Center for a New American Security

Commentor Zathras rightly took me to task on a post about India and Pakistan's relationship.

Pakistan's long-term interest lies in the two countries settling their differences. But, as Zathras says, what's in the interests of the country isn't always in the interest of the people that run it.

"Suppose Pakistan's political elites continue to be driven by the inertia that encourages policies bad for the country but helpful to the maintenance of their domestic positions?"

This is a valid point to make in any country (ie. politicians and bankers, or politicians and defence firms). Pakistan has not fared well in the past 50 years. Some might argue that the political groupings felt they needed to cement their positions in order to implement their vision for the country's betterment. However, the end result is that rural landlords have succeeded in paying little tax and the military as made itself the country's strongest institution, while state services, the national economy and now public security have suffered dramatically.

I passionately believe that the way to remedy this is to build on Pakistan's often overlooked advantages and empower its people to become involved their country's future direction. I am just coming to the end of a one project I was working on to facilitate a discussion about governance, religion and identity based on Pakistan's own religious traditions (which I have written about before).

But the process that needs to take place is a discussion with the aim of building a new consensus where for 50 years there has only been one group trying to impose its vision on others. To that end, it's really good to see more initiatives that aim to work with and engage the public.

After the floods, I wrote about the activities of young Pakistanis who had decided that the responsibility for helping their country lay ultimately with them. For the afpak article, I spoke to Ali Abbas, the head of the Pakistan Youth Alliance. A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to attend the launch of a new social movement that Ali, and other young Pakistanis, have started up.

Khudi was launched with the help of the UK's Quilliam Foundation, an anti-extremism think tank. The launch in Islamabad gathered together figures from Pakistan's media, the young activists themselves, Maajid Nawaz, director of Quilliam, as well as Noman Benotman, a former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and a former associate of Osama Bin Laden.

Fasi Zaka, a well known and fairly outspoken commentator, talked about the responsibility the media has to promote reasoned, constructive debate. Hamid Mir, a well known TV anchor, talked about the limitations placed on the media. As Noman Benotman was speaking, a vocal section of the crowd cheered nearly every sentence he spoke. But when he paused respectfully during the call to prayer, a voice from the back called, "Where is your secularism now?"

I have friends that complained about the content and style of the evening. "It's not Pakistani enough." Or, "Why are they preaching at us?" Or, "The speakers are saying different things."

I differ. It is Pakistani by the fact that Pakistanis are taking a leading role in it. Also, Pakistanis find it appealing enough to become Facebook fans (13,500 Facebook so far). Also, I would say that the difference of opinion is the point of an initiative like Khudi.

In 2007, Maajid Nawaz, addressed a hall in London and laid out his reasons for leaving behind his former life as a leading member of the non-violent extremist group Hizb ut Tahrir. The hall was full of ultra orthodox Muslims (salafis), people who were sympathetic to his old group, generally interested young professional Muslims and many non-Muslims. Maajid laid out his thoughts and many people disagreed, vocally, right there and then. But the point was that it was debate. In the last three years, the space for debate amongst young British Muslims has grown.

Pakistan, a country where 60 percent of the population is under 30, also needs open debate. If everyone agreed from the beginning, it wouldn't be needed. Instead, in Pakistan, because there has been little national debate - and no consensus - about the core foundational questions that underpin the state, there is little common ground from which to start the debate.

A national consensus is the basis of political stability. It lays out a broadly agreed idea of what the country is about, the duties of the rulers and the ruled as well as the roles of its various intertwined communities (economic, ethnic, religious etc.) This sort of common understanding allows for differences of opinion to occur without ripping a country to shreds or bringing it to a standstill. A national consensus is necessary to develop a sense of political participation and the sense that leaders are responsible to the people. If that can be achieved, the elites Zathras mentions have less leeway to secure their positions at the end of their country.

Even though Pakistanis have little common solid standpoints from which to begin the debate, Khudi makes the point that desire for change amongst the youth is a powerful enough place to start.

In the long-term the answers can't come from abroad. If we accept that bad governance, the exploitation of deeply held beliefs and fears for short-term ends are amongst the issues that have contributed to extremism, then initiatives like Khudi and Karvaan-e-Amn (which I was working on) that promote debate and engagement are going to  ultimately br more useful than military aid.

From mid November onwards, I'll be moving on to another role involving communications in Pakistan. But I hope the long-awaited national dialogue amongst Pakistanis grows.

