Decade of terror

IT is not as if the world was not at war in 1999. Ten years ago, as the world welcomed the new millennium, the ravages of armed conflict resonated amid the imagined fears of a global computer shutdown.
Indeed, in 1999, our world had barely reached the end of the chapter on the grisly conflict in Kosovo which killed over 3,000 civilians. Pakistanis, too, had come perilously close to a nuclear cataclysm, barely avoiding a serious war with India over Kargil.
Both Kosovo and Kargil represented a conflict that has been transformed in the first decade of the new millennium. By the end of 1999, Nato operations in Kosovo had driven Serb forces out of Yugoslavia and allowed refugees to return. Peacekeeping forces (including Pakistan’s) were sent to the embattled region and reconstruction began. Before the year was out, the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia had levelled indictments against Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes.
At home, the Kargil conflict, while markedly different from the Nato effort in former Yugoslavia, was in its structural dynamics also a case of conventional warfare where two states sparred over physical territory and ended up in a conflict situation.Ten years ago, Kargil and Kosovo represented the structural dynamics of both world and regional conflict, where countries or groups of countries attacked other countries and international law, at least theoretically, marking the beginning and ending of wars.
I recall these two conflicts here, one proximate and the other relatively remote, to emphasise the dramatic transformation that the structure of conflict has undergone in the first 10 years of the new millennium.
It is relevant to mark how terror and terrorism have changed the dynamics of war and concomitantly our identities, our fears and even our hopes for the next decade. The first decade of the new millennium, notably the years following 2001, saw the emergence of conflict motivated, defined and fought solely on the basis of chasing and eliminating groups not officially affiliated with a nation state. The non-state warrior, the terrorist, would in the next 10 years become the single most important denominator in world conflict.
The attack on the World Trade Centre on Sept 11, 2001, thus was the biggest act of non-state warfare the world had ever seen. The decade saw the world clamouring to reconfigure and recalibrate identities and understandings of nation states that had heretofore seen only economic challenges. If the Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648 had marked the beginning of the nation state as a unit of governance, the attacks of Sept 11, 2001 marked the beginning of its demise. Since then, nation states, both powerful and weak, have seen their efficacy questioned and the meaning of their physical and virtual borders thrown in abeyance as they scrambled to fight an enemy not ordered along the same parameters.
The consequences of this blind scramble to understand the challenges of conflict have been tragic. Clinging to old rules, the US began two conventional unilateral conflicts aimed at shoring up strategic interests in regions where it believed the non-state groups were most deeply entrenched. Unleashed under the pretext of avenging 9/11, the wars in Iraqand Afghanistan fought with conventional armies led the world’s sole superpower on a wild goose chase that expended massive resources and saw hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.
Fighting an enemy unbound by the law, unhampered by political processes and morally unaccountable to any except itself, the US found itself abandoning core principles of due process and the rule of law, unmoored as it was in the murky moral waters of extra-state conflict. Ten years later, the two wars continue and there is little in terms of progress on fighting non-state groups.
Pakistan, a smaller, weaker state, has not been spared the transformation of warfare. In the wake of Kargil, few Pakistani analysts could have predicted in 1999 that Pakistan would be entrapped in a conflict of the kind it is today. The bloody last half of the decade saw an increase of nearly 500 per cent in suicide bombings. Since 2006, a total of over 8,000 people were killed in Pakistan as a result of suicide bombings. This figure does not include the casualties from military operations in the tribal areas and Swat which would likely cause the number to swell even more.
Suicide bombing, previously unheard of in civil conflict in Pakistan, has become ubiquitous in terms of the frequency with which it is carried out. The last few months of 2009 have been the bloodiest with a suicide attack occurring nearly every day.
The first decade of the new millennium then has been a decade of terror. It has redefined human conflict for the powerful and weak. As old institutions designed to fight conventional wars creak into action with the help of mechanisms withered by corruption and an inept bureaucracy the errors of the system are likely to trap innocent civilians.
With 2009 drawing to a close the world has failed to arrive at answers in response to terror; states have tried conventional wars, abandoning the rule of law, paying warlords, hiring mercenaries and even remote-controlled planes. Despite all these efforts countries large and small, weak and strong have failed to corner the non-state warrior who has remained impenetrable and largely unassailable. As warfare has moved away from the army barracks into the cave, the rented room and the abandoned warehouse the world is set to end the first decade of the millennium horrified by the terror unleashed but helpless against it.

