We humans have many varieties of religious experience. One of the most common is self-transcendence — a feeling becoming part of something larger, grander and nobler. Most people experience this at least a few times in their lives. When the self thins out and melts away, it not only feels good but can be thrilling.
It’s as though our minds contain a secret staircase taking us from an ordinary life up to something sacred and deeply interconnected, and the door to that staircase opens only on rare occasions. The world’s many religions have found a variety of ways to help people find and climb the staircase. Some religions employ meditation. Others use spinning, dancing and repetitive movements in combination with music. Some use natural drugs. Many secular people have used these methods too — think of the popularity of rave parties, which combine most of these techniques to produce feelings of “peace, love, unity and respect.” As the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim put it, we are “homo duplex,” or a two-level man.
The big question is, Why do our minds contain such a staircase? I believe it’s because there was a long period in human evolution during which it was adaptive to lose the self and merge with others. It wasn’t adaptive for individuals to do so, but it was adaptive for groups. As evolutionary biologists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson have proposed, religiosity is a biological adaptation for binding groups together and helping them enter a mind-set of “one for all, all for one.” Groups that developed emotionally intense, binding religions were able, in the long run, to outcompete and outlast groups that were not so tightly bound.
If the human capacity for self-transcendence is an evolutionary adaptation, then the implications are profound. It suggests that religiosity may be a deep part of human nature. I don’t mean that we evolved to join gigantic organized religions — that kind of religion came along too recently. I mean that we evolved to see sacredness all around us and to join with others into teams that circle around sacred objects, people and ideas. This is why politics is so tribal. Politics is partly profane, it’s partly about self-interest. But politics is also about sacredness. It’s about joining with others to pursue moral ideals. It’s about the eternal struggle between good and evil, and we all believe we’re on the side of the good.
Most social scientists have assumed that religion is not an adaptation. They try to explain the rise of civilization using ideas about kinship (we can be nice to those who share our genes) and reciprocity (we can be nice to those who might return the favor some day). Cooperation with strangers that we’ll never see again is assumed to be an evolutionary “mistake.” But if you see religion as an adaptation that helps groups compete, then religions make a lot more sense.
This perspective also helps explains the persistent undercurrent of dissatisfaction in modern life. Ever since the Enlightenment, modern secular society has emphasized liberty and self-expression. We exult in our freedom, but sometimes we wonder: Is this all there is? What should I do with my life? What’s missing? What’s missing is that we are homo duplex, but only our first-floor, profane longings are being satisfied.
One great challenge of modern life is to find the staircase then to do something good and noble once you climb to the top. I see this desire in my students at the University of Virginia. They all want to find a cause or calling that they can throw themselves into. They’re all searching for their staircase. Most people long to become part of something larger. And this explains the extraordinary resonance of this simple metaphor conjured up nearly 400 years ago. “No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
The Annan Plan is ‘worse than feckless’, because it buys the Assad regime time and precludes more effective options.
Washington, DC - Kofi Annan is a good man. We know that. We have all watched him for years. Where there is conflict and misunderstanding, whether among individuals, groups, or nations, he seeks conciliation. When two parties are in armed conflict, he does not take sides; instead, he tries to make peace.
But we also know that his instincts, however noble, have sometimes served him badly. That was true in Rwanda, when Annan’s forbearance provided evil men with an opportunity they should not have had. It was also occasionally true at the UN, where the corrupt and the abusive sometimes found sanctuary in the nurturing environment of the then-Secretary General’s tolerant understanding. And now, once again, we see Kofi Annan on a world stage, following, as usual, his noble instincts.
Annan was a logical choice for the UN and the Arab League to serve as their joint envoy to Syria. The UN Security Council is at loggerheads. Its permanent members cannot agree on a course of action regarding Syria. China, burdened by its ongoing mistreatment of Tibetans and Uighurs, will not support any action which could set a precedent for international interference in domestic repression. Russia has its own interests in the preservation of the Assad regime, and can cite its abhorrence of protracted civil war to forestall concerted international action against it.
The Arab League, for all that it has dealt sternly with Assad, has its own preoccupations and divisions, and collectively flinches from aiding and abetting violent insurrection in an Arab nation.
Professional peacemaker
Yes, all this makes Kofi Annan a logical choice as emissary. He is, after all, a professional peacemaker. He will not choose sides, and his six-point interim peace proposal for Syria is a model of even-handedness, both as between the regime and the rebels, and as between their respective allies. When circumstances will not permit distinctions between oppressor and oppressed, between aggressor and victim, or between right and wrong, Kofi is your man. The patient Ghanaian will deal impartially with anyone. He will sit, as he did over the past weekend with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, to discuss his peace proposal, as though the latter were earnestly seeking justice in the Levant.
