Post-Election Challenges for Nawaz Sharif

by Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq

The real challenges in the post-election period is stemming from the increasing onslaught of miscreants against the State and rapidly deteriorating economic conditions having serious ramifications.

Wanton attacks on almost all political parties with loss of precious human lives confirm that the obscurantists at war with the State are openly committing treason by maintaining private armies prohibited under Article 256 of the Constitution. They are openly demonstrating disloyalty towards the State violating Article 5 which says: “Loyalty to the State is the basic duty of every citizen and obedience to the Constitution and law is the inviolable obligation of every citizen wherever he may be and of every other person for the time being within Pakistan.”

The incidents in Pakistan cannot just be called terrorism—it is much more than that. In fact, this is an open war against the State that needs to be tackled with an iron hand by the new elected government as a first priority or challenge.

Nawaz Sharif’s new government with consensus of all political parties would have to establish special war tribunals to punish miscreants guilty of violating Articles 4 and 256 with impunity.

Article 256 clearly says that “no private organization capable of functioning as a military organization shall be formed, and any such organization shall be illegal.”

Flagrant violation of Article 256 and that of Article 5 needs to be punished without any further delay.

Chapter VI of the Pakistan Penal Code, 1860 mentions inter alia, conspiracies against the State, collection of arms for the purpose of waging war (s. 122), concealing knowledge about such designs (s. 123) condemnation of the creation of the country, (s. 123A) defiling the national flag (s. 123B), assaulting president or the governors with the intention of creating hurdles in the lawful exercise of their powers (s. 124), sedition (s. 124A) and depredation on territories (s. 126)—need to be applied wherever required, adopting due process of law provided in Article 10A of Constitution.

The last Parliament, during its 5-year tenure did not show seriousness in reviewing the existing anti-terrorism laws. However, just a few days before dissolution, it passed two new laws, The Investigation for Fair Trial Act of 2013 and National Counter Terrorism Authority Act, 2013, aimed at collecting evidence and information against terrorist networks using modern techniques. In March and February 2013, the Parliament also passed the Anti-terrorism (Second Amendment) Act, 2013 and Anti-terrorism (Amendment) Act, 2013. It needs to be stressed that mere passing of laws will not help to eradicate the forces that are bent upon undermining the very existence of the State. An all-out effort on a war footing is required to uproot this menace, lest it is too late.

The second most critical challenge is economy. In the post-election period, the country ensnared in debts, needs strict fiscal discipline, proper collection of taxes and their judicious use and above all rapid infrastructure and economic growth and development. The rising fiscal deficit and shortfall in tax revenue has assumed alarming proportions—there has been an increase of Rs. one trillion in domestic debt alone during the current fiscal year. According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), our overall stock of domestic debt comprising permanent debt, floating debt, unfunded debt and foreign currency loan continues to rise—domestic debt registered a massive surge of 15 percent during first nine months (July-March) of the current fiscal year. The stock of domestic debts reached Rs 8.8 trillion mark as on March 31, 2013 as compared to Rs 7.63 trillion as on June 30, 2012, depicting an increase of Rs 1.17 trillion.

Since Pakistan received an amount of $1.8 billion from the US on account of Coalition Support Fund (CSF) so far, it has provided some cushion to reduce reliance on domestic debt resources but even then the government’s borrowing from domestic banking channel has been on the increase. Floating debt, which includes three months’ treasury bills and market treasury bills, is the key borrowing instrument for the government to meet its financial needs and over 50 percent of domestic debt has been borrowed through this instrument. Domestic debt and liabilities are likely to reach Rs. 9 trillion mark at the end of the current fiscal year. Overall floating debts reached Rs. 4.776 trillion mark at the end of March 2013 compared to Rs. 4.143 trillion in June 2012, depicting an increase of Rs. 633.2 billion. In addition, permanent debts, which include market loan, federal government bonds, income tax bonds, prize bonds, etc, rose by 15 percent or Rs. 260.6 billion during July-March of the current fiscal year. With current increase, it surged to Rs. 1.956 trillion from Rs. 1.696 trillion. Similarly, with an increase of Rs. 265 billion, unfunded debts, comprising national savings, postal life insurance and GP Fund, has reached a staggering Rs. 2.063 trillion at the end of the third quarter. Debts under foreign currency loan posted an increase of Rs. 3.1 billion to Rs 4.5 billion. It included FEBCs, FCBCs, DBCs, and special US bonds held by residents. Previously these were part of external debt liabilities but from June 2008 onwards these form part of domestic debt.

If the new government follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, our foreign debt is going to be US$75 billion in 2015 and that of domestic debt Rs. 12 trillion. They will have to take curative measures and tough decisions in the first 90 days along with overall structural reforms. The policy of appeasement towards tax evaders, money launderers and plunderers of national wealth, if not discontinued, will push the country to complete disaster. The shameless indulgence of rulers and bureaucrats in wasteful expenditure has pushed the country towards the position where half of the population of the country is facing malnutrition and one third is living below the poverty line.

The new government will have a formidable challenge on the fiscal front. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is facing huge revenue shortfall. It estimates to collect Rs. 2050 billion by 30 June 2013—the provisional revenue collection stood at Rs. 1516.6 billion till 7 May 2013. The original revenue target of Rs. 2381 billion was revised downward to Rs. 2191 billion in March 2013, but FBR is not even capable of achieving it. In the remaining two months (May & June), FBR is to collect Rs. 489 billion to reach the second-time revised target of Rs. 2050 billion. This, as usual, will be done by collecting advance tax in advance, raising unlawful demands and blocking of bona fide refunds to further harming the business climate and causing hardship to the masses.

The new government can easily collect taxes of Rs. 8 trillion without levying any new taxes and further destroying the ailing economy. Pakistan certainly has 10 million individuals having taxable annual income of Rs 1.5 million (a very conservative estimate), total income tax collection from them at the prevalent tax rates comes to nearly Rs. 3750 billion. If we add income tax due from corporate bodies, other non-individual taxpayers and individuals having income between Rs. 400,000 to Rs. 1,000,000, the gross figure would be about Rs. 5000 billion. FBR collected only Rs. 716 billion as income tax in the last fiscal year. Similarly, due to rampant corruption in sales tax, federal excise and custom duties, the total collection is only 25-30 percent of actual potential. In fiscal year 2011-12, FBR collected Rs. 804.8 billion under the head sales tax, Rs 122.5 billion under federal excise duty and only Rs. 216.9 billion under custom duties. Total indirect collection of Rs 1148.2 billion was pathetically low. It should have been at least Rs. 3500 billion. If existing tax gap is bridged, the total revenue collection would be Rs. 8500 billion. There is no need to be dejected. We have tremendous potential. All we need is good governance, effective and modern tax administration and prudent use of public money. At the same time, it is necessary to ensure redistribution of income and wealth through progressive taxation—taxing the rich for the benefit of the poor. At present, we are taxing the poor for the benefit of the rich.

