sitana: a mountain campaign of the borders of Afghanistan in 1863. Published 1866). In 1860s the Afghan jezail with a range of 300 yards was better then the Brown Bess used by the British army. The introduction Snider and later Lee Metford and Martinis rifles (1897) with smokeless powder backed by artillery gave the British again the advantage. Finally the introduction of machinegun (Gatling and Maxim) made the British army a superior force. At the same time the tribes managed to acquire new weapons and balance was again maintained (Skeen, 1932). By 1906 Muscat imported 278,000 pounds worth of rifles from four European countries. The arms were transported to Mekran coast by boat and from their Afghan camel caravans took them to Southern Afghanistan and sold to the tribes. The British tried to block the movement by sea and land (Wylly, 1912).

The main issue of attacks by the British beyond its borders into Tribal Areas of Afghanistan (now Fata) was raids (cattle lifting) by tribes supported by ‘Hindustani Fanatics’ in the area. We must realise that the people living in inhospitable mountains had limited agricultural resource, living partly a nomadic life and raids in the more prosperous plains. In 1858 the British army raid destroyed Sitana, Bonair on the southern slopes of Mahabun Mountains. The British claimed that part of Amb State which was under British protection had been invaded by ‘Hindustani Wahhabi Fanatics’ and had to be evicted by the British Army. This was followed by destruction of ‘Hindustani settlement’ of Mulka located on the northern slopes of Mahabun Mountains in 1863. The British army in another raid destroyed ‘Hindustani village’ of Mundee in 1864. The other British approach was to block supplies, funds and fighters from British India. For the people of Fata fear of British occupation of Sindh and later Punjab was an indication of their advancement and occupation of their areas  (Punjab Administration Report, 1863-64 and 1867-68). The retaliatory raids into Tribal Territories by British forces became a nuisance for the poor. The tribes requested the Hindustani Jihadis to move their training camps into remote areas or leave the area. The Jihadis from outside Fata returned following Russian invasion in 1979.

20^th century Wahhabi Movement in India

There was resentment against British occupation of India among the educated youth in India. The Wahhabi doctrine of jihad carried intense appeal for these men. They decided to launch their jihad from Pakhtun tribes of British and Afghan frontier. They hoped that Afghanistan and Turkey would help them to conquer India. Large number of educated Muslims in India decided to move into the Tribal Area and some into Afghanistan in 1905. These British citizens called ‘Hindustani Wahhabi Fanatics’ were interned in Afghan territory at Jallalabad by the Afghan king Amir Habibullah Khan under pressure from the British. Influential Indians in Afghan court finally released them. Although highly educated young anti British volunteers were influenced by Deoband School led by Sheikhul Hind Maulana Mehmoodul Hassan they were looked upon with suspicion. The money was supplied from across India from Calcutta, Patna and Punjab. However they were sadly disillusioned with the state of affairs they found in Afghanistan. There was no rule of law and the justice system was a replica of ancient system where the only the king finally gave his verdict. There was no system of education and this is where the ‘Young Afghans’ with the help of young Indian students led by Dr Abdul Ghani from various parts of India proposed to bring change. A society with proposed constitution and educational awareness threatened Amir Habibullah’s rule. In 1909 Dr Abdul Ghani and 38 British subjects members of Mashroota movement were interned in the Ark Fort Kabul while seven Afghani citizens were blown from artillery pieces. The Islamic Wahhabi renaissance of Afghanistan with system of the West ended with complete disillusionment of educated Muslims of India. Amir Habibullah was assassinated in 1919 and the new Amir Amanullah released them.

The Muslims of India during the WW I felt betrayed by the British when it went to war against Turkey a Muslim country and the home of the Khalifa of the Muslim World. This was the Khalafat Movement joined by Hindus and Sikhs as a means to ouster of the British from India. The Muslim preachers across India were asking for jihad against the infidels in particular an end of Indian occupation by the British.

Another jihadi group of about 20,000 people entered Afghanistan from India during Khalafat Movement of 1920. A poor country like Afghanistan could not afford to house and feed these people who has burnt their boats in India and had nothing to live on. Most moved back to India but a small hard core remained but their cause was doomed. By this time the political scene had changed. Russia as a communist state was expanding into Central Asian states also became enemy of the religion and hence of Muslims. Some Mujahids became communists. Many of jihadis in Kabul were seeking communist help to push the British out of India. Other Indians wanted help from Turkey but the country was in dire strait and refused anything to do with these Indian ‘revolutionaries’. There were endless intrigues within the Indian ranks in Russia, which did not help their cause. Amir Amanullah was advanced financial support and fearful of Russian intention he aligned with the British and would not tolerate anti British moves in his kingdom. Many of new jihadi arrivals moved to Fata and settled in older Hindustani settlements. For the British transportation of explosives was worrying and made efforts to stop this. They used secret agencies to affectively stop funding of Hindustani settlements from their sympathisers in India. The jihadi movement by Hindustani Fanatics continued till the 1930s but were a spent force and did not pose any danger to the British authorities. Only two Hindustani settlements were remaining in Fata.

The movement for jihad by Hindustani Wahhabi volunteers had sever setbacks from changing world scene and from within their ranks. However one cannot but admire these people from relatively affluent background in India chose a life of immense struggle and hardships. With no military training they faced hostile tribes, corrupt police, suspicious rulers and dacoits these people were moving across Asia and Europe despite poor resources. Their travels in Afghanistan, Central Asia and Turkey could have given credit to any Western explorer of that time (Shah, 2000). With the Russian and later American invasion the old ‘Hindustani’ now Pakistani Mujahids started to stream into Afghanistan to fight the invaders. Nothing has changed.

Fata during the British Raj

The Agencies of Fata were created firstly of Khyber to keep a hold on the Pass in 1878. Following cession of Kurram by the Afghan government in 1879 it was made an agency in 1892. The Malakand, Tochi and Wana (later Waziristan) were developed between 1895 and 1896.  The people of Waziristan were up in arms against demarcation of western border based on strategic heights rather than tribal lines. To force the tribes in accepting Durand Line Waziristan Field Force was organised in 1894. In 1901 the settled districts were made into province of North West Frontier and the Agencies separated (Obhrai, 1983). Starting in 1920 railway line from Peshawar was extended to Landi Kotal (Bayley, 1926).

The British continued its policy in Fata of ‘Butcher and Bolt’ in retaliation of tribal raids. After subduing the lashkar the villages of ‘miscreants’ were torched or blown up, the crops burnt, waterways destroyed, livestock rounded up and economic blockade of the offending area put in place. Each time a new agreement was made with the tribal elders. Starting in 1917 the British troops used ‘Air Service’ to attack the Mehsud tribal lashkar. In response the old style of Lashkar attack was abandoned. In 1930s Chief of the Air Staff Sir Hugh Trenchard proposed use of fighter aircraft to keep the tribes in check rather than rely on slow cumbersome land expeditions. He was overruled due financial constraints (Barthorp, 2002). Now drone strikes by the Americans and bombing by Pakistani F16 are trying to do the same. With advancement of military technology armoured cars and later light tanks were used. In Tirah the tribes were asked to remove ‘Turk and Afghan’ settlers (now foreign fighters) which they did sending them back to Afghanistan (Obhrai, 1938). It seems that nothing has changed in the 21^st century. Unfortunately we have no written record of the suffering or body count of people during various invasions and devastations caused by armies entering the area.

The British policy regarding Fata had been shifting. John Lawrence was in favour of ‘backward school’ making the Indus as the final ‘natural’ border. Sir Mortimer Durand advocated a ‘scientific frontier’, which was a soft face of ‘forward policy’ (Diver, 1935). The Durand Line split the ancient tribal system to secure military vantage points for the British. Whatever the policy development work in the area was limited to making roads to facilitate movement of troops at short notice. When the British left in 1947 Pakistan reversed the Fata ‘forward policy’ and pulled out the regular troops from Fata. We had peace in Fata till 2004.

Recent Developments in Fata

Let us jump to recent events shaking Fata and Afghanistan. The bookshops today are full of bewildering array of old and new publications on Afghanistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda (see Bibliography). Most of the modern authors have little understanding of the area, people or its history under discussion. Even the Pakhtuns of KP have vague understanding of the people of Fata. Fata tribes are individually unique and do not fit into a single cultural pattern. Al Qaeda, initially an all-Arab group, as an entity appeared on our radar screen through American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Al Qaeda led by Arabs has a foreign agenda and is irrelevant for Pakistan’s Fata problem.

The Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 galvanised the tribes and people of the country and Fata against the occupiers. This time Russian had helicopters, APCs and tanks but in this asymmetrical war the Afghans had the terrain on their side and supplies of manpower and ammunition from America, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Al Qaeda, a small splinter group, was born out of this triple marriage. The supply of Stringer missiles by the Americans negated Russian air power. On our visit to Bokhara in 1995 it was sad to note a large soldiers graveyard in the local park killed in Afghanistan-a needless butchery of the youth of Bokhara.

The American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 united the Fata tribes once again into military opposition. People of Pakistan are also opposed to American intervention in Afghanistan and drone attacks in Fata. They are supplying manpower and funds to Taliban as seen in 1860s. The ‘Hindustani fanatics’ are now ‘foreign fighters’ or called ‘Punjabi Taliban, Arab fighters or Uzbeks’. The Fata Pakhtun ‘raiders’ of 1863 were transformed into Mujahedeen during Russian occupation and then into Taliban when the Americans came in. AK47, 50 calibre machinegun, sniper rifle, Improvised Explosive Device (IED), landmines, Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) and suicide bombers now affectively replace the Stringer missiles. The Pakhtuns are innovative. Pakistan became an enemy of the Taliban fighting the American and Nato armies because of Pakistan governments support to Americans in the form of supplies and drone attacks. We saw spate of suicide and IED blasts in major cities of Pakistan.

The incidence of Lal Masjid in Islamabad and then attack of the Pakistani army into South Waziristan in 2004 was the last straw for peace. Most of the students who died in Lal Masjid in the army assault were from Fata and KP. Then came the incidence of US troops killing 24 FC soldiers in cold blood in North Waziristan on November 26, 2011, which was followed by retaliatory freeze of Nato supplies through Pakistan and returning of Shamsi Air Base used for drone strikes in Fata. Earlier CIA agent Raymond Davis was held for shooting two motorcyclists in Lahore and then released after payment of blood money under Islamic law. He was never tried for murder of two young men in America. This was followed by the killing of Osama in an American raid in Abbottabad, which produced bad blood between the two countries. The people of Pakistan were told of thousands of visas issued by Pakistani embassy in US to dubious people considered as CIA agents.

