Muhajirs to India?

Read about the meaning of "muhajir" here.

And read this quote, taken from a comment thread at Abu Muqawama's site:

"It all seems to be a curiously mixed response - on the one hand people do not seem that worried about the Taliban. On the other, this correspondent says she was repeatedly asked, whereever she goes, about whether India might accept refugees from across the border if things get really bad."

No way to verify, of course, how many people asked this from the unknown correspondent, or if they really did so. Still some extreme possibilities to ponder.

The Economist on enterprising Dutch athletes on the island of Uruzgan

Entirely accidentally, I bumped into a month-old article in the Economist about... Afghanistan's Dutch model province, Uruzgan. It was an amazing experience.

I left closely monitoring developments in Uruzgan towards the spring of last year, after being a keen (remotely located) observer of them for over a year. What is amazing to me is to see that the discursive reality has not changed at all since then, when it comes to such media as the Economist.

For them, the ink blot strategy is still a peculiar Dutch invention, and not, somehow, ISAF's counterinsurgency conceptual framework in the entire south of Afghanistan - a framework taken from British experience in Malaya. Oh, those crazy and yet inventive Dutchmen! The article seems to be lost between appreciation for how daring these good-meaning Dutch guys are and between bashing them for not dying like the others. Like, it is all their choice what they are doing on this island called Uruzgan, while far over the horizon, on other islands like Kandahar and Helmand, Canadians and Brits are slogging it out in much more bloody fashion, just because they like not to shy away from the fight.

Meanwhile, who the hell cares about the reality on the ground in Afghanistan? This is still only about a competition of talented Western nations, don't you see?

Which European country finds the right balance when left out there in the wilderness - it is almost like the Olympics, you see. And right now the Economist is intermittently worried and ecstatic that those enterprising Dutchmen could run away with gold medal here.

Of course, at least by chance, one does find telling bits of commentary quoted in the article. Example:

"The Afghan army’s commander in Uruzgan, General Abdul Hamid, says the Taliban use remote districts of Uruzgan as training areas. So they have a reason to “live and let live” for now."

Studying actual differences in approaches tried here and there is important. Go ahead with that, guys. But you will have to identify differences by much more reliable metrics, and without looking at Afghanistan through the Eurolympics prism. (Start with reading Hans de Vreij's excellent comment on the article.)

Micro-blogging, Facebook-style

Péter Marton is reading Defining the Punjabi Taliban Network by Hassan Abbas.

State Failure Classics #3

At around the turn of 2007 and 2008 I put up two posts as part of a would-be "state failure classics" series. The idea was that I would take some of the most remarkable statements from the academic discourse on state failure, and reflect on how they might be interpreted in the Afghan-Pakistani context at that point in time. This was the first of eventually just two such attempts (the second doesn't really count, in fact, so I won't even link to it).

This could have been good for some productive and yet low-effort blogging for me, but I eventually didn't persist with it.

Now it's back, though. Here's some video I have to steal from a link that I found over at the Jengster's.

As a state failure classic, it truly defies imagination. To qualify this somewhat: Hamid Gul says actually nothing new here. The ideas he is voicing are present since Pakistan's creation of course. But repeating them all, word for word, without reflecting on where things are headed after all those decades right now, is something that is amazing, to say the least. The You Tube user who uploaded the recording had some harsher words from which I would distance myself in that I would not want to mock Pakistani people in general in any case. There is irony in what we hear here, but in a different way.

Swat gouvernementalité

Quote; from a news report about the by now well-known case of Pakistani Taliban who flogged a girl in Swat:

"Human rights activist Samar Minallah said the girl was from a poor family and was flogged after a neighbour told the Taliban she had had an affair.

"They did this brutality just on suspicion. There was no trial. No evidence, no witness was produced," she said."

(...)

"Minallah said the militants had issued two minutes of footage of the beating and it was being sold in markets.

"It was distributed deliberately by the militants to harass residents and make the point that they can keep on doing what they like," Minallah said."

Brutally effective, isn't it? No interest in a fair trial, not to mention that the norm they were statedly defending may not be accepted by many even in the areas they control (that adultery should be punished by flogging, with relatives made to hold down the girl to be flogged).

The Taliban just showed that they are ready to do this without thinking for a second... And did so on DVD, so it can also be distributed. They did what they did before their version of sharia would have been a government-approved fact in Swat. Just in case.