The new elected government can end debt-enslavement, which is the main cause of our subjugation provided that as a first step, the President, Prime Minister, ministers, parliamentarians, heads of political parties and high-ranking government officials, start living modestly, pay and collect taxes wherever due and by their behaviour, mobilise the masses for discharging their obligations diligently.

Asian HRs Commission Hongkong Says Army Supported Al Qaeda Candidates

Pakistan military intends to back Al-Qaida candidates for the next parliament

There have been some developments recently that reveal that in the 2013 elections elements of the Taliban and Al-Qaida had been offered seats in the parliament. Before these developments the security agencies with the help of right wing parties have also allowed 53 sectarian candidates to contest the elections without passing through the sword of the articles 62 and 63 of the constitution which debar any candidate known to be involved in cases of sectarian violence, hate campaigns or having been charged with murder and killings through sectarian violence.

The military officials were remained busy in the Bajur agency, FATA, close to Afghan border, to make a deal with the agents of Al-Qaida for the coming elections.

During the time of filing the nomination papers the Military Commander of the Bajur agency, Brigadier Ghulam Haider, held a meeting with the local leadership of Jamat-e-Islami (JI) who, in the past had direct links with the militants of Al-Qaida and master minds of 9/11 and had provided shelter to them. There are two national assembly seats from the Bajur agency and these two seats were assured to JI and in return the JI and other jihadist organization will provide:

(1) logistic support to those who want to join Jihad in Afghanistan from Pakistani side and extend ‘melmastia’, the traditional tribal hospitality, to Mujahideen coming back from Afghanistan;

(2) JI will not oppose any operation in Bajaur but rather support any military operation in Bajure in future;

(3) JI will not oppose but rather help in constructing the road that connects Afghanistan with Pakistan (The road connects Chakdara via Munda-Bajaur-Ghakhi Pass-Kunar and Chakdara-Munda-Samar Bagh-Shahi-bin-Shahi-Asmaar-Kunar) and (4)the arrangement will remain intact between the two parties until a favourable government in Afghanistan is installed.

The reasons for such developments are described as the USA and Allied Forces are leaving Afghanistan next year so the military has geared up its contacts with those political-cum-religious parties who could help in furthering the interests of Pakistan and the military to establish their major share as a stake holder.

When the US and Allied forces entered Afghanistan, the religious parties in Pakistan were brought into the power in 2002 elections by the then military dictator, General Musharraf. Now, when these forces are leaving Afghanistan, there are hectic efforts to bring fundamentalists again into the power particularly in the province of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KP).

The May 11 elections are the first ever party-based elections in FATA history after the political parties order was extended to the tribal belt as part of reforms to the Frontiers Crimes Regulations (FCR) in 2011.

Mr. Haroon Rasheed and Sardar Khan of JI are contesting elections from the constituency of National Assembly 43 and 44 respectively.

Haroon Rasheed was also elected in 2002 on the JI ticket when military needed religious parties to help military government. He was providing shelter to the Al-Qaida militants at his house who were wanted at international level. In 2009, during the military operation, 10 Al-Qaida militants from the Arab countries were recovered who were hiding there since many years. His brother and nephew were arrested but brother was released and nephew is still behind the bar to safe him. His house has also been destroyed with many other houses in the Loi Sim area of Bajur. All destroyed houses were not allowed to be reconstructed but Haroon Rasheed’s house has been renovated as a special case.

The JI and its leaders were involved in providing shelter to Al-Qaida militants. The mastermind of 9/11 incident, Mr. Khalid Shiekh Mohammad was arrested from the house of Ahmed Abdul Qadoos, a leader of JI from Rawalpindi, Punjab, in March 2003 but with the help of Musharraf government Qadoos was released and no action has been taken against him. The same was with former provincial mister of KP, Mr. Siraj ul Haq, the president of JI from the province. He handed over one Al-Qaida man to his friend’s house in Durgai, the Malakand Agency. After some years the Al-Qaida militant was arrested by the military but no action has been taken against Haq and his friend, it was in the era of Musharraf government when Haq was the senior minister of the province.

Last January in Karachi, two Al-Qaeda operatives were arrested after a shoot-out in the house of Sabiha Shahid, another leader of the Jamaat’s women’s wing. Dr. Khawaja Javed and his brother, who are facing trial on charges of harbouring senior Al-Qaeda operatives and their families, in their sprawling residential compound outside Lahore, are closely related to a senior Jamaat leader.

According to the newsline report of 2003, Similarly, in Karachi, Jamaat (JI) activists were involved in the shoot-out which helped a third Arab to escape. “We have strong evidence of the Jamaat’s involvement with Al-Qaeda,” said a senior government official.

The Jamaat boasts the most active women’s wing of any political party. They have been in the forefront of the protests against the arrest of Al-Qaeda leaders. Many political leaders accuse the Jamaat of using its women members as human shields. Security officials maintain that Jamaat activists, who actively participated in the Afghan war against Soviet occupation, developed close contacts with the Arab fighters and the links continued after the war was over. “Their association with the Al-Qaeda is not surprising,” said a senior official. Faisal Saleh Hayat, the federal interior minister, said it was a matter of great concern to the government that top Al-Qaeda operatives were found to be harboured by the Jamaat. “How can they claim that Al-Qaeda fugitives are their guests?” he asked. In a press briefing on March 10, an ISI official maintained that individuals from the Jamaat were associated with the Al-Qaeda.

This time the military has again contacted the JI and other religious groups to induct religious candidates in the parliament so that the liberal and secular political parties should not come in majority and can not change the Islamic colour of the country. In the recent days the chief of the Army staff, General Kiyani has come out with the announcement that the Islamic Ideology is the basis of the creation of Pakistan and it can not be separated from the country. This announcement has been termed by media circles as the ‘pre-poll rigging’.

A deal is under way with many Jihadi groups and they were assured that the military will make their way in to the parliament but in return they have to extend their help in furthering its interests in Afghanistan by providing safety and security to the Jihadi elements. This is the reason that JI have been taken as the best via media for the militant organisations and in return JI will be given good numbers of the seats in the parliament.