Ten Years of American Occupation of Afghanistan

America is bleeding in Afghanistan like its predecessor the Russians. The 1^st World armies require expensive services and equipment, which are not appropriate for war in the 3^rd World. With killing of Osama the main reason for invasion of Afghanistan has been removed. The original motivational force for the American troops in the field was to make America ‘safe’ and revenge for 9/11 by removing Al Qaeda leadership has been achieved. The Americans have killed enough innocent Afghans to settle revenge for 9/11. The civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2011 were estimated as 3,021, which was more than 8% in 2010. A total of 4,507 civilians were wounded. These deaths were attributed to militants (77%) and 14% due to Isaf and Afghan forces. The number of suicide bombings (450) increased by 8%. Homemade explosive landmines killed 967 people (Johson, Kay. Civilian deaths in Afghan war hit record high. Dawn. February 5, 2012). A report by Amnesty International claims that 500,000 Afghans are homeless due to on-going war. About 400 people are made homeless on daily basis (War, neglect leave 500,000 Afghans homeless, says AI. Agencies. The News. February 24, 2012). Today Americans are questioning the basic reason for US invasion of Afghanistan (Cloughley, Brian. Afghan war is based on lies and deception. Counterpunch/Daily Times. February 20, 2012).

The US soldiers in the field are now fighting a non-ideological war where it is now ‘them or us’. It is not surprising that American soldiers have been caught taking fingers as souvenirs and urinating on dead Afghans. It is time they got out without giving an impression that they have their tail between the legs. In any case Americans do not need troops on the ground in Afghanistan to ward off any untoward incidence. They have 50 bases in the Middle East and Qatar and Bahrain bases are not far from Afghanistan. For surveillance the Americans have ample supply of drones and settilites. Their troops can be moved into Afghanistan at short notice. I do not see how the Americans can maintain Karzai as the leader of Afghans once they leave.

Fata Solution-Options

The other player in Afghan scene is Pakistan. Afghan leadership never had soft corner for the Pakistan. The bone of contention between the two is the 2,640 km 1893 Durand Line Agreement inherited from the British for fixing ‘spheres of influence’ between the two countries. Thus the British claimed Fata and what is now most of KP as their ‘sphere of influence’. Today neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan can dictate to the Fata tribes. Both keep Durand Line as a porous border and bone of contention. The attacks into Pakistan by Taliban or its splinter groups have been worrying. Like the British earlier the American and Pakistani leadership have made agreements with the various groups of Pakistani Taliban and tribes, which each side claim were broken by the other. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have to give a clear programme for the betterment of the people.

Legally the situation in Fata and Balochistan is quite similar. In Balochistan Area A, which is only 3% of the province is under direct provincial rule where the administration is functioning. In Area B (97%) the Sardars have been given the responsibility of governance and maintenance of private armies. In Fata, since there were no tribal chiefs, governance was given to the tribes with the right of the central government to intervene under Frontier Crime Regulation. The ancient tribal autonomy is the main issue for integration of Fata into mainstream of Pakistan. There have been many suggestions for bringing Fata into the mainstream of Pakistan. Since last year political parties have been allowed to function in Fata. Some claim that Fata should change its status from ‘sphere of influence’ into a province of Pakistan. Then there are others who want Fata to become part of corrupt Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province (Afridi, Ghulam S. Fata’s integration. Dawn. February 8, 2012). The political solution has to emerge from the people of Fata and cannot be dictated by the Pakistan government. The present military policy of creating displacement of the population (IDPs) followed by indiscriminate destruction of what little livelihood of the people of the area had has been a disastrous policy. The ‘hull’ (solution) for Fata is not war but economics and education. In any case Pakistan cannot financially afford even low-level military intervention in the area. Pakistan was spending (directly and indirectly) Rs259.10 billion on ‘war on terror’ in 2005 but by 2010 this was increased to Rs2,975.04 billion. Another estimate claims that Pakistan is loosing Rs3 billion daily and Rs93 billion every month on ‘war on terror’ (Abbasi, Ansar. Pakistan lost Rs7,020b, got only Rs990b. The News. February 8, 2012). The cost of human lives lost and those maimed is also significant (Shah, Akhtar Hussain in Stabilising Afghanistan, 2011).

Historically Afghanistan was on the trade route from Central Asia and Iran to India. Later the Russians joined in. With communist take over of Russia (1917) the borders were hermitically sealed and the ancient trade movement stopped. Afghanistan became dependent on India and later Pakistan for its basic needs.

From times immemorial Afghanistan and Fata was trading and providing heavy work to India till the Russia, British and later Pakistan came to define borders. Horses and cloth were brought in from Iran and Central Asia to be sold in India. Dry fruit sale was in their hands all over India. Heavy work such as building mud walls and providing wood to the rural areas in India was the work of these hardy men from the mountains. Today Fata has a million armed men but is heavily dependent on food, electricity, infrastructure, fuel and some places gas from Pakistan. Only 7% of land in the area is cultivable. Fata survives on smuggling, heroin export, and jobs in local militia and in rest of Pakistan. We are not sure of mineral wealth of Fata since no survey has been carried out. Thanks to the Americans we now know that neighbouring Afghanistan is full of mineral wealth including rare earth minerals (Simpson, 2011). Before the Russian invasion there was insignificant poppy growth in Afghanistan. Today they are producing 5,800 tons of opium a year and the American army has failed to make a dent on heroin production or its export (Cloughley, Brian. Doing Afghan drugs. Daily Times. January 29, 2012). Fata is one important outlet for heroin export and source of earning for the poor people.

We also need to evaluate the impact of developments in Afghanistan on Pakistan. First and foremost Talibanisation to a degree has taken place in Pakistan where most people are supportive of Islamisation, which cannot be equated with Talibanisation. The first step towards Islamisation of Pakistan took place with Objectives Resolution in 1949. Since then the rulers of Pakistan have used Islam to promote their rule over the country. Some of the so-called religious scholars have used Islam for financial gains or to grab power. Money has flowed from local and foreign sources in support of different factions. Religion has become the biggest industry in Pakistan. Religion has also been source of deadly conflict within Pakistan as different sects jockey for power.

The Arab Spring in Middle East and North Africa has drifted to Islam as a source of inspiration. Even Turkey with years of enforced secularism as visualised by its army is trying to find Islamic values. The lack of understanding by the West of the Muslim World is the basis of the problem of being threatened by Islam. There is also much confusion among the Muslim World as to what is Islamic and is coloured by cultural past of each society in the Muslim World. On the other hand Muslims should understand that ‘Islam is (not) in danger’ and they do not require armed conflict to achieve their goal. The Muslim World has to realise that we are now living in a global village and cannot survive in isolation as being tried by Iran. Most of all the West needs to understand the mind set of emerging Muslim World. A free stable Afghanistan needs to evolve from Stone Age and not forced at gunpoint to perceived Western values and governance. Afghan peace would bring peace in Fata. Rest assured the Afghans or people of Fata are not going to declare war on the West.

There is a strong parallel between Russian and later American invasions. The Russians came into Afghanistan to make them communists while the Americans after the period of rage want to build a capitalist system in their style of democracy. Neither of these super powers have made any dent on the Afghans. Change comes from the mind and not guns. This was the effort of Bacha Khan the Frontier Gandhi. He was essentially a social worker and not a politician dubbed as a traitor by the Pakistani leadership. We should use the carrot rather than the stick to solve Fata problem. There has been in place Fata Development Authority for many years it has dismal record of socio-economic development as compared to rest of Pakistan. Fata also has Fata Disaster Management Authority collaborating with UN Development Programme, which requires $200 million (Ali, Zulfiqar. Donors seek access to monitor Fata uplift. Dawn. February 15, 2012). Poor figures of health and education are alarming. We do not have correct information since the army feeds it and we have no independent observers in the area (Qureshi, Shafiullah. Fata failure. The News. January 29, 2012).

Guns shall make the Fata situation worse since there is no military solution. Above all we need professional research of the area and a ten years planned strategy with the consent of the Fata tribes. The old social structure has been altered with massive influx of arms and ammunition during Russian invasion. The old British administrative system is in tatters. The Political Agent and Malik equation and the jirga system have been dismantled. We are not dealing with old Fata anymore. Solution of Fata has to emerge from its people. Before we plan for a long-term policy for Fata it has to be taken off the hands of the Pakistan Army.

PS. Today Pakistan faces a more serious problem of separatist nationalist movement in Balochistan, which unlike Fata is not a religious issue. Unfortunately successive governments in Pakistan have been in a state of denial and used the gun to make Balochistan fall in line. This time it is not going to work.

Radicalisation of Pakistani society unleashed by Gen Zia fast gaining ground is also a major issue yet to be addressed (Hussain, 2012).

