Why Pakistan Is Upset With The Taliban?

SALEEM SAMAD

Maryam Marof Arwin, founder of Afghanistan Women and Children Strengthen Welfare Organisation in a Twitter post lament: Afghanistan has been made a cage for Afghan women and girls.

This tweet tells a million words, which depicts the state of Afghanistan after a 16-month rule by the barbarian Taliban, who has pushed the nation into the 7th-century medieval era.

Last week, Pakistan’s envoy in his deliberation made a damning assessment of Taliban’s rule at the so-called “Moscow Format of Consultations” by key regional countries mostly neighbours held on 16 November hosted by Russia.

In an unusual move, the envoy from Islamabad tells despite assurances from Kabul, the rights of women and girls have regressed.

The assessment shared by Ambassador Muhammad Sadiq, Pakistan’s special envoy on Afghanistan, said the interim government has done little to form an inclusive government, protect the rights of women and eradicate dreaded terrorist networks.

The fourth meeting of the Moscow Format since 2017 was held with participation from Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Iran, Pakistan, China, Turkmenistan, India, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan at the level of Special Representatives or Envoys on Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the portal Khaama Press News Agency of Afghanistan blasted the Moscow Format and argued that the meeting was ‘incomplete’ without Taliban representatives.

It is understood that Kremlin is frustrated and decided not to invite Taliban representative to Moscow for the consultation.

Russia’s displeasure was caused by negative progress made toward an inclusive Afghan government reflecting the interests of all the ethnic and political forces of the country, as promised by the Taliban’s end.

The joint statement released at the end of the consultation of the Moscow Format on Afghanistan called the Taliban a “new reality,” and stressed the formation of an “inclusive government”, respecting the interests of all major “ethnopolitical” forces.

Ambassador Sadiq in his address took an unusually harsh attitude against the Taliban regime.

In the last meeting in Moscow last year laid down broad principles to govern practical engagement with the Interim Afghan government based on i) promoting inclusivity; ii) respecting fundamental human rights including rights of women; iii) countering terrorism; and iv) sustained support to the Afghan people, including the provision of humanitarian and economic support.

The Moscow Format hoped that as friends and neighbours of Afghanistan, stood up for the Afghans. The consultation advances desired goals by bringing together the regional countries in a process of meaningful dialogue and engagement on Afghanistan.

Sadiq said the progress barometer signalled some of the worst fears, including a rapidly deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, the mass exodus of refugees and a prolonged period of instability and violence did not materialise, the interim Afghan government had also not made the kind of progress that the international community consistently urged the interim Afghan government to promote greater political inclusivity.

Incidentally, Rawalpindi funded, trained and abetted the Taliban fighters. Earlier, to oust the Soviet invader of Afghanistan in the 70s channelled American weapons, funds and sanctuaries to the Mujahideen including Al Qaeda brainchild Osama Bin Laden.

The proliferation of military-grade weapons and violent terrorism have spilled over to Pakistan. Rawalpindi is feeling the pinch in their shoes of the threats of violence and civil war in the regions along the borders with Afghanistan.

The Taliban fighters returned to power in August 2021 and deliberately ignored all the commitments made separately in Doha as well as in Moscow.

Despite assurance from the interim Kabul government, the rights of women and girls also appeared to have regressed, not progressed, according to the Pakistani envoy. He added that the footprint of terrorist organisations in Afghanistan had yet to be fully eradicated.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) claims that opium cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 32% over the previous year.

Opium cultivation has caused a larger drug problem in Afghanistan. It has invited a nexus of the international network of the opium trade and money laundering.

Not to anybody’s surprise, the terror network protects the drug lords to collect funding to augment the outfit’s clandestine operations from the opium trade.

Well, the Taliban regime for their survival in the face of global economic sanctions benefitted from the opium trade.

With the lack of progress, Pakistan observed that the critical support needed by Afghanistan to deal with the humanitarian and economic crises and other challenges has faltered.

Apparently, Afghanistan remains cut off from the international banking system and faces serious liquidity challenges. Billions of Afghan assets are frozen, thus deprived of being gainfully used for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan.

The opium trade has threatened the neighbouring countries Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan vulnerable to combating and controlling the overland drug trafficking worth $1.8 – $2.7 billion in 2021.

On the other hand, the Moscow Format of consultation appealed for help to millions of Afghans, who were in desperate need of urgent humanitarian support, including food, medicine and essential life supplies.

To conclude the stakeholder of peacebuilding in volatile Afghanistan was a collective failure of the international community to stand by the people of Afghanistan – the international commitments to provide humanitarian support to Afghanistan remain largely unfulfilled.