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782

On December 4, four militants stormed a mosque used extensively by Pakistan Army personnel and killed 35 people who had gathered for Friday prayers. Among the victims were 17 children. Security forces battled the militants for an hour before three blew themselves up. The attack marked a return to the sort of well-executed, multi-pronged tactics that militants have used against the army on previous occasions. But the choice of target - Muslims at prayer - forced a response from the country's religious establishment.

Right after the attack, Interior Minister Rehman Malik called on Pakistan's religious figures to take a stand. Within hours Mufti Muneeb ur Rehman, an influential figure within the religious establishment was on television.

"We have issued a fatwa that suicide bombings, remote attacks and direct attacks against civilians or the forces of an Islamic country are haram (Islamically forbidden)", he said. "Suicide attacks are specifically forbidden because they are carried out by killing yourself, which is totally outside the rules of Islam.... Attacking mosques is totally unacceptable in the eyes of Islam."

Mufti Muneeb represents a mainstream Islamic outlook in Pakistan known as Barelvi, which encompasses the country's Sufi traditions. Much has been made of Sufis as the mainstream - largely apolitical - Islamic outlook that has the potential to provide Pakistan, as well as the wider Muslim world, with the religious legitimacy to counter the austere Salafi and more specifically the Jihadi-Takfeeri ideology that the likes of the Taliban adhere to. In 2007, the Rand Cooperation published Building Moderate Muslim Networks, which advocates engaging and bolstering the Sufi strand of Islam throughout the Muslim world.

But is it really as simple as that? The phrase might have become a cliche but Pakistan is presently the location of a very real battle for hearts and minds. Is it possible to pick a side and support it against another?

The Sufi tradition has very deep roots in Pakistan. The country is dotted with shrines that are visited by thousands of people daily from across Pakistan's ossified class structure. Londonstani's taxi driver of choice is a fairly typical adherent.

Chacha (uncle) supports eight children on about £7.40 a day, which takes him 12 hours of driving to earn. His family is from Murree, a hilly area about 2-1/2 hours drive from Islamabad. But he spends most days of the week living in a small unheated concrete room outside a small stall owned by a relative who also works in the capital. Chacha has a terrible cough, exacerbated by his constant smoking and his taste for the local Murree whiskey. If he could afford it, Chacha would go to the doctors to find out how to treat it. But unlike Londonstani, he's not too worried about it:

"You know, I thank God because health comes from Him. And when you are ill, it makes you remember your own mortality. It makes you remember that you will go back to God and you have to answer for your actions. So in that way, being ill is a blessing because it will make me closer to God."

Conventional wisdom in Pakistan states that men like Chacha uncritically accept whatever they are told by firebrand preachers - of the religious or secular variety that dominate the pulpits and the airways. Chacha, however, is nobody's fool when it comes to current affairs.

"Some people in Pakistan love America and others hate it. The ones that love it are the educated people and those who travel abroad and like fashions from abroad. They have investments in America and they travel there. So its no surprise that they love it.

"For the poor people, they don't see anything good coming from the friendship with America. All we see is that we are suffering for America's war. We didn't invade any country and start a war. The fight is between al Qaeda and America? It's nothing to do with us. But because the people in government are friends with America, we ended up fighting for them."

Despite being very clear about which section of the population he belongs in, Chacha has not resorted to a blind hatred of all things American or Western.

"All the Americans I've ever met are pretty nice people. But I think their policies are bad for our country. Sure, their government needs to look after their interests, but ours needs to look after our interests. That's not happening because the people in our government are looking after the interests of themselves, their family and their group of friends."

Chacha is a follower of Pir Ali Shah, whose shrine-complex is situated on the outskirts of Islamabad at Golra Sherif. 

Golra Sherif has attracted pilgrims for near two centuries. Every week, thousands of men, women and children gather in what has become a little town in its own right to hear Qawalis (devotional songs), pray at the various tombs and eat the food laid on by the shrine's guardians.

                               

The outlook that includes Chacha and countless other Pakistanis is being challenged by the Takfeeri-Salafi mode of thought. The Taliban is the most vocal manifestation of this outlook but my no means its sole representative. Groups like Tehreek-e-Islam and al-Huda, while not explicitly violent, promote a "return to true Islam" message which sees the Sufi traditions of the country as a corruption of the true faith. Most of these groups are in some way or another an offshoot of the Deobandi school of thought which also gave birth to the Jamaat-e-Islaami political party which is sympathetic to the Taliban.

