The Pashtun Problem

On August 18^th 2009 Asma Jahangir, then chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, met with the US mission in Pakistan to brief them about an HRCP report. The report alleged that Pakistani military had engaged in public, extrajudicial killings of suspected Taliban & Taliban sympathisers in the Malakand Division, even referencing mass graves.

Jahangir confided in the US mission however that the more inflammatory incidents of abuse had been ignored by the HRCP so as to avoid arming the Taliban’s propaganda machine. She then asserted that the HRCP would have tried to downplay the abuse allegations if the military had used the “usual tactic” of extrajudicial murders; staged encounter.

A staged encounter is when security forces kill a suspect in custody and then claim he died in an exchange of fire with them, an “encounter”. Such as the one Rao Anwar conducted to murder “Taliban” Naqeeb Mehsud.

This Faustian bargain is at the heart of the trouble brewingin Islamabad right now. To understand the Pashtun grievance, and the ongoing protest, one has to examine how the war against Taliban has unfolded in the last decade, and how it has been covered.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan systemically targeted and eliminated tribal leaders within FATA, establishing their control over the region but also robbing it of leadership and voices that could represent the people there. The Pashtun nationalist party ANP was next on their hit list. They lost many workers and leaders to targeted attacks, Bashir Bilour the most notable among them. Their coalition partners in the KP & Federal government at the time, PPP, of course lost Benazir Bhutto to a terrorist attack.

This meant that when the military operations took place, there was no Pashtun leadership from FATA to protest or identify any abuses and/or profiling that occurred. The Pashtun nationalist party, ANP, & the PPP for that matter, had themselves suffered at the hands of TTP and pushed for military action. Little interest was shown in keeping the military in check.

Rights watchdogs, activists & liberal sections of the press were already willing to back abuses against the population of FATA, which happened to be largely Pashtun, if it meant ridding the country of Taliban. The HRCP’s willingness to downplay extrajudicial murders is only one example of steps taken which, coupled with the appalling state of journalism in the country, presented a distorted image of the war to mainstream Pakistan. One which was completely void of any abuses that the, again largely Pashtun population, suffered at the hands of the state.

The easily identifiable bits are the support for drone strikes & military bombings inside FATA, and the framing of opposition to them as being pro-Taliban. Yet there are other ways of shaping discourse.

Treatment & plight of the Pashtun IDPs, which numbered in millions, never could wade into the national conversation. The missing persons issue has largely been linked with Baloch separatists and is reported in that context. The number of Baloch missing persons cases HRCP could confirm in 2012 is 198, whereas the number of missing person court cases in PHC alone, in the same year, were over 2000. It’s an epidemic for Pashtuns, and it is never in the news.

Then there’s the misreporting about casualties. Over and over completely fabricated figures for the number of people killed by TTP are published. Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies compile the actual numbers by tallying the count from each reported attack in their yearly security reports. As of 1^st January 2018, 22,048 people have lost their lives in violent terrorist attacks. This includes lives lost in sectarian & separatist (Baloch) violence, not just the TTP. Yet you hear 45 thousand, 55 thousand, 60 thousand. A fetish for increasing the death count plagues our media. This is to drum up support for the war, to do what is “necessary”.

What is necessary here is military bombings, profiling and extrajudicial killings of suspected Taliban. For which there are no figures. There is no telling how many have lost their lives in bombings or encounters/custodial killings. Even though we know all that has happened, some cases are detailed in Amnesty International report “Hands of Cruelty”.

This comes back again to the necessity of dealing with the Taliban, and the firm belief of our military, rights watchdogs and the press that any information that could hinder that goal should not be shared with the public. The problem with extrajudicial killings in this war however, as it is constructed now, is that the murder you condone is of a “suspected” Taliban, but a confirmed Pashtun.

A Naqeeb Mehsud.

Karachi is where the line has been crossed from “necessary” evil to clear ethnically, politically biased crime against Pashtuns. The demonisation of Pashtuns in the city was started by the terrorist Altaf Hussain and MQM, who had a political interest in doing so and a history of profiting from ethnic hate. Much like when Trump banned Syrian refugees by linking them with “Muslim” terrorists, Altaf Hussain railed against the “Talibanisation” of Karachi by FATA refugees for years.

The difference was that unlike in the case of Trump, the press here were in the corner of Altaf Hussain. Another difference was that Altaf himself is a terrorist and the MQM, not the TTP, and certainly not the Pashtun refugees, are the biggest threat to peace in Karachi.

According to the Police, by end of 2011 alone over 7,000 people had been killed in ethno-political violence in the city. “Ethno-political” is code for MQM & PPP, who the press aren’t at liberty to identify. By the end of the same year the number of people killed in “terrorist” - TTP, AQ, LeJ - attacks in the city was 720.