First published in The News Times, November 20, 2022

Saleem Samad, is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

What will President Joe Biden’s strategy be for South Asia?

President Joe Biden signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington/ Photo REUTERS

SALEEM SAMAD

Hours after President Joe Biden took oath in Washington DC, the leaders of South Asia showered tribute to the new leadership of the United States.

Months before the formal swearing-in on January 20, there were frantic exchanges of diplomatic cables from the capitals of South Asian countries to the United States capital, eager to know the 46th US president’s strategy for South Asia.

Most South Asian think-tanks were of the opinion that the policy would be different from the outgoing president, Donald Trump. The regional leaders and think-tanks have mixed feelings on Trump’s policy on South Asia, which was dubbed as “out of focus.” Most of the think-tanks on South Asian affairs were confident that Biden’s foreign policy would be far more pro-active and pragmatic.

The new US president is likely to engineer a full-scale foreign policy plan to augment cooperation with the 8-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), 11-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 55 member states of the African Union, 21-member state Organization of American States (OAS), 22-member Arab League, 6-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and so on and so forth.

Michael Kugelman, deputy director for the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC, believes that Biden will fully back a rapidly growing US–India partnership that enjoyed much forward movement during the Trump years -- just as it had throughout every previous administration back to the Bill Clinton era.

Incidentally, Biden is a long-time friend of India’s, who once described the US–India partnership as the defining relationship of the 21st century.

On the other hand, thousands of bipartisan Indian expats in America, who are effectively influential in American politics and administration, were able to churn hard facts into a pro-active foreign policy towards India in South Asia.

The two countries have a shared concern over combating terrorism and the challenges that the emerging Chinese hegemony pose -- these will have Biden’s full-throated support. He will also increase pressure on Pakistan to shut down the India-focused terror networks on its soil, especially with the receding US footprint in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, Washington’s delicate relationship with Pakistan won’t be upended by abrupt moves, such as a sudden decision to cut security aid. Like Trump, however, Biden strongly supports total withdrawal from Afghanistan.

However, when he was vice president of Barack Obama’s administration, he was a vocal opponent of his policy regarding additional troop deployment to battle the Taliban and the remnants of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

He is expected to toe the line of Trump for a workable relationship with Pakistan that revolves around securing Islamabad’s diplomatic support in advancing a fragile peace process in Afghanistan with the jihadist Taliban.

Meanwhile, the rest of South Asia will receive strategic focus, as it did during Trump’s era. The attention will be largely framed through the lens of the US-China rivalry and, increasingly, the India–China rivalry amid Beijing’s deepening footprint across the region, fuelled by its controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), says Kugelman at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre.

Washington’s radar will once again lay emphasis on democracy and human rights issues in South Asian states, an emphasis which was often overlooked by the previous administration.

Biden is likely to go relatively easy on India for strategic reasons, but Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka could find themselves subjected to sharp and frequent criticism.

Fortunately, climate change is another priority for Biden, which is a major threat to South Asia, especially Bangladesh, Maldives, India, and Sri Lanka, and this offers an opportunity for less tense US engagement in the region.

In short, the South Asian policy under President Joe Biden will be a rare case of a continuity program. It will definitely have an impact upon the incoming administration and will reset the US foreign policy, presenting both new opportunities and fresh challenges for the region.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 26 January 2021

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, and recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He can be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter @saleemsamad

Pakistan looking to ‘secularize’ terrorism

SALEEM SAMAD

Amid the coronavirus pandemic taking a heavy toll of human lives globally, the General Head Quarters (GHQ) of the dreaded Pakistan army in Rawalpindi is attempting to “secularize terrorism” in restive Kashmir.

Rawalpindi has given birth to another jihadist terror network, The Resistance Front (TRF). The GHQ has developed the expertise in recruiting and abetting Islamic militias to fight and kill innocent people in a bid to establish “Naya Pakistan” of Imran Khan.

From Afghanistan to Bangladesh, Balochistan to Kashmir, Iran to India, the deep state has been engaged to destabilize the region, which the South Asian nations have strongly reacted to in regional forums.

Pakistan’s maiden brutal operation “Raiders in Kashmir” was in autumn 1948. Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s blue-eyed boy Brigadier Akbar Khan, Burma war front veteran, pushed hundreds and thousands of ferocious tribesmen and unleashed a reign of terror in the picturesque valley for 5 days.

Presently the so-called “Azad Kashmir” is also known as Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and rest of Jammu and Kashmir is Indian Administered Kashmir. 

Thus Kashmir remained in GHQ’s terror map.