Terror incidents claimed 3,300 lives this year

Over 3,300 people, including personnel of law-enforcement agencies and armed forces, were killed this year in terrorism-related incidents across the country. Suicide bombers struck every fifth day. Data compiled through newspaper reports of major incidents show that 1,037 people lost their lives in 76 suicide attacks in 2009.

December saw the highest number of suicide attacks — 15 — which claimed 211 lives. On average nine lives were lost daily. Although personnel of the armed forces and law-enforcement agencies, including police, Rangers and FC, were the main target of militants, civilians were also killed in suicide attacks on shopping centres, educational institutions, mosques and imambargahs.

The data show that 443 personnel of army and police lost their lives during military operations and terrorist attacks. Militants attacked a number of police stations, checkposts and offices of the FIA and ISI. The most brazen attack was carried out by Taliban militants on the heavily-guarded GHQ in Rawalpindi on Oct 10. Six soldiers and four attackers were killed in the siege, which lasted almost 24 hours. At least 42 people, a number of serving and retired army officers among them, were killed in two suicide blasts and gun attack on an army mosque near the GHQ on Dec 4.

The NWFP was the worst-hit province where more than 64 per cent of the terrorism-related incidents took place in 2009. About 2,133 people lost their lives in the province and 699 in Fata. Punjab also remained in the grip of terrorism and 369 people were killed in different incidents. Two incidents of terrorism took place in Sindh, where 44 people died. The data show that 35 people were killed in Balochistan, 29 in Islamabad and eight in Azad Kashmir. The month-wise breakdown shows that May remained the bloodiest month of the year in which 1,120 people — 945 in the NWFP alone — were killed.
It was in this month that the government launched a full-scale military operation in Swat, Buner and adjoining areas. The month also saw the highest number of military casualties — 135.
The Taliban targeted a number of prominent personalities, including elected representatives. Seven people, including Allama Sarfaraz Naeemi who was an outspoken opponent of the Taliban, were killed in suicide attacks. Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Hamid Saeed Kazmi survived an attempt on his life in Islamabad on Sept 2. The Awami National Party was the main target of the Taliban because of its open support for the military operation in Swat and Malakand. Two of its MPAs — Dr Shamsher Khan and Alamzeb Khan — lost their lives in terrorist attacks.
Senior NWFP Minister Bashir Bilour survived an assassination attempt in Peshawar on March 11. Six people, including two suspected suicide attackers, were killed. The Taliban blew up a shrine of the 17th century Sufi poet Rehman Baba in Peshawar. The military claimed to have killed a number of important leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda during the operation in the NWFP and Fata. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a drone attack in August in South Waziristan. A convoy of two buses carrying Sri Lankan cricketers and officials was attacked by 12 gunmen near the Qadhafi Stadium in Lahore on March 3. Six policemen and two civilians were killed. Sindh, which remained in the grip of violence in 2007 and 2008, largely remained peaceful throughout 2009. But on Dec 28, it witnessed a major act of terror when 43 people were killed in a suspected suicide attack on an Ashura procession in Karachi.

