Kiracofe on AFPAK

The Neo-COINists, Neocons, and assorted members of the Imperial faction wringing their hands about "AFPAK" and drinking their snake oil and opium cocktails.  Meanwhile there is ground reality.

With respect to Punjab (Panjab) a serious assessment of Taliban penetration on the Pak side of the border would be useful.

It should be obvious even to casual observers by now that Taliban are a Wahhabized takfiri movement of Pushtuns (Pashtuns, Pathans).  They (Wahhabized Pushtuns) were empowered by the Zia dictatorship for Cold War purposes and then by Benazir (yes Benazir with a wink from the US Clinton Admin) for hydrocarbon (UNOCAL) and "strategic depth" Pak purposes.

Historically, the penetration of Wahhabism into the subcontinent is via the Deobandi sect.  It came directly from...yes the Arabian peninsula through missionaries in the 18th century. So this is not new.

Since the late 1970s, the Saudis have funded the Wahhabization of the Subcontinent region with the Deobandis as a key component.

Perhaps the merry band of 40ish NeoCOINist officers (and a certain Australian buddy of theirs) should take their pasty white faces out of the library and get the asses into the field and into the dung-littered mud.

Here, for example, is a recent take on Pak Punjab (predominantly Berelvi) from a Pak analyst which could be assessed:

"The New York Times reports that Taliban insurgents are teaming up with local militant groups to make inroads in Punjab, and that in at least five towns in southern and western Punjab, including Multan, barber shops, music centres and internet cafes offensive to the militants’ strict interpretation of Islam have received threats.

"The report has instigated a blistering debate here in Punjab on whether, in the days to come, the Taliban can really take over Pakistan’s largest province. Some recent incidents, including attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore and the Manawan Police Training School, raised fears to new heights and many believe that the Taliban, known to have their roots in the tribal culture of frontier region and Afghanistan, have the capacity to expand their control to other parts of Pakistan, most importantly to Punjab.

"The Taliban school of thought simply cannot win support in Punjab. I rest my opinion on three fundamentals because of which the Taliban cannot win in Punjab.

"First, the Taliban philosophy is based on the strict Deobandi school of Islam, which has no room for saints and shrines. The majority of Punjabi Muslims are followers of the Barelvi school; which revolves around the saint and his shrine. Punjabi Muslims have always been emotionality attached with shrines and sufis. When the Taliban locked the mausoleum of Pir Baba in Buner, Punjabi Muslims felt offended, despite the fact that Pir Baba is not a well-known saintly figure in Punjab.

"No one can dare think of closing down the shrines of Data Ganj Bakhsh, Hazrat Mian Mir or Bahauddin Zakaria. Almost every village in Punjab has a shrine, and for Barelvis, shrines are nearly as sacred as mosques. This is not in conformity with the orthodox Ahle Hadith or Deobandi traditions, which do not recognise the shrine or mazar as a religious symbol. In fact, they consider reverence of shrines as apostasy (shirk).

"Second, there is no doubt that Punjabi rural society is caste-based and people care for castes in inter se relationships. However, by no means does this make it a tribal society. The customs even in remote Punjabi villages are far more liberal than tribal customs. The position of women in this society is more elevated than in tribal society; they enjoy more liberties, and in many cases are the sole decision makers.

"In an agricultural economy like Punjab, women are as important as men. In rural Punjab, women working in the fields is a common sight; subjecting them to strict veil and domestic confinement as is the case in the tribal areas of Afghanistan is unimaginable in Punjab.

"In urban centres like Lahore, Multan, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad, women are enjoying an even higher status than in the rural areas. Therefore, it will not be possible for anyone to subject women in Punjab to the kind of restrictions that the Taliban have imposed in the areas under their control. The same applies for harsh punishments: the death penalty was abolished in the area between Delhi and Lahore much before its abolition in the United Kingdom. The reaction to public hanging during the Zia era was so severe that the government was forced to review its policy after only one execution.

"The third reason is the strong emphasis in the Punjabi lower and middle class on education. Even families with income levels as low as Rs 4000 to Rs 6000 per month take pains to send their children, including females, to school. Hence, this very strong societal force will deeply resist any ideology that restricts people from educating their children. Further, proliferation of the free media and a strong cultural base are two other factors that will make it extremely difficult for the Taliban to establish themselves in Punjab."...
http://www.dailytimes.com.p

k/default.asp?page=2009\05

\08\story_8-5-2009_pg3_5

On Barelvis see,

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/islam-barelvi.htm

Clifford Kiracofe

Comments

[alnval]

Col. Lang:

re Curious' comment re Gates replacing McKiernan:

When Gates was asked what new tactics he (Gates) would employ that might complement the president's new strategy, Gates replied, "That's why I'm putting in LG McChrystal and LG Rodriguez (as his deputy)."

Although Gates made plain that he is not going to be micromanaging AFPAK he does expect both these officers to bring something to the game that McKiernan does not.

Anybody have any idea what that might be? (Until today LG Rodriguez had been an assistant to Gates specializing in COIN.)