The three political parties, the PPP, MQM and ANP and other political parties from Balochistan province, who are liberal and secular have been threatened by the Taliban that they would not be allowed to have freedom of election campaign. Their public meetings are continuously under the bomb attacks and the Taliban claim the responsibility. Those political parties who are supposing to the ‘friends of Taliban’ have the full freedom for the election campaign. The security forces are also not providing any security to stop the attacks of the liberal parties. A great divide has been made by the military, the caretaker government and election commission between the centre right and liberal political parties and all arrangement have made that those political parties must win who have the inclination towards Al-Qaida and Taliban.

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About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights in Asia, documents violations and advocates for justice and institutional reform to ensure the protection and promotion of these rights. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

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Asian Human Rights Commission
#701A Westley Square,
48 Hoi Yuen Road, Kwun Tong, Kowloon,
Hongkong S.A.R.
Tel: +(852) 2698-6339
Fax: +(852) 2698-6367
Web: humanrights.asia
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American Drone Strikes Declining But Who Will Now Handle the Pakistani Terrorists

There are signs that the Obama administration be running out of high-level targets.

After a sharp rise in Mr. Obama’s first two years, the total number of drone strikes is now in sharp decline.

In Pakistan, strikes peaked in 2010 at 117; the number fell to 64 in 2011, 46 in 2012, with 11 in 2013, according to The Long War Journal, which covers the covert wars.

In Yemen, while strikes shot up to 42 in 2012, no strikes have been reported since a flurry of drone hits in January.

Mr Obama has pledged more transparency for the drone program, and he and his aides have hinted that change are coming. It remains unclear what the administration has in mind, but the president has spoken of the treacherous allure of the drone.

Decisions on targeted killing are “something that you have to struggle with. If you don’t, then it’s easy to slip into a situation in which you end up bending rules thinking that the ends always justify the means,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not who we are as a country.”

Taliban: Enemy of Our Enemy is Our Friend

Tribal elders pressurised to sign peace deals with Taliban

by Kahar Zalmay

Yet another policy change by the army indicates that the Taliban are now an asset in the new develop of the region

As the time of the withdrawal of the USA and the allied forces is coming closer the Pakistan army has suddenly changed its stance against the Taliban.

The army has developed its new policy from “Crush the terrorists” to “Our enemy’s enemy is our friend” and included the Taliban as its partner for the coming changes in the region. Since 2001 Pakistan has received huge amounts of foreign aid against Al-Qaida and the Taliban and internally a policy was adopted against terrorists which were generally bracketed as ‘Taliban’. The government and the army have divided the Taliban into the Pakistani and Afghanistan Taliban and showed a strong inclination towards declaring the Pakistani Taliban as enemies of the country. They are mainly operating from the tribal areas into the major cities of Pakistan.

In their latest policy statement the army has declared the terrorists as the major threat to the security of Pakistan. This is a policy shift as the main ‘threat’ to the country was previously India.

It is claimed by the Pakistani army that almost 40,000 armed forces personnel have been killed by terrorists, mainly by the Taliban. However, once again, a policy shift has been observed where the military is now forcing the tribal leaders of the FATA to make friends with the Taliban and sign peace deals with them. FATA is a semi-autonomous tribal region in north-western Pakistan, bordering Pakistan’s provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan to the east and south, and Afghanistan’s provinces of Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Paktika to the west and north. It comprises of seven tribal agencies (districts) and six frontier regions, and is directly governed by Pakistan’s federal government through a special set of laws called the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR).

Malaks are the tribal elders of different tribes and the Khan is the leader of the Malaks. The Malaks in Bajaur Agency are under tremendous pressure from the military to sign peace deals with the Taliban who fled to Kunar province in Afghanistan. Bajaur is one of the seven tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan. To the South of Bajaur is the Mohmand Agency while to the North it is connected with District Dir.

During the war with the Taliban the Pakistan army provided arms, ammunition and training to the tribal leaders and elders to fight against Terrorists. For that initiative the Aman Committees (Peace Committees) were formed and they fought valiantly, sacrificing their lives and property to save the country from attacks from the northern areas.

According to the details available from the scribe of this article in the interviews conducted with the Malaks, they were invited for a Jarga three months ago at the Political Agent’s office in the agency headquarter, Khaar. In that meeting the Malaks were asked to sign a peace deal with Taliban from Bajaur Agency and also to send a delegation to Kunar in order to bring them back.

The Jargas in the tribal areas are the official meetings conducted under the political agent of the FATA and grand Jargas are conducted by the provincial governor of Khyber Pakhtoonkha.

When the Malaks resisted this initiative, another Jarga was called on February 8, 2013 which was addressed by Brigadier Ghulam Haider who is the commander of the military in the agency. In this Jarga, Brigadier Haider pressed the elders to agree to a peace deal with the Taliban.

The ‘demand’ from the military was not merely limited to a peace deal with the Taliban. Each Malak was also asked to host 30 Talibani until the political agent built houses for them.

“We were shocked and could not believe what we were told by the Brigadier. We thought the military came to uproot  the terrorists from our area but now it is asking us to sign a deal with the murderers of our sons, brothers and children”, a shaken and incensed Malak shared with this scribe in Bajaur.

The resilience to this proposal-cum-dictate came from the elders of Salarzai tribe which was the first tribe to launch a tribal Lakhkar (a collective tribal force) under the leadership of its Khan, the Khan of Pashat, Shahabuddin Khan to fight Taliban in 2007-08. This was before the military entered Bajaur. Instead of appreciating the struggle of the Salarzai tribe and its elders, it has now become a casualty of the State policy.

“We are accused of taking money from the USA, Afghanistan, Europe and India for launching our Lakhkar. And when we refused to succumb to the pressure of the military to have peace with Taliban, a 1000-strong Taliban outfit attacked our area from the Baatwar side, a mountainous village on the Pak-Afghan border. Our valiant tribesmen deterred their attack and pushed them back to the Afghan side”, a Malak told me on the condition of anonymity. We were sitting in the shadow of those tall snowy mountains from where Taliban entered some four months back.

“We do not know what the military and the government want from us. We sacrificed so much in this war. There is not a single family that did not lose a member in this fight. But we are befuddled that why after so much sufferings, the military wants us to welcome those murderers. If this was going to be the conclusion of our fight, we would not have wanted the sacrifices of our children, fathers and brothers”, an elderly man belonging to the Salarzai tribe voiced, the sorrow and subjection was clearly printed on his wrinkled face.

