by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Washington : US military institutions are struggling to fill the 66 slots they had kept aside for officers from Pakistan for the next academic year, as President Donald Trump’s administration refused to provide funds for their training, official sources said.
The fund for training Pakistani officers came from the US government’s International Military Education and Training Programme (IMET) but no funds were made available for Pakistan for the next academic year, Dawn online reported on Saturday quoting the sources as saying.
Dawn first learned about the suspension from the US National Defence University (NDU), Washington, which has had reserved seats for Pakistani officers for more than a decade now.
The outgoing Pakistani officers, however, were told that the university has been asked to fill the positions for the next year with officers from other nations.
The NDU is one of several US military institutions that train officers from Pakistan.
The Trump administration announced early this year that it was suspending security assistance to Pakistan over differences on Afghanistan but indicated that training programmes for military officers will continue.
The cancellation of slots kept aside for Pakistani officers, however, shows that the suspension now also applies to training programmes.
Pakistani officers have been receiving military training and education in the US since early 1960s, which were suspended in the 1990s but restored after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World, Opinions
By Vishnu Makhijani,
It would seem rather presumptuous on the part of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan to declare that he would take oath as the Prime Minister on August 11, after addressing the nation and sort of laying down his policies for the next five years — because he is still short of the half-way mark. For this, he might just be helped by the “deep state”.
The way things are stacked up now, the PTI, with 115 seats, is a little over 20 short of the halfway mark of the 269 seats contested in the National Assembly (the contest for three seats are to be held at a later stage). PTI’s tally may come down to 109 after those who contested from twin constituencies step down from one of the seats. The total number of seats in the Assembly are 342, with 70 of them reserved for religious minorities and women which are allocated in proportion to the winning numbers in contested seats.
The PTI will, of course get a fair number of the 70 seats reserved seats. But it will remain short of the simple majority. The PTI leadership has reportedly approached disparate groups like the PML-Quaid (PML-Q), the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) and the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), as well as Independents, to shore up its numbers.
That is certainly treading on thin ice.
Take, for instance, the PML-Q, founded by its present chief, Shujaat Hussain, and Mian Muhammad Azhar — with an enormous leg-up from a certain Pervez Musharraf. The bulk of its members were initially in the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and broke away after the 1997 general elections to protest against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif turning it into a “family fiefdom”. Then, in 1999, it vociferously supported the military coup by the army chief, General Musharraf, after Sharif attempted to prevent his plane from landing at Karachi on his return from Colombo.
Thus, it was not surprising that the PML-Q should have been dubbed the “King’s Party” for the support it received from Musharraf during the 2002 general elections, enabling it to win 126 seats in the National Assembly with a 25.7 per cent vote share. However, its tally dropped to 60 seats in the 2008 general elections and further to two in 2013. It claimed four seats in the current polls.
Let’s now consider the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), a splinter group of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM) founded in 1964 by the charismatic Altaf Hussain, who has not been able to return to the country for decades from London due to a slew of cases related to murder, targeted killings, treason, inciting violence and hate speeches against him.
The MQM has for long ruled the southern Sindh province but is largely held responsible for the targeted killings of Mojahirs, the immigrants and their descendants who moved to Pakistan from different regions of India after the partition of the sub-continent in 1947. On the flip side, it does have 24 seats in the National Assembly.
The Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), a rag-tag group of disparate political parties, came together just ahead of the 2018 polls as a grouping opposed to Sindh’s ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and while it can flex its muscles at the provincial level, it hardly has a say at the national level.
As for the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), it comprises dissidents of the two PMLs and was formed just ahead of the general elections and has seven seats in the National Assembly.
Given the fractured verdict, cobbling together a coalition may be challenging for PTI, but not very difficult as it can offer the carrot of power to various parties and independents.
Assuming that the party is able to garner a majority, Imran Khan’s hands will be tied due to the various pulls and pressures of the alliance partners. Whether he will be able to provide basic governance, let alone even look at development and diplomacy, is to be seen.
Another worry for the PTI is the reports that the PML-N and PPP had agreed to formulate a “coordinated joint strategy” in the National Assembly. In the end, these might be mere pinpricks but they can have a debilitating effect on the government’s attempts to deliver.
Finally, there is the “deep state”. The Oxford Dictionary defines this as: “A body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.”
Logically, in Pakistan’s case, this would be driven by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency (under control of the Army), whose propensity for creating instability is all too well known on both sides of the border. Its moves will be closely watched by Pakistan’s principal political parties as also by India’s ruling establishment.
The question is: Will the new prime minister toe the line or will he be able to chalk out an independent policy. From all indications, Imran Khan would probably remain an establishment man.
(Vishnu Makhijani is a senior journalist. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in)
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World, Opinions
Imran Khan
By Saeed Naqvi,
Even before elections in Pakistan had taken place, the media which articulates the Western establishment point of view, like the Economist, had already declared it a “flawed election”; it even screamed “foul play” which the “khaki umpire” (read the Army) had rigged.