However, Deobandis are not monolithic in their outlook. The Deobandi school of thought started in India in 1866 as a reaction to the British takeover of Muslim India. Its core message is a revival of Islam throught through Islamic learning. Mulana Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islaami, was a Deobandi student but others within the school of thought separated themselves from politics. The Indian branch of the Deobandi school issued a proclamation in 2008 condemning terrorism. In Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami has repeatedly refused to condemn the Taliban.

One consequence of the war in Afghanistan is the fracturing of Pakistan's religious patchwork quilt. Whereas once the fault lines lay between Shia and Sunni, these have now spread to Barelvi and Deobandis (who are both Sunni). As the Barelvis are seen to side with the state's stance against the local Taliban and its official backing for the U.S-led presence in Afghanistan, they have become exposed to allegations that they are "stooges" of "state-sponsored Islam". This has also opened them up to attack on religious grounds by the element of Deobandi thought that sees Sufi practice as unIslamic; a point of view shared by the Wahabis, Takfiris etc, basically, the kind of people who support the Taliban outlook.

A number of sources estimate that the majority of Muslims in Pakistan, India and South Asian communities in the United Kingdom are from Barelvi backgrounds. But whereas once the Deobandi-Barelvi divide was fairly pourous and devoid of any practical meaning, today it has taken on political connotations.

And those political connotations have very serious implications. A few weeks ago, Londonstani tagged along on a series of meetings organised by a British Muslim organisation that involved many leading Barelvi figures. One of the main issues that arose was the very real threat these figures faced if they took a stand against the Taliban. The delegation from Britain visited Jamia Naemia in Lahore, a Barelvi madrassa. The visit started with a prayer at the grave of the school's founder Sarfraz Naemi, who was killed by a suicide bomber weeks after denouncing the Taliban and issuing a fatwa against suicide bombings. It mattered little that he had previously criticised the government for its support of the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The explosive religio-political landscape of Pakistan is best illustrated by the security outside the madrassa guarding one set of Islam's guardians against another.

                                            

Mufti Muneeb was present during the meetings. He made the point that the Barelvis leaders knew that they had to make a stand, but were nervous as to what this would mean for the safety of their families and followers. The statement Mufti Muneeb made after the Rawalpindi attack did not mention the Taliban specifically. In reference to the attackers, he said: "We don't know who they are. But we hear from the media and the government that they say they are acting in the name of religion. That is why we issued a fatwa to refute their claims to have religious justifications for their actions." A few days after making the statement, Mufti Muneeb and several other leaders who echoed his call were laid up in hospital with suspected poisoning.

Supporting the Barelvis materially against the Deobandis is a dangerous logic to follow. It smacks of the sort of colonial and cold war era policies that pitted one group of "natives" against another and led to decades of warfare. At the same time, it overlooks the divisions within the ranks of Pakistan's "traditional Muslims". Any effort to provide material support would flounder at the first hurdle of who to distribute it to. But one practical and realistic suggestion the Barelvis did raise was of moral support from the wider community of Islamic leadership. Despite their numbers, the Barelvis are in danger of being bullied into silence. Their stance makes them appear as government - and therefore Western - stooges. Their opponents portray them as quietist fatalists who are unwilling to stand up for the honour of Islam. And if their opponents dominate the public Islamic discourse - as they are on course to do - anyone in Pakistan who opposes armed insurrection against the state and a fight to the death against anything that hints of tolerance, moderation and discourse will be forced into silence. The medium term consequences for Pakistan, the region and the international community will be dire.

Wondered what a Pakistani madrassa actually looks like?

Something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Londonstani has been getting about.

More to come soon...

An article in Maariv is claiming Israeli soldiers went into Gaza encouraged by IDF rabbis to think of their mission as a holy one.

"The military rabbinate brought many magazines and articles with a very clear message: 'We are the Jewish people, a miracle brought us to the land of Israel, God returned us to the land, and now we have to struggle so as to get rid of the gentiles who disturb us from conquering the holy land.' All the feeling throughout all this operation of many of the soldiers was of a war of religions," he said. "As a commander, I tried to explain that the war is not a war of Kiddush Hashem [the sanctification of God's name, including through martyrdom] but over the stopping of the launching of the Qassam rockets."