Selected Bibliography

1. Adye, John. Sitana: a mountain campaign of the borders of Afghanistan in 1863. ASIM: BOO6PE65CC. Published 1866.
2. Ahmed, Khalid. The mystery of what Pakistan wants. Friday Times. Jan 2/Feb 2, 2012.
3. Al Qaeda in its own words. Edited by Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2008.
4. Albinia, Alice. Empires of the Indus. John Murray, London. 2008.
5. Baha, Lal. NWFP: administration under British rule 1901-1919. National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, Islamabad. 1978.
6. Barthorp, Michael. Afghan wars and the North-West Frontier 1839-1947. Cassell & Co, London. 2002.
7. Bayley, Victor. Permanent way through the Khyber. Jarrolds Publishers, London. MCMXXXIV (1924).
8. Bellew, HW. Afghanistan and the Afghans: brief review of the history of the country and account of its people. Samson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London. 1879.
9. Bergen, Peter L. Holy war Inc: inside the secret world of Osama bin Laden. Phoenix, London. 2002.
10. Borovik, Artyom. The hidden war: a true story of war in Afghanistan. Faber and Faber Ltd., London. 1991.
11. Bruce, Richard Isaac. The forward policy and its results. 1898.
12. Burns, Alexander. Cabool: a personal narrative of a journey to, and residence in that city, in the years 1836, 7, and 8. Reprint Ferozesons Ltd., Lahore. 1961.
13. Caroe, Olaf. The Pathans. Reprint by Oxford University Press, Karachi. 1975.
14. Charny, IW. Fighting suicide bombing: a worldwide campaign for life. Praeger Security International, Westport. 2007.
15. Deshpande, Anirudh. British military policy in India, 1900-1945. Vanguard Books, Lahore. 2005.
16. Diver, Maud. Kabul to Kandahar. Peter Davis, London. 1935.
17. Docherty, Paddy. The Khyber Pass: a history of empire and invasion. Oxford University Press, Karachi. 2007.
18. Dupree, Louis. Afghanistan. Oxford Pakistan Paperback, Karachi. 1997.
19. Edwards, Herbert B. A year on the Punjab Frontier in 1848-49. Vol. I & II. Reprint Ferozesons Ltd., Lahore. 1963.
20. Elliott, JG. The Frontier 1839-1947: the story of the North-West Frontier of India. Cassell, London. 1968.
21. Fata- a most dangerous place. Principle Author Shuja Nawaz. Centre for Strategic & International Studies. 2009.
22. Griffiths, John C. Afghanistan. Pall Mall Press, London. 1967.
23. Gul, Imtiaz and Jaffar, Nabila. Taliban and the Pakistani politics. Friday Times. Jan 2/Feb 2, 2012.
24. Hamilton, Angus. Afghanistan. William Heinemann, London. 1906.
25. Hopkirk, Peter. The Great Game: on secret service in High Asia. John Murray, London. 1990.
26. Hosain, Mohammad. A few phases of the Afghans in Jullundur Busties. 1938.
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29. Jalal, Ayesha. Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. 2008.
30. Jan, Abid Ullah. Afghanistan: the genesis of the final crusade. Pragmatic Publication. Ottawa. 2006.
31. Journals and diaries of the Assistants to the Agent, Governor-General North West Frontier and Resident at Lahore 1846-1849. First edition 1911. Reprint Sang-e-Meel. 2006.
32. Khan, Mohammad Hosain. A few phases of the Afghans in Jullundur Basties. 1938.
33. Khan, Wajahat S. The other guy’s endgame—Part I. Friday Times. Jan27/Feb-2, 2012.
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35. Krasmer, D Stephen. Getting tough with Pakistan. Foreign Affairs. January/February. 2012.
36. Kroernig, Matthew. Foreign Affairs. January/February. 2012.
37. Lahood, Nelly. The jihadis’ path to self-destruction. Hurst & Co. London.2010.
38. Lieven, Anatal. Pakistan a hard country. Allen Lane, UK. 2011.
39. Matinuddin, Kamal. Power struggle in the Hindukush Afghanistan (1978-1991). Services Book Club, Lahore. 1991.
40. Mir, Amir. Talibanisation of Pakistan. Pentagon Security International, New Delhi. 2009.
41. Murray, Hallan AH. The high-road of Empire. John Murray, London. 1905.
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43. Nichols, Robert. Settling the Frontier: land, law and society in the Peshawar Valley, 1500-1900. Oxford University Press. 2001.
44. Obhrai, Divan Chand. The evolution of North-West Frontier Province. First published 1938. Reprint Saeed Book Bank, Peshawar, 1983.
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48. Rashid, Ahmed. Decent into chaos. Allen Lane, UK. 2008.
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50. Ridedel, Milton A. In search for Al Qaeda: its leadership and future. Vanguard Books, Lahore. 2009.
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53. Schofield, Victoria. Afghan frontier: feuding and fighting in Central Asia. Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London. 2003.
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56. Stabilising Afghanistan: regional perspective and prospects. Edited by Maqsudat, Hassan Nuri, Mohammad Munir and Aftab Hussain. Islamabad Policy Research Institute. Hanns Seidel Foundation. 2011
57. Steven, Coll. Ghost Wars. Penguin Books. 2004.
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60. Tanner, Stephen. Afghanistan: a military history from Alexander the Great to the fall of Taliban. Oxford University Press, London. 2002.
61. The Second Afghan War: 1878-80. Complied by Charles Metcalfe MacGregor and India Army Intelligence Branch. Army Education Press. 1975.
62. Thomas, Lowell. Beyond Khyber Pass. Hutchinson & Co., London. 1920s.
63. Warren, Alan. Waziristan, the Fiqir of Ipi, and Indian army- the North West Frontier Revolt of 1936-37. Oxford University Press, Karachi. 2000.
64. Wylly, HC. From the Black Mountain to Waziristan. Macmillan and Co., Ltd. London. 1912.
65. Yate, AC. Travels with the Afghan Boundary Commission. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh. 1886
66. Zaeef, Abdul Salam. My life with the Taliban. Hachette, India. 2010.

Appendix

Chronological Table of North West Frontier Campaigns (Barthorp, Michael, 2002).

By Stephen Magagnini for The Sacremento Bee

KARACHI, Pakistan — On a moonlit Thursday night in February, a television network executive hosted an elegant affair for journalists and diplomats at his villa above the Arabian Sea.

Karachi’s privileged dined on lamb, shrimp, chicken, mutton and fettuccine in mushroom sauce, and were surprised by a quartet of wandering minstrels, soulful Sufi poets who serenade for their supper, uncorking ballads about love.

On the south side of this city of 18 million, a group of Afghan refugees, who scrape out a living collecting cardboard and other recyclables in a slum straddling a swamp of open sewage, were mopping up gravy with roti – Pakistani bread.

About 900 Afghans live in this fetid slum, down the street from poor Pakistanis and water buffalo. They earn about $60 a month and survive on bottled water, chewing tobacco and roti.

“We’re happy in Pakistan,” said 33-year-old Shaezhad, leader of a cardboard collection station. “We get food and respect.”

At the party across town, talk-show hosts and other Pakistani elites blew cigarette smoke into the faces of U.S. journalists, criticizing U.S. foreign policy and the toll the war in Afghanistan has taken on their country.

Many Pakistanis resent American aggression in the region and want more respect from U.S. policymakers, but they don’t hold individual Americans responsible. Yet everywhere we went, we were held to answer for U.S. wars and Americans’ deep misunderstanding of Pakistan.

“You are arrogant, playing video games with our lives,” Abdul Moiz Jaferii, political analyst for CNBC Pakistan, said over lunch one day in Karachi. He was referring to U.S. drone attacks that have killed Pakistani and Afghan civilians.

“And we hate America because the U.S. has always been the biggest, closest ally of the military dictators. You have done nothing to help democracy.”

The impact of the war in Afghanistan has permeated nearly every pore of this country of 180 million. More than 2 million Afghan refugees have fled to Pakistan, and some have brought a culture of violence. Since 9/11, 35,000 Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist attacks by suicide bombers and other war-related violence, according to Pakistan’s intelligence agency. The victims include 6,000 soldiers and 29,000 civilians.

The unpredictable violence and the kidnapping of foreign workers have created a climate of fear in this country. We weren’t allowed to visit villages outside urban areas, where 40 percent of Pakistanis live. Two shotgun-wielding security guards protected our buses in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. We entered our hotels through metal detectors and were rarely allowed to interact with average citizens in public places.

Pakistan – strategically located between Afghanistan, India, China and Iran and influenced by Saudi Arabia – remains an enigma to many Americans, who aren’t sure whether it’s friend or foe, democracy or military dictatorship.

Pakistan has provided critical support to NATO troops in the Afghan war – drones are launched from here, NATO supplies are sent through this country, and Pakistani troops have helped recapture terrorist strongholds along the volatile Afghan border.

But distrust of the United States in the wake of deadly drone attacks and the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border battle in November is such that rather than calling for more U.S. aid to build needed power plants, schools and hospitals, a growing number of Pakistanis want nothing to do with the United States. The government of Punjab – Pakistan’s most powerful state with about 90 million people – has decided to reject U.S. aid.

The killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy SEALs in Abbottabad in the heart of this country embarrassed and angered the Pakistan military and made Americans question why bin Laden was allowed to live in essentially a resort town. Some U.S. politicians have called for an end to the $18 billion in financial aid pledged since 9/11.

An Islamic republic?

Some of the world’s largest, most beautiful mosques are here, and to celebrate the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday on Feb. 4, 10,000 people named Muhammad gathered in prayer in Karachi.

We saw few women wearing hijabs, or head coverings, except those at Islamabad’s Faisal Mosque, which can hold 10,000 people for Juma, or Friday prayer.

Professional women drive cars, dress like their counterparts in U.S. cities and run government ministries, clinics and newsrooms. Women, who constitute 52 percent of the population, are increasingly getting advanced degrees. There’s a Pakistani proverb: “Every girl who goes to university gets a husband.”

Despite Islam’s ban on liquor, at a party in Islamabad guests of both sexes repaired to a speakeasy in the basement to drink wine or Johnny Walker Black and smoke cigars.

Though most marriages are still arranged, as many as 20 percent are “love marriages,” said Samina Parvez, director general of the government’s external publicity agency. “The divorce rate is also increasing – it’s about 10 or 15 percent,” Parvez said. “The majority of us are not practicing Muslims.”

Kamoran Sani, sales and marketing director for the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi, declared, “What you’ve heard about the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s a big farce. There are orgies, voyeurs’ lounges, raves.”

A diverse nation

Pakistan didn’t become a nation until the British sliced India into Muslim and Hindu majority states in 1947. Pakistan – an Urdu acronym for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh province and Baluchistan (“stan” means nation) – varies wildly from region to region.

“There is no such thing as Pakistan,” Jaferii said. “First comes your family, then your clan, third your region, fourth your province – the nation comes a distant fifth.”

Much of rural Pakistan is a feudal society dating back to the 13th century. Mullahs, or religious leaders, still invoke blasphemy laws exacting punishment against those accused of insulting Islam. Last year, the governor of Punjab was killed by his bodyguard for criticizing the law as he sought a pardon for a Christian woman sentenced to death.

But Pakistan has tremendous religious and ethnic diversity. Muslims include Sunnis, Shiites, Ismaelis, Ahmadis and Sufis – each practicing their own brand of Islam. At Lahore University of Management Sciences, I chatted with Muslims, Hindus and Christians who were all friends.

From the Sufi love poems to Pashtun folk songs about social justice, music plays a key role in Pakistani identity.

In the center of Karachi there’s a Catholic church – St. Patrick’s Cathedral, built by the Jesuits in 1931. There’s a Jewish cemetery. Sikhs worship throughout Pakistan. The ancient city of Taxila was occupied by Alexander the Great and reflects Persian, Moghul, Buddhist and Christian traditions.

Pakistan’s future

Sixty percent of Pakistan’s population is under age 30; half is under age 20. Half the kids haven’t been to school, and fifth-grade students are reading at a second-grade level, said Nadeem ul-Haq, deputy chairman of the government’s planning commission.

“We have 2 million kids a year entering the labor force. What are these kids going to do?” ul-Haq said. There is no building boom to provide jobs, and foreign investments have been scared away by terrorism.

“Entrepreneurship is the key thing we need to focus on,” he said. “Overseas Pakistanis have been very entrepreneurial, sending back $13 billion a year to their poorer relatives.”

From 7-Elevens to Silicon Valley firms and venture capital funds, ex-pat Pakistanis are thriving in the United States. The 500,000 Pakistanis in the United States, including 100,000 in California, send $100 million a year to charities in Pakistan, said Ahson Rabbani, CEO of I-Care, which connects donors with 30 nonprofits.

