Baitullah Mehsud-A living legend May 28, 2008

Baitullah Mehsud is a Pashtun from the Shabikhel sub-tribe of the Mehsud tribe. He was born in the early 1970s in a village called Landi Dhok in the Bannu region of the North West Frontier Province, which is some distance from the Mehsud tribe’s strongholds in South Waziristan.

With a reputation based on his record as a fearless fighter willing to die for the cause, Baitullah’s lack of a religious title has not held him back. Although he is the most powerful militant commander in Pakistan, he remains a shadowy figure with perhaps a larger-than-life reputation.

Commander Mehsud has recently been named in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Newsweek has labelled him “more dangerous than Osama bin Laden”.

President Pervez Musharraf accused him last year of being responsible for dozens of suicide attacks which led Pakistan into emergency rule.

The CIA says he was the brains behind the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minster Benazir Bhutto.

Baitullah Mehsud is not a household name—yet. Terrorist leaders tend to be nameless and faceless until their deeds earn them infamy. Osama bin Laden’s name was largely unknown to the public until Sept. 11, 2001. But with General Pervez Musharraf’s recent imposition of emergency rule in Pakistan and his desperate struggle to hang onto power, Baitullah’s name has begun to emerge in daily news reports coming out of Pakistan. Some portray him as an annoying stone in Musharraf’s shoe, just one of several problems confronting the general. But others see Baitullah as a pivotal figure who could tip the political balance in Pakistan toward militant Islam and spark terror attacks throughout the world.

Baitullah commands a force of 20,000 to 30,000 fighters in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. He has dispatched suicide-bombers to kill Pakistani police and soldiers in Swat, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, and Peshawar. On August 30, his forces brazenly captured 213 Pakistani soldiers and held them hostage for two months until his demands were met. One day after declaring the current state of emergency, General Musharraf reached a settlement with Baitullah, exchanging 25 militants in government custody for the captured troops. Musharraf later admitted that these men were trained suicide bombers, and one of them was under indictment for participating in a suicide bombing. As part of the deal, Baitullah agreed to expel foreign militants from his territories and stop attacking the army. But Baitullah has signed peace accords with the Pakistani government before and reneged on his word.

Baitullah has no formal education or religious schooling but is a natural leader with keen political instincts. He controls a critical battleground in the war on terror, South Waziristan, a tribal territory in Pakistan on the Afghanistan border about the size of New Jersey. The Taliban currently thrive in this region and Al Qaeda is welcome there. There’s a better than even chance that Osama bin Laden is living somewhere in Waziristan under Baitullah’s protection.

Baitullah’s advocates say he has brought peace to the region, but detractors note that the peace came at a price—literally. Like a Mafia boss, he and his lieutenants shake down the populace for protection money. He’s closely allied to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and, like the Taliban, he enforces an extreme form of shariah in his territory. Women must observe a strict form of purdah, and men are forbidden to shave their beards. Playing music and watching videos are against the law. He has ordered the murder of adulterers by stoning. There are few Pakistani government courts in the region, and the Waziristanis seldom use them. Instead they go to Baitullah to settle their differences. In South Waziristan and parts of North Waziristan, he is the law.

Baitullah is said to have a signature method of dealing with people he deems disloyal. He first sends the offender 1,000 rupees, a spool of thread, a needle, and a note instructing the person to have a kafan (burial shroud) made within 24 hours. When the time is up, the person is murdered.

Baitullah is also said to have ordered the suicide-bomber attack on Benazir Bhutto the day after she returned to the country on October 18, 2007. The explosions were close enough to Bhutto’s car to shatter the windshield. Baitullah denies that he was behind the attack, though it’s no secret that he despises her for her pro-American stance. He also opposes Musharraf for the same reason.

Both the Taliban and Al Qaeda have sought his support to accomplish their particular goals. The Taliban want to concentrate their efforts on waging war in Afghanistan and regaining control there. Al Qaeda militants want a worldwide jihad against all governments aligned with the United States, starting with Pakistan. Baitullah can send forces east into Afghanistan to help Taliban fighters or keep them in Pakistan to undermine the government. So far he has done both.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has given Pakistan $10 billion to help fight terrorism. But some believe that some of that money found its way into Baitullah Mehsud’s accounts. If so, what has he done with it? Is he content to serve the interests of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, or does he have ambitions of his own—even nuclear ambitions?

Victory for the Taliban May 21, 2008

The Pakistani government has struck a deal with the pro-Taliban activists. A deal was stuck after  detailed  negotiation, which America advised them against

“We have real reservations about negotiated agreements with extremists,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“There is a lot at stake here and we have made the point repeatedly.”

Last week Nato also criticsed the deal. I dont understand why are these bodies so reluctant to get into a dialogue. In this day and age a war can not be won in this day and age without negotiation.

Below are the terms of the negotiations which have been disclosed.

• Sharia law in Swat
• close of training camps and end attacks.
• hand over any foreign militants
• government would make limited concessions on militant demands for the imposition of Islamic law in the region

These are just some of the 15 point deal disclosed. All and all a positive first move made by the new government.

Pakistan State TV: Missiles Kill 20 March 16, 2008

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan (AP) — At least 20 people were killed in a missile strike near the Afghan border on Sunday, state-run Pakistan Television said.

The strike destroyed the house of a suspected militant leader, according to a local tribesman.