If you will stand for a mixed metaphor, the “khaki umpire” is, these days, playing the monkey between two cats – the US and China. With Donald Trump and his Deep State apparently engaged in a savage fight to the finish, the balance of advantage must be seen to be with China. But the Chinese themselves are keeping their fingers on the China-Pakistan economic corridor.
Imran Khan has expressed reservations on transparency issues. On the other hand, there have been reports that thousands of Pakistani students, who in the past would have been westward bound, have entered Chinese schools of learning. Who knows, this may be the thin end of the wedge.
If the Chinese can decolonize the Pakistani mind to this extent, it must be time for the West to take note. But a sketch that sections of the Army and Imran Khan might be innately anti-
West can be overdrawn. Yes, Pakistan has choices other than the US which includes Russia, but this does not mean the Army will bite the hand that has fed it since its inception.
These are complex times and a durable phenomena like the “West” manifests itself in many forms. After all retired Pakistan armymen, like retirees elsewhere, do keep a steady gaze on post-retirement sinecures. A huge opportunity beckons Pakistan retired Army officers in Saudi Arabia.
The new Prime Minister will be pragmatic. He will not seek to impose a moral code on his armed forces. But he will draw some very firm red lines and these red lines will stretch from Pakhtunkhwa right through Afghanistan, the arena of his political baptism and purgatory. That is where he cannot be seen to be striking deals. His political turf will turn to ash if he does.
He should not be seen in the traditional Pathan-Punjabi balance. The brunt of the blowback from the Afghan war was borne by the Pathan region, true, but it was a national catastrophe. Let me explain.
Washington twisted Pervez Musharraf’s arm to turn upon those Mujahideen in Afghanistan whom Riyadh, Washington and Islamabad had reared to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. The blowback from the Afghan war singed Pakistan. The Lal Masjid fiasco in Islamabad aggravated an uncontrollable situation. The reverberations from that blowback have not ended yet. Remember, the public outcry was against Musharraf fighting “America’s war” against terrorism. It became all the more shrill when the two brothers controlling Lal Masjid, Ghazi Rashid and Maulana Aziz, led the chorus.
Let me fast forward to the latest American debacle in Syria and its possible impact on the Af-Pak region. When almost all the mercenary Islamists had been caught with their trousers down, the existential question arose: what to do with trained terrorists?
When animal lovers in Britain forced an end to the traditional foxhunt, the impulse reached India’s southern hill station of Ootacamund also. The same question arose: what to do with hundreds of pedigree hounds? Good sense dawned and the canines were kept in a deluxe kennel, then distributed among dog lovers. But what do the trainers do with terrorists, trained and tested in action, who have not only tasted blood but have begun to love it? Trained terrorists can only have one use: as assets against any Muslim society the “trainer” wishes to destabilize – Afghanistan, Xinxiang, the Caucasus and so on.
I can quote at least two recent US Presidents to prove my point. In an interview to Thomas Friedman in August 2014, President Barack Obama made a startling admission. Asked why he had not ordered air attacks against the Islamic State, when it first reared its head, Obama said: “that would have taken the pressure off Nouri al Maliki”, Iraq’s stubbornly anti-American, Shia Prime Minister. In other words, the IS advance from Mosul to Baghdad was facilitated to oust Nouri al Maliki, an outcome the US was excitedly waiting for. Maliki had to be punished for the affront of not signing the “Status of Forces agreement” with the US. Eventually Maliki was shown the door.
After having been briefed by the intelligence agencies, candidate Donald Trump told Jake Tapper of the CNN: “Where do you think have billions of dollars worth of arms – and cash – gone in the course of our involvement in Syria? To the extremists, of course, I believe so.” He has not budged from this position.
What should worry Imran Khan is the next stage: the transfer of trained terrorists from Syria to Northern Afghanistan. Iran’s Supreme leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, told a Friday congregation in Tehran on January 30: “The US transfer of IS terrorists to Afghanistan is aimed at creating a justification for its (US’) continued presence in the region.” More recently, Russia’s Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Morgulov Igor Vladimirovich, told a high powered assembly at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi: “IS fighters were being flown to northern Afghanistan.” The Afghan air space is under the control of the US and the government in Kabul. “So who is responsible?” Vladimirovich asked.
Islamabad, Beijing, Moscow are all persuaded that Taliban will have to be part of the solution in Afghanistan. Americans have been marking time with the good Taliban, bad Taliban mantra because they clearly do not have a policy.
The moment is laden with irony for President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul. The emergence of a Pathan in Islamabad should have provided him with comfort. Instead he is having kittens: the Pathan on the other side has an agenda which is totally at cross purposes with Ghani’s. Imran’s agenda would boost his popularity in the country where Ghani, alas, has none. The moral is simple: no sidekick to a foreign power has ever been respected at home.
(A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views expressed are personal.)