Shabir Choudhry, a political activist from POK has written to British Leader of Opposition, Keir Starmer, informing that Pakistan continued to violate the UN Security Council’s resolutions on Kashmir. 

The withdrawal of the Pakistan army never materialized; instead, it infiltrates “jihad warriors” to commit violence and terrorism on the other side of Line of Control (LoC).

Rawalpindi’s skill in creating fright among the people was imported to brutally suppress the nation during the brutal birth of Bangladesh in 1971.

The hawkish General’s terrorism model was developed in the terror lab in POK and was transplanted in the Eastern War Theatre, a delta with the long monsoon season.

The shadowy lobby in Eastern Command of the Pakistan army in Dhaka implemented their sadistic plan to raise several terror groups and also brought in the paramilitary Rangers and Mujahid militias to implant fear-mongering among the local people.

Besides forming the “Shanti Committee” by staunch supporters of Islamic Pakistan with political leaders, the occupation forces also established the infamous razakars and raised 50,000 militias. The paramilitary East Pakistan Civil Armed Force (EPCAF) was attached to border security force East Pakistan Rifles (EPR), while the Al Badr and Al Shams units contributed another 5,000 militia each.

The strengthening of the groups of armed militias was mostly recruited locally to resist the Mukti Bahini’s onslaught and neutralize the dream to achieve independence of the people in towns and villages.

Al Badr was a secret death squad recruited largely from Islami Chhatra Sangha (later rechristened as Islamic Chhatra Shibir), a youth organization of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami.

The secret death squad was responsible for enforced disappearances of nationalist supporters, savage torture, and brutal extrajudicial killings of thousands of intellectuals, teachers, and professionals all over the country.

To come out clear from the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) -- the anti-terror financing watchdog -- Rawalpindi not only overnight floated TRF, but also the Joint Kashmir Front, Jammu Kashmir Ghaznavi Force, and other such new groups.

Well, the new terror group TRF has created waves in cyberspace streaming from Rawalpindi since October 2019. 

Pakistan’s spy agency ISI’s pandora’s box was exposed, like a chameleon, to secularize terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir by doing away with Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen, which had gained notoriety, and merging them into one common non-Islamist label to make it look like an indigenous rebel movement with a modern outlook.

The Pakistani deep state’s idea of “bleeding India through a thousand cuts” is being experimented with for the last several decades, even as Islamabad gets little diplomatic or proxy military success in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which has been relatively peaceful ever since the abrogation of Article 370, concluded an Indian conflict researcher Aditya Raj Kaul.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 19 May 2020

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @saleemsamad; he can be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com

Sheikh Hasina deserves thanks for neutralise conflict in Assam

How Bangladesh helped Assam
SALEEM SAMAD

Early this year, New Delhi decided to withdraw the Indian Army from Assam, the neighbouring state in the northeast of India.

The conducting of a conflict assessment in the wake of a reduction in militancy in the region was the primary reason for the withdrawal of troops from Assam.

The top brasses in Indian defense were in the view that as the situation was improving in Assam, the state police should deal with it with the help of the Central Paramilitary Forces, according to The Assam Tribune.

Nearly two decades ago, the Indian army was deployed for counter-insurgency operations in Assam, in November 1990.

The dreaded militant groups National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB), United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), and other separatist armed groups were at the behest of Pakistan spy agency ISI, with their cohorts in Dhaka.

Bangladeshi territory was used by the militant leaders of ULFA, NDFB, and other insurgent groups in Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Manipur for their separatist movement.

The second-generation separatist leaders got renewed impetus in their illegal activities during the regime of Begum Khaleda Zia from 1991-1996 and again in 2001-2006. Pakistan was literally fighting a proxy war in the northeast through ISI covert operations in Dhaka.

The so-called headquarters of ULFA, NDFB, and others were dismantled, the leaders were pushed back from Bangladesh, months after Sheikh Hasina took oath in 2009. Since then, the entire gamut of militancy was physically immobilized in Bangladesh.

Thus, the cross-border terror came to a halt. The militant outfit’s bank accounts and other businesses were frozen by Bangladesh authorities. Several rogue elements in the Bangladesh government who were involved with aiding and abetting the militancy were punished and others reprimanded.

Recently, the NDFB(S) signed suspension of operations -- the ULFA remains the only major militant outfit active and the situation does not warrant deployment of the army all over the state -- the defense brass concludes.

On November 29, the Global Terrorism Index 2019 noted that Bangladesh had been the most successful South Asian country in countering terrorism. S Binodkumar Singh, Research Associate of Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi wrote: “Bangladesh had the largest improvement of any country in South Asia.”