But does anyone honestly think that the Syrian regime, committed as it is to a programme of violent intimidation and collective punishment, will provide “full humanitarian access”, or a daily “humanitarian pause” for those whom it suspects of aiding its adversaries? What are the chances that the tender Mr Assad will release detainees who may promptly rejoin the struggle against him, or that he will permit foreign journalists to freely document his atrocities? Who would want to bet his life, or the lives of those dear to him, that Bashar and his generals will honour a ceasefire, or engage in good faith in a “political dialogue” with those who are challenging their power?
Pursuing such “solutions” is worse than feckless, for it forestalls other, potentially effective actions. By permitting the Syrian regime added time, it is morally equivalent to aiding and abetting Bashar al-Assad.
Diplomats at the UN embraced the Annan proposals – not because they had any chance of implementation, but because they demonstrated “progress”. Diplomats love a process, and that’s what the Annan Plan provides them. The hope is that when – not if – the proposals are effectively stymied by Syria, the unanimously approved UN “statement” by which the Annan proposals were launched might then be passed as a “resolution”. More “progress”. But a feckless statement will not be any more effective for having become a resolution. This is the diplomatic equivalent of Zeno’s Paradox, for each progressively smaller step forward slowly converges on, but can never pass the hard barrier of Sino-Russian obduracy.
Violence continues
Meanwhile, the Syrian Army that devastated Baba Amr continues its brutal shelling of al-Khalidiya and its offensive in Hama Province. And the rebels of the Free Syrian Army, who are rapidly running out of arms and ammunition, are being progressively forced to flee to Turkey and Lebanon.
There are no clean and morally unambiguous options in this conflict, which has already become a civil war with sectarian overtones. In the best of circumstances, there will be considerable bloodshed and much violence and injustice done to innocents. Those countries willing to engage effectively and realistically with the opposition will have the opportunity at least to influence them, however marginally, in positive directions, as some are trying to do in advance of the “Friends of Syria” meeting scheduled for April 1 in Istanbul.
But such good as can be done in these circumstances will only be done by those who are willing to climb metaphorically into the ring, and to dirty themselves in the process of providing such assistance as is possible to the oppressed of Syria as they struggle to liberate themselves from an unspeakable regime. It will mean taking sides.It was therefore encouraging to see the agreement reached this past Sunday between US President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to increase the flow of non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition. This is doubtless but an early step in a process, yet another process. Let us hope that the process continues quickly. For what the situation needs is not high-minded sentiments, but effective, lethal aid to Syrians willing to fight for basic freedoms against a regime that has shed any pretense of legitimacy or respectability.
Edmund Burke famously said that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. The good and high-minded people, the Kofi Annans if you will, who vote on statements and pass resolutions, who promote quixotic peace proposals, who hold earnest parleys with implacable dictators, may appear to have clean hands in the end. Those who engage, who try to do good in an evil world, on the other hand, will be compromised. But when ultimately the smoke has cleared, both literally and metaphorically, and the final accounting is made, and judgments are passed on all those implicated, either for their action or for their inaction, it will be upon the shoulders of the “good” that the weight of moral opprobrium should fall.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Army that devastated Baba Amr continues its brutal shelling of al-Khalidiya and its offensive in Hama Province. And the rebels of the Free Syrian Army, who are rapidly running out of arms and ammunition, are being progressively forced to flee to Turkey and Lebanon.
There are no clean and morally unambiguous options in this conflict, which has already become a civil war with sectarian overtones. In the best of circumstances, there will be considerable bloodshed and much violence and injustice done to innocents. Those countries willing to engage effectively and realistically with the opposition will have the opportunity at least to influence them, however marginally, in positive directions, as some are trying to do in advance of the “Friends of Syria” meeting scheduled for April 1 in Istanbul.
But such good as can be done in these circumstances will only be done by those who are willing to climb metaphorically into the ring, and to dirty themselves in the process of providing such assistance as is possible to the oppressed of Syria as they struggle to liberate themselves from an unspeakable regime. It will mean taking sides.It was therefore encouraging to see the agreement reached this past Sunday between US President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to increase the flow of non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition. This is doubtless but an early step in a process, yet another process. Let us hope that the process continues quickly. For what the situation needs is not high-minded sentiments, but effective, lethal aid to Syrians willing to fight for basic freedoms against a regime that has shed any pretense of legitimacy or respectability.
