Getting bloodier and messier

SENSELESS suicide attacks, relentless bombings and ubiquitous insurgency-related violence across Afghanistan — claiming thousands of lives during the last nine months — have made 2007 the most deadly year for a war-weary nation since the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Despite the rosy picture of the security situation painted by President Hamid Karzai and his western backers, notably US leader George W. Bush, the long-suffering Afghans have not even an iota of doubt about the unpalatable reality that they are caught in a vicious circle. Anyone in their right frame of mind would refuse being railroaded into accepting these appraisals at face value.

Hard-hit by this unending murder and mayhem are the ill-equipped, least-trained and under-qualified personnel of Afghanistan’s fledgling security forces — a prime target for battle-hardened guerrillas. High-casualty assaults in recent weeks have had a morale-busting effect on the Afghan National Army (ANA) and police, already depleted by a spate of desertions.

Even in Kabul, where tight security arrangements have been put in place due to a heavy international presence, employees of the nascent law-enforcement agencies are bearing the brunt of militant-linked aggression.

In the capital, two grim reminders of the growing chaos came on April 30 and October 2 — suicide bombings that caused more than 50 fatalities, soldiers, policemen and civilians included.

Recently, a suicide attack on a bus ferrying police instructors to their academy in the heart of the capital killed 13 officers and civilians, including a woman and her two children who boarded the ill-fated vehicle moments before the explosion. So powerful was the morning rush-hour blast that it ripped the roof and sides off the bus, leaving most bodies mutilated and charred beyond recognition.

Barely four days earlier, up to 30 ANA troops perished in a similar suicide bombing of their bus by an attacker in a military uniform in a heavily-guarded capital neighbourhood.

As the site was littered with pieces of bus seats, human flesh, uniform shreds and a twisted hull of burnt metal, municipality workers were pressed into service to wash blood and body parts flung into nearby trees — a heartrending scene that adequately illustrated the government’s inability to stave off the threat posed by an escalating insurgency. Among the victims were two children heading to a special school for handicapped students and a woman holding a baby in her arms. With ham-handed intelligence operatives still groping for clues to the perpetrators, a third blast on the airport road killed six people. At least one US-led Coalition service-member was among the dead.

More than 112 suicide attacks have taken place over the last 10 months, compared to 120 recorded last year. Around 5,000 people including rebels, civilians, Afghan police and soldiers as well as foreign troops, have lost their lives in violent incidents this year, the most deadly since the toppling of the Taliban.

On the surface, the increasingly lethal strikes are symptomatic of a determined Taliban attempt to prove that ten of thousands of western and Afghan troops cannot protect the people, much less stop the fighters in their tracks.

Apart from scaring away potential ANA and police recruits, the anarchic conditions underline the continuing resurgence of militants, not only inside the war-torn country but also in Pakistan’s tribal badlands. That the Taliban have been able to regroup despite the presence of about 40,000 US and Nato troops in Afghanistan amply underscores the limitations of obsession with a military solution to an uprising that has stymied the reconstruction drive in the embattled south and elsewhere.

In a new report, the UN says: ‘The Afghan National Police has become a primary target of insurgents and intimidation of all kinds has increased against the civilian population, especially those perceived to be in support of the government, international military forces as well as the humanitarian and development community.’

Indubitably, post-Taliban Afghanistan has seen a sharp fall in childhood mortality rates, and the construction of health clinics and schools. But in no way does the present level of progress address the needs of a thoroughly disenchanted population deprived of even the most basic civic amenities such as reliable healthcare, electrification and power-supply schemes, a network of paved roads and affordable education.

Compiled by the UN Department of Safety and Security, the report sharply contrasts with the upbeat appraisals by Bush and Karzai, who somehow believe the Taliban are a spent force struggling for survival.

The fact that senior militant leaders carrying huge bounties on their heads remain at large and the trail of elusive Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden has gone cold does not seem to frustrate the over-optimistic allies.

Their assessments, therefore, appear to be at odds with the alarming UN document that says the security situation in Afghanistan is evaluated by most analysts as having deteriorated at a constant rate through 2007.