Most of the militant leaders pushed back are presently active in negotiation for sustainable peace in the region. After being evicted from Bangladesh, the camps of the separatists moved to Myanmar. Myanmar military caused havoc on their camps recently.

The casualty from two decades of conflicts in northeast India has significantly reduced after Bangladesh had been able to neutralize the militancy and keep cross-border terror in check.

According to data from the Institute for Conflict Management, in 2000 the civilian casualty was 267, security forces 37, and extremists killed 223; while in 2019 civilian deaths dropped to one, security forces casualty to zero, and only two militants were killed.

The total deaths in 20 years comes to: 2,208 civilians, 340 security forces, and the number of separatists killed was 2,331 in 2,562 incidents of conflicts. The tripartite agreement was signed between NDFB President B Saoraigwra, the Assam government’s Ashutosh Agnihotri, and Union Home Joint Secretary (North-East) Satyendra Garg in New Delhi on January 17.

Bangladesh security forces were on high alert, and last June a team from the Bangladesh army and RAB, in a joint operation, recovered 12,000 weapons, including rocket launchers and machine guns, from the Satchari National Park.

Earlier in the year 2004, in a sensational recovery, 10 truckloads of arms and ammunition -- apparently smuggled in by ULFA’s military commander Paresh Barua from China -- were seized by the Bangladesh Army near Chittagong port.

The fugitive Paresh Barua, once a popular Assamese soccer player, was handed the death sentence by a Bangladesh court after he stood convicted in the 10-truck arms smuggling case.

Last November, a three-member pro-talk ULFA delegation -- Chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa, General Secretary Anup Chetia, and Foreign Secretary Sasadhar Choudhury - attended a formal discussion with interlocutor AB Mathur, a former special secretary of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) at an undisclosed location in New Delhi.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune on 2 March 2020

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, and is a recipient of the Ashoka Fellow and Hellman-Hammett Award. He can be followed on Twitter @saleemsamad

Parliamentarians at IPU Assembly moots unity to combat terrorism

SALEEM SAMAD

Parliamentarians at the 136th Inter-Parliamentarian Union (IPU) are poised to adopt a resolution to deal with terrorism and militancy. Terrorism is a global phenomenon and is a threat to all countries.

The delegates of IPU are discussing to forge unity globally to combat terrorism, Secretary General Martin Chungong told the media at press briefing on Monday.

He said the Dhaka Assembly is expected to adopt three resolutions. The first is the role of parliament in preventing outside interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states and the second, promoting cooperation on SDGs with focus on women, and third emergency item resolution.

Parliamentarians are debating on two pressing issues. The first is non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nation states. The second is inclusive financing of women in development.

"Process is in progress in at the conference venue in Dhaka for global parliamentary community," said Chungong at the mega IPU conference in Dhaka.

The five-day IPU Assembly in progress from Saturday with the participation of over 1300  delegates from 131 member states of the century-old organization. The dignity of human rights, sovereignty and women's empowerment were agreed in the conference.

He said women in parliament are very less, IPU is advocating political empowerment of women.

Regarding terrorism, Chungong said that terror networks active in various countries are not localized. There is need for global parliamentary community prevents to fight terrorism, he remarked.

Regarding the general debate on Redressing Inequality: Delivering on dignity and well-being for All, Chungong said IPU will highlight an action-oriented proposal that parliaments are making here when the 136th assembly concludes, it will have a number of things that parliamentarians can follow up theses concretely and device a program to gain measurable achievements over reducing inequality.

"What I'm proposing in the strategy is a series of actions that will help the global parliamentary community prevent those things that lead to terrorism and militancy," IPU Secretary said.

Chungong said, "Violent extremism was born out of frustration, out of inequality in society, out of injustice, violation of human rights and lack of opportunity - so, those are the things we're addressing in the strategy to combat terrorism and militancy."

He said he will brief the executive committee today (Tuesday) on the strategy that the IPU devised to enable the parliamentary community worldwide to combat terrorism. "We shouldn't allow terrorism to occur before you do something about it."

"How parliaments can take practical actions at national and international levels to alleviate inequality and restore the dignity of human being in all aspects of social, political and economic arena," Chungong said.

The emergency item resolution will focus on famine affecting the population of Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Northern Kenya. This proposal was jointly placed by Belgium, the United Kingdom and Kenya.

Besides, the documents of outcomes of the general debate on 'redressing inequalities, delivering on dignity and wellbeing of all' will be adopted at the IPU Assembly on Wednesday, the last day of 136th IPU assembly.

First published in The Asian Age, April 4, 2017

Saleem Samad is an Ashoka Fellow (USA), an award winning investigative journalist and Special Correspondent of The Asian Age