“The military should tell us in clear terms what it wants from us? If it wants us to leave this place, so we shall. If it wants us to attack Afghanistan, we will do it. My kids are out of school for five years; they can’t go to school even in Peshawar or roam there unreservedly. They cannot go out of this compound and I myself cannot sit here”, (he was referring to his Hujra where the guests were sitting), another Malak told the scribe in Khaar, the headquarters of Bajaur Agency.

The scribe then asked, “But will you be able to handle Taliban if the military left Bajaur. He replied, “We want the military out as we are sick of its double game and we have arrived at this conclusion that military and Taliban are the same. And as far as the Taliban are concerned, we will slice them into small pieces and throw them to this dog”. He signalled to the dog lying near the kut (the traditional bed) enjoying a sound sleep and not the least concerned with the Malak’s anguish and my curiosity.

“The military is forcing Malaks to agree to a peace deal with the Taliban and for that it exploits different tactics”, divulged a local journalist on the condition of anonymity. “If you are a Malak and you resist negotiations with the Taliban, a stranger would use some IEDs in your area and stay there until the military sniping dogs spot him there. This gives the military an opportunity to confront the Malak and accuse him of harbouring the Taliban himself. He is left with no option but to accept peace deal”. He laughed, probably noticing the expression of surprise on the face of this scribe. “This is FATA my dear, away from human civilization”, he added.

The recent appointment of the governor of KPK, Shaukatullah Khan could be linked to this new strategy of the Pakistan army to bring back their assets from Afghanistan, rest them and get them ready for a new battle in Afghanistan after the US forces withdraw. Shaukatullah Khan was an elected member of the National Assembly from Bajaur Agency.

When the scribe contacted the Military Commander in Bajaur, Brigadier Ghulam Haider, to get his view on the allegations levelled against the military by the Malaks he said, “I might have been misquoted by some Malaks as the purpose of the military in Bajaur is to clear the area of all sorts of militants. We are strictly concentrating on our job and as for negotiations with the Taliban are concerned it’s a political decision that needs to be taken by the political forces in the country”.

The entire tribal area is now in a state of confusion, not knowing whether to side with the Taliban or the army. Regardless of which way to go, there is no doubt in their minds that they will be at the mercy of both the Taliban and the army. This is not the first time in recent history that there has been a policy change regarding the Taliban and it appears that this is more a matter of convenience rather than being in the interest of the security of the country.

If, in fact, the peace deals are signed with the Taliban this will be a licence for them to kill the innocent citizens in the name of their version of Islam.

Taliban Have Reached Karachi

Karachi is no stranger to gangland violence, driven for years by a motley collection of armed groups who battle over money, turf and votes.

But there is a new gang in town. Hundreds of miles from their homeland in the mountainous northwest, Pakistani Taliban fighters have started to flex their muscles more forcefully in parts of this vast city, and they are openly taking ground.

Taliban gunmen have mounted guerrilla assaults on police stations, killing scores of officers. They have stepped up extortion rackets that target rich businessmen and traders, and shot dead public health workers engaged in polio vaccination efforts. In some neighborhoods, Taliban clerics have started to mediate disputes through a parallel judicial system.

The grab for influence and power in Karachi shows that the Taliban have been able to extend their reach across Pakistan, even here in the country’s most populous city, with about 20 million inhabitants. No longer can they be written off as endemic only to the country’s frontier regions.

In joining Karachi’s street wars, the Taliban are upending a long-established network of competing criminal, ethnic and political armed groups in this combustible city. The difference is that the Taliban’s agenda is more expansive — it seeks to overthrow the Pakistani state — and their operations are run by remote control from the tribal belt along the Afghan border.

Already, the militants have reshaped the city’s political balance by squeezing one of the most prominent political machines, the Pashtun-dominated Awami National Party, off its home turf. They have scared Awami operatives out of town and destroyed offices, gravely undercutting the party’s chances in national elections scheduled for May.

“We are the Taliban’s first enemy,” said Shahi Syed, the party’s provincial head, at his newly fortified office. “They burn my offices, they tear down my flags and they kill our people.”

The Taliban drift into Karachi actually began years ago, though much more quietly. Many fled here after a concerted Pakistani military operation in the Swat Valley in 2009. The influx has gradually continued, officials here say, with Taliban fighters able to easily melt into the city’s population of fellow ethnic Pashtuns, estimated to number at least five million people.

Until recently, the militants saw Karachi as a kind of rear base, using the city to lie low or seek medical treatment, and limiting their armed activities to criminal fund-raising, like kidnapping and bank robberies.

But for at least six months now, there have been signs that their timidity is disappearing. The Taliban have become a force on the street, aggressively exerting their influence in the ethnic Pashtun quarters of the city.

Taliban tactics are most evident in Manghopir, an impoverished neighborhood of rough, cinder-block houses clustered around marble quarries on the northern edge of the city, where illegal housing settlements spill into the surrounding desert.

In recent months, Taliban militants have attacked the Manghopir police station three times, killing eight officers, said Muhammad Aadil Khan, a local member of Parliament.

In interviews, residents describe Taliban militants who roam on motorbikes or in jeeps with tinted windows, delivering extortion demands in the shape of two bullets wrapped in a piece of paper.

A factory owner in Manghopir, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety, said that several Pashtun businessmen had received demands for $10,000 to $50,000. The figure was negotiable, he said, but payment was not: resistance could result in an assault on the victim’s house or, in the worst case, a bullet to the head.

Mr. Khan said he had not dared to visit his constituency in months. “There is a personal threat against me,” he said, speaking at the headquarters of his party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which represents ethnic Mohajirs, in the city center.

The militant drive has even distressed Manghopir’s most revered residents: the dozens of crocodiles who inhabit a pool near a Sufi shrine here.

The Muslim pilgrims who come here to pay homage to the shrine’s saint have long also brought scraps of meat for his reptile charges.

But lately, as visitor numbers have dwindled from hundreds per day to barely a few dozen, the roughly 120 crocodiles here have grown hungry, according to the animals’ elderly caretaker.

Police officials, militant sources and Pashtun residents say that three major Taliban factions operate in Karachi — the most powerful one, which is rooted in South Waziristan and dominated by the Mehsud tribe, and two others from the Swat and Mohmand areas.

A senior city police officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that militant commanders with those factions send operational orders to Karachi from the tribal belt; while some captured militants have tried to justify their activities by citing the authorization of religious clerics in the northwest.

In cases, he added, regular criminal groups have posed as Taliban fighters in a bid to increase their power of intimidation.

Just why the Taliban are adopting such an aggressive profile in Karachi right now is unclear. Some cite the greater number of militants fleeing Pakistani military operations in the northwest; others say it may be the product of dwindling funds, as jihadi donors in the Persian Gulf states turn to the Middle East.