Seven missiles were fired in the strike in the tribal area of South Waziristan, the television report said.

The report did not indicate where the missiles came from, but U.S.-led coalition forces based in neighboring Afghanistan have launched attacks inside the Pakistani border in the past.

Pakistan has been battling Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban in its regions bordering Afghanistan. The U.S. considers the country’s effort vital to the war on terrorism.

The missiles were fired by an unmanned drone, local tribesman, Rahim Khan, told The Associated Press.

At least two hit and destroyed the home of a local militant leader and Taliban sympathizer who goes by the single name Noorullah, Khan said.

Benazir’s blueprint February 20, 2008

Kamila Shamsie on the murdered Benazir Bhutto’s posthumous call for democracy and tolerance, Reconciliation

Kamila Shamsie
Saturday February 16, 2008
Guardian

Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West by Benazir Bhutto
336pp, Simon & Schuster, £17.99

There can be few experiences more disquieting than that of reading the opening pages of Benazir Bhutto’s Reconciliation, with its description of her homecoming on October 18 2007 – the jubilation followed by carnage. The details of the suicide attack are horrific enough within their own context, but when read as precursor to the attack that killed Bhutto 10 weeks later they acquire an even more chilling resonance. There is the sense of reading two texts: the first might well have been published during the early months of Bhutto’s premiership, its words a yardstick against which we would measure the effectiveness of her government; the second stands as the final testament of an extraordinary woman whose death added urgency to the already-urgent arguments of the book.

After the first chapter, with its heartstopping description of October 18, we move into a more scholarly tone in which Bhutto defends Islam from those outside who view it as a religion of violence and fear, and from those within who want to cast it in such terms. In a vigorous riposte to both those groups, she discusses verses of the Qur’an that enshrine peace, plurality and the democratic traditions of consensus and debate, as well as making a strong case for verses which forbid the very actions that extremists claim as necessary or justifiable acts of “jihad”. In furtherance of her thesis, she quotes at length a number of Muslim scholars. For those who have spent the better part of the past decade making the same argument, this chapter is a very useful storehouse of ammunition with which to defend the point; for those who believe the opposite to be true, there may be much that is revelatory in her assertions.

But while Bhutto defends Islam itself, she does not waver in the constancy of her message that there is much need for criticism and change in the Muslim world. On several occasions she mentions the speed with which Muslims berate the west for its acts of injustice, yet when it comes to Muslim-on-Muslim violence – in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Darfur – there is silence from the Ummah, the global community of Muslims.

She follows with a chapter devoted to the contested issue of democracy and Islam. With a succinctness that sometimes borders on patchiness but is more often swiftly efficient, she lays out the political histories of a large number of Muslim-majority nations, effectively arguing that the failure of democracies in most of those countries has political rather than religious roots – and in almost all cases, the west (either a colonial European power or the US) has played a shoddy role in undermining democracy and propping up dictators.

Disappointingly, the least convincing chapter is the one entitled “The Case of Pakistan”. Here, too often, the scholar and humanist of earlier chapters gives way to a political campaigner intent on her own family’s hagiography. When it comes to the tenures of the Bhuttos – father and daughter – as prime ministers of Pakistan, she admits no fault. One of the most telling omissions is her refusal to acknowledge that she was prime minister from 1994 to 1996 while the Taliban, with support from Pakistan, were extending their control through Afghanistan. Instead, she only mentions that the Taliban took Kabul right after the fall of her government in 1996 – neatly placing all the blame for Pakistan’s Taliban policy on her successor, Nawaz Sharif.

The bind she’s in is clear: admit her government aided the Taliban and she undercuts the position she’s laid out for herself as an opponent of all forces of obscurantism; on the other hand, admit that even while in power she was not allowed by the ISI-military nexus to have a say in Afghan policy and she opens herself up to the question, “Why should this time be any different?” It is easier to sidestep the matter.

But she returns to firmer ground with the next chapter, which doesn’t merely take on the phrase “clash of civilisations” but beats it to a bloody pulp – again with the aid of a number of Muslim theologians whose presence in the pages doubles as reminder of the many voices of reason and tolerance within the Muslim world. How to strengthen those voices and give them space to be heard is one of her chief concerns – for the real clash, she repeatedly points out, is not of Islam versus the west, but within Islam itself. She has much to say on the subject, but the point that she makes repeatedly and compellingly is that for the moderates to claim victory dictatorships must end and democracy must be given every assistance.

Bhutto lays out her own blueprint for the defeat of extremism by concerted efforts involving both Muslims and the west. Some of those ideas seem unrealistic. In particular, her suggestion that the oil-producing Gulf states “jump-start economic and intellectual development” in the rest of the Muslim world via a Muslim Investment Fund contradicts her own argument that states act in self-interest rather than as part of a pan-national religious community, and also ignores the dismal record of many oil-producing nations in promoting intellectual development within their own borders. She ends the book by acknowledging that her proposals “may seem daunting and even impossible. I make these recommendations because the times demand something more than business as usual . . . It is a time for creativity. It is a time for bold commitment. . . There has been enough pain. It is time for reconciliation.”

It may be tempting to think her death undermines her belief in what was yet possible, but it seems more in keeping with the spirit of Reconciliation to say that there are ways to counter those who use violence to further their ends. We just can’t wait until tomorrow to do it.