Spectacle + terror + context-specific message + modern means of distribution. Ain't no rocket science; still it's a revolution beyond the 1990s Afghan Taliban's approach to photography and filming.

Whether the Taliban really didn't think for a second about doing this is another question. They picked on a poor family - there are two basic options how this may have occurred.

1) They randomly picked on the family in question, meaning they bumped into just this case. For the girl and her family this was just a coincidence of poverty and being terrorised.

2) To a degree they chose this family to show an example with. No coincidence. Reasons? Poor families (the large majority) are the primary audience. It had to be one of them, because the Taliban's goal is to have them develop the sort of "gouvernementalité" they wish for. Then there is also the practical idea that the better-off may avoid being disciplined like this, by showing extra generosity as proof of how disciplined they are. And then they may as well leave land and property behind. Go to London for instance, never come back. So their house, their orchards and all else can be taken over. Other than that, the Taliban are not all that interested in governing them.

P.S. I should also point to Arif Rafiq's excellent commentary on the issue.

Breaking news: Pakistan has social structure, not only a chain of command

See here.

But it is still mostly that (broken-looking) chain of command causing a lot of trouble, apparently. Military officers, retired and non-retired... Ok, admittedly, also problematic are our broken conceptual frameworks used to interpret what the Pakistani military and Pakistani jihadists are doing.

A recent case for an example. By chance, just on the day when this particular "revelation" came, which I am about to discuss, I watched A mighty heart, the movie about Daniel Pearl's kidnapping about Angelina Jolie playing Daniel Pearl's wife.

So, there's this guy named Haroon Rashid, a retired major of the Pakistani Army. He decided to continue life with the Harkat-ul Mujahedeen after retirement. This so reminds me of a former US Army guy whose story I heard of - the guy converted to become a devout Muslim, of a rather literalist kind, after retirement, and told a journalist once that Islam (the kind he was practicing) was almost like the military used to be for a way of life, only the military was never at any moment so strict... Only, of course, in Pakistan, similar life paths are produced on a different scale.

Back to Rashid - he was involved in kidnappings that were important for independently financing the HuM operations he participated in. Four kidnappings we are talking about. One of these was film director Satish Anand's abduction. Anand was taken captive on October 21, 2008 from megacity Karachi, just like Daniel Pearl more than six years before him. He surfaced in the NWFP then, this April, not long ago. At that point, references made in the Pakistani media pointed to Harkat-ul Jihad-i Islam as behind the case. Big difference? Probably not really.

Haroon Rashid was just transferring an abducted trader from Rawalpindi to Waziristan when he was arrested. And then he was asked questions, and after a while he gave some answers. From this it transpired he had been part of the assassination of Major General Faisal Alvi, in November last year. He so confessed.

As to Alvi, the late Major General was gunned down in Islamabad in that November killing. He was shot several times in his car one morning, together with his driver. His attackers used 9 mm guns, not necessarily what you would expect from Harkat-ul Mujahedeen.

Alvi was a former head of Pakistan's SSG, the Special Services Group, roughly the local equivalent of the British SAS, a link that has some significance since Alvi was born a British citizen in Kenya, and had excellent relations with the SAS. In 2005 he was removed from his position by Prez-Gen Musharraf, under complicated circumstances. He discovered certain interesting dealings of some generals, allegedly. The latter might have been afraid of him, so speculation goes, and they may have set up a neat trap for Alvi, walking straight into which the Major General said some offensive comments about Musharraf that were recorded and then shown to... Musharraf. The case is made more interesting by the fact that Alvi is said to have included ties between Baitullah Mehsud and the generals concerned in his accusations against his ill-wishers.

Anyway, by November 2008 he decided to do something. He wrote a letter to COAS (Chief of Army Staff) Kayani about the generals, naming names. He is complaining there, mostly about his unmerited fate, for example how his enemies retained money that he should have been paid upon retirement and gave it to him only in small details, as "oxygen for survival." How his daughter's marriage suffered (divorce) after his removal as head of the SSG in 2005. How he had to "struggle in the civil world for a living," while his enemies retained high positions in the army. Not much about Baitullah Mehsud, though, in that letter, which leaves open the question whether the letter's part with Alvi's promise to "furnish all relevant proof" really concerned Taliban ties.