In any event, it has shaken the city’s bloody ethnic politics.

Since the 1980s, armed supporters of the Mohajir-dominated Muttahida Qaumi Movement have engaged in tit-for-tat violence with those of the Pashtun-dominated Awami National Party. In the worst periods, dozens of people have died in a day. Now, faced with a common enemy, figures in both parties say they have declared an uneasy, unofficial truce.

As well as the attack on the Awami party — which have seen it close 44 of its district offices across the city — the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for two attacks on the Muttahida Qaumi Movement — first, a bombing that killed four people, then the assassination of a party parliamentarian.

In a recent interview with The New York Times in North Waziristan, the Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said the group was targeting both parties — as well as President Zardari’s PPP — for their “liberal” policies.

The security forces, shaken out of complacency, have begun a number of major anti-Taliban operations. The latest of those occurred on March 23 when hundreds of paramilitary Rangers raided a residential area in Manghopir, near the crocodile shrine, confiscating a cache of more than 50 weapons and rounding up 200 people, 16 of whom were later identified as militants and detained.

“I don’t think the Taliban would like to set Karachi aflame, because they fear the reaction against them,” said Ikram Seghal, a security consultant in Karachi. “The police and intelligence agencies have very good information about them.”

Other factors limit the Pakistani Taliban’s ingress into Karachi. One of the more provocative ones is that allied militants — particularly the Afghan Taliban — might not like the added publicity. The Afghan wing has long used the city as place to rest and resupply. There are longstanding rumors that the movement’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, is taking shelter here, and that his leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura, has met in Karachi.

In such a vast and turbulent city, the Taliban may become just another turf-driven gang. But without a determined response from the security forces, experts say, they could also seek to become much more.

What Was This Asshole Doing When Posted in Pakistan?

Pakistan’s Precipitous Decline

By William Milam

NYT/ April 4, 2013

Pakistanis are celebrating the accomplishment of an elected government — for the first time in the country’s history — serving in office for the full five years of its constitutional term.

Never mind that this is the only accomplishment of that government, or that the news is drowned out by the horror stories that continue to emanate from Pakistan. These only serve to solidify the impression of an increasingly dysfunctional, fragmented, very troubled state, on which much depends, but in which fragility and instability continue to mount.

Atrocity builds on atrocity. Minorities are targeted and murdered — with seeming impunity — by extremists who brag publicly about doing so. And the violence is not limited to minorities. Anyone who does not meet a narrow and exclusive definition of “Muslim,” as defined by religious fundamentalists, has come under increasing attack. The ubiquitous Sufi shrines, revered by perhaps half of the Sunni population, are assaulted by extremists who regard them as apostate. Humanitarians delivering social and medical services to the poor are gunned down in cold blood — witness the murder of polio vaccine and other health workers, and that of Parveen Rehman, the head of Pakistan’s celebrated urban social service NGO, the Orangi project of Karachi. And now we learn that, with an election coming, the political parties are wooing the perpetrators, rather than pledging to defeat them.

Predictions about Pakistan, a growth industry today but one that has kept scholars and pundits busy for decades, has often produced insightful and unsettling analyses. Almost all observers come to the same conclusion — Pakistan will muddle through for the foreseeable future. We view Pakistan either through “a glass half full,” meaning that there is hope that someday, in some way, the country will turn around, or through “a glass half empty,” meaning that its long-term trajectory is toward failure, but that it will hold together during our lifetime (glued by the army).

But the increasingly grim news out of Pakistan forcefully reminds me of what my dear friend, the late Sir Hilary Synnott, former British high commissioner to Pakistan, argued a few years ago. The half-full or half-empty glass was not, he said, the appropriate metaphor. Analysts should, he insisted, look at Pakistan through the image of “a glass too large,” by which he meant a country constantly overreaching.

I think Sir Hilary was on to something. Pakistan has historically tried to punch above its weight. This derives mainly from its historic regard of India as its existential threat. This elevated the army, gave it a public imprimatur above the politicians, and allowed it to take — almost as its right — most of the state’s resources to maintain an imagined parity with India. To add to its arsenal, the army recruited religious militants to fight as proxies against India and in Afghanistan. The irony is that the army has lost control of these proxies, and it is they who are now carrying out the attacks against the state and its citizens.

In addition to the army, Pakistan inherited its other political and economic institutions from the British (and to some extent the Moguls) and, as in almost all ex-colonial countries, these were taken over by indigenous elites and the state, for the benefit of those elites and the state. This suited the army just fine, as these institutions were soon dwarfed vis-à-vis the army, and remain so. Had its society remained so structured, over time those political and economic institutions might have become stronger and more independent, and Pakistan more modern. Sometimes that happens, but infrequently. The addition of these now-autonomous militant proxies to an already unpromising mix made that mix even more toxic, and modernization much less likely.

Before our eyes, the Pakistani state, which seems to have given in without a murmur to the exclusionist narrative of the fundamentalists, may have begun to unravel. Sir Hilary’s metaphor of “a glass too large” may have even wider application and meaning. How can a state continue to muddle through when it has lost the fundamental requisite of a state, its monopoly on the use and definition of legitimate violence? How much longer before Pakistanis conclude that the basic protection their state is supposed to provide its citizens — of life and property — is absent.

The feeling comes that the inflection point of the “muddle through” curve is being reached, that in effect, the too-large glass we should look through has now filled to overflowing with problems that Pakistan cannot handle — a weak state under attack from the monsters it created, with mostly dysfunctional political and economic institutions, going in a vicious circle, and showing no promise or hope of transformation. The West, as well as Pakistan’s regional neighbors, should be thinking about the political and strategic implications of an accelerated decline toward state failure in this key, nuclear-armed country.

William Milam is a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

 

Drone Attacks Started with the Army’s Consent

On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him.

Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound, severing Mr. Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound.

That was a lie.

Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the CIA, the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state.

In a secret deal, the CIA had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.

That back-room bargain is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the CIA’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the CIA to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.

The CIA has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike. While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, it became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war.

Neither American nor Pakistani officials have ever publicly acknowledged what really happened to Mr. Muhammad — details of the strike that killed him, along with those of other secret strikes, are still hidden in classified government databases.

CIA Chief Mr. Brennan, who began his career at the CIA and over the past four years oversaw an escalation of drone strikes from his office at the White House, has signaled that he hopes to return the agency to its traditional role of intelligence collection and analysis. But with a generation of CIA officers now fully engaged in a new mission, it is an effort that could take years.