Karachi burns on Ashura

A suicide bomber on Monday struck a Muharram procession in Karachi on Ashura, killing at least 26 people and wounding dozens more, defying a major security clampdown, Some snapshots are following;

The terror of true love

TRUE love has always terrorised conservative societies. The legends of Heer and Juliet and their ill-fated suitors have spawned a gamut of narratives in diverse cultures. As another year draws to an end, a lasting image it leaves behind for me is that of a young Pakistani Muslim man dancing away at an upper caste Aiyer Brahmin wedding in Bangalore. A bevy of beautiful Hindu women surrounded him, one of them his wife. I don’t believe any India-Pakistan peace conference can ever be meaningful where a throng of these cross-border lovers, deemed cultural terrorists by their powerful and influential detractors, are not given centre-stage. The cross-border couples represent the truest grit, an absolute must to overcome the many insurmountable challenges of mistrust and fear as also of physical violence that unconventional and trans-geographical love faces. The detractors are not always worked up about the wrong nationalities involved in the fray. They are in fact often more busy being a menace at home. And they usually belong, both in India and Pakistan, to the cultural milieu that supports “honour killings” of women in their respective medieval confines. They target in particular those women, and also men, who question the family tradition of taking a spouse they did not know or want. I have watched the terror-stricken faces of low-caste Jatav men and women in Barsana, the village of Lord Krishna’s fabled consort, Radha, where two of their boys were lynched with a Jat girl who had eloped with one of them. All three were hanged from a tree. Then they were slowly disfigured with torches before their bodies, still warm in spite of the ebbing of blood within, were thrown into a common pyre. A Jat kangaroo court had taken the decision, which usually is of a higher currency than the state’s supposedly secular writ. The ropes dangled from the banyan tree for months after the collective crime that terrorised the far corners of the Jat-dominated region. Pakistan’s problems with honour killings are probably as incorrigibly entrenched as its non-Semitic variant flourishing across much of India. There is a difference though. In India those who instigate violence between sects of men and women who love or marry outside their prescribed format have a powerful political voice in the street and in parliament, via rightwing religious revivalism. Much of the modus operandi involves rumour-mongering, instilling fear and mistrust followed by outright violence. In a recent article in the Economic and Political Weekly, Charu Gupta closely analysed the issue of ‘Love Jihad’ or ‘Romeo Jihad’, coined recently by activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh to target Muslim boys who mingle with Hindu girls. The implicit allegation in both the terms is that Muslim men are wooing Hindu women as part of a religious campaign to convert them to Islam. What the propagandists of this poisonous canard deliberately ignore is the fact there are about as many Muslim women attracted to Hindu men. Last week I enjoyed the wedding of a young man whose mother bears a Muslim name, the father a Hindu. There is of course no certainty at all that these cross-cultural marriages will last more than others, if at all others last. (On the other hand Shia and Sunni couples were having a great time in Iraq, as they do elsewhere in the Middle East, before American troops arrived and wrecked their lives, injecting an untenable sectarian identity which most Iraqis would otherwise shun.) The issue of fomenting fear and mistrust by using women as a tool in a poisonous propaganda blitz to polarise communities is not new. Charu Gupta, in her analysis, cites a tract published in 1924 from Kanpur which “dwelt on the catastrophic decline of Hindus due to increasing conversions of Hindu women to Islam”. It claimed that a number of Aryan women were entering the homes of yavanas and mlecchas (terms used for Muslims in such writings), reading nikah with them, producing gaubhakshak (cow-killers) children and increasing Muslim numbers. A poem written in 1928 and later banned, called Chand Musalmanon ki Harkaten, stated: ‘Tadad badhane ke liye chal chalai, Muslim banane ke liye scheme banayi.... Ekkon ko gali gaon mein lekar ghumate hain, parde ko dal Muslim aurat bethate hain’ (Muslims are making new schemes to increase their population and to make people Muslims. They roam with carts in cities and villages and take away women, who are put under the veil and made Muslim — Charu Gupta’s translation.) Pro-Hindu organisations in 2009, too, have claimed that forced conversions of Hindu women in the name of love are part of an international conspiracy to increase the Muslim population. “The issues at stake here are not only to construct a picture of numerical increase in Muslims but also to lament the supposed decline in Hindu numbers and to mourn the potential loss of child-bearing Hindu wombs, and thus exercise greater control over women’s reproductive capacities to enhance Hindu numbers. Both the campaigns construct an image of the Muslim male as aggressive, and broadcast a series of stereotypes and repetitive motifs, creating a common ‘enemy’….” The luring of Hindu women by Muslim men is stated to demonstrate the “lack of character” of the lustful men, violating the pure body of Hindu women. In the 1920s, many Hindus came to perceive abductions and conversions of Hindu women as a characteristic Muslim activity. Such constructs had even older historical roots. Gupta quotes noted Hindi writers like Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850-85), Pratap Narain Misra (1856-94) and Radha Charan Goswami (1859-1923) as often portraying medieval Muslim rule as a chronicle of rape and abduction of Hindu women. “The first generation of popular novelists in Hindi — Devakinandan Khatri, Kishorilal Goswami and Gangaprasad Gupta — who started writing in the 1890s, depicted similar prejudices. Lecherous behaviour, high sexual appetites, a life of luxury and religious fanaticism were seen as the dominant traits of Muslim characters. These stereotypes of licentious Muslims were strengthened, with new contours added in the 1920s. It was claimed that now ordinary and all Muslims were indulging in such practices.” We shall not let it pass without comment that all the insidious poetry cited by Ms Gupta had mushroomed only after the last Mughal emperor and his primarily Hindu supporters were vanquished by a virulent colonial response to their jointly conducted revolt against foreign rule. The “terror of true love” has mutated in our region according to the political exigencies it faces. It took the form in Germany of Nazi drive to exterminate homosexual lovers. The reactionary response to unbridled love is always virulent.