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World, Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
Even the best laid plans of mice and men can go awry. If the Pakistan army wanted Imran Khan to score a runaway victory in the elections, it will be disappointed. If an inability to reach the halfway mark forces the former cricketer and international playboy to constitute a coalition, the already confused scene in Pakistan will become more muddled.
The reason is that Imran cannot have any truck with either his bete noire, Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League or with Bilawal Bhutto’s People’s Party. He will have to depend, therefore, on the Independents to form a government.
But for a person who has had no experience of governance, a khichdi or hodge-podge ministry will have a hard time finding answers to the country’s myriad problems — an economy in a shambles, shortage of electricity and even water and, the most contentious of all, terrorism, which has made it a virtual pariah in the eyes of the world.
Will Taliban Khan, as Imran’s critics have called him because of his supposed soft corner for jihadis, be equal to the task? If he wanted among his putative supporters the party of the mastermind of the Mumbai massacre of November 26, 1908, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, he must have been disappointed to learn that the latter’s Allah-o-Akbar party has fared poorly in the polls.
This failure is in keeping with Pakistan’s electoral tradition of keeping out the so-called Islam-pasand parties — or the outfits known for their avowed love for religion — at a safe distance from the legislatures. The Jamaat-e-Islami, for instance, the fountain head of religions extremism, secured a bare two per cent of the votes in 2013. The Pakistan army’s hope, therefore, of “mainstreaming” the militants has been dashed.
In contrast, the electoral snub for Saeed can be seen as a sign that Pakistan’s heart remains in the right place, even if that is not always evident to Indians because of its conversion into a haven for terrorists under the tutelage of the pathologically anti-Indian army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Although Imran criticised Nawaz Sharif’s linking of the 26/11 outrage in Mumbai to Pakistan, that did not boost Saeed’s prospects.
For the Pakistan army, Imran’s stumbling just before breasting the winning tape cannot but be disquieting. Although Rawalpindi, where the army headquarters are located, will be in overall control over the country’s foreign policy (as also the domestic scene) as always, it still likes a civilian to be the formal head of the government to tell the world about the country’s democratic credentials.
Imran may be able to play that role even at the head of a coalition. But he is likely to be somewhat hamstrung, especially in the face of criticism by Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League, which is now headed by the former (and currently jailed) prime minister’s brother, Shahbaz, and also by the Pakistan People’s Party.
The army’s relief, therefore, of having succeeded with a little help from the judiciary to oust the supposedly pro-Indian Nawaz Sharif will only be partial. It will also be concerned about how reliable a puppet Imran will turn out to be. Will the swashbuckling hero of cricket and now of politics, who has been accused of being a drug addict by one of his former wives, scrupulously follow the script written for him by the army ?
It is known that once a person ascends to the throne, he tends to develop a mind of his own. In view of Imran’s extrovert and flamboyant personality, it is difficult to believe that he will be the army’s poodle all the time, especially when his interactions with the world leaders will tell him that Pakistan’s reputation is not as pristine as he would like it to be and that India’s case on terrorism is widely accepted.
Besides, the army will remember that Nawaz Sharif, too, was once its favourite till his business instincts told him that endless enmity with India will not benefit Pakistan even if such a state of affairs is indispensable for the army if it wants to retain its stranglehold on the country’s politics and society.
India, therefore, will have to tread carefully with the new dispensation across its western border. Any summary rejection of Imran as a friend of the army and of terrorists will be inadvisable even if his initial observations on Kashmir, for instance, tend to portray him as a hawk. That may be more for domestic consumption in Pakistan than a long-term view.
The caution on India’s part is all the more necessary because the political scene in the country is on the verge of change with several elections in the states and a general election due to take place within the next 12 months. Therefore, the Pakistan “desk” in the external affairs ministry will have to keep its options on hold.
(Amulya Ganguli is a writer on current affairs. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by Editor | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Farooq Abdullah
New Delhi : Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah on Friday said peace in Jammu and Kashmir was impossible without involving Pakistan, asking the BJP government to give up its rigid stance and be flexible in solving problems in the terror-ravaged state.
“You may not like what I am going to say. We will not have peace in Jammu and Kashmir unless we strike a deal with Pakistan,” Abdullah said in his speech during the no confidence motion in the Lok Sabha.
He said he had high hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he would build peace with Pakistan that Atal Bihari Vajpayee could not do.
“North Korea, which was making nuclear missiles, atom bombs, has made peace with US President Donald Trump. Trump and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin are meeting each other to find peace. But we have failed to do the same for Jammu and Kashmir.”
In his short but fiery speech, the National Conference leader said the anti-Muslim rhetoric building up in the country needed to stop because it was dangerous.
“We won’t be defeated by America, Russia or any other nation. We will defeat ourselves. We will not be successful unless the Hindus and Muslims unite.”
Pointing his finger towards the ruling bench, Abdullah asked the BJP to take note of the fact that “Muslims are as Indians as you are”.
—IANS