Today, even some of the people who were present at the creation of the drone program think the agency should have long given up targeted killings.

Ross Newland, who was a senior official at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia., when the agency was given the authority to kill Qaeda operatives, says he thinks that the agency had grown too comfortable with remote-control killing, and that drones have turned the CIA into the villain in countries like Pakistan, where it should be nurturing relationships in order to gather intelligence.

From Car Thief to Militant

By 2004, Mr. Muhammad had become the undisputed star of the tribal areas, the fierce mountain lands populated by the Wazirs, Mehsuds and other Pashtun tribes who for decades had lived independent of the writ of the central government in Islamabad. A brash member of the Wazir tribe, Mr. Muhammad had raised an army to fight government troops and had forced the government into negotiations. He saw no cause for loyalty to the ISI that had given an earlier generation of Pashtuns support during the war against the Soviets.

Many Pakistanis in the tribal areas viewed with disdain the alliance that President Musharraf had forged with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They regarded the Pakistani military that had entered the tribal areas as no different from the Americans — who they believed had begun a war of aggression in Afghanistan, just as the Soviets had years earlier.

Born near Wana, the bustling market hub of South Waziristan, Mr. Muhammad spent his adolescent years as a petty car thief and shopkeeper in the city’s bazaar. He found his calling in 1993, around the age of 18, when he was recruited to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and rose quickly through the group’s military hierarchy. He cut a striking figure on the battlefield with his long face and flowing jet black hair.

When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001, he seized an opportunity to host the Arab and Chechen fighters from Al Qaeda who crossed into Pakistan to escape the American bombing.

For Mr. Muhammad, it was partly a way to make money, but he also saw another use for the arriving fighters. With their help, over the next two years he launched a string of attacks on Pakistani military installations and on American firebases in Afghanistan.

CIA officers in Islamabad urged Pakistani spies to lean on the Waziri tribesman to hand over the foreign fighters, but under Pashtun tribal customs that would be treachery. Reluctantly, Mr. Musharraf ordered his troops into the forbidding mountains to deliver rough justice to Mr. Muhammad and his fighters, hoping the operation might put a stop to the attacks on Pakistani soil, including two attempts on his life in December 2003.

But it was only the beginning. In March 2004, Pakistani helicopter gunships and artillery pounded Wana and its surrounding villages. Government troops shelled pickup trucks that were carrying civilians away from the fighting and destroyed the compounds of tribesmen suspected of harboring foreign fighters. The Pakistani commander declared the operation an unqualified success, but for Islamabad, it had not been worth the cost in casualties.

A cease-fire was negotiated in April during a hastily arranged meeting in South Waziristan, during which a senior Pakistani commander hung a garland of bright flowers around Mr. Muhammad’s neck. The two men sat together and sipped tea as photographers and television cameras recorded the event.

Both sides spoke of peace, but there was little doubt who was negotiating from strength. Mr. Muhammad would later brag that the government had agreed to meet inside a religious madrasa rather than in a public location where tribal meetings are traditionally held. “I did not go to them; they came to my place,” he said. “That should make it clear who surrendered to whom.”

The peace arrangement propelled Mr. Muhammad to new fame, and the truce was soon exposed as a sham. He resumed attacks against Pakistani troops, and Mr. Musharraf ordered his army back on the offensive in South Waziristan.

Pakistani officials had, for several years, balked at the idea of allowing armed CIA Predators to roam their skies. They considered drone flights a violation of sovereignty, and worried that they would invite further criticism of Mr. Musharraf as being Washington’s lackey. But Mr. Muhammad’s rise to power forced them to reconsider.

The CIA had been monitoring the rise of Mr. Muhammad, but officials considered him to be more Pakistan’s problem than America’s. In Washington, officials were watching with growing alarm the gathering of Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas, and George J. Tenet, the CIA director, authorized officers in the agency’s Islamabad station to push Pakistani officials to allow armed drones. Negotiations were handled primarily by the Islamabad station.

As the battles raged in South Waziristan, the station chief in Islamabad paid a visit to Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, the ISI chief, and made an offer: If the CIA killed Mr. Muhammad, would the ISI allow regular armed drone flights over the tribal areas?

In secret negotiations, the terms of the bargain were set. Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that they be allowed to approve each drone strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets. And they insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas — ensuring that they would not venture where Islamabad did not want the Americans going: Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India.

The ISI and the CIA agreed that all drone flights in Pakistan would operate under the CIA’s covert action authority — meaning that the United States would never acknowledge the missile strikes and that Pakistan would either take credit for the individual killings or remain silent.

A New Direction

As the negotiations were taking place, the CIA’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, had just finished a searing report about the abuse of detainees in the CIA’s secret prisons. The report kicked out the foundation upon which the CIA detention and interrogation program had rested. It was perhaps the single most important reason for the CIA’s shift from capturing to killing terrorism suspects.

The greatest impact of Mr. Helgerson’s report was felt at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, or CTC, which was at the vanguard of the agency’s global antiterrorism operation. The center had focused on capturing Qaeda operatives; questioning them in CIA jails or outsourcing interrogations to the spy services of Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and other nations; and then using the information to hunt more terrorism suspects.

Mr. Helgerson raised questions about whether CIA officers might face criminal prosecution for the interrogations carried out in the secret prisons, and he suggested that interrogation methods like water boarding, sleep deprivation and the exploiting of the phobias of prisoners — like confining them in a small box with live bugs — violated the UN Convention Against Torture.

The ground had shifted, and counterterrorism officials began to rethink the strategy for the secret war. Armed drones, and targeted killings in general, offered a new direction. Killing by remote control was the antithesis of the dirty, intimate work of interrogation. Targeted killings were cheered by Republicans and Democrats alike, and using drones flown by pilots who were stationed thousands of miles away made the whole strategy seem risk-free.

The Predator had been considered a blunt and unsophisticated killing tool, and many at the CIA were glad that the agency had gotten out of the assassination business long ago. Three years before Mr. Muhammad’s death, and one year before the CIA carried out its first targeted killing outside a war zone — in Yemen in 2002 — a debate raged over the legality and morality of using drones to kill suspected terrorists.

A new generation of CIA officers had ascended to leadership positions, having joined the agency after the 1975 Congressional committee led by Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, which revealed extensive CIA plots to kill foreign leaders, and President Gerald Ford’s subsequent ban on assassinations. The rise to power of this post-Church generation had a direct impact on the type of clandestine operations the CIA chose to conduct.

After Mr. Muhammad was killed, his dirt grave in South Waziristan became a site of pilgrimage.