[Babak Makkinejad]

Arun:

Thank you for your reply.

I too often had wondered whether from the stand point of Hinduism the 3 Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not a single religion. Than you for confirming that.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

"All the three secular parties ruling Sindh have fallen apart. The MQM and the ANP have inclined to ethnic politics, the latter only recently showing inclination to represent all the 4 million Karachi Pashtuns floundering without political leadership because the JUI is almost non-existent there and the Deobandi madrassas are under pressure. The Pashtun is also pushed into a corner by the rise of the Barelvi clergy, which is increasingly militant and shows an anti-Pashtun ethnic bias like the MQM. While opposed to the Taliban in the rest of Pakistan, it is not oblivious of the prospect of a grand weaning of the radicalised Pashtun back under the ethnic banner.
...
There is no doubt that it has reports from the police about the infiltration of “Taliban-type” Pashtuns into the city. There have been encounters in the Pashtun-dominated areas where such elements have been arrested too. But, based on their perception of the role of the MQM, the Sindh government is not willing to take the kind of action that the MQM wants it to take. Pashtun and Muhajir ethnic gangs are clashing in the night in Karachi, leaving a lot of people dead.
More confusion is going to follow when Imran Khan is finished with Karachi and the Jama’at-e Islami chief Syed Munawwar Hassan turns his attention to the divided city. He and Mr Khan are in unison against the military operation in Swat, saying the army is killing its own people at America’s behest. The two have the capacity to attract Pashtuns, especially on the basis of their pro-Taliban slogan. Mr Hassan, while talking to Jama’at processionists in Lahore the other day, asked them to “make preparations” because an “announcement for jihad may be made during the coming days”. Karachi may therefore become a “suitable” place for this jihad because the ruling triad is in disarray there.

The Muhajir-Sindhi divide has slid into the background and a Muhajir-Pashtun divide has come to the fore, in no small measure helped by the FATA diaspora into Karachi because of the civil war-like conditions there. As the army goes after the Taliban in the Malakand region more Pashtuns will trickle down to Karachi. The instinct of the ANP as an ethnic party is to give them a political safety net, only at the cost of sharpening its contradiction with the MQM whose electoral strength in Karachi is overwhelming — a fact that both ANP and PPP must pay proper heed to."

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\05\12\story_12-5-2009_pg3_1

Would the white pasty faced NeoCOINists and sundry White House sycophants like to explain how their "strategy" for the "wogs" in Afghanistan is going to settle things down for the "wogs" in Pakistan, say Karachi for example?

What are all these white Neo-"Whiz Kids" (remember them?), military and civilian, smoking these days, or are they just eating opium laced Paan?

[Irony notice: I have nothing against Paan personally, a rather nice delicacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paan].

[Arun]

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/kamran-shafi-yellow-ribbons-and-all-259>Kamran Shafi writes in the Dawn about all the things the American military **does not** do.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/kamran-shafi-yellow-ribbons-and-all-259

Example:

I saw no evidence of banks and travel agencies and textile mills and sugar factories and cornflakes-manufacturing mills and estate agencies being run by the US army (or the US navy and the US air force for that matter) in my travels across America. Armed forces stations were just that: armed forces stations with limited access to civilians, and those too who were accompanied by a member of the armed forces or their dependent(s). Neither, and this is important, does the US army run farming operations and get into disputes with the tenant farmers who till the land as share-croppers.

Since one mostly drives in the US to get from point A to B, many were the times that I came upon army convoys on the highways. Every single time the convoy travelled in the slow lane, at the designated speed, the drivers with both hands on the steering wheels, headgear on, looking straight ahead. No slouching, no cigarette hanging from the drooping lower lip Humphrey Bogart style. In the back, if there were soldiers being transported, they sat up straight, headgear on, no slouching, no smoking. And no leering at passing cars either!

Never has a US army captain who was given a ticket for a traffic infringement gone back to his barracks, filled a truck or two with soldiers from his company, and driven to the police station to which the offending policeman belonged, and proceeded to beat up everybody in sight. Never has a US army general’s wife got so infuriated by her driver being ticked off by a police constable that the local army authorities kidnapped the offender and beat the daylights out of him, among other ministrations.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

Sidney Smith,

Thanks for the kind words.

1. FYI, I am teaching a course "Energy and Global Politics" at W & L this spring semester. Af-Pak fits into a larger context.

In class we are using:
William Engdahl, A Century of War. Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (London: Pluto, 2004)
Rafael Kandiyati, Pipelines. Flowing Oil and Crude Politics (London: IB Taruis, 2008).

2. For a quick journalistic overview of the general situation impacting AFPAK:

http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2009/05/12/pipelineistan-goes-af-pak/

3. For the continuity of US policy -- Clinton-Bush Jr -- Obama in this regard see Brzezinski's "The Global Chessobard".

[Hotrod]

"Perhaps the merry band of 40ish NeoCOINist officers (and a certain Australian buddy of theirs) should take their pasty white faces out of the library and get the asses into the field and into the dung-littered mud."

A stupid, petty remark.