This post is not about Israel, so let's not go down that road again (although the gang did an admirable job in keeping the comments more or less sober in this post). I want to use this post as a "jumping off" point to discuss the role chaplains should or should not play in the military. Anyone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan knows soldiers or officers -- almost always evangelical Protestants -- who thought they were there on a holy mission. Others -- even those otherwise religious, such as myself -- chose to put a big fat line in between what we were doing as soldiers in the service of our nation and that which we were called to do as believers serving God. Honest to goodness, the biggest crisis of faith I have ever had was in part precipitated by a chaplain telling me that I was in Afghanistan on a mission from God and that I had just killed a man because God wanted me to do so. At the time, I wanted to quit the Army and Christianity both. And I had a dim view of chaplains for a long time afterward.

Here's a question for the readership. What role should chaplains play in the U.S. military, and how strict should the separating line be between church and state in an army at war? Personally, I think chaplains should exist to a) perform religious services for professing believers, b) counsel soldiers of faith and c) do little to nothing else. I always hated those pre-mission prayer circles, for example. But am I too extreme? Not extreme enough? Just to throw another consideration in the mix counter to my arguments, bear in mine that chaplains often fill in the gaps left by a military struggling to provide counseling to soldiers (of all faiths, or of none) struggling with PTSD.

Okay, discuss.

Update: Until you guys descending into debating the world of finance, this post generated some fantastic comments. Thanks much, and sorry I could not respond to all of them.

I have often used this blog to whine about the left-of-center Guardian/Observer, but for my money, its coverage of the ongoing conflict in Gaza has been about as good as any English-language non-Israeli media outlet. (I'm endorsing only the hard reporting and analysis -- not the opinion pieces.) Beirut-based Mitch Prothero is a first-rate American journalist with more time in Iraq than most U.S. soldiers I know. He has also spent some quality time in Gaza. Thus, his analysis of the fighting in today's Observer is worth checking out. Additionally, I have always liked and admired the reporting of Rory McCarthy since we met, in Beirut, in 2005. Jerusalem-based Rory has been doing good work as well since the fighting began.

But this article on the text message trash-talking taking place between the Israelis and Hamas was what caught my eye first this morning.

Israel and Hamas have mounted psychological warfare on each others' civilian populations. Hamas says it is firing threatening text messages at Israeli mobile phones and jamming radio stations while Israel is bombarding Palestinians with menacing phone calls and leaflets.

"The messages say that the Palestinian resistance missiles will reach you wherever you are and your government won't be able to protect you," said Abu Mujaheid, spokesman for the Palestinian Resistance Committees.

On the one hand, I am tempted to say this represents something new. And it does, as far as the medium is concerned. But check out this passage from Orwell's Homage to Catalonia:

…the real weapon was not the rifle but the megaphone. Being unable to kill your enemy you shouted at him instead. … On the Government side, in the party militias, the shouting of propaganda to undermine the enemy morale had been developed into a regular technique. In every suitable position, usually machine-gunners, were told off for shouting duty and provided with megaphones. Generally they shouted a set piece, full of revolutionary sentiments which explained to the Fascist soldiers that they were merely the hirelings of international capitalism, that they were fighting against their own class, etc., etc., and urged them to come over to our side. This was repeated over and over by relays of men; sometimes it continued almost the whole night. There is very little doubt that it had its effect; everyone agreed that the trickle of Fascist deserters was partly caused by it. … Of course such a proceeding does not fit in with the English conception of war. I admit I was amazed and scandalized when I first saw it done. The idea of trying to convert your enemy instead of shooting him!

So... not so new, then?

And since the readership so enjoys fighting in our comments section (even when we're not posting), here is something to debate. I read the following on the Angry Arab blog:

I have to admit this: from the military perspective, having seen and compared the performance of leftist fighters in Lebanon and the present-day Islamic fundamentalist fighters (no matter the outcome of the Israeli attack on Gaza), I have to make this painful confession as an atheist: that religion is a more effective military motivator than Marx and Lenin.

Well? Is religion a more powerful combat motivator than secular ideologies? Talk amongst yourselves...

(By the way, in the Israeli media and in the absence of Ze'ev Schiff, the military analysis of Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff is always worth reading. Issacharoff, in addition to being a good reporter, is also a real hero.)