Anyway, Carey Schofield, a journalist of the Times met Alvi shortly before Alvi's death, in a restaurant named Talkingfish (think of that name for a sec...).

That's why we have the letter, because Schofield and the Times published it to us, in that censored form.

Alvi was killed four days later, and those generals, who were supposed to be afraid of him, might have felt some relief with this, speculate some people. Of course, if the Harkat-ul Mujahedeen are named as the assassins, then the Alvi case can be nicely tied back to SSG operations in Waziristan, for which this might have been just revenge.

What strikes the observer, totally baffled as he or she may be by this stage, is that of all insurgents it was Baitullah Mehsud that was supposedly named by Alvi according to Schofield. Let us quote the original story from Schofield:

"He told me how one general had done an astonishing deal with Baitullah Mehsud, the 35-year-old Taliban leader, now seen by many analysts as an even greater terrorist threat than Osama Bin Laden. (...) according to Alavi, a senior Pakistani general came to an arrangement with Mehsud “whereby – in return for a large sum of money – Mehsud’s 3,000 armed fighters would not attack the army."

Some questions come up WRT that text. What analysts compare Baitullah Mehsud to OBL? How "many"? And, like, you mean, that Baitullah Mehsud that is interchangeably referred to now as an Indian or a US agent in Pakistani public and media discourse? (See example.)

A few last words about Haroon Rashid. His brother, Captain Khurram, died fighting ISAF in Afghanistan. Apparently. One of Haroon Rashid's accomplices in the kidnappings, by the name Abdul Basit, was another retired major. Apparently.

Asymmetric war reporting

Remember that piece from Nancy A. Youssef, describing how different Marines are finding the experience of fighting in Afghanistan from what they faced in Iraq?

"In Iraq, a half-hour firefight was considered a long engagement; here, Marines have fought battles that have lasted as long as eight hours against an enemy whose attacking forces have grown from platoon-size to company-size."

But NATO's so-called master narrative still says, about 2008:

"The significant increase in security incidents this year is due to an increased use of asymmetric tactics by insurgents."

And this is similar to what Theo Farrell said in a House of Commons hearing about Afghanistan.

"There are combat operations, which I would call formation warfare, where the Taliban or other groups gather in company-size formation-between 50 and 200 soldiers-and launch a formation attack against one of our patrol bases, or even against a forward operation base. On the other hand there are terrorist attacks, which would comprise suicide bombs, improvised explosive devices and sniper fire. The important point to realise is that this past year, as I understand it, we have seen a significant reduction in formation warfare by the Taliban, and an increase in terrorist attacks. Some observers have said that that is very worrying, because they are moving to asymmetric tactics, which presents a great challenge for us.

I see it as a positive development. The simple reason why they have moved to asymmetric tactics is that between 2007 and early 2008 we caused considerable attrition to their force structure. It is very hard to get reliable figures, but I understand from speaking to people in the Ministry of Defence that they think that around 6,000 Taliban have been killed. So we have gutted a lot of their lower command structure, which has forced them to move towards more asymmetric tactics."

There may seem to be a contradiction between what the Marines say, and what, among others, the Brits say. Both were making first-hand observations in Helmand, which makes this all the more interesting.

Now here are some statistics. First, from Anthony Cordesman's comprehensive presentaion on the Afghanistan/Pakistan war, prepared for CSIS, page 22, showing growth in the number of direct fire attacks. Watch the blue columns.
Then from ANSO's Q1 report (thanks to Christian for drawing attention to it), page 8, showing growth in the number of "close range" attacks.

And some more statistics from ANSO, page 10, about tactics, showing the proportion of small arms/RPG attacks which grew from 54% in Q1 of 2007 to where it is now, in the first quarter of 2009.
This could be interesting to address. ANSO's team concludes that insurgents have stable logistical support, a steady supply of recruits and they are capable of engaging the other side's forces in a conventional manner. At least as long as the first jet-delivered bomb does not drop by for some truly asymmetric action, I would add.

In other news, things are looking bad. In more ways than one.

Debating causation

If I'd have to point out just one of the weak assumptions in President Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, taken from the interagency white paper behind it, it could be this one. Quoting from the white paper proper.

"Assisting Pakistan's capability to fight extremists (...) will include increased U.S. military assistance for helicopters to provide air mobility, night vision equipment, and training and equipment specifically for Pakistani Special Operation Forces and their Frontier Corps."