Edmund Burke famously said that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. The good and high-minded people, the Kofi Annans if you will, who vote on statements and pass resolutions, who promote quixotic peace proposals, who hold earnest parleys with implacable dictators, may appear to have clean hands in the end. Those who engage, who try to do good in an evil world, on the other hand, will be compromised. But when ultimately the smoke has cleared, both literally and metaphorically, and the final accounting is made, and judgments are passed on all those implicated, either for their action or for their inaction, it will be upon the shoulders of the “good” that the weight of moral opprobrium should fall.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday welcomed the parliamentary review of relations between Pakistan and the United States, and told Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani he hoped that it would lead to a “balanced approach that respects Pakistan’s sovereignty but also respects our concerns with respect to our security and our needs to battle terrorists”.
The much anticipated meeting took place on the sidelines of the nuclear security summit here at which both leaders discussed ways to assuage tensions between the two countries.
It was the first highest-level contact between Islamabad and Washington since the US Navy Seals recovered and killed al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. The massacre of 24 soldiers in NATO airstrikes on the Salala checkpost in November further strained the already tense relations.
“Prime Minister Gilani has very clearly articulated to President Obama that government as the executive head has asked the parliament to recommend new rules of engagement with Washington,” Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said while briefing the Pakistani media about the meeting. She, however, dispelled the perception that the government had already decided to revive ties with the United States and the parliamentary review was mere eyewash.During the meeting, which lasted for an hour, the two leaders discussed a wide-range of issues, including bilateral relations and peace and stability in the region.
Obama appreciated Pakistan’s role in fighting terrorism and extremism and said improved relations between Islamabad and Washington were important to achieve success in the ongoing war on terror. Gilani made it clear to him that no war could be won without the ownership of the people. Obama said his country fully recognised and respected the sovereignty of Pakistan but at the same time he stressed the need for protecting the security of the US from terrorists.
Referring to the parliamentary process on the issue of future relations between Pakistan and the United States, he said that his country accorded due respect and honour to the process. “I welcome the fact that the parliament in Pakistan is reviewing, after some extensive study, the nature of this relationship,” Obama said, adding, “I think that it’s important for us to get it right.” Giving his comments to the media along with Gilani at the Coex Convention Centre, the venue of the summit, Obama said both Islamabad and Washington needed to work together for the security and peace in region. He was of the view that stability and security in Afghanistan was important because it would not only benefit Pakistan, but also the entire world. Obama mentioned the fact that during the last several months, Pakistan-US ties had experienced some strains but he welcomed the parliamentary review, adding the nature of relations were important.
The PM told him that Pakistan was keen to improve its relations with the US and wanted the ongoing parliamentary process to revisit the rules of engagement. He agreed with President Obama that stability in Afghanistan would ensure stability in Pakistan. Foreign Minister Khar, who also attended the meeting along with Ambassadors Sherry Rehman and Masood Khan, told journalists that the issues relating to drone attacks and NATO supplies also came under discussion during the Obama-Gilani meeting. Khar disagreed with a questioner who asked her whether the attempts to put relations with the US back on track was the result of any secret deal. “There is no room in the system for striking a deal with anybody. The government is not trying to jump the gun in this regard,” she added.
Advocating democracy is neither a “remedy” to Central Asia’s political ills nor a sound “strategic option” for NATO.
London, United Kingdom - Dubbed as the “pivot region” of world politics, the five Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have collectively gained an immense strategic importance over the last two decades, thanks to their geography and vast deposits of natural resources including gold, gas, oil and uranium.
Today, China has its eyes on Central Asia as a source of energy and raw materials for its expanding economy, as well as a “critical frontier” for its trade expansion and ethnic stability. Chinese state-owned enterprises have penetrated deep into the infrastructure and energy sectors across the region, especially in Turkmenistan, while the government has sought to increase its soft power by sponsoring a large network of Confucius Institutes in the region’s capitals.
In what seems to be both a response to NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe and an attempt to keep the US and China’s Central Asian ambitions at bay, Russia – the traditional Central Asian power – has been seeking to expand its power in, and relevance to, the region since the late 1990s.
Currently, Moscow exerts a great deal of influence over the politics of Central Asian states. It is also a crucial market for Central Asia’s “surplus labour” and therefore, a key source of remittances, which in turn make some regional governments extremely vulnerable to Moscow’s demands. The recent spat between Moscow and Dushanbe over the imprisonment of a Russian pilot by Tajik authorities is a case in point. Angered by Tajikistan’s apparent independent decision, Moscow secured Vladimir Sadovnichy’s release by threatening Rahmon’s government with mass deportation of Tajik workers.
Preoccupied with Eastern Europe in the 1990s, NATO’s Central Asian strategy was limited to the expansion of ties with energy-rich Kazakhstan and prevention of a Russian monopoly over pipelines carrying oil from the Caspian Sea region. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, however, Central Asia’s proximity to Afghanistan elevated its strategic importance by offering a “natural” force projection platform as well as a relatively safe exit gate from the Afghan theatre.