A Pakistani journalist, Zahid Hussain, visited it days after the drone strike and saw a makeshift sign displayed on the grave: “He lived and died like a true Pashtun.”

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan’s top military spokesman, told reporters at the time that “Al Qaeda facilitator” Nek Muhammad and four other “militants” had been killed in a rocket attack by Pakistani troops.

Any suggestion that Mr. Muhammad was killed by the Americans, or with American assistance, he said, was “absolutely absurd.”

Not All Drone Strikes Are Carried Out by the Americans

U.S. Disavows 2 Drone Strikes Over Pakistan

When news of the two latest drone strikes emerged from Pakistan’s tribal belt in early February, it seemed to be business as usual by the CIA.

Local and international media reports carried typical details: swarms of American drones had swooped into remote areas, killing up to nine people, including two senior commanders of Al Qaeda.

In Islamabad, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry lodged an official protest with the American Embassy.

Yet there was one problem, according to three American officials with knowledge of the program: The United States did not carry out those attacks.

“They were not ours,” said one of the officials. “We haven’t had any kinetic activity since January.”

What exactly took place in those remote tribal villages, far from outside scrutiny, is unclear. But the Americans’ best guess is that one or possibly both of the strikes were carried out by the Pakistani military and falsely attributed to the CIA to avoid criticism from the Pakistani public.

E-mail and phone messages seeking comment from the Pakistani military were not returned.

If the American version is true, it is a striking irony: In the early years of the drone campaign, the Pakistani Army falsely claimed responsibility for American drone strikes in an attempt to mask C.I.A. activities on its soil. Now, the Americans suggest, the Pakistani military may be using the same program to disguise its own operations.

More broadly, the phantom attacks underscore the longstanding difficulty of gaining reliable information about America’s drone program in the remote and largely inaccessible tribal belt — particularly at a time when the program is under sharp scrutiny in Washington.

For the past month, John O. Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser and nominee to lead the C.I.A., has been dogged by Congressional questions about the drone program’s lack of transparency, particularly when it comes to killing American citizens abroad.

The biggest obstacle to confirming details of the strikes is their location: the strikes usually hit remote, hostile and virtually closed-off areas. Foreign reporters are barred from the tribal belt, and the handful of local journalists who operate there find themselves vulnerable to pressure from both the military and the Taliban.

That murkiness has often suited the purposes of both the C.I.A. and the Pakistani military. It allows the Americans to conduct drone strikes behind a curtain of secrecy, largely shielded from public oversight and outside scrutiny. For the Pakistanis, it allows them to play both sides: publicly condemning strikes, while quietly supporting others, like the missile attack that killed the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in 2009.

Still, the information vacuum also places American officials at a disadvantage when it comes to answering accusations that the drone strikes kill large numbers of innocent civilians alongside bona fide militants. State Department officials have complained that they cannot effectively counter civilian death claims they believe are hugely inflated because the program is classified — a subject of lively debate inside the administration, one official said.

The private controversy over the latest strikes, however, suggested another phenomenon at work: the manipulation of the actual drone reports themselves.

The two strikes, which took place on Feb. 6 in North Waziristan and Feb. 8 in South Waziristan, went unremarked on largely because they appeared so run of the mill.

Small Pakistani news agencies and international television networks, including NBC and Al Jazeera, carried common-sounding details: accounts of multiple American drones hovering overhead, estimates of the number of missiles fired, accounts of the rescue effort by local civilians and quotes from Pakistani military officials in the tribal belt or nearby Peshawar.

“The compound was completely destroyed. The militants had surrounded the area after the attack,” one official told Agence France-Presse after the second explosion, in Babar Ghar, near Ladha, in South Waziristan.

Some reports, attributed to Pakistani officials, said the dead included two Qaeda commanders, identified as Abu Majid al-Iraqi and Sheikh Abu Waqas. Other reports said four Uzbek militants had died.

“The Pakistan Air Force does not generally undertake stand-alone strikes such as these because it is not equipped with the appropriate strike weapons,” a Pakistani military source said.

The American narrative of those strikes is very different.

Two senior United States officials said there had been no American involvement in the attacks. A third official said the C.I.A. had not paid the reports much attention because no American forces had been involved. But that official said American intelligence pointed to the Pakistan Air Force as having conducted the first strike, probably as part of a military operation against Pakistani Taliban militants in the neighboring Orakzai tribal agency.

he second attack was more mysterious. “It could have been the Pakistani military,” the official said. “It could have been the Taliban fighting among themselves. Or it could have been simply bad reporting.”

Few issues antagonize the relationship between Pakistan and the United States as much as the drone program does — or encapsulate the often contradictory, smoke-and-mirrors nature of the military-to-military relationship.

In public, both Pakistani military and government officials routinely and vehemently condemn the strikes. But in private, a handful of senior Pakistani generals are “read into” the program, according to American officials.

The United States gives the Pakistani military 30 minutes’ advance notice of drones strikes in South Waziristan. However, it gives no notice in North Waziristan, considered a bigger hub of Taliban and Qaeda militancy, and also a major base for the Haqqani Network, which carries out attacks in Afghanistan, one senior American official said.

If American claims are correct, the United States has not conducted a drone strike in Pakistan since Jan. 10, marking the longest pause of the campaign since November 2011, when the C.I.A. stopped strikes for 55 days after American warplanes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a disputed border clash.

Some analysts believe the lull may be connected to Mr. Brennan’s nomination, pointing to a similar slowdown in Yemen, the other major theater of American drone operation. Others point to more prosaic explanations, like intelligence delays or bad weather.

“The whole thing seems to be on pause at the moment,” said Chris Woods of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a watchdog group that tallies the drone strikes, mostly using news reports.

If one thing is clear about the drones, it is that all sides — Pakistanis, Americans and the Taliban — have an interest in manipulating reports about their impact.

Mr. Woods said he would take American claims of noninvolvement in the February attacks “with a pinch of salt,” citing the details about the Qaeda deaths as potential evidence of C.I.A. involvement.

But, Mr. Woods added, his group had earmarked reports of about a dozen drone strikes as suspicious in recent years, and had marked them as such on its Web site.

Viewed from Washington, a handful of erroneously reported strikes may seem inconsequential. According to most estimates, the C.I.A. has carried out about 330 drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt since 2004, the vast majority of them in the past five years. (Though the American military also operates drones, officials insist that the program in Pakistan is solely conducted by the C.I.A.)

Yet in Pakistan, they carry greater significance, igniting huge and sometimes violent anti-American demonstration that make drones a toxic subject for generals and politicians alike. But the American claims about the two attacks this month suggest that they may, also, be trying to have the best of both worlds.