In Northern California, Pakistanis raised more than $100,000 for Pakistani flood relief efforts spearheaded by cricket star Imran Khan, who may lead the country if his party wins the next election. Khan has gained credibility by building a cancer hospital for the poor in honor of his late mother. His party includes a women’s wing that has direct access to him.

Philanthropy is playing a growing role in Pakistan, financing schools in poor villages and slums. The Citizens Foundation is educating 100,000 students.

“I mentored six girls,” said Karachi journalist Samia Saleem. “One was 13 and said she didn’t want to get married – she wants to be a teacher.”

Ali Shah Haider, 17, wants to be a commercial pilot. “I sleep from 2 p.m. until 4:30 p.m., then go to work at the textile factory from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. to support my family – there are 12 of us. I do my homework between shifts.”

A nation’s dreams

Though life seems cheap in Pakistan, the people are upbeat survivors who often describe life as bo hat acha, which means “great!” in Urdu, their main language.

Last year 1,575 people were killed in Karachi, where 2 million weapons are in circulation, said Francisco Quinones of Arcis International Security. A doctor was killed in Karachi the day before we landed. Violence has been blamed on the Taliban, rival political gangs, Sunni and Shia militants, rogue security forces, and Afghan refugees.

Some refugees have been recruited by the Taliban. Others like Shaezhad, who collects recyclables in the slums of Karachi, are glad to be alive under the green and white crescent flag of this country.

Still, he wants to go home to Afghanistan. “We want our land back, we want to live with respect and we want employment.”

Azhar Abbas, the managing director of Geo TV news who hosted the party in Karachi, said that “democracy is taking hold” in his Pakistan despite the violence many here believe followed the U.S. war on terror.

The business editor of daily newspaper the News, Amir Zia, said the United States can still play a positive role in Pakistan. “If Americans pull out without getting the job done, the Islamic extremists will say it’s a victory and will become much more organized.”

But at the National Defense University, business and technology expert Bilal Munshi called Pakistan “a psychologically scarred nation suffering from a mass form of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).”

If the 4 million young people entering the workforce each year get jobs, “we will be a power … but if they don’t see a future they’re going to pick up the gun, and you’re going to be in real trouble.”

The U.S. can help develop Pakistani schools, Bilal said, “but don’t interfere in our internal affairs – let us do things our way.”

Filed under: Afghanistan, American Muslims, Democracy, England, India, Muslims, Nuclear, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pakistan Cricket, Pakistani Taliban, Pakistanis, President Obama, Saudi Arabia, Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban, terrorism, US Army, US-Pakistan Relations Tagged: Afghan Refugees, Afghanistan, Alexander the Great, Citizens Foundation, Geo Tv, Imran Khan, Karachi, Moghul, NATO, Overseas Pakistanis, Pakistan, Pakistani Americans, Pakistanis, Pashtun, Persian, Punjab, Sikhs, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Taliban, Taxila, United States, Urdu, US-Pakistani relations

Testimony of Mansoor Ijaz in London

NADEEM MALIK

OPENING STATEMENT UNDER OATH

I, Musawer Mansoor Ijaz (Ijaz), a citizen of the United States of America, do hereby solemnly swear that the testimony I present in this Witness Statement on oath to the Honourable Commission (the Commission)is the truth as I know it to have occurred based on the evidence in my possession and to the best of my recollection where physical or documentary evidence is not available in reference to the subject matter of this inquiry (the Inquiry).

I submit my testimony as a first person witness to the events herein. I appear in front of this Commission to present the physical evidence in my possession and to allow such evidence as I have to be forensically tested in any manner chosen by competent, independent and unbiased experts retained by the Commission so that the authenticity of these data can be ascertained with certainty. I duly submit this Witness Statement to the Commission as a private citizen of the United States, born in the State of Florida in the year 1961, and bound only by the laws of the United States of America. I state for the record that my loyalties are first and foremost to the national interests of my country of birth. I do not now nor have I ever served in any official position in the US government. I act at the behest of no person in government, outside of government, in any foreign country or in the United States of America.

CONTACT WITH PAKISTAN OFFICIALS

While I maintain high-level political and military/intelligence contacts in nearly two dozen countries around the world, during the past decade, I have had no contact with any Pakistani government official, civilian, judicial, military or intelligence with the following four exceptions (Amb. Haqqani excluded):

(a)2003 when I last interacted with the former director general of Inter-Services Intelligence, Gen. Ehsan ul-Haq, shortly before he left the DG-ISI position in 2004; and,

(b)Nov. 2005 when my wife and I visited the prime minister of Pakistan and some military officers during and after our trip to Kashmir as the earthquake reconstruction period began; and,

(c)May 5, 2009 when I met with President Asif Ali Zardari for 45-50 minutes at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington DC at the invitation of Amb. Haqqani(Haqqani)to brief the president shortly before he met with US officials at the White House; and,

(d)Oct. 22, 2011 when I met alone with Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the current DG-ISI, a this request for approximately four hours in London to provide him with the same accounting of facts I provide to the Commission herein.

CONTACT WITH HAQQANI

Over the past decade, I have maintained regular contact with Haqqani through e-mail, BlackBerry chat exchanges, SMS, in-person meetings and telephonic discussions. Often, after the 9-11 attacks, when I was not available for media appearances due to calendar conflicts, I would refer producers to Haqqani as a qualified expert on Pakistan affairs. Haqqani was helpful

and supportive in other important matters, including speaking at one of my charity’s annual

fundraising dinners in June 2009 (please see Exhibit-A for examples of our communications).From the day Haqqani assumed his ambassadorship role, I had no involvement in his Congressional or White House lobbying efforts, no role in his development of the Pakistani-American community or any other aspect of his role as ambassador other than assisting in the ways we were able to after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.

At no time during Haqqani’s ambassadorial tenure have I lobbied anyone for Pakistan, acted as an agent of the Pakistani government or represented any foreign interest lobbying for a particular outcome. I acted in this matter purely as a friend in my private capacity trying to assist Haqqani in communicating his message in ways that only he dictated, characterized and gave authority for, not in any way to be construed as diplomatic or official activity. Other than as disclosed above, I maintain no active relationships of any type electronic, e-mail contact, telephonic contact, BlackBerry messenger contact or SMS contact with anyone living in Pakistan. I have no close relatives living or alive in Pakistan. I have no business interests in Pakistan. I have no political interests in Pakistan. I have never been involved in any political party, political organization or given a single political contribution in Pakistan to any candidate for high office, or sitting elected official. In short, I have no material ties to Pakistan other than my birth parents.

EVENTS OF MAY 9, 2011 UNTIL MAY 12, 2011

The events I describe herein are a factual recantation of my interactions with Haqqani on the dates of May 9th, May 10th, May 11th and May 12th of 2011, and then again starting on October10, 2011, the date on which an opinion piece I authored was published in the Financial Times entitled “Time to take on Pakistan’s jihadist spies.”

The text of this opinion article has already been entered into the record on the date of the Court’s Order.

I had further material interactions with Haqqani on October 28, 2011 and November 1, 2011. At no time did I meet Haqqani in person. All communications were electronic / telephonic.

The events of the three and a half days in May will be summarized in Tabular form in order to show the type of communication (telephone, e-mail, BlackBerry chat, PIN message and handwritten notes), a brief description of each type of communication, and where a communication was evidenced by physical documentation or electronic messages those are attached hereto as labeled exhibits. My recollections of the discussions in telephone calls a replaced in quotations where attributed to Haqqani. Where the dialogue uses coded words or phraseology that may not be apparently clear to the Court, I have put annotations to explain what was intended by the language used.

RESERVATION NOTICE

I reserve the right to amend this Witness Statement at a future date once forensic examination of my electronic BlackBerry device is complete. There are certain messages (PIN, SMS, etc) that may be archived in backup volumes that I am presently unaware of, having not seen any of those messages since June 2011 when the last monthly backup was made. I have chosen not to retrieve these messages from my computer hard drives which normally roll off after a thirty (30) day period in the device until a certificate that my BlackBerry device has not been tampered with and contains original data in it can be provided. The backup data will only be reviewed once the forensic examination is complete. I would also ask the Commission’s permission to spend about20-30 minutes in explaining how BlackBerry handsets work and why the knowledge of BB operations are so critical to the analysis of data in this matter. Finally, certain Explanation comments that I have noted are for “In Camera” hear in gs only because the disclosures are not appropriate for this statement that can be viewed by others. Please note in the tabular formats set forth below, line numbered for convenience, the following legend: BBM = BlackBerry Messenger chat exchange SMS = Short Message exchangeE-M = E-MAIL sent or received CALL = Telephone OUT to recipient or received IN (numbers withheld for “In Camera” briefing)

TBA = To Be Announced (for those messages referenced but held on backup hard drives)All dates are shown in MONTH/DAY/YEAR format. All times given are Central European Time (CET) in military time format.

HAQQANI BLACKBERRY PIN NUMBERS

I submit for the Commission’s records the two PIN numbers that are unique in the BlackBerry system of communications that were used by Haqqani during our communications by BBM Messenger. The first one, 2326A31D, was used in May. The second, 287EF1E9, was used in the October and November exchanges up until at least November 5th or 6th when I noticed he had disabled me as a BBM contact. I wish to additionally inform the Commission that in the intervening weeks since Haqqani once again changed his BlackBerry PIN, I have been informed

by two important official sources (whom I shall identify “In Camera”) that attempts may have

been or are being made to manipulate, erase, delete or otherwise distort data in the electronic devices of Haqqani that could confirm the data I have provided herein as fact. Additionally, it may be noted by the Commission that both the Interior Minister of Pakistan as well as Haqqani have confirmed that some form of electronic messaging and commstook place with me. Yet Haqqani continues to deny the entirety of any exchanges, for example, as those set forth in this Statement. So which is it? Did he communicate with me or not? If so, where is that data and who has access to it today?

TELEPHONE CALL SUMMARIES

CALL #1

–

05/09/2011 IJAZ TO HAQQANI

–

12:35:49

–

DURATION 16:03

I called Haqqani at the London Intercontinental Hotel, Room 430 as he had requested a few minutes earlier by BlackBerry messenger. We had not spoken by telephone for some time, so we briefly exchanged pleasantries. I asked him what he was doing in London he simply said it was a private visit and moved on to the subject matter at hand. There was an elevated stress in his voice. He spoke rapidly, almost randomly at times. Several times I had to ask him during the call to slow down so I could get the notes down from what he was trying to tell me. He explained that the bin Laden raid had created severe stresses between the army/intelligence organs of Pakistan and the civilian branch of government. Referencing some meeting that had

taken place “72 hours ago” between the army chief, the prime minister and the president, he said there was a “collective jute chalak y” [my spelling phonetically because I do not know what these words mean as my
Urdu is quite rudimentary] between the army and ISI to pin the blame of the bin Laden failure on President Zardari’s administration.