Depending on Russian gas
In addition, Europe’s ever increasing dependency on Russian gas and the various strategic vulnerabilities embedded in such dependency have encouraged NATO to try to establish a firmer presence in Central Asia’s energy sector in order to reduce Russia’s dominance over the international gas market.
Aware of this ongoing and intensifying great power rivalry in their region, Central Asian states themselves have embarked upon a geopolitical chess game playing, albeit to various extent, Washington, Beijing and Moscow against one another so to maintain and secure their holds on power in their respective countries.
As NATO tries to utilise the region as its “exit road” from Afghanistan and pursues its ambitious New Silk Road Strategy, therefore, it is imperative to explore NATO’s options and their limits, for securing these ends, especially that a regional political crisis of some kind over the short to medium term seems inevitable.
Like their counterparts in the much of the Arab world, lives of average citizens in Central Asia are marred with misery and misfortune. Central Asia, in other words, suffers from autocratic rules, widespread corruption, endemic poverty, chronic human rights abuses, a youth bulge, high rates of inflation and unemployment, imposed secularism and religious intolerance.
Since 2005, in fact, the region has gone through a series of political crisis evident in public strikes in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and indeed, Kyrgyzstan, which has managed to set a world record by undergoing two revolutions over a five-year span.
And to make matters worse, there are unresolved intra-regional disputes over border demarcations and management of scarce water resources which have not only sharpened mutual distrust and recriminations, but have also exposed regional states to political developments in each other’s territories.
Last year’s quarrel between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan over a railway blast near the Uzbek-Afghan border, which Uzbekistan described as a terrorist attack, is a testimony to this. Dependent on Uzbekistan for its rail connections with the outside world, Dushanbe first blamed Tashkent for the explosion and then complained that it had been “inexplicably slow in repairing the bridge”.
Influence of Russia
Hence, advocating democracy is neither a remedy to Central Asia’s myriad political and economic ills nor a sound strategic option for NATO. In the context of entrenched authoritarian political cultures inherited from the Soviet era, rise of China and the continuing influence of Russia whose developmental model does not equate trade and economic prosperity with democracy and a lack of state institutions as well as civic entities in largely nomadic societies of Central Asia, any democratisation project could have the unintended effect of complicating matters further, while also pushing regional states towards the Chinese and Russian orbits.
Any attempt at democratisation in Central Asia should be painstakingly slow and confined to assisting Kyrgyzstan, as it tries to consolidate a parliamentarian system of governance. Should Kyrgyzstan succeed in its democratic experiment, there can then be hopes that other nations might follow suit in the future. The bad news here is that the current, democratically elected government in Bishkek seems to be tilting closer to Russia and thus, it might not ask for any Western assistance.
NATO could also go at it alone and try to capitalise on Central Asian regimes’ desire for its continual engagement with the region as a “counterbalance” to Russia and China in return for a permanent base. Although appreciative of Chinese investment, regional states are nonetheless fearful of becoming a “mere raw materials appendage” to China.
Russia, on the other hand, is distrusted due to her continuous meddling in the internal affairs of Central Asian states. Nevertheless, a unilateral NATO approach to the region would certainly irk Beijing and Moscow, encouraging them to forge closer ties and transform the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) into a truly anti-NATO organisation.
Notwithstanding official statements, institutionalisation of Sino-Russo rivalries in both Central Asia and further afield – not an anti-NATO posture – has been the key reason behind the establishment of the SCO. This is evident in the fact that Belarus became a dialogue partner at the organisation immediately after its completion of lucrative trade and military agreements with China; a development that Russia was not particularly content with.
Dwindling economic influence
Alternatively, NATO could forge an alliance with Russia in its effort to stay engaged in Central Asia. Despite having troops stationed throughout the region, Russia has proved incapable of contributing to peacekeeping operations there, while Moscow is genuinely concerned about its dwindling economic influence in the region vis-à-vis that of China.
For its part, NATO has much to gain through co-operation with Russia, especially that it has readily turned a blind eye to human rights abuses in the region in recent years. Not only the two have a vested interest in curbing drug trafficking and terrorism, but they also have a common interest in limiting Beijing’s influence in Central Asia.
What is more, history shows that Sino-Russo co-operative gestures have been strongest only when their bilateral ties with Washington have suffered setbacks. A NATO-led co-operation with Russia in Central Asia, hence, could be an opportunity for the US to improve its ties with Moscow and deprive Beijing of an important ally on the world stage provided that the US government is prepared to satisfy certain Russian demands.
All in all, as NATO member states prepare themselves for the upcoming meeting in Chicago, there is an urgent need for prompt discussions and contingency planning on Central Asia. This is so because, not only Central Asia is of immense importance to NATO’s ability to successfully execute its wider geostrategic interests in the world, but also because a political crisis in the region is now a matter when not if.