It is true that TTP militants did find their way into Karachi and established operations there, but the first target killing credited to TTP came in the August of 2012, an ANP leader Amir Sardar. The results of the Karachi operation launched in 2013 show that they remained small players in that respect.

According to a Rangers briefing about the operation in Aug of 2016, they were able to fix responsibility for 7,224 target killings in the city. Only 557 killings were traced back to members of banned organisations; TTP, LeJ, AQ.

5,863 killings were traced back to members of the MQM.

Yet it is young Pashtun men that are bearing the brunt of extrajudicial killings in the name of fighting terrorism. Extrajudicial murders in 2014 were 925, and in 2015 were 700 in Karachi. Naqeeb is just one of 450 killed, majority Pashtuns, by Rao Anwar alone. MQM members, according to party claims, that have been lost to extrajudicial killings stands at 62.

You have to be dishonest to not see the contrast here. One organisation has gotten away with murder, with collusion or condoning by rights groups & the press, because they claim to represent an ethnic group.

One ethnic group has suffered at the hands of the state, with collusion or condoning by rights groups & the press, for the crimes of an organisation that doesn’t represent them. It is not difficult to see why the media is as uninterested as it is in covering the Islamabad sit in.

Balochistan(Part 3): The Politics of HR

In the aftermath of Sabeen Mahmud’s murder, actually right after the cancellation of the LUMS talk, a large number of people voiced anger against those trying to highlight state abuses in Balochistan. Mama Qadeer especially came under fire, but many people vocal about the issue were also accused of being traitorous, or at least of lacking patriotism, or colluding with separatists or, well, you get the idea.

The group under fire have expressed shock over the reaction they have faced. All they are trying to do is highlight basic, basic, human rights violations; human life itself. Human life, in theory, should be the foremost concern of every decent person, even in an indecent society.

In Pakistan however, that is perhaps too much to ask for.

As mentioned in part 2, an overlooked aspect of the Balochistan issue is that tactics employed by Baloch insurgents are similar to those that are used by TTP in FATA and KP. Another overlooked aspect is that the state’s security apparatus has also employed similarly abusive tactics in KP/FATA to deal with them.

The displacement of a population, like that of parts of the Bugti tribe, has been witnessed in South Waziristan. Also witnessed is distrust of the populace and delayed rehabilitation. The raising/backing of pro-government militias to fight the insurgents, as alleged to take place in Balochistan, is another common occurrence in the long fight against the Taliban.

There’s more. Amnesty International’s report in 2012, “The Hands Of Cruelty”, details some of the other abuses committed by the Pakistani forces in the tribal areas. These include abductions, torture, deaths in custody and dumping of bodies. They also include “enforced disappearances”, again, like the ones that have brought Balochistan into the limelight. If anything, the intensity seems to be greater, with the report noting 2000 court cases filed by 2012, compared to only 135 by 2015 for Balochistan.

In addition, the people in FATA and parts of KP face intensive artillery & aerial bombing campaigns in populated areas, villages and towns etc. These forced millions to move and caused unprecedented damage to property and, one would imagine, to life. “Imagine” because even though there are recorded instances of gunship helicopters firing indiscriminately, and mowing down everyone, in crowded main bazars, no figures of civilian deaths have been compiled by any organization whatsoever.

This is because their lives, or deaths, are not relevant to politics of any organization. Or any group. In fact, highlighting the above mentioned tragedies is considered, by most of us, as detrimental to the greater good.

Consider that, according to Wikileaks, Asma Jehangir & HRCP, when investigating HR violations in the wake of the Swat operation, actually covered up the military’s abuses. The rights body, that has been vocal on Balochistan, did so in order to “avoid arming the militants' propaganda machine”. 

Is it a secret that the establishment doesn’t want its abuses in Balochistan to be highlighted for the same reason HRCP covered them up in Swat? What happens when someone is intent on highlighting abuses another group would rather have swept under the carpet?

Let’s take the example of drone strikes. Not only a violation of international law, but also the purest, most arbitrary form of extrajudicial killings we have seen in the last decade.

Unlike in the case of missing persons, there are no arrests, no interrogations, no one is released. Drone attacks have killed roughly the same number of children as the number of enforced disappearances the HRCP could confirm in Balochistan.

Yet many that are appalled by the atrocities elsewhere have cheered them on. They have mocked protests against drone strikes with religious fervour and admonished the protesters as informers or supporters of TTP.

Is that at all different from what happened last month? The efforts to hide the truth about military brutality. The vitriol against those who protest. Only the roles have changed.

The same people who are willing to overlook abuses & attack dissenters in one conflict, for the greater good, can be at the other end of vitriol for highlighting abuses in another theatre. For the greater good.

This is the sad reality of discourse in our country. Around the world, peoples’ politics decide the HR causes they get behind. In Pakistan, our politics decide the HR abuses we get behind. 