He said the US and British were “beating the shit out of us” to get information in the raid’s aftermath about how bin Laden had been on Pakistani soil for so long. He said in clear words that I wrote on my notepad as he said them, “the Army wants to bring the government down”. He then said he needed my help.

I asked in which sense and he informed me that it was urgent to get a message verbally to “the Americans” that the Obama administration needed to back the army down. He said this was a “1971 moment” a reference I did not understand at all at the time he first made it and had to ask him at the end of the call to clarify for me because he repeatedly referred to this phrase during the call. He then immediately stated his preference for the right person to give this as yet undefined verbal message to was Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the US joints chiefs of staff because (a) he was one of the few people who Gen. Kayani would listen to and (b) he was about to chair a meeting with a Pakistani delegation a two days later in Washington (Wednesday, May 11, 2011).I informed him that I did not know Adm. Mullen. I asked him why he needed me to do this for him when he had so many other ways to do it and he said in his official position, it was impossible to get such a message to the Americans without risking the possibility of detection by

ISI or the military officers he had around him at the embassy in DC. He said I was “plausibly deniable” as a conduit and that no one would ever believe if this got public in those days he had come to me for such kind of help. I made it clear that I had long ago given up the role of a back-channel communicator and that I would do it for him as a friend only if I could get someone on the US side to agree to deliver a message to Adm Mullen in the timeframe Haqqani had requested.

I then asked him whose authority he was acting on behalf of. He was vague. Not evasive, just vague. He said there was a like-minded group of people in Islamabad that would be brought on board by “the boss” a reference I understood to mean President Asif Ali Zardari as the new national security team once tensions had dissipated. He mentioned two names I recognized (Jehangir Karamat and Mahmud Durrani) but added that they would be approached once this was all over a point I took to mean they were unaware of this operation in advance. I then asked him what the message was that he wanted delivered and by when exactly it had to be in Mullen’s hands. He dictated a series of points to me, many of which are contained on the two pages of handwritten notes, and the rest were typed into a blank e-mail template at the point I asked him to pause because I couldn’t keep handwritten pace with his verbal speed while holding the phone to my ear at the same time. The balance of notes, typewritten into the blank e-mail template, ultimately became the basis of the first draft of the written memorandum that I sent him at 18:32 on May 9, 2011. The handwritten notes are explained further under EXHIBIT B explanations. We concluded the 16-minute phone call by agreeing to use certain coded words in our BBM chat exchanges during the following two days until the effort was concluded. These are enumerated as each chat took place in the “Explanation” column of Table 1

CALL #2

05/09/2011 IJAZ TO GEN. JONES

12:58:06

DURATION 02:25

I called Gen. Jones at home. His wife picked up and said he was jogging. I explained the importance. As I rarely called at home that early in the morning, she understood it was important and said she would get in touch with him while he was running and get him to call me back in about an hour when he was in. I gave her a brief overview that the matter had to do with a rapidly devolving situation on the ground in Pakistan and that I had been asked to get an urgent message into a senior administration official. I did not go into details. I did not give names.

CALL #3

05/09/2011 IJAZ TO LAWYER #1

13:01:27

DURATION 04:47

As a parallel track, I immediately called my outside counsel, whose name I am withholding pending an “In Camera” hearing on this matter, in Washington DC he is a former senior government official from the administration of Pres. George H W Bush working at one of Washington’s most prominent and largest law firms. I called him because I knew he had a wide array of contacts available for us to explore how else we might approach Adm. Mullen if I was unable to persuade Gen. Jones to pass the message on. I explained the situation at hand inoutline form only. I explained under attorney-client privilege that Haqqani had asked me to assist him, that the tone of my earlier discussion with Haqqani indicated to me that something serious was amiss in Islamabad and that if we could help we should. His principal concern was under whose authority such a sensitive message was being delivered. I explained that Haqqani generally enjoyed the complete confidence of the president in Pakistan, and that I understood the impetus for this operation was coming from Pres. Zardari in the broader sense, if not operationally. He told me there were two options available to us through the law firm, one a senior US political figure now in private life and the other an acting officer of the US government who knew Adm. Mullen well. He told me he would get in touch with both andreport back to me later in the day (it was 7am in Washington at the time I reached him)

CALL #4

05/09/2011 GEN. JONES TO IJAZ

13:54:31

DURATION 19:26

Gen. Jones called me back from his private cell number around 8am his time in Virginia. I recapped the entire Haqqani call (please see summary of Call #1 for details). His first reaction was to say he didn’t particularly trust Pakistani officials (generally, not specifically), and that in his experience through government work with them, they often made verbal promises that they didn’t keep. He said he would not consider taking any message to Adm. Mullen if it wasn’t in writing. Gen. Jones also insisted on having higher political authority than Haqqani, whom he had grown to be somewhat skeptical of over time, if and when he decided to go ahead. We went through the points Haqqani wanted relayed, which took the bulk of the time on the call. He commented that while compelling, it sounded like an opposition group’s agenda. I made clear that it was morelike a change of players under a sitting head of state whose new ground rules and agenda were so diametrically different than the old that it (Haqqani’s desired message) could give off that impression. I gave Jones some background on my relationship with Haqqani and told him that Haqqani would never have come to me if it wasn’t serious because of my past tensions with the senior leaders of Pakistan, no matter whether military, intelligence, political of any party persuasion.

Jones’s skepticism remained throughout the call, but in the final analysis he said he would do it as a favor for me if I could get the message to him in writing with the appropriate political authority. We agreed to be in touch later in the day once I had gotten Haqqani on board with the NO VERBAL, ONLY WRITTEN demand and I had further explained to Haqqani that Jones wanted certain knowledge of the appropriate political authority and consent for this operation before delivering the message to Adm. Mullen.

CALL #5

05/09/2011 HAQQANI TO IJAZ

18:28:45

DURATION 02:34

During this call, I informed Haqqani that one of the three choices on the US side was insisting onhaving the message in writing, with higher political authority than Haqqani alone, to go forward. I informed him that I had taken the precautionary step, given the tight time constraints, to prepare a written draft based on the notes I took in the first call and that I had tried to reach him earlier in the day to let him know about the in-writing constraint. He agreed and told me to send him the draft in writing for his review. I then asked him to clarify what he meant by “discipline” in the nuclear program a point he had made in the written notes earlier and whether the point he made about US Vice President Biden on the “blank sheet” agreement on nukes and Kashmir should be included in the preamble paragraphs. He said no. I also asked him whether he wanted names included in the paragraph mentioning the new national security team he said no. Finally, I asked him whether he wanted any characterization of the army chief, prime minister, president’s meeting included this is when he gave me the information about the CIA station chief’s name being outed and the phraseology about “no central control being in place” as a result of the stresses in Islamabad during the previous days.After inserting a few of the necessary comments into the e-mail draft, I sent the draft to Haqqaniat 18:32. We closed the call by noting my mail to him would come in a few minutes as well as the message’s delivery timing and logistics.

CALL #6

05/09/2011 LAWYER #1 TO IJAZ

23:49:10 & 23:55:21

DURATION 05:28 & 09:58

During these two calls

the first with my outside general counsel, the second a conf call with a third party, we explored the requirements posed by two other possible candidates to deliver the message to Adm. Mullen. My counsel informed me that he had reached a close aide of the active US government officer who knew Adm. Mullen well, and that he wanted to have a conference call with me to listen to how we wanted to do this and what the US official wanted from us as performance parameters before agreeing to our request. We then agreed that the US political personality was out due to slow response. We followed up this call with a 10-minute conference call with the US official’s trusted friend.

We discussed two possibilities the first was to have the US official arrange a private meeting between myself and Adm. Mullen so I could deliver a verbal message as Haqqani had initially preferred. This approach had two problems

I was a nine hour airplane ride away from Washington and there simply wasn’t enough time to match Adm. Mullen’s busy schedule with my getting in the air before the Wed. meeting was to have taken place. The second problem was my personal hesitation to carry a verbal message given what Gen. Jones had told me in his first call about the unreliability of Pakistani officials saying one thing and doing another. The second possibility discussed was for us to have the US official deliver the message, in writing, to Adm. Mullen. This posed two different challenges the US official was unwilling to do it as a “non paper” (a message delivered in writing on paper without signature or letterhead between governments). He insisted on the message being on letterhead with appropriate signature. This conference call made it clear that the 2nd potential US interlocutor was simply not the right solution.

CALL #7

05/10/2011 HAQQANI TO IJAZ

00:30:55

DURATION 01:17

I informed Haqqani that two of the three options for transmission were out, why they were out

and that in order to proceed with the third option I needed him to confirm the memo’s draft form

or send me his changes, and I needed his confirmation that he had the Pakistani government’s highest political authority to proceed. He said he would review the memo during the night. On authority, he said something like “don’t worry about that, I’ve got it sorted out with the boss.”

Haqqani also quickly informed me at the end of the conversation that I needed to remove Point 6on the list because it was already agreed by the Pakistani authorities in the intervening hours since we had last spoken.

CALL #8

05/10/2011 IJAZ TO GEN. JONES

00:33:05

DURATION 01:39

I called Gen. Jones immediately to say that he would transmit the message, that I had confirmation from Haqqani of his authority to proceed from the highest political level and that I would be sending the memorandum over shortly with a request that he hold on to it until I had Haqqani’s final word in the morning (Tue, 10 May). I told Gen. Jones that given the fluidity of events on the ground, it was best that he waited until at least midday on Tuesday before puttingthe Memo in Adm. Mullen’s hands. I recall asking him whether he preferred WORD.DOC files or .PDF files for printing purposes and I sent him both types of files later in the night so that if there were last minute changes and I was not in front of a computer, he could make the necessary changes himself with me giving him Haqqani’s changes by telephone.

CALL #9

05/10/2011 IJAZ TO HAQQANI

09:06:16

DURATION 11:16

During this call on the morning of May 10th, I asked Haqqani if he had any last minute changes to the Memorandum, and then informed him that I had sent it to the US interlocutor earlier in the night so that if there were no changes, we were ready to deliver to Mullen later that day, before Haqqani had planned to leave London .We went through the architecture of the Memo, focusing this time on the opening paragraph and confirming the new signature paragraph (from whom did this document come) that had been added in. We reviewed briefly the six agenda points.I then asked him one last time to confirm he had the authority from the highest political level to proceed with the operation because Gen. Jones (who remained anonymous to Haqqani) would not proceed without that understanding from me and he said, “I’ve got the boss’s approval; go ahead”. I told him we would n

eed to wait until just after lunchtime for me to reach the US interlocutor and give the final delivery instruction.We discussed briefly his schedule for return to the US and next contact time, and when I wouldbe given the time of the Wednesday meeting with Mullen.