During the year, there were 525 security incidents — attacks by Taliban and other violent groups, bombings, terrorism of other kinds and abductions — every month, up from an average of 425 incidents a month in 2006.

Most experts ascribe the deteriorating state of affairs to Bush’s decision on shifting troops and resources to Iraq, his administration’s failure to capture top rebel leaders and safe havens that the Taliban have found in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region.

As a consequence, the war on terror is increasingly morphing into a campaign against a people already at the mercy of predatory warlords and terrorists of different descriptions.

As the surge in violence is taking a high toll on civilians, students, schools, officials, tribal elders, pro-government clerics and police are being targeted in a calculated effort to impede the establishment of legitimate government institutions. Flagrant human rights violations by ramshackle, corrupt and unprofessional security forces are contributing in no small measure to the alienation of the common Afghan.

Despite incessant talk of ambitious reconstruction goals and a ‘Marshall Plan’ Bush announced for Afghanistan, the country has received far less assistance. An average of $3.4bn that the US expends annually on reconstructing Afghanistan — a budget pared back to a minimum without any good reason — is not even 50 per cent of what it has spent in Iraq. Hundreds of civilian deaths over the past few months in unfocused air strikes are fast eroding public support for the Karzai administration and earning foreign troops the wrath of the Afghans.

Apprehensive about the political price that the civilian deaths are exacting, Karzai has repeatedly excoriated heavy-handed American and Nato tactics while ordering an end to the so-called collateral damage. Much to his angst, however, the bombings, raids on homes and shootings of civilians are increasing by the day.

The emotive issue of civilian killings, dogging the US and its allies, also exposes chinks in their political strategy in terms of minuscule hard intelligence, waning popular support for counter-insurgency operations and a failure to hunt down dreaded militants.

For the war on terror to be still winnable, Pashtuns have to be given a share in power commensurate with their numerical strength to prevent the incumbent set-up appearing a backward autocracy and the burgeoning drug trade curbed to chip away at the bloated cash reserves of militants.

The writer is a Pakistani journalist based in Kabul.

Deeds and deals resonate

IN the era of seesaw dismissals of their governments by the selfsame President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, there was a moment when Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif declared in parliament that their conduct had imperilled democracy and they would thenceforth respect its norms whether in the opposition or the government.

So patently sincere were they in abjuring manipulative politics and intrigue with establishment forces that the nation actually hoped and believed in a resurgence of democracy.

We all know that frame of mind did not last. Yet, when Benazir and Nawaz Sharif buried the hatchet again and drafted and signed the Charter of Democracy, again we hoped not that the two mainstream political parties would fuse and merge but that their leaders finally understood their admittedly competitive parties would get nowhere in opposition to military politics unless they created civil political space through a joint effort. Once again they forswore tactics which underwrote militarised oligarchic politicking in bids for power.

Once again we all know the Charter of Democracy lost its franchise when Benazir Bhutto and General Musharraf found clandestine linkage. What may we hope for now? Some call it the penultimate betrayal; some call it the penultimate sagacity.

Either or neither may be true. But if Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had ridden the crest of the popular wave this summer and braved re-entry into Pakistan simultaneously and together, the victory would surely have been that of the democratic cause in Pakistan first and foremost; and only secondarily that of whichever party leader emerged strongest in a reassertion of political integrity and democratic pluralities through convincing national elections.

Irrespective of whether those elections spelt victory for the PML-N or the PPP they would have spelt a decisive setback for militarism. Instead, it has now become sadly clear that Ms Bhutto’s decision to go it alone diminished the democratic challenge to militarism. Her diplomatic sagacity has secured her party a favourable handicap in the electoral contest under a Musharraf presidency but that gain is only seen as such by power-hungry elements in her party.