The anticipated turmoil and instability could be driven by a dangerous rise in Kyrgyz nationalism directed at ethnic Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan, a succession crisis in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan where lifelong leaders have yet to nominate their successors, or a surge in Islamic militancy in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan since states’ inability to provide basic social services for the public, violent crackdown on dissent, proximity to Afghanistan and a lack of secular opposition are giving rise to Islamic extremist discourses.
Since both Russia and NATO have a broad range of common strategic interests in Central Asia, efforts must thus be made to pave the way for a NATO-Russo co-operation in Central Asia as this present the least bad option available at NATO’s disposal. Failure in doing so, however, could, at the very least, jeopardise NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, thereby plunging the US into another calamity born out of the ashes of the Afghan war.
Yemen urged Pakistan on Tuesday to free one of Osama bin Laden’s injured widows, saying the Yemen-born Amal Al-Sadeh and her four children were not guilty of any crime.
Pakistan’s interior minister said earlier this month that bin Laden’s three widows, including Sadeh, would be put on trial for entering and living in the country illegally.
“The Pakistani authorities retracted from their initial position to surrender Amal to the Yemeni government,” Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi told Reuters.
“We continue to call on the Pakistani authorities to transfer her to her home country. We are also concerned about the well being of her young children. The children should not be punished for the mistakes of their father.”
Al Qaeda leader bin Laden was shot and killed in May last year by US Special Forces who stormed his house in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad after a decade-long manhunt.
Sadeh, two other wives from Saudi Arabia and an undisclosed number of children were among the 16 people detained by Pakistani authorities after the raid.
Relatives said Sadeh, who was shot in the leg during the raid, entered Pakistan legally.
“She came to Pakistan with her elder brother in 2000 using her passport,” said Hameed Al-Sadeh, Amal’s 27-year-old cousin.
“They flew from Sanaa to Karachi. There was nothing illegal about it. The Pakistani authorities have even released a photocopy of her passport,” he told Reuters.
Hameed, who is a journalist in Sanaa, said Amal was being held with her four children in a basement.
“She limps from a bullet wound in her knee and she’s suffering from psychological trauma and very low blood pressure,” he said.
“She hasn’t seen the sun for months, they are kept in the basement below the earth, she and her four children, the eldest is a 12 year old girl, and three boys, the youngest is two.”
Yemeni Human Rights Minister Houriya Mashhour said Amal had committed no crime in Pakistan.
“Just because she was married to him (bin Laden) does not make her guilty,” Mashhour told Reuters.
“What about the children? They have nothing do it with this. They have been kept in captivity for almost a year now. Why should they pay the price?” she added.
A skeleton apparently dropped out of the Indian cupboard when a slice of the disgusting Indian role in the Sri Lankan war was openly written about today in our press. Even in cold print, it stinks of dead carcasses rotting under the tropical sun, and the sight of the vultures feeding on them is simply appalling.
The point is, India can never get rid of the smell of Sri Lankan blood on its hands. The blood coagulated over the past 3 decades and now all the waters of the Indian Ocean cannot wash it away. What is needed is a truth and reconciliation commission so that the Indian establishment can go through a genuine catharsis.
Now, where do we begin? I think a good starting point is NOT Rajiv Gandhi’s assasination but what drove Velupillai Prabhakaran to order the killing. So, let us go back to the early 1980s when we were on ‘talking terms’ with Prabhakaran.
That was also the time I worked as a diplomat in the Indian mission in Colombo handling political work, but like Lord Palmerston said famously about the Schleswig-Holstein Question, I’ve forgotten all about it.
Fortunately, however, we have still serving our establishment three officials who may remember and can possibly tell the whole story at its genesis, and the truth and nothing but the truth as to what made Prabhakaran turn an enemy — West Bengal governor M.K.Narayanan, Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai and the Permanent Representative to the United Nations H.S.Puri.
Let us constitute a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Sri Lanka. Knowing the truth about Sri Lanka’s war and reconciling with the truth is becoming terribly important for our country, too. As the flip-flop in the Indian stance at the UNHRC voting in Geneva yesterday shows, opportunism bordering on political cynicism still rules the roost in India’s Sri Lanka policy; and, it is bereft of principles, beliefs, consistency or any trace of morality.
India is playing with fire. It shouldn’t be that the life of one former prime minister was lost in vain, when it was cut down in its prime.
Equally reprehensible it indeed is if our country is still having a blood feud with its small neighbour. An honest bit of soul-searching will do us a world of good. Now, how do we begin? Let us begin by asking M.K.Narayanan first, who would probably have a complete memory of the violent life and times of Prabhakaran. But before doing that, read the story in the Business Standard first so that you’d know what to ask him.