CALL #10

05/12/2011 IJAZ TO HAQQANI

01:09 ON MMI US CELL

DURATION 04:00

Haqqani informed me about the results of the meeting with Mullen. He said a “call will go outfrom Washington to Pindi [Rawalpindi?] tonight.” and that he was sa

tisfied the intervention hadworked. We clarified the M remark in my BBMs, he thanked me and the call ended.

RATIONALE FOR WRITING THE Financial Times ARTICLE

Much confusion has been introduced by media analysts, critics and supporters alike about the motivations and agendas that may have led me to publish the initial FT article on October 10,2011. I state for the record that there was no external impetus given to me to write the initial article, neither from any individual, nor from any governmental body US or foreign nor anyother source in any manner whatsoever. Since 1996, when I published my first article in The Wall Street Journal, I have published over 125 opinion pieces in only the most reputable journals and newspapers around the world, and have appeared extensively on television and radio as ananalyst regarding political, security and business issues. I have also had numerous articles written about my citizen diplomacy initiatives in Sudan, Kashmir, Pakistan and elsewhere.In recent years, I have reduced my writings dramatically, writing only a few times a year when a major political or geopolitical event takes place that bears consequence on subject matters thatinterest me. Pakistan generally, and more specifically the struggle to bring a secure and stable democracy to the fore without hidden agendas, corrupt practices and the venality that is so often present in modern day Pakistani rulers military and civilian alike is a major topic on which I have written often in the past. If the Commission so wishes, I am happy to provide a full reference list for my past writings on Pakistan.

I further state for the record that my sole motivation in writing the Oct. 10th FT article was to enunciate a policy prescription I believed was in the best national security interests of the United States about how best to deal with Directorate S of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The impetus for the article, which I drafted the first thoughts for on 24 September 2011, arose from testimony offered by Adm. Mullen in his final appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee in which he called the Haqqani network of terrorists a “veritable arm” of the ISI, among other very strong comments.

The reaction in Pakistan’s media to Adm. Mullen’s statement was immediate, and as it has been in my case under the glare of the Mullen Memorandum controversy, was shrill and unabashed in lambasting a high-ranking military officer of the United States who served our country honorably for 43 years. While Adm. Mullen needed no defense from my writings, I felt it was important for US policymakers to know that an effort which involved Adm. Mullen himself back in May had been made to reign in Directorate S of ISI, and it so happened that to source this material for my

opinion piece, I referenced the memorandum as the “peg”

as it is called in journalism to base my opinions on. There was no malicious intent involved in bringing the memorandum into the opening paragraph. The description I gave was the bare minimum of facts that were needed in order to give my opinion piece the authenticity it required for the policy prescription to be given any weight. I had written more or less exactly the same opinion article on June 2, 2011 for Newsweek / Daily Beast Company

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-06-02/pakistans-isi-spy-agency-s-wing-and-terrorism/

after learning of the death of Saleem Shahzad, without material effect in the inquiry of my arguments. Clearly, introducing the memorandum into the FT opinion article strengthened the argument because it gave it the needed authenticity. Editors at the FT who normally evaluate my opinion columns for publication have tended in the past to choose those articles of mine that begin with some historical anecdote to anchor the article’s policy prescriptions and opinions. This article was no different, other than the anecdote was in the form of a “first person” analysis.

If the Commission so requests, I will make available my internal correspondence with the FT editors to provide evidence of this fact. I would like to note, for the Commission’s interest, that Haqqani sent me the following BBMchat on June 4, 2011 to which I responded and he then wrote a reply please see the following screen shots:

I apologize to the Commission for the frank exchange of language between Haqqani and myself, but this is evidence of the type of relationship we shared together. Message time-stamped 02:18was first message from Haqqani. I replied the next day. Message in second screen time-stamped18:05 was his reply. One final point of note on this subject matter: some sections of the media have questioned why it took so long for the opinion piece to be published in the FT from the date of Adm. Mullen’s

statement. As you are most certainly aware, FT is a financial newspaper whose editorial pages are reserved primarily for finance discussions, not matters of security and foreign policy. As Europe has been engulfed in perhaps the most important financial crisis it has suffered since the introduction of the Euro, the Eurozone crisis dominated the editorial pages of the FT for those weeks, and my opinion article which dealt with matters much further away and unrelated to the major editorial thrust, simply was placed on a date that was convenient to the FT’s editorial calendar. I had no control over that decision and again, at the Commission’s request, I amprepared to make my internal communications with the editors available in this specific regard.

EVENTS OF NOTE AFTER THE Financial Times

ARTICLE APPEARS

Haqqani sent me a BlackBerry message around 21:50 GMT on the evening of October 10, 2011, shortly after my opinion article had been published on the FT’s website. It read: “This FT op-ed of yours is a disaster”. Before I had a chance to see it and respond, he telephoned me at 21:57GMT in a somewhat panicked voice, reiterating what he had just said by BBM message and then asking me whether there were any other “senior Pakistani diplomats” I knew in Islamabad that he could name to throw the “press hounds of my scent”. I responded by querying why the op-ed was such an issue for him and what he was so upset about. He replied simply by saying everyone would now assume it was he who was the brainchild of the Memorandum and that I understood nothing about Pakistan’s domestic situation. It was a short call lasting only 00:45.

At the time of this writing, I do not yet have the hard copy details of my October telephone bills to give the exact time and date of the second call I received from Haqqani

it was about 5 or 6days before I met with Gen. Shuja Pasha in London. My recollection of that call is as follows: Haqqani called to inform me he had just learned that Gen. Pasha was coming to London. I expressed disinterest and lack of knowledge. He expressed some anxiety over my disinterest and said something to the effect of “what’s going on here” a clear reference to his skepticism of my disinterest. He did not ask once during that call whether I had been approached to see Gen. Pasha. His only concern was whether Gen. Pasha would be meeting with the FT editors in London, whether I knew anything about it and whether I would do him the favor of intervening with the FT editors to insure they did not provide Gen. Pasha with a copy of the Memorandum or any other evidence that I had provided the editors when I wrote the opinion piece. I responded by again asking him, as I had on the night of May 10, 2011, why he was so paranoid about the Memorandum and whether we had done something wrong in delivering it to Adm. Mullen. His response was to simply reiterate that I understood nothing about Pakistan’s domestic political situation and that there were some who would say Haqqani “was playing for your [U.S.A.] side” if the content of the Memorandum was revealed in public. I told him that I did not believe the FT editors would take a meeting with Gen. Pasha without a lot of advance work being done about purpose, etc and the call ended.

SUMMARY OVERVIEW OF MEETING WITH DG-ISI LT. GEN. SHUJA PASHA

I was contacted by a person, whose real name I do not know to this day, on or about the 16th of October to see whether I would be willing to meet with Gen. Pasha. I inquired purpose and proposed location. Purpose: to determine the truthful facts surrounding the content of the Memorandum and its genesis (authorship, operational details of the effort to get it delivered to Adm. Mullen, etc). Location: London was the most convenient location for both of us to meet. After discussing the implications of such a meeting going ahead with my in-house legal counsel and my family, I agreed to take the meeting. We met on the evening of 22nd October in London at the Park Lane Intercontinental Hotel, Room210, from approximately 1830hrs until 2230hrs, according to my records. There was one person

I believe the logistics manager of the meeting with Gen. Pasha when I was shown into the room by a member of his security detail and that person shook hands with me and left the room promptly.

I brought my electronic devices and a notepad to the meeting. We both agreed to take batteries out of our telephones while we spoke. The telephones were stored in a drawer near the table we sat at. Gen. Pasha brought a notepad as well. After being seated face to face at a small dining table, Gen. Pasha opened the meeting by stating his purpose in asking to meet me. He made clear he was not there to interrogate but rather to understand with evidence supporting my statements what exactly had happened in the days in question. He made clear he was in London with the consent of the army chief, Gen. Kayani. He made clear he did not know who I was prior to the meeting, and had asked one of his researchers to prepare a dossier for his review. He asked me to give him my own summary of my background, partly to allow me to introduce myself, but also to separate fact from fiction in the dossier he held. Each comment I made was later backed up during the meeting by evidence I showed him on my computer about my background, life, family and businesses. I made clear to him at the outset of the meeting that I had agreed to the meeting on the basis that it was entirely possible in my mind given the adverse reactions Haqqani had shown me on the two telephone calls I had with him prior to this meeting that Haqqani did not properly inform the government of Pakistan of his activities, and that if anything he had done was against the laws of Pakistan, in violation of the Constitution of Pakistan or the rules of international diplomacy as agreed between the US and Pakistan, it was possible that myself, Gen. Jones and Adm. Mullen had become unwitting accessories to these possible wrongdoings. For that reason alone, whether I liked or disliked the ISI, whether I had written against it or the military or any other organ of the Pakistani state, I felt the responsibility to share the facts with him and to understand whether there was any possible wrongdoing on our part collectively as US citizens that had assisted Haqqani in transmitting the message to Adm. Mullen. I also made clear to Gen. Pasha that I did not want to personally be involved in any debriefing of

him that would lead to a disruption of the civilian government’s normal business he responded by making clear that it was his and Gen. Kayani’s deep desire to see a government complete its term, but that the rumors of what was contained in the Memorandum from a content perspective could simply not be ignored. On this basis, we agreed to start the meeting in good faith with him questioning openly without constraints and me answering in the most truthful and complete manner possible. He asked me about my relationship with Haqqani (length, frequency of contact, type of contact, etc). He queried me about my interactions with prior Pakistani ambassadors in the United States, as well as past political leaders (Bhutto, Sharif, Musharraf, etc). After my initial set of answers about 30 minutes into the meeting he went to the door of the room and informed the security person that “this is going to take a while”.