 

Passing Out of 100 Suicide Bombers to Attack Islamabad

According to credible sources, that a suicide asset may be casing out potential targets in the larger Rawalpindi-Islamabad metropolis and similar reports have surfaced in Lahore.

In addition, there are indications that there is an increased general threat of abduction of foreigners in Punjab and the Rawalpindi/ Islamabad metropolitan area.

While and there are no known specific threats against NGOs facilities and personnel at this time. staff of these NGOs have been advised to remain particularly vigilant and review personal security measures.

In particular, staff has been reminded of the following precautions:

• Change routes and timings to/from offices.
• Avoid walking alone, particularly during hours of darkness and be aware of your surroundings.
• Hiking activities on the Margalla Hills should be limited to trails 3 and 5, conducted in groups at peak time.
• Monitor residential guards closely and ensure compliance with standard access control procedures, as well as increased vigilance of the immediate area.
• Report any suspicious activities or other incidents to their security personnel.

 

Mohsin Hamid Blames the ISI for the Current Mess

To Fight India, We Fought Ourselves

By Mohsin Hamid

On Feb 18, 2013, my mother’s and sister’s eye doctor was assassinated. He was a Shiite. He was shot six times while driving to drop his son off at school. His son, age 12, was executed with a single shot to the head.

Next day, I attended a protest in front of the Governor’s House in Lahore demanding that more be done to protect Pakistan’s Shiites from sectarian extremists. These extremists are responsible for increasingly frequent attacks, including bombings this year that killed more than 200 people, most of them Hazara Shiites, in the city of Quetta.

As I stood in the anguished crowd in Lahore, similar protests were being held throughout Pakistan. Roads were shut. Demonstrators blocked access to airports. My father was trapped in one for the evening, yet he said most of his fellow travelers bore the delay without anger. They sympathized with the protesters’ objectives.

Minority persecution is a common notion around the world, bringing to mind the treatment of African-Americans in the United States, for example, or Arab immigrants in Europe. In Pakistan, though, the situation is more unusual: those persecuted as minorities collectively constitute a vast majority.

A filmmaker I know who has relatives in the Ahmadi sect told me that her family’s graves in Lahore had been defaced, because Ahmadis are regarded as apostates. A Baluch friend said it was difficult to take Punjabi visitors with him to Baluchistan, because there is so much local anger there at violence toward the Baluch. An acquaintance of mine, a Pakistani Hindu, once got angry when I answered the question “how are things?” with the word “fine” — because things so obviously aren’t. And Pakistani Christians have borne the brunt of arrests under the country’s blasphemy law; a governor of my province was assassinated for trying to repeal it.

What then is the status of the country’s majority? In Pakistan, there is no such thing. Punjab is the most populous province, but its roughly 100 million people are divided by language, religious sect, outlook and gender. Sunni Muslims represent Pakistan’s most populous faith, but it’s dangerous to be the wrong kind of Sunni. Sunnis are regularly killed for being open to the new ways of the West, or for adhering to the old traditions of the Indian subcontinent, for being liberal, for being mystical, for being in politics, the army or the police, or for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At the heart of Pakistan’s troubles is the celebration of the militant. Whether fighting in Afghanistan, or Kashmir, or at home, this deadly figure has been elevated to heroic status: willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, able to win the ultimate victory, selfless, noble. Yet as tens of thousands of Pakistanis die at the hands of such heroes, as tens of millions of Pakistanis go about their lives in daily fear of them, a recalibration is being demanded. The need of the hour, of the year, of the generation, is peace.

Pakistan is in the grips of militancy because of its fraught relationship with India, with which it has fought three wars and innumerable skirmishes since the countries separated in 1947. Militants were cultivated as an equalizer, to make Pakistan safer against a much larger foe. But they have done the opposite, killing Pakistanis at home and increasing the likelihood of catastrophic conflicts abroad.

Normalizing relations with India could help starve Pakistani militancy of oxygen. So it is significant that the prospects for peace between the two nuclear-armed countries look better than they have in some time.

India and Pakistan share a lengthy land border, but they might as well be on separate continents, so limited is their trade with each other and the commingling of their people. Visas, traditionally hard to get, restricted to specific cities and burdened with onerous requirements to report to the local police, are becoming more flexible for business travelers and older citizens. Trade is also picking up. A pulp manufacturer in Pakistani Punjab, for example, told me he had identified a paper mill in Indian Punjab that could purchase his factory’s entire output.

These openings could be the first cracks in a dam that holds back a flood of interaction. Whenever I go to New Delhi, many I meet are eager to visit Lahore. Home to roughly a combined 25 million people, the cities are not much more than half an hour apart by plane, and yet they are linked by only two flights a week.

Cultural connections are increasing, too. Indian films dominate at Pakistani cinemas, and Indian songs play at Pakistani weddings. Now Pakistanis are making inroads in the opposite direction. Pakistani actors have appeared as Bollywood leads and on Indian reality TV. Pakistani contemporary art is being snapped up by Indian buyers. And New Delhi is the publishing center for the current crop of Pakistani English-language fiction.

A major constraint the two countries have faced in normalizing relations has been the power of security hawks on both sides, and especially in Pakistan. But even in this domain we might be seeing an improvement. The new official doctrine of the Pakistani Army for the first time identifies internal militants, rather than India, as the country’s No. 1 threat. And Pakistan has just completed an unprecedented five years under a single elected government. This year, it will be holding elections in which the largest parties all agree that peace with India is essential.

Peace with India or, rather, increasingly normal neighborly relations, offers the best chance for Pakistan to succeed in dismantling its cult of militancy. Pakistan’s extremists, of course, understand this, and so we can expect to see, as we have in the past, attempts to scupper progress through cross-border violence. They will try to goad India into retaliating and thereby giving them what serves them best: a state of frozen, impermeable hostility.

They may well succeed. For there is a disturbing rise of hyperbolic nationalism among India’s prickly emerging middle class, and the Indian media is quick to stoke the fires. The explosion of popular rage in India after a recent military exchange, in which soldiers on both sides of the border were killed, is an indicator of the danger.

So it is important now to prepare the public in both countries for an extremist outrage, which may well originate in Pakistan, and for the self-defeating calls for an extreme response, which are likely to be heard in India. Such confrontations have always derailed peace in the past. They must not be allowed to do so again. In the tricky months ahead, as India and Pakistan reconnect after decades of virtual embargo, those of us who believe in peace should regard extremist provocations not as barriers to our success but, perversely, as signs that we are succeeding.