Did General Pasha and his colleagues ever realise that their mid-20th century organisation, built on ‘paradigms of control and fear’ and buttressed through old fashioned notions of ‘national security’ and ‘patriotism’ needs a strategic rethink to face the challenges of a new interactive age?
Almost all western newspaper reports that mention ISI start with the laudatory buzz words “Pakistan’s all powerful spy agency”. This is precisely the mindset that the new DG ISI needs to avoid from day one. The unfortunate reality is that today ISI might be powerful or frightening for helpless journalists, citizens and taxpayers of Pakistan (who should, in the first place, if Pakistan was a normal country, be expected to be protected by their intelligence agencies). But in terms of protecting its own turf and vital national interests, ISI today is clearly the bruised, fatigued boxer that is sweating and panting on the ropes, wondering what went wrong. This is the unflattering but hugely realistic image that the new DG ISI should have on the plasma screen of his mind as he sets out to tackle the challenges faced by his agency.
General Zaheerul Islam’s predecessor was a hardworking, honest and conscientious officer, but during his three years at the helm, the agency encountered the worst crisis of its history. It suffered a series of embarrassments, was humiliated and outmanoeuvred by rival intelligence organisations, was confronted by an unprecedented demonisation across the world and, to make matters worse, it now faces a crisis of legitimacy amongst the better educated and more intellectually vigorous sections of Pakistani society.
General Pasha may like to thank internationally acclaimed author, Ahmed Rashid, who argues in his latest book, Pakistan On the Brink that President Obama had approved a plan by Leon Panetta to create a Pakistan-specific CIA hidden from the eyes of ISI. Thus one can exonerate the traditional soldier, General Pasha, for the challenge to contain this global age blitzkrieg was enormous and certainly beyond the capacity of his rusty organisation. Nevertheless one wonders: did General Pasha and his colleagues ever realise that their mid-20th century organisation, built on ‘paradigms of control and fear’ and buttressed through old fashioned notions of ‘national security’ and ‘patriotism’ needs a strategic rethink to face the challenges of a new interactive age? If they did, some change would have been seen in the behaviour of the lower to mid-ranking officials who continue to employ ‘fear’ as a tool to deal with the media and civil society, leading to an increasing wedge between the ISI and the intelligentsia of its own country.
I would pick up four events or developments to help explain the kind of multidimensional challenges the ISI faces today. First, in 2009, with massive penetration and footprint of foreign intelligence agencies across Pakistan, ISI for the first time lost its monopoly on gathering and regulation of information from within Pakistan. To Pakistan’s spymasters, who had failed in their political battle to prevent CIA’s penetration, this loss of control might have been worrying to begin with. And the infamous Raymond Davis affair may have concentrated their minds on the extent and risks of this penetration, but its true nature, size, depth, scope and significance probably only dawned upon them when the role of Dr Shakeel Afridi and his polio teams in the CIA operation to discover Osama bin Laden came to the surface. Add to this the twist that Congressman Dana Rohrabacher wants Dr Afridi to be given US citizenship and awarded for his services to the international community, and you get to develop a sense of the challenge ISI faces in a globalised interactive world.
Second, the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden by the CIA in an Abbottabad compound fully exposed the capacity issues of the ISI, however we may put it (depending upon what is known from open sources as to what happened). For if we believe the insinuations of the US media that the ISI was keeping OBL through some ‘wheels within wheels’ arrangement for a trade-off later, then clearly it failed to protect its ‘prized asset’ from the competing intelligence, CIA, that effectively penetrated and manoeuvred within ISI’s home turf. Unfortunately, this damning verdict on ISI’s capacity and competence stays the same even if we turn this story around, faithfully believing ISI’s version that it had no inkling of OBL or his colourful harem of wives, because in that case it not only failed to detect the ‘international public enemy number one’, but also had no idea what the CIA was doing (with a massive operation, that included hiring buildings and running polio teams) on its turf under its very nose.
Third, the successful raid by a mysterious group of ‘Taliban’ on Pakistan Navy’s Mehran base, in May of 2011, leading to the destruction of strategically vital surveillance planes, P-3C Orion, can only be analysed as a spectacular failure on the part of the ISI in an area that constitutes its primary responsibility, i.e. inter-services intelligence. In fact, those forces who planned this attack through the Taliban, apart from the destruction of surveillance planes, must have desired to send a message to Pakistanis and the world at large how vulnerable the defence and intelligence structures are in a country loaded with nuclear weapons. Has ISI done some soul searching on the real scope of this disaster? If it did, we are not aware of it.