Because the PPP that Ms Bhutto inherited has been a vital democratising force, which tamed the army’s political supremacy, her recasting of that legacy will have strong political consequences. Secular democratic voters who did not identify with the Musharraf credo against extremism or his politics as exemplified by the PML-Q now find it equally difficult to identify with Ms Bhutto’s PPP. Ms Bhutto’s transition to democracy may leave far too many sincere democrats outside the party’s changed parameters.

As she is already speaking from a prime ministerial pinnacle, she has reminded people of some of her less edifying realities as prime minister. Memories of track tenure may delight jiyalas but not those outside the charmed circle. After Ms Bhutto comes home, she may see that for today’s Pakistanis, democracy means the rule of law, not the restoration or preservation of the rule of Benazir, Nawaz, Altaf, Qazi, Fazlur, Musharraf et al.

The manifestation of public sentiment at the reference filed against the Chief Justice of Pakistan catalysed more perhaps than any of us can yet understand. For one thing, it has connected the intelligentsia and the common mass in an awareness of the depth of the menace to individual freedoms and civil liberties in a Pakistan characterised by rubberstamp legislatures and executive contempt for the essence of constitutionality.

The argument for transitional rather than transformational politics is embedded in the fear of provoking a declaration of martial law. What is the use of avoiding martial law if the alternative is political fascism? What do we call a democracy whose standard bearers have to be beyond the reach of the law of the land? And whose electorate has to be increasingly circumscribed by it?

It is quite true that the cases Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif initiated against each other were politically motivated. It is also quite true that white-collar crime is hard to establish. It is undeniable that many presently outraged liberals have themselves argued repeatedly for amnesty to our political leaders. But it is also undeniable that the mode devised by the NRO makes a mockery of public accountability. The ordinance may provide a means of reconciliation between some parties but it has left truth out of the picture.

Indemnity conferred by an unrepresentative legislature remains unrepresentative. Pakistanis’ minds have little respect and Pakistanis’ hearts even less room for former prime ministers who approach the electorate flashing tinsel haloes and spilling rhetoric their actions have already belied. Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif need to acknowledge their grave aberrations and seek forgiveness from the people they failed to serve with democratic fidelity. Public repentance should precede political pardon. For only then can Pakistanis hope — yet again — that these leaders have gained in wisdom and reformed.

As things stand, there is reason to fear the PPP in transit with a retiring General Musharraf will be as democratically dysfunctional as the PML-Q and MQM have been as the serving general’s political alter egos. For civil society to accept the regime’s definitions of transitional politics could be as suffocating as any declaration of martial law. In fact, martial law is at least recognised as such and justly excoriated and resisted.

It has been a Pakistani tradition to pin hope on military redress and judicial underpinning when democratically elected leaders or reinvented military leaders and their cosmetic legislature fail the people. Precedents with regard to Ayub, Yahya, Bhutto, Zia, Nawaz, Musharraf come to mind. But, no matter how slowly, democracy evolves.

This time we hope that the judicial underpinning and military support is for constitutionality and the rule of law in a civil polity. The way to that fine end demands a reconstituted election commission and a credibly neutral caretaker government for the promised January elections. At present, the electoral process General Musharraf promises is more than transparent: it is blatant.

Facilitating return of Bhutto

AN assault on people’s intelligence, disservice to the English language and insulting serious political undertakings elsewhere in the world are among the three side effects of governance in a country where the ruling class is riddled with contradictions. The recently issued National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) is the latest example of such governance.

The ordinance joins the dubious line-up of its predecessors including the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB).The word national is common to all three entities. While the term is all too visible in nomenclature, in reality it is the missing link when it comes to the rationale, practice and implications of the NRO, NAB and NRB. The yawning gap between what these terms say and what they do is too obvious for anyone to miss, except their beneficiaries. That’s why I think their drafts can be used as examples of taking metaphors to absurd levels.

Let’s take the NRO. First of all, some of its beneficiaries have the audacity to compare it to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Let’s state the simplest of difference between the two. Pervez Musharraf is no Nelson Mandela. We don’t have Oliver Tambos and Walter Sisulus among the cast of characters making the rounds of numerous television channels defending the NRO.