Update: Okay, WTF:

"I just heard on the news that Gavriel's base has been shelled," my wife, Sarah, said to me last Tuesday, referring to our 19-year-old son, a member of an Israeli army tank unit waiting on the Gaza border for the order to enter. And, she added in a deliberately calm tone, "A soldier was killed." We texted Gavriel, and within five minutes he called, safe. How, Sarah asked, did families survive war before cellphones?

Are there any NCO's in the IDF? Do they not take up everyone's cell phones prior to an operation? Does anyone not share my opinion that soldiers talking on their cell phones to their families during the middle of a war is a bad idea? I'm not trying to tell the IDF how to do business, but Hizballah was apparently able to listen in on Israeli cell phone conversations during the 2006 war. So wouldn't it make sense to just take up everyone's cell phones and tell them they can call their families when the war is over?

Update II: Ha! Listen to this crank call from a Palestinian in Gaza to the IDF's tip line. (Arabic, but easy to understand for any students out there.)

Oh goodness. Look, Abu Muqawama loves Baby Jesus too, but this is really stupid. Did this Marine think this was going to hurt or help his unit's mission? Honestly.

FALLUJAH, Iraq — At the western entrance to the Iraqi city of Fallujah Tuesday, Muamar Anad handed his residence badge to the U.S. Marines guarding the city. They checked to be sure that he was a city resident, and when they were done, Anad said, a Marine slipped a coin out of his pocket and put it in his hand.

Out of fear, he accepted it, Anad said. When he was inside the city, the college student said, he looked at one side of the coin. "Where will you spend eternity?" it asked.

He flipped it over, and on the other side it read, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16."

"They are trying to convert us to Christianity," said Anad, a Sunni Muslim like most residents of this city in Anbar province. At home, he told his story, and his relatives echoed their disapproval: They'd been given the coins, too, he said.

Fallujah, the scene of a bloody U.S. offensive against Sunni insurgents in 2004, has calmed and grown less hostile to American troops since residents turned against al Qaida in Iraq, which had tried to force its brand of Islamist extremism on the population.

Now residents of the city are abuzz that some Americans whom they consider occupiers are also acting as Christian missionaries. Residents said some Marines at the western entrance to their city have been passing out the coins for two days in what they call a "humiliating" attempt to convert them to Christianity.

Update: Marine removed from Iraq.

Is it just because Abu Muqawama went to church tonight or has anyone else noticed how often the senators have brought God into the discussion today? First St. George of Voinovich starts it off by announcing the solution to Iraq's ills is to "pray harder." Then we're told to thank God Almighty for the MRAP. You know what Abu Muqawama thanks God for? The fact that in this round of questions -- unlike last fall -- the Senate goes first. Do you remember how awful last fall was, sitting through the questions and comments from those clowns in the House of Representatives? Compared to them, the Senators are all re-incarnations of Daniel Webster. Abu Muqawama doesn't know how the rest of you elect your representative to the House, but in the 3rd Congressional District of Tennessee we basically just look around until we find some young conservative without anything better to do than go to Washington and hit on interns at the Hawk & Dove.

In other news, P. just made the analogy of Iraq being like trying to teach a small child to ride a bicycle. How terribly condescending that must sound to Iraqis watching on al-Jazeera. Apparently P. didn't see the WaPo's cartoon today...

Update: Abu Muqawama also thanks the Lord Almighty for the bottle of Arak his Mohammedan flatmate, Londonstani, brought him back from Beirut this weekend. Because it's the only thing that's getting him through these hearings at the moment.

Update II: He also thanks Baby Jesus for Jim Webb, who has been awesome today. This guy wouldn't be the best VP pick for Hillary Clinton, but he would be a great one for Obama.

Update III: Finally, Abu Muqawama thanks Yahweh that Joe Biden has finally and incredibly shut his mouth and allowed this blogger to go to sleep. (It's midnight here in East London, folks. See you tomorrow.)

Abu Muqawama was reading the religion section of the Washington Post today:

When Deacon Ken Finn is counseling prisoners, he often tells the story of Saint Dismas.

"He was the guy crucified on the right side of Christ," Finn says. "He never took a course in [Catholic doctrine], but he gets to skip purgatory and go straight to heaven." ...

Crucifixion is too harsh a crime for thievery, Bock says, so the men were probably insurgents or revolutionaries of some kind.