Petty because your CV is not the CV of someone who has the standing to lecture McMaster/Kilcullen/Nagl/McFarland/Fick/Exum et al (McMaster and McFarland are loosely affiliated at most) on the need to get into the field, and anyone who teaches or has taught at VMI understands that "go into the field" represents a very specific thing to the group of people that you describe as "pasty white". I say this as a product of VMI's IS Dept - there's no way that you don't know better.

Stupid because your basic point seems sound - the Punjab will show some degree (TBD, but likely significant) of resistance to the codes of behavior that the "Taliban" (a loose term) have historically required. Roger, got it. It's a good point - too bad you made it awfully easy to write you off as a buffoon.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

1. Bloody battle looms for Mingora

* Residents say Taliban have mined roads and dug trenches around 200,000 trapped civilians encircled by Pakistani troops

ISLAMABAD: A deadly battle is looming over the capital of Swat, where armed Taliban have mined roads and dug trenches around 200,000 trapped civilians encircled by Pakistani troops, say residents and officials.

Ground forces have so far avoided close urban combat since launching a renewed offensive to crush the Taliban, instead massing on the outskirts while the Taliban mine exit and entry points, building up for a huge showdown."
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\
05\15\story_15-5-2009_pg7_15

2. "Second, in trying to cope with the difficult task of administering the camps and in aid of the jihad, we permitted jihadi parties, particularly the more fundamentalist among them, to exercise considerable amount of control in the camps and to propagate their distorted version of Islam. It was in these camps and in the schools run by these parties that the seeds of extremism were planted. Today, there is talk of screening new arrivals in tents to ensure that no Taliban find sanctuary, but it is even more important to ensure that volunteers at camps do not share the Taliban’s worldview.

It was disquieting, in this context, to read a report in the Guardian by Declan Walsh that one of the first refugee camps to be set up at Sher Gur, a few hundred meters from the Malakand Division boundary, is being run by the Falah-e Insaniat Foundation, the renamed relief wing of the Jama’at-ud Dawa. According to this story, the FIF camp is conspicuously well funded and organised, “particularly in comparison with the chaotic efforts of the government”.

While FIF spokespersons said they had no political agenda, Walsh noted that in nearby Mardan, bearded activists manned a fundraising tent festooned with FIF signs and the group’s distinctive black and white flags with banners conveying the political message: “Stop the killing of Muslims”.

It should be clear that winning the hearts and minds of the refugees will not be possible if such activities are permitted by organisations that have a very different agenda. Screening refugees will be a difficult if not impossible task but preventing such organisations from having any role in the relief effort and maintaining complete control of the camps is well within our competence."
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\
05\15\story_15-5-2009_pg3_4

3. "The Afghan opium trade, operating almost unchecked by US intervention in the area, has spread out into government corruption and widespread heroin addiction throughout Afghanistan and Iran....A common sentiment that he found throughout his interviews in Afghanistan was the idea that "Afghan officials work with the drug dealers, or sometimes, are the drug dealers."
As an example of the relationship, Lasseter refers to the upscale areas where top Afghan officials live in Kabul as "poppy palaces," expensive dwellings that most Afghans could afford to inhabit, not even government workers. "Those are houses in Kabul in relatively upscale areas where rents run into the $1,000 or up to $10,000 that are frequently owned by Afghan officials or those connected witht them who would seem to have no legal means by which to own that real estate, much less at the expense of armoured vehicles which often pull up around them," Lasseter says. Because of the extensive corruption and lack of social infrastructure, the order and enforcement of law has precariously short reach in Afghanistan, emphasizing an already chaotic country that some call a "narco-state." "There are many who would argue that the grid of the government in Kabul doesn't extend very far from Kabul," Lasseter says. ..."
Source: Frontier Post [Pakistan]. May 15, 2009.

[Clifford Kiracofe]

1. No counter-insurgency training needed: Kayani

Sunday, May 17, 2009
RAWALPINDI: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has said that Pakistani Army does not require any generalised foreign training for countering insurgency, except for very specialised weapons, equipment and high technology.

In a press release issued by ISPR on Saturday, the COAS said, “Pakistan Army has developed a full range of counter insurgency training facilities, tailored to train troops for such operations.”

He was commenting on remarks from various quarters on the level of Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) training of the Pakistani troops and about their shifting from eastern borders. "
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/

top_story_detail.asp?Id=22182

2. "Then the service members of Marine Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan began, each firing round after round from their respective M-4 Carbine and M-16 A-4 rifles, improving their accuracy with each shot.

But the rifle sight adjustment exercise lost its simplicity when a powerful sand storm engulfed the Marines and sailors as they lay across the firing line. Sand filled their mouths and nostrils, covered their weapons and eliminated all visibility of their targets ahead.

Being outside the protective wire for the first time, the events symbolized the unpredictability of Afghanistan, as well as that of their future missions to follow. The storm cleared off and returned for hours to follow. The sun later set under blue skies...."
http://www.military-world.net/Afghanistan/1395.html

And notice the photo of the white American fellow and the locals....