Four, the arrest by FBI and later plea bargaining of the Kashmiri activist, Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai in August 2011 raises interesting questions about ISI’s inability to understand the changing international scenario and its own position in it. Why for instance, despite mounting fault lines, clash of interests and frictions with the US intelligence community, the ISI never figured out that it needed to tie up its loose ends? Perhaps even more importantly, is it getting the right legal, technical and strategic advice as it initiates, conducts and sustains various intelligence activities around the world? Ironically, in the case of Dr. Fai, the ISI appeared shocked as if it was betrayed by erstwhile friends; though as a smart intelligence agency with its eye on the changing political dynamics inside the US and its regional posture in South Asia, it should have expected this turn of events many years in advance and prepared for it.
In addition to these purely technical issues of capacity and competence, ISI today is also facing a growing crisis of legitimacy amongst the Pakistani intelligentsia. In one briefing after the OBL fiasco, a senior official desperately cried out that ISI was the only agency in the world that was not only being demonised by the foreign press but was also being denigrated by its own media. He was right; ISI is being squeezed hard by a combination of interests on its domestic front which, if it continues, is bound to further reduce its capacity to serve as a key national institution.
But the million dollar question is: does ISI have any capacity to deal with these new kinds of challenges? And the answer is: this is what the new DG’s challenge is and should be. First, ISI needs an internal debate to determine if it wants to see itself as a modern intelligence organisation or would like to continue as a Brezhnev era operational agency that relies upon ‘fear and muscle’ for achieving its objectives?
Second, if it yearns to be a modern age intelligence agency then it must take immediate steps to reduce its widening gulf with the Pakistani politicians, media and intelligentsia. It can initiate this process by moving its own well-thought out proposal to close the ‘political cell’. Along with this, it has to ensure (even if it is not directly responsible) through its new conduct that stories like the murder of Saleem Shahzad, the abduction of Umar Cheema and the roughing up of politicians like Kabir Wasti cannot be connected to it by any stretch of the imagination.
Third, and perhaps the most important: it must take steps to increase efficiency and reduce its visibility. That won’t be possible unless it improves its human resource by refusing to be used as a ‘parking lot’ by superseded officers, and launches a massive programme of education and retraining. It may start by restructuring its training institutes that need to hire expertise in the areas of IT, law, public policy, international relations, psychology, cyberspace and the media. It is time for the ISI to wake up and smell the coffee. Dinosaurs don’t survive, tigers do.
The French government is under pressure to explain why more was not done to stop a self-styled Al Qaeda gunman who reportedly killed seven people.
Mohamed Merah, 23, died in a hail of bullets at the end of a marathon siege in the city of Toulouse.
He had reportedly admitted to killing three Muslim soldiers, three Jewish children and a rabbi over the past two weeks.
The picture that is emerging of Merah is one of a disturbed young man who was known to French intelligence officials and was on the United States no-fly list.
The Frenchman of Algerian descent had told investigators he had started reading the Koran while in a French prison and became a radical.
The prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Francois Molins, says Merah had travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He says Merah was interviewed by intelligence agents in Toulouse in November but told them he had been to Afghanistan on holiday – and even showed them photographs.
But questions are being asked about how a man who was under government surveillance was able to access weapons and kill seven people before being caught.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who has been lambasting Muslim immigration as part of her presidential election campaign, was quick to accuse the government of “laxity” towards the “fundamentalist risk”.
A spokesman for Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande said there had been a surveillance “failing”.
Socialist Jean-Pierre Chevenement, a former defence and interior minister, said the killings were “a warning for services in charge of anti-terrorism”.
‘Errors of judgment’
Some ordinary citizens, who will vote in the first round of presidential elections on April 22, also suggested the authorities were slow to halt Merah’s rampage.
“They should have got him a long time ago, they knew where he was and what he’d done,” said Amairi Messaoud, 55.
“How come he had been in court 15 times for minor offences and they didn’t get him?”
But interior minister Claude Gueant rejected accusations of intelligence slip-ups.
“The DCRI follows lots of people involved in radical Islam. Expressing ideas, espousing Salafist beliefs, is not a sufficient reason to arrest someone,” he said.
Foreign minister Alain Juppe said “light must be shed” on what happened in the run-up to the killings, but insisted there was “no reason” to think there were any failings.
Security expert Francois Heisbourg said that “the question should at least be asked” about eventual intelligence errors.
“To err is perfectly human. For me, it was clear that our immunity to attacks couldn’t last forever,” he said.
“One day or another a terrorist was going to slip through the net, but of course that can’t excuse any possible errors of judgement.”
‘A fanatic and a monster’
Investigators are now trying to establish if Merah was a lone home-grown militant, or working with others under instruction.
Meanwhile, candidates for the presidential election have resumed campaigning.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged action, announcing a crackdown on internet hate sites and those who travel abroad for indoctrination.
“Any person who consults websites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be criminally punished,” he said.
He also labelled Merah a “monster”.