We then began the data debriefing. We went through the information that has been provided in this Witness Statement line by line so that I could explain what had happened in those three and a half days. He asked questions, at times looked a bit astonished at what he was seeing but at no time did he offer any assessment of the data other than to indicate that the records were “clear and convincing” evidence. We took the bulk of the four hour meeting to do the data debrief. In my recollection, Gen. Pasha read the Memorandum itself in about three or four minutes, demonstrated surprise and dismay at times disgust and disappointment over the content of the document. He did not ask a single question about the content of the document other than if I was willing to divulge the names of the others besides Haqqani that he had told me were to be part of the new national security team. I did so with the caveat that I did not believe either Karamat or Durrani knew anything about the plan to deliver the Memorandum, the contents of the Memorandum or the mindset of Haqqani and those behind him in dreaming up the scheme. At the point during the meeting where he learned of the three US people I had approached to deliver the Memorandum to Adm. Mullen, he asked me how I knew each of them, how well and to briefly summarize my requests of them in terms of why, who was involved, under what authority and in which modality such delivery might take place with each person. Intermittently during the data debrief, I would open my computer or my BlackBerry device and point out how the data was stored, transmitted, displayed, etc. He then carefully analyzed dates, times, “properties” of my Microsoft documents to see when the documents were created and how

they fit into the timeline I was stating, looked at the original telephone bill logs, checked the time at which each BBM message was sent or received and reviewed my handwritten notes. Contrary to media reports, at no time did Gen. Pasha try to send a BBM message to Haqqani from my handset. He recorded the PIN numbers that I had for Haqqani, both the old one and the new one Haqqani did not yet have the third PIN at that time that he would ultimately obtain. Gen. Pasha did ask to see how I stored e-mail addresses and to see the ones I had for Haqqani one from his private university mailbox (Boston Univ.) and one for official use at the embassy in Washington. There were no other issues relevant to this subject matter discussed during the meeting. It ended on a cordial note with Gen. Pasha thanking me for providing a clear record of events and asking if it was okay to follow up if other questions arose in the aftermath of his further investigation into the matter.

BBM CHAT EXCHANGES WITH HAQQANI ON 28 OCT 2011

approx 21:55 until 22:33 CET

Participants:Mansoor IJAZ, Husain HaqqaniMessages:

Husain Haqqani: you can keep saying you delivered a message and show bbm convos to prove it Husain Haqqani: Basically you don’t get itHusain Haqqani: You have given hardliners in Pak Mil reason to argue there

was an effort to get US to conspireagainst Pak MilHusain Haqqani: You are a US citizenHusain Haqqani: You are supposed to look after US interestsMansoor IJAZ: I wrote one article. Have not said one word on the record since then to anyone. I think your press isworking both sides against the middle, trying to force something out of anyone they can. Period. I don’t play in thatgameHusain Haqqani: In Pak political situation, getting burned as a US stooge undermines one’s effectivenessHusain Haqqani: I will make sure FO shuts upHusain Haqqani: Let this die downHusain Haqqani: We are in the rightHusain Haqqani: We will still make things happenMansoor IJAZ: Okay, well I know my IQ is pretty low so you are probably correct in saying I just don’t get it.Husain Haqqani: The Pak press be damnedHusain Haqqani: I stand by you as a man of integrity werving his countryHusain Haqqani: You don’t let ppl back home argue I play for your team, not oursMansoor IJAZ: But from my point of view, if there was a real threat, as you stated at the time, it is clear you weretrying to save a democratic structure from those hawksHusain Haqqani: You get to write the book on how you changed US-Pak dynamic and won the war in A’tan (w/ somehelp from a Paki nerd) Mansoor IJAZ: I was happy to get the message in the back door because it served American interests to preserve thedemocratic civilian setup and the offers made, if achieved, were very much congruent with American objectives inthe regionHusain Haqqani: True that, friend. But you know premature revelation ain’t goodMansoor IJAZ: As far as I can see, we did right. Unless there is something I don’t see here. But then I’m sorta dumbfrom down on the farm where them hillbillies liveHusain Haqqani: Hey! Don’t run down hillbilliesHusain Haqqani: Even the smartest can miss a piece of the puzzleHusain Haqqani: You are assuming there are no powerful men in Pak willing to break w/ US. Premature revelationgives those ppl reason to claim ‘conspiracy’, ‘treason’Husain Haqqani: That is all you missed. Period.Husain Haqqani: And no one else might tell you this, you’re becoming irritable and losing your sense of humor asyou grow oldHusain Haqqani: Let this one go. There is much to do. MUCH. And then, there’s the beach where I’ve been waitingto be invited, the slum boy visiting the millionaireMansoor IJAZ: I’m not a millionaire. But I do know a nice piece of beach!Husain Haqqani: I’m not a slum boy either but I know how to make friends with smart people with a sense of history:PMansoor IJAZ: Jesus, then what the fuck are you doing hanging around with me? =DHusain Haqqani: We’ll make things happen and if we can’t, we’ll write a book about itHusain Haqqani: Who said I was hanging around witjh you. A minute ago I thought you were about to hang me Mansoor IJAZ: :OMansoor IJAZ: Really?Husain Haqqani: Look, Isloo is a mess. Journos gone wild. Politicos scared of mil. Mil scared of Yanks.Mansoor IJAZ: Tell me one important thing. Who likes you and who hates you in the US establishment? Who wantsyou to stay and who wants to fuck you up?

Husain Haqqani: The debate abt your oped has caused my detractors to put pressure on my bossHusain Haqqani: In US estab, I can count on Leon and PetraeusMansoor IJAZ: I thought YOU were the boss!Mansoor IJAZ: Who is against you?Husain Haqqani: Folks at State don’t like meMansoor IJAZ: Why?Mansoor IJAZ: Too close to AZ?Husain Haqqani: They think I am too mixed up w/ DoD and others and do not help them cut deals w/ Pak milHusain Haqqani: Close to AZ bit tooHusain Haqqani: They are wrong re DoD and others.Husain Haqqani: It is just that becoz of A’tan, they are more imp than StateMansoor IJAZ: I always thought HRC was one of your fans. She even has a lady from our parts working with herHusain Haqqani: It is folks at State who got pissed off by your missionHusain Haqqani: She may be but I was Holbrooke’s buddy so everyone who hates him hates meHusain Haqqani: I have no time for just pushing paper aroundHusain Haqqani: State likes processMansoor IJAZ: Which mission? Sudan, Kashmir, there were so many they got pissed off about. I showed them howto do real American diplomacy and that was like a big pile of shit on their desk they couldn’t swallowHusain Haqqani: Conferences, statements–with nothing changingHusain Haqqani: The latest oneMansoor IJAZ: Yeah, I got it. You’re right!Mansoor IJAZ: Anyway, State will always hate me because I don’t accept their muddling way of doing thingsHusain Haqqani: I don’t know for a fact but I won’t be surprised if the FO statement was prompted by someone hereHusain Haqqani: Robin Raphel is back as Grossman’s deputyHusain Haqqani: You stepped on her toes w/ Kashmir missionMansoor IJAZ: That would be typical. But Grossman knows me and he knows how serious I am. Raphael still hatesme for the Kashmir intervention where she did everything she could to fuck me upHusain Haqqani: And now they hate me more when folks back home who hate me tell them you and I might havebeen together on s’thing (whether we were or not is irrelevant to them)Husain Haqqani: Grossman is good but he doesn’t like anyone playing a larger than life role. Old schoolHusain Haqqani: That’s why I have been requesting you to let this one goMansoor IJAZ: Yeah I know. Found that out when he was our lobbyist. But he’s a good guyHusain Haqqani: That takes attention off meMansoor IJAZ: Hmmmmmmmmm……. Not sure anything could take attention off youHusain Haqqani: I try and make peace with State and focus on battles at homeHusain Haqqani: HaHa Mansoor IJAZ: Diplomacy at its finest!!!Husain Haqqani: Yeah, right! But at least I shd not be painted as playing for your teamMansoor IJAZ: Why not? You were a good quarterback for those three days!!Husain Haqqani: I want to solve f***ing problems not fight a rearguard action all the timeHusain Haqqani: Husain Haqqani: Let us wait and see if Hillary’s latest foray changes things in any directionMansoor IJAZ: Did we really solve a true problem or was this all smoke and mirrors?Mansoor IJAZ: I mean on those days of stress…Husain Haqqani: View here is that everyone in Isloo sucks!Mansoor IJAZ: That’s pretty much true!!!!Husain Haqqani: Too early to say re solutionMansoor IJAZ: But if they all suck, then what did we save — a sinking ship that was going to sink anyway???Husain Haqqani: And there is a genetic problem at that end, predisposed to going round and round in circlesMansoor IJAZ: Yup!! That’s for damn sureHusain Haqqani: I think we save the situation from an extremely violent outcomeMansoor IJAZ: How can you solve the problems you understand so well from here if all the people in charge overthere are wrong? It’s only one year til we have a change in the US. Then you really won’t like who we have here!Husain Haqqani: I mean, Iran might have done better if the Shah had been saved AND some true reform introducedHusain Haqqani: Actually, I think the new ppl here might be better to deal with

Husain Haqqani: They won’t take lies easilyMansoor IJAZ: Don’t bet on it. We have a lot of extremists cropping up and seeping into the systemMansoor IJAZ: They don’t trust anything PakistaniMansoor IJAZ: Don’t matter what it isHusain Haqqani: Well, in that case find me a cheap piece of beachMansoor IJAZ: Cain, Romney (who hates Muslims), Perry — its all the same crapMansoor IJAZ: Hmmmmm, yes, I can arrange thatMansoor IJAZ: Why is Z such an idiot?Husain Haqqani: But don’t go off writing opeds abt arranging piece of beach w’out consulting first Husain Haqqani: HaHa! Tough questionHusain Haqqani: I have a speech in 20 mins so let’s keep that for laterHusain Haqqani: Bye for nowMansoor IJAZ: Okay. Good luck.Husain Haqqani: Thank you!