Media Under stress

THE South Asia Media Commission’s seventh report released on Tuesday highlights issues that should be addressed seriously by the fourth estate as well as by the governments of all the eight member-states of Saarc. Of primary concern is the growing incidence of violence in the region and its impact on media practitioners who have become vulnerable to it. According to the report 12 journalists were killed in 2009 in South Asia, more than half the number — i.e. seven — in Pakistan alone. It goes to the credit of the Pakistani media that in spite of the hazards it faces its members continue to perform their duties in a steadfast manner. Ironically as long as the press was in chains, journalists were more or less secure. They could not pose a danger to anyone. Now that it is in a position to expose the wrongdoings of governments and mobilise support for the rights of ordinary citizens, especially the downtrodden sections of society, it has come under attack from vested interests. To survive this difficult phase, the media must be protected by the government as well as by media proprietors.
Why have journalists not received protection from the law-enforcement agencies and their own employers in the form of protective gear and training as they go about their often dangerous duties? This is absolutely essential if the media is to survive as an institution that reaches out to people to report their concerns. Security measures must be extended by the government to foreign journalists as well to enable them to enter risky zones with adequate protection so that Pakistan receives fair coverage in the world media. The SAMC report points to another key feature of the media that should prompt us to take serious notice. It observes that some “zealots” in the profession have used their freedom to “scandalise and destabilise a fragile democracy.” It is not becoming of any organ of the media to become the mover and shaker of governments. The media’s job is to expose and work for a holistic development of a democratic order. This is possible if various sectors of the state act in coordination and are developed in an integrated manner.