“These crimes were not the work of a madman. A madman is irresponsible. These crimes were the work of a fanatic and a monster,” said.
“To look for an explanation… would be a moral fault.”
Mr Sarkozy’s poll numbers are improving, but Ms Pen is determined to put the blame for the murders squarely back on him.
The former UN weapons inspector discusses Iran’s nuclear programme and how to prevent another war in the region.
Few men have spent more time at the intersection of nuclear weapons and international politics than Swedish diplomat Hans Blix.
As the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and then chief United Nations weapons inspector, Blix was at the centre of events when he publicly contradicted claims from the administration of former US president George W Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It was an assessment the US pushed aside.
Blix also accused the British government of dramatising the threat of weapons in Iraq in order to strengthen its case for joining the 2003 war against Saddam Hussein. No stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
In his 2004 book Disarming Iraq, Blix gives an account of the events and inspections before the coalition began its invasion.
“I am sorry for the way it went because we failed, and if we had persuaded the UN Security Council and persuaded the world, then there might not have been a war,” he said.
Recent talk about a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear installations has made Blix concerned about a repeat of the events that led to the Iraq war.
“When I hear [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu saying it’s not a question of days or weeks, but also not years, I think that sounds like a terrible threat,” he says.
In this interview with Al Jazeera, Blix discusses Iran’s nuclear programme and how to stop what he calls a “legally unjustified” attack against Tehran. Is Iran trying to develop a nuclear weapon? Is an Israeli attack on Iran coming?
Talk to Al Jazeera airs each week at the following times GMT: Saturday: 0430; Sunday: 0830, 1930; Monday 1430.
Click here for more on Talk to Al Jazeera
Click here to follow Talk to Al Jazeera on Facebook
The Taliban on Sunday threatened to attack Pakistani lawmakers and their families if they support allowing Nato to resume shipping supplies through the country to troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Pakistan closed its Afghan border crossings to Nato in November in retaliation for American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan’s parliament is scheduled to begin debate Monday on a revised relationship with the US that could lead to the border being reopened.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan accused Pakistani officials of acting like slaves for the US and said allowing Nato supplies to resume would be “shameful and unacceptable.”
“These parliamentarians must know that in such case, none of them will be safe in their homes,” Ahsan told The Associated Press. “We will start attacking all the parliamentarians and their families.”
Ahsan also said militants would “publicly slaughter” drivers ferrying Nato supplies.
The US is eager to get the supplies moving again because it has had to spend much more money shipping goods by an alternative route that runs through Central Asia.
The supply line through Pakistan will also be key to trucking out equipment as the US seeks to withdraw most of its combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Pakistan would also benefit from patching up relations because it needs US assistance to help keep its struggling economy afloat. The US has given Pakistan billions of dollars in aid since 2001 to enlist its support in fighting Islamist militants, but the relationship has been plagued by mistrust.
A Pakistani parliamentary commission tasked with proposing new guidelines for the relationship between the two countries last week demanded an end to American drone attacks and an apology for the airstrikes that killed Pakistani troops.
The commission also recommended that the Pakistani government charge Nato more for shipments through the country if it allows them to resume. The parliament is scheduled to begin debate on these points Monday.
Washington has expressed regret for the border incident but avoided a formal apology. US officials were reportedly preparing to apologize last month but had to postpone the plan after US soldiers burned copies of the Quran in Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama apologized for that, bring criticism from political opponents.
High-level meetings between the two countries were mostly put on hold following the airstrikes, but lately they have started to pick up.
On Sunday, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari met with Marc Grossman, the US special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, on the sidelines of a conference in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the US said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is scheduled to meet Obama during a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday.
The Pakistani army, and to a lesser extent the civilian government, will ultimately decide whether to restore ties with the US, but parliament could influence the decision.
Analysts say placing the issue before lawmakers is an attempt to give the government and the army some political cover, so they can claim support of the country before quietly reopening the supply route.
Opposition lawmakers have indicated they may not back the proposed new terms with the US.
“If the government wants the parliament to provide guidance on certain issues and situations, then we are ready to, but the government has to convince us, because its track record regarding two previous resolutions proved to be very bad,” Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the leader of the opposition in parliament, said Saturday.
Parliament passed a resolution last May recommending Pakistan cut off Nato supplies if the US didn’t stop drone strikes in the country. The missile attacks continued, as did the Nato supplies.
The drone strikes are unpopular among Pakistanis and have long been publicly opposed by the Pakistani army and government as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. They also maintain that the attacks fan support for militancy even as they kill insurgents.
The issue is muddied by the fact that in private, the army has approved at least some of the strikes and provided intelligence on them, raising questions over whether they technically violate the sovereignty of the country. American officials rarely talk about the program in public.
Posts