BBM CHAT EXCHANGES WITH HAQQANI ON 01 NOV 2011

–

22:06, then 22:31 until 23:03

Participants:Mansoor IJAZ, Husain Haqqani Messages:

Mansoor IJAZ: Hi buddy, I understand you/ your foreign office hacks are commissioning hatchet pieces against me.Unfortunate…. very unfortunate Husain Haqqani: I will enquire and stop them. There’s no need for any of this.Husain Haqqani: You haven’t helped by engaging so much w/ Pak media.Husain Haqqani: What happened to the ‘silent soldier’?Mansoor IJAZ: I issued a statement that was designed to put an end to all of this after Imran Khan’s rally nonsense.But be that as it may,I’m not going to tolerate character assassination in any of thisHusain Haqqani: I agreeHusain Haqqani: Will do my best to prevent itMansoor IJAZ: Roger thatHusain Haqqani: Focus on your policy message instead of who did what and we can turn this aroundMansoor IJAZ: Please remind your boss that his beloved wife, who later became a good friend of mine, tried thesame bullshit tactics in 1996 when Maleeha was envoy — result: her government was dismissed in Nov 1996.Mansoor IJAZ: I’m not someone he can mess around with. He better get that message from me and really understanditHusain Haqqani: My response to Imran was very simple and true: I did not write a treasonous letter and if Imran hasa copy, he should present itHusain Haqqani: I don’t think your threatening helpsMansoor IJAZ: That’s true from my point of view as well. But politicians are politiciansMansoor IJAZ: I don’t make threats. I state facts. Your boss needs reminding of the factsHusain Haqqani: Are you sure your side won’t deny?Mansoor IJAZ: No, maybe they will. But that would also be a mistake. Too much proof on that side as well.Husain Haqqani: But does “proving” help anything?Husain Haqqani: Is it not the nature of a private mission that officials deny it?Mansoor IJAZ: Don’t know. Don’t care. My point is simple — I’ve said what I was going to. Attacks on my personwill not be tolerated. And my statement stands. Stop telling lies about me and I might just stip telling the truth aboutyouHusain Haqqani: If you were to listen to my advice, you would let this blow over and prove yourself afterwards. Youare the one who will outlast the flying shit Husain Haqqani: That is usually my strategy: be there when the others have self-destructed or blown over

Mansoor IJAZ: I’ve kept to my word — if everyone wants to call it a fabrication and make me the fall guy, thengloves come off and it’s not going to be fun or pretty for anyoneMansoor IJAZ: You did something you thought was right outside channels because you felt it would be the mosteffective way to get the job done.I helped you execute. I haven’t thrown you under the bus. But be damn sure I won’t let anyone do that to meHusain Haqqani: I’ll do what I can to keep it prettyHusain Haqqani: I haven’t. I won’t.Mansoor IJAZ: By the way, I know a lot more than you give me credit for about the circumstances that led to May 1and your role in all that. Just FYIHusain Haqqani: Honorable ppl stick with one another. Take care.Mansoor IJAZ:

BBM CHAT FROM HAQQANI ON 02 NOV 2011 at 03:42

Husain Haqqani: I am maintaining silence so pls check with me before reacting if some Pak journo attributes anything to me

This completes my Witness Statement to the Commission. I wish to thank this august body forpermitting me to be heard in completeness. I remain ready to answer any of your questions. Iwish the Commission

God’s speed in addressing the important issues raised by this matter.

Thank you, Chairman and the members of this Honourable Commission, for your time and yourattention in this matter of great national importance.

Submitted for the record this 16th day of February, 2012

Deponent Musawer Mansoor IJAZ

VERIFICATION:

Verifying on solemn affirmation on this 16th day of February, 2012 at London that all content of this affidavit, oral as well as printed in script from blackberry, email and other devices are absolutely true, honest and sincere to the best of my knowledge and nothing has been deposed falsely, ambiguously and wrongly. Deponent Musawer Mansoor IJAZ

NADEEM MALIK

Filed under: CURRENT AFFAIRS

http://www.awaztoday.com/playshow/20110/Islamabad-Tonight-20th-February-2012.aspx
http://www.zemtv.com/2012/02/20/islamabad-tonight-with-nadim-malik-20th-february-2012-latest/
http://www.friendskorner.com/forum/f247/video-islamabad-tonight-nadeem-malik-20th-february-2012-a-265075/
http://www.pakistanherald.com/Program/Islamabad-Tonight-February-20-2012-Nadeem-Malik-9755

ISLAMABAD TONIGHT

WITH NADEEM MALIK

20-02-2012

TOPIC- RESOLUTION ON BALOCHISTAN IN AMERICA

GUESTS- KHURSHID MAHMOOD QASOORI, SHEHZAD CHODHRY, SHERRY REHMAN, RIAZ KHOKHAR, TALAL BUGTI

KHURSHID MAHMOOD QASOORI OF PTI said that a strong reaction has come forward from Pakistan on resolution on Balochistan in America and it is correct. He said that American government has kept distance from the resolution on Balochistan. He said that America wants to make Pakistan scapegoat on its defeat in Afghanistan. He said that armed operations were conducted in Balochistan during ZA Bhutto and Musharaf era. He said that America is trying to link Balochistan problem with Iran policy. He said that there were some doubts between Iran and Pakistan on the issue of Abdul Malik Rigi which were cleared on his arrest. He said that Israel is trying to put maximum pressure on Iran through America. He said that Pakistan needs to introduce a tax system in the country in order to have an independent foreign policy.

AIRMARTIAL (r) SHEHZAD CHOUDHRY said that America made a mistake by attacking on Salala check post and it widened the distance between the two countries. He said that resolution on Balochistan has been presented in America in response with the distance Pakistan has taken after Salala check post attack. He said that no one is violating human rights in the world more than CIA. He said that the government, establishment and Baloch Sardars should sit together to understand each others point of view. He said that in few days Sherry Rehman along with Hina Rabbani Khar will meet Hilary Clinton in London. He said that it is possible that Hillary might offer apology on Salala check post attack. He said that Baloch people are being killed in the fight between BLA, BRA and security agencies. He said that there should be an immediate ceasefire in the Balochistan province by taking Baloch elders on aboard. He said that military should also admit its mistakes in Balochistan it will send a good message to Baloch people.

SHERRY REHMAN PAKISTAN AMBASSADOR IN AMERICA said that the resolution on Balochistan by Senator Dana Rohrabacher has been presented in the American congress and not in the senate. She said that she conveyed the message to American administration that resolution on Balochistan will send a wrong message to Pakistan. She said that she made it clear to Americans that the problem of Balochistan is Pakistan’s internal affair. She said that America is willing to improve its diplomatic ties with Pakistan. She said that she told American administration that Pakistan should be treated equally and seriously. She said that it is an election year in America and they are focusing on their internal problems and criticizing Pakistan.

RIAZ KHOKHAR FORMER AMBASSADOR TO AMERICA said that we need to take steps of appeasement which could be acceptable for Baloch people. He said that when there will be problem in our country it will invite foreign intervention. He said that we should take such steps that Balochistan issue could resolve of its own.

TALAL BAGTI OF JWP said that military officials responsible for giving mutilated corpses of Baloch people. He said that Punjabi’s are being murdered on the orders of retired military commandos in Balochistan. He said that if Baloch people are responsible for the murder of Punjabis why no body is arrested so far. He said that India is involved in Balochistan situation because Pakistan is interfering in Indian held Kashmir.

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Filed under: CURRENT AFFAIRS

“Religion is the opiate of the masses.” That’s what Karl Marx said, and in a recent final exam, that’s what my political science professor asked us to analyze. Needless to say, one’s opinion of this quote ties directly into one’s religious beliefs, or lacking those, one’s ideas about religion in general. Throughout human history, wars … Continue reading »

Are they really trying to convince us that not consuming Shezan’s (one of our largest manufacturers of edible things in Pakistan) products is of national interest because it’s owned by the Ahmadis?

Oh, come on!

Sure they come from a different set of thoughts, and believe Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib to be a prophet and also believe in the Quran – which contradicts their ideology, as Allah says there will be no prophet after Muhammad (PBUH). But that’s ignorable, as we know that the real truth lies within the Quran and that anything/anyone that offers a different angle to this din is very misguided. Since it does not matter who said what, especially over Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) word, who himself said that my main sunnat/hadith is the holy Quran itself! But of course, the devil must twist someone’s mind down the lineage road and mislead many others who don’t want to act on clear instructions.
It is really mind-boggling how different sects declaring/believing in the same God, and book, re fighting against each other as if they were enlightened on the subject by some holy text. Many even would argue how Allah mentions that Muslims should fight their enemies have got to be followed in the most subtle meanings.
[Now viewpoints must change, and a comparison drawn up if we want to fair in judging the situation and their anger].

First, the Ahmadis: They believe in Islam, and call themselves Muslim. Just like Sunnis. But their religion changes course when they start believing that a guy named Mirza Ghulam Ahmad from India, who claimed that he had gotten revelations from the heavens on many occasions, or in other words, a Mujaddid, was the promised messiah (second coming of Jesus Christ). He was the founder of The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which would follow his guidance and would somewhat be under his wing. Meanwhile, many of his community members even settled in Pakistan, where they were treated differently, and in many cases, abusively. Pakistan’s lower-middle and lower classes, especially, would treat Ahmadis in a different manner and in a very biased fashion. Some even condemning them to hell’s eternal fire, God’s wrath, and a general enemy to the more pure Muslim society of the Sunnis. (More detail on this here).

Now, the Sunnis: There isn’t much to where they come from, really. They are all believers in the basic and fundamental beliefs that Quran brought along with, nothing other than that – except some give importance to Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) more than his message, the Quran, which is absurd. But there is one major place where they are making a blunder in. Even though their concepts are noble, they have given more importance to the practices mentioned in the Quran (Salah, fasting, charity etc.), over it’s message (of human growth and welfare). This is more of a culture-like following, than a din (way of life/code of life).
So, understanding that both sides are slightly off their path of Din, we can say that both of them are at fault. Not so.

Allah says, in the holy Quran, that Muslims should fight their enemies. Enemy is a word given to people who purposefully is interfering with what you preach and have faith in. But at the same time, the very same God says, that everyone has a right to believe whatever they want, and there is no jabar (forceful action) in my Din. Now this just confuses our people, even when the message is oh-so obvious. The latter is to be applied at all times, and in daily life. The former, though, is to be taken action upon under more severe consequences.
But one thing that pushes the Ahmadis in the shadow is this: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad declared that Jesus (Isa) had in fact survived the crucifixion and later died a natural death after having migrated towards Kashmir, and that he had appeared in the spirit and power of Jesus.

Now, that’s just wrong and slightly pushing it.

We can agree on this, although, that no matter what they say, everyone has an equal right and freedom to believe and say what they want… Even if it’s wrong.

Also, this is against the law of consumerism and capitalism.

More detail on the situation of the banned juice:
This decision was launched by the Lahore Barrister Association, and voted in favor for by a hundred educated lawyers.

Campaign of murder, terror & harassment against Kashmiri students studying in various parts of India. Student tortured and murdered. Hung with his hands tied. Indian Police dismiss it a suicide. Refuse to investigate.

Kashmiri Student ‘Murdered’ In Lucknow

In a bizarre incident, a Kashmiri student doing his MBA course in Uttar Pradesh has allegedly been murdered but the Lucknow police closed the case without either registering a case or conducting any investigation.
…
However, the family sources said, that on seeing clear marks of violence over the body, which convinced them he had not ended his life but had been murdered. At this, the body was photographed and videographed in presence of the deputy superintendent of police, Uri, after which it was laid to rest at the ancestral graveyard.

The family sources alleged it was a clear case of murder and the body had been hung from the tree to show it as suicide. “If at all, Danish had to end his life, he could have done it at the hostel itself. Why should he have gone missing and hanged himself from a tree away from the college that too having his hands tied up,” they asked, adding Danish had gone to Lucknow to pursue his studies and had no signs of any mental stress.

Reports said it was the sixth case of Kashmiri students being subjected to harassment outside the state which has claimed one precious life with this incident and which has created a sense of insecurity among all their fellow students studying in various Indian states.
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