2009 in broad strokes

If pressed, Pakistanis would probably give 2009 mixed reviews. Throughout the year, political problems – clashes between the government and opposition; a failure of the civilian and military establishments to see eye to eye; wrangling between the centre and the provinces – and the slow march of extremism, in the form of militant posturing and suicide attacks, have vied for headlines.
But there has also been much progress in the past 12 months as military operations against militants have proved successful, the Supreme Court has delivered historic judgements, and breakthroughs with regards to Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, and the NFC have been finalised. Indeed, 2009 has been a year of both tumult and triumph in this country.
Politics: The scuffles and successes
Confrontations continued between the country’s two major political parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) over the judges’ reinstatement and an overall implementation of the Charter of Democracy (CoD). On February 25, a Supreme Court verdict declared the Sharif brothers ‘ineligible to contest elections or hold public offices,’ within minutes of which PML-N workers took to the streets of Punjab’s various cities voicing their agitation against the decision. The same day, governor rule was imposed in the Punjab in order to fill the ‘unprecedented and unique constitutional void’ created with the disqualification of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif from holding public office.
While unrest continued in the Punjab, the PML-N announced all-out support for the lawyers’ movement for the judges’ reinstatement and marched toward Islamabad in order to stage a sit-in outside the parliament. On March 16, Prime Minister Gilani announced the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. The proclamation was hailed by the opposition and the lawyers and the Long March was subsequently called-off.
After this unrest, Governor rule in the Punjab was lifted at the end of March and the Supreme Court reinstated Shahbaz Sharif as the Chief Minister on March 31. In a good streak for the Sharifs, on May 26, the Supreme Court overturned its own verdict that barred the Sharif brothers from contesting elections. More good news followed on July 17, when the apex court acquitted Nawaz in the plane hijacking case.
Other regions of the country were also not spared political troubles. Political turmoil first grappled Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on January 6, when the region’s Legislative Assembly approved a no-confidence vote against the then-Prime Minister Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan following which Sardar Mohammad Yaqoob Khan was sworn in as the AJK Prime Minister. On October 14, Sardar Yaqoob Khan resigned from his post ‘in order to avoid a political controversy in the Legislative Assembly’. Later that month, the Legislative Assembly elected Farooq Haider as leader of the house and a 23-member AJK cabinet was sworn in on October 29.
Meanwhile, a self-governance reform package for the Northern Areas was approved on August 29. The package aimed at giving the region complete administrative autonomy and changed its name to Gilgit-Baltistan. The first elections for the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly were held on November 12. And despite allegations of rigging, the PPP secured the mandate to govern the region, leading to Syed Mehdi Shah’s election as the region’s first Chief Minister.
Political reforms were also planned for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and were announced by President Zardari on August 14. Reforms included: ‘allowing political activities in Fata, setting up an appellate tribunal, curtailing arbitrary powers of political agents, giving people right to appeal and bail.’ The reforms’ systematic implementation did not take place and to some extent the measures were overtaken by the unrest and the military operations in the tribal belt.
In Balochistan, the political situation deteriorated with the killing of three Baloch activists a day before kidnapped UNHCR official John Solecki was released by the Balochistan Liberation United Front (BLUF) militants in April. Baloch distrust of Islamabad festered and allegations thrived regarding the missing persons’ issue. Sporadic violence continued across the province and, on October 25, Balochistan’s then-education minister Shafiq Ahmed Khan was assassinated in Quetta.
To control the situation, the government initiated a package to address the political, administrative and economic concerns of the province. Some significant areas the package addressed were limiting military activity inside the province, release of missing persons ‘against whom there is no charge and trial of others before a competent court.’ The package was instantly rejected by most nationalist and separatist groups who called it a cover-up.
The year also saw deliberations on the seventh National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, which concluded with the provinces’ agreement over a formula for resource division among the federating units. Poverty, revenue generation and collection, and inverse population density were, for the first time, introduced as the criteria on which the provinces’ respective shares would be decided. The consensus reached by the provinces was generally seen as a step in the right direction, which would help contribute towards stabilising Pakistan’s democratic institutions.