Pakistan's military may certainly use such equipment for all sorts of purposes. But ever since the US made its move in Afghanistan, the Pakistani military's readiness to fight extremists did not really hinge on how well-equipped its soldiers were/are. It is not a matter of asking them more nicely. And not a matter of giving them better equipment for counterinsurgency. To the extent that they did things at US request, it was partly out of pragmatism (with regard to the US-provided life-support to the Pakistani economy); and it was usually dependent on how much sabotage any such effort faced from within, partly equally out of (a different kind of) pragmatism, partly out of the extremism that has gained influence even within the military. (See what I refer to as "sinking boat operations" here, under the sub-title "Calling 1-800-HAQQANI".) In other words, you can add what you mean to be a counterinsurgent's game-changers to the mix, but the internal Pakistani equilibrium between the only partly visible factions is unaffected by that. The Pakistani army does not become more committed to counterinsurgency just because it gets some fancy equipment for that. Such a change would need to come from elsewhere. From heads, mostly.

On the other hand. One can understand the dislike in India of the Pakistani aspects of the Obama strategy shown for example in this article by Madhav Das Nalapat, father of the NAATO idea. But saying that the Pakistani army is motivated by a "vision of Mughal-era India" is just another misinterpretation to me. Sure there might be people in the Pakistani Army and the ISI who believe in a borderless umma. Or people who never reconciled with the switching off of support to Kashmiri insurgents. Or people who would have never given up support to the Taliban regime, even after 9-11, faced with U.S. military power (and faced with the possibly missed opportunity of getting loads of money in GWOT assistance).

But that Mughal-era India would be the motivating factor for the Pakistani Army, even for the top brass? I mean it's one thing what education generations after generations of Pakistanis get. What I am interested in asking is if it - reestablishing Mughal rule over India - is truly a factor of causation for anyone, meaning there's surely no 5- or even 50-year plan for the realisation of exactly that project within any faction of the Pakistani security sector.

See superficial illustration:

Blood emeralds

Now is one of those times when I will have to blog economically here, and hit entire flocks of birds with few stones if possible. No harm meant to animals of course, just trying to speak expressively.

Today, in light of recent news from Pakistan, I will refer to the literature on the political economy of armed conflict. A major, by now relatively widely known abstract explanation of conflict is the honey pot concept. Some refer to it as a "theory" or as a "hypothesis." In fact, there are two versions of it.

A stronger version is equal to the assumption that fighting occurs for the control of resources. A milder version is that fighting can, after a while, once it has broken out, occur for the control of resources that can finance the fighting. Thus, as different views have it, the honey pot is either a cause or a sustaining factor.

Guess which one it is when you read about the Taliban takeover of an emerald mine in Shangla:

"The mine had been leased to American firm Luxury International, which had been paying Pakistan Rs 40 million a year. The company had left recently because of the security situation.

The Taliban took positions around the mine on Wednesday after the security guards fled. They announced to take control of mining operations and offered the locals to work with them and share the profits. They bought mining equipment from the nearby Kotkay Bazaar.

Sher Bacha, the nazim of the area, and the locals confirmed the report and said more than 1,000 people worked on the mine on Wednesday. Only 100 people worked at the mine before the Taliban takeover."

The excerpt just shows that reality is always too complex for theory to handle. That is the essence of theory: throw away some of the complexity to have a general sense of what you need to focus on. Meeting a given case is always interesting and will always offer contrast/deviation to theory in its details...

Illustration: Swat emeralds examined at this website

Quick notes.

1. One resource the Taliban gained access to here is the allegiance of a whole area where they are now major employers (of a 1,000 people with families). Of course it will be nice for them to trade in the emeralds with places like the Gulf Arab states, too. But that's not all that there is to this.

2. Is the fighting in the FATA and the NWFP (Shangla is in the NWFP, bordering on Swat district) driven by fight for the control of resources? In a sense even that could be true, but before you see some great analogy between amber-trading Teuton Knights of medieval Europe and emerald-trading Taliban from the NWFP, pause to appreciate complexity in this case, too. It is rather a scarcity of the overall available resources in the Pakistani Pashtun areas that contributes to this in an indirect or structural way, but even that is only a part of the entire story.

Alright, I'm dropping my laptop for now. Bye.