Ignorance is no excuse for us in Pakistan to belittle the valiant struggle of the African National Congress (ANC) against Apartheid and the courage of the post-Apartheid national unity government’s initiative to establish the TRC in 1995 by comparing it to the sham of the NRO.

The TRC was aimed at looking at the ‘causes and extent of the gross violations of human rights committed during the period from March 1, 1960’. Its granting of amnesty applied only to persons ‘who make full disclosure of all the relevant facts relating to acts associated with a political objective committed in the course of the conflicts of the past’. It was to offer victims ‘an opportunity to relate the violations they suffered’.This arduous path was deemed worth taking so that ‘the restoration of the human and civil dignity’ could be achieved and the nation could be informed about ‘violations and victims’. The Act that Nelson Mandela signed in 1995 reads a treatise in political wisdom.

Transcripts of Amnesty hearings are available on the Internet and even a random reading of cases would testify that the South African TRC was one of the noblest and the most humane way to publicly come to terms with the dirty and violent legacy of Apartheid.

The NRO that Musharraf has signed is neither national in scope nor reconciliatory in spirit. It is, for all intents and purposes, a legal indemnity by a military chief to a select number of individuals allegedly involved in financial corruption. The NRO applies only to cases that were registered between Jan 1, 1986, and Oct 12, 1999.

To reconcile is to restore to friendship or harmony. If the present set-up and its allies led by Musharraf is the side which wants to reconcile with its opponents on the national level, the opposing party would have to include, but not be confined to, Fata tribes, Baloch dissidents, people allegedly kidnapped by the intelligence agencies, the lawyers’ community and the political opposition in the shape of political parties. The NRO is a misnomer because it does very little to extend the olive branch to any of the above.

Put bluntly, the political bargain that has been struck is a fragile understanding between Musharraf and the PPP where the former would not block the way of Benazir Bhutto’s future political plans in return for her providing him political oxygen at this crucial juncture.

In a divided society, national reconciliation has to be a healing process where victims are heard and perpetrators offer full disclosure of their deeds. The NRO prescribes hiding and not open healing.

The NRO is an offspring of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). Accountability refers to an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions. The NAB process selectively targeted people and spared those who threw in their lot with Musharraf’s political system. Reconstruction as per the NRB’s activities was designed to come up with a political system that would undermine the role of the national parties and provinces in the name of devolution.

When I draw attention to qualitative and contextual differences between the South African TRC and the NRO in Pakistan, the purpose is not to be dismissive of the rapprochement between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto. Her party has got more than 30 per cent of the popular vote cast in every national election since 1988.

At the end of the day, the deal she has got falls well short of her stated non-negotiable demands. The cases against her have been withdrawn but she couldn’t get Musharraf to lift the ban on a twice-elected prime minister running for a third term. She also did not get the written pledge from Musharraf’s side to have an independent election commission to conduct the upcoming elections.

Does that mean that the party cadres would be accusing Ms Bhutto of short-changing them? Barring isolated voices of political puritans within the PPP, most will be content with the deal. In the charisma-based party, the person of Ms Bhutto is the biggest asset that the PPP has. Her absence from the home front is acutely felt by the PPP leadership at all levels. If she can come back without having to worry about being hounded by the NAB operatives, the PPP cadres would love to have their leader return as the country gears up for elections.

Can she deliver the results? It is too early to say. Currently, her party is not much different from the other main contenders of power as far as offering a compelling programme of governance is concerned. She is a tenacious campaigner and is fully capable of retaining 30 per cent plus of the popular vote in the party’s bag. The stars smiled on her in 1993 when Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Nawaz Sharif collided.

In 2007, circumstances have made Musharraf eat his words of never allowing Benazir to set foot in Pakistan as long as he was in power. The NRO should be renamed the BRO (Benazir Return Ordinance) as that captures its essence more accurately. That way it won’t be a misuse of the English language and we won’t be trivialising the South African TRC. Above all, we would not be insulting the intelligence of ordinary Pakistanis.

The writer teaches at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

hnizamani@hotmail.com