Also on the matter of resources, 2009 saw a controversy over the Kerry-Lugar bill that tripled non-military aid to Pakistan to US$ 7.5 billion over a period of five years. Rifts between Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership came out as debate ensued over the stated and the possibly intended objectives of the assistance package. While conflict brewed over the bill in Pakistan, Foreign Minister Qureshi rushed to Washington to communicate Pakistan’s concerns over the proposed bill’s conditionalities. The unchanged bill was then signed into law on October 15.
This was not the end to the year’s political scuffles. Ironically, it was the so-called National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) that turned out to be the most critical political challenge Pakistan faced in 2009. Chaos augmented and mudslinging continued as the ordinance expired on November 28 and the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional on December 16.
Security: More bombings despite military operations
Overlapping the political crisis was the security situation in Swat, a region in north-west Pakistan that had been under the control of extremists since July 2007. As violence spiralled in the region, the government moved toward a formal truce with the militants which included promulgation of the Nizam-i-Adl regulation, which imposed Sharia law in the Malakand division.
The measure emboldened the Swat Taliban who then vied for control of Buner and Lower Dir districts. Eventually, the truce agreement mediated by Maulana Sufi Mohammad of the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM) collapsed. On April 26, a military operation was launched in Swat. The operation aimed at taking back Swat, Buner, Lower Dir and Shangla. Operation Rah-i-Rast, also known as Operation Black Thunderstorm, led to a full-scale humanitarian crisis as civilians started to flee from these areas for safety. More than two million people were displaced from the region, most of who returned after the operation was declared successful and completed on June 14.
As the army consolidated control over Swat and neighbouring districts, a suspected US missile attack on August 5 in South Waziristan’s Zanghara area killed the then-Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud. Baitullah’s death, regarded as a significant blow to the Taliban in South Waziristan, was accompanied by the continual and massive troop build-up along the southern and eastern borders of South Waziristan.
In the wake of retaliatory terrorist attacks in Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar and Shangla, the army on October 17 launched an operation in South Waziristan. The operation is currently ongoing and the army claims to have captured Kotkai, Kaniguram, and Sararogha among other important militant bastions in the battle to eliminate the local and foreign militants in the region. The operation is being viewed as Pakistan’s most ambitious move against the Taliban. As the year draws to a close, the army is also initiating action against militant hideouts in the neighbouring tribal agency of Orakzai.
The year of military successes and political disturbances was punctuated by frequent terrorist attacks across the country, most of which were associated with the TTP. The cities of Peshawar, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi were repeatedly attacked and although government and military installations seemed to be the standard targets, many attacks also singled out civilians, for example, the bombing of Peshawar’s Meena Bazaar on October 28 that killed 117 people, mostly women. Indeed, October remained the bloodiest month and saw 10 terrorist attacks claiming at least 283 lives.
Cross-border tensions
India has also stayed in the Pakistani headlines this year. On January 5, India handed over the first dossier regarding the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008, detailing ‘evidence of links with elements in Pakistan.’ While Pakistan haggled with resulting international pressure, India demanded extradition of suspects involved in the attacks. Rumours also circulated that a five-member team of the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had visited Faridkot, the alleged ancestral town of Ajmal Kasab, the lone captured attacker whose name remained a matter of debate for quite some time.
Relations between India and Pakistan continued to deteriorate throughout the year and rare encounters between Indian and Pakistani high-ups only revealed the widening rift. While diplomatic sabre-rattling continued, elections in India brought the Congress back to power. Pakistan’s own investigations into the Mumbai attacks suspects’ links continued and dossiers upon dossiers were exchanged between the two states.
At year’s close, the trial of Ajmal Kasab continues in India and an Anti-Terrorist Court in Pakistan has indicted seven suspects for ‘planning and helping the execution’ of the attacks. Relations, however, remain strained between India and Pakistan: India decries Pakistan ‘inaction’ against terrorist outfits (particularly the release of Jamaatud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed) and denies involvement in Balochistan and Fata. Pakistan, on the other hand, appears aggravated by India’s ‘stalling of the dialogue process’ and continues alleging Indian involvement in domestic insurgencies and acts of terrorism inside Pakistan.
Looking forward to 2010
It is tricky to judge whether this tumultuous year was a step toward redemption – as manifest in decisive military operations and the superior judiciary’s NRO verdict – or a shift toward further turmoil. With an additional 30,000 troops inside Afghanistan and the ongoing South Waziristan military operation whose success is still a matter of conjecture, the least that can be hoped for is that Pakistan manages to develop a considerable degree of political stability, avoids conflicts between the state’s four pillars and thereby strengthens the government’s institutions.