Balochistan(Part 2) : A Disfigured Insurgency

The attack by Baloch separatists on labourers in Turbat last month was a timely reminder that there is more to Balochistan than the state’s high-handedness. The atrocities of the armed forces reviewed in the preceding blog-post take place in, and are part of, a two way conflict.

Mama Qadeer’s son, Jalil Reiki, was the information secretary of the Balochistan Republican Party, headed by Brahamdagh Bugti. Brahamdagh is also believed to control the Balochistan Republican Army and, alongside Harbiyar Marri & Allah Nazar Baloch, credited with leading the insurgency in Balochistan. All 3 are designated as terrorists by Pakistan.

The insurgency, which has often been romanticised because of the neglect of Baloch demands & general deprivation in the province, has sadly become increasingly problematic. To the extent that it displays a host of defining features of terrorism.

Take for instance the practice of killing settlers.

“I do not want to justify the acts of Baloch fighters but they say they only attacks spies and collaborators,” said Mir Muhammad Ali Talpur about the issue, a veteran supporter of the Baloch cause and another invitee of the cancelled LUMS talk.

History however suggests the “spies & collaborators” line to be an excuse for a terrorist operation. The TTP, for example, killed scores of alleged informants and tribal elders it saw supporting the Pakistani government in FATA.

Also, it’s not really true. As one former BSO-Azad member, now affiliated with the “independence movement”, explained, the separatists want all settlers gone. Actions speak even louder, and the tale they tell is clearly one of ethnic cleansing.

The attack that killed 20 labourers, settlers, recently was not an anomaly. Innocent settlers have been killed regularly for not being Baloch, including women. Baloch Nationalist leader Hasil Bizenjo puts the number of settlers killed by insurgents equal to his estimate of the number of missing persons; 2000. The Balochistan Punjabi Ittehad put it at 1,200 back in 2011.

The HRCP’s Balochistan head put the number at 1000 Punjabi settlers killed by last year. In addition they have been threatened and hounded out of Balochistan on a very large scale, 90,000 from Quetta city alone, leaving livelihoods and property behind. Having been all but driven out of the Baloch majority areas by now, only a few survive in Pakhtun dominated areas, or working under the watch of the security forces.

Like the labourers that were murdered earlier in April, who, to the surprise of many, included one's from Sindh. But those following Balochistan closely know that even Hindko speakers & Urdu speaking settlers have been a target for some time now.

The insurgents also go after other Baloch, “informants” obviously, but people seen as pro-Pakistan, even anyone going to contest in or cast votes for an election is threatened. It is often remarked that the Pakistani national anthem isn’t heard in schools there. Muzaffar Jamali, a principal of one such school, was attacked by the insurgents and his 10 year old son was killed in 2012, for allowing the singing of said national anthem.

This wasn’t a one off incident either. Schools, just like the TTP, and teachers in particular, have been the targets of insurgents all along. HRW’s report “Their Future At Stake” recorded killings of 22 teachers  by 2010. Attacks on schools were so rampant that government schools opened for only 120 days of the year.

Lastly, journalists in Balochistan are also threatened by the Baloch insurgents for favourable coverage, and killed when necessary. All security forces personnel & state employees are the more legitimate targets, including of kidnapping and execution style attacks.

The kidnapping & execution of security personnel is, as was the case with targeting schools, alleged informants or supporters of government, opposing figures and relative minority groups, a trait the Baloch insurgency shares with the TTP.

The insurgency is divided into factions that clearly don’t see eye to eye, and their quarrels have manifested in attacks on, and killings of, each other’s militants. Despite appeals for the militants to work together against the state, by Mr Talpur for instance, the divisions have not gone away.

Perhaps this can be explained by the different backgrounds of the people who have taken up the armed struggle. Hrybiar Marri is carrying on the long fight by the Marri tribal leaders against the state of Pakistan. Allah Nazar started as a political activist from the BSO, not a tribal sardar, and became increasingly more radicalized with time. Brahamdagh and his grandfather meanwhile had always stayed away from siding with separatists until Gen Musharaf encroached on late Akbar Bugti’s authority in Dera Bugti.

Whatever the case, these divisions add to an already weak insurgency. The military has outsourced the insurgent problem to the FC, a force designated for, and simultaneously undertaking, the manning the border. One which does not have significant military grade firepower. Yet, as Mr Bizenjo noted, the insurgents can’t defeat them.

What they can do is become a liability for those sympathetic to the Baloch cause with their many terrorist operations. 

Part 3 to follow..

Death & Discourse

The recent strikes in North Waziristan have prompted some to conclude that the "time for talk is over", and this could indeed be the case if a long standing peace deal with Hafiz Gul Bahadur in NWA is revoked. However, the PMLN government’s penchant for saying one thing and doing nothing means that the confused lull will prevail for a while longer.

What struck me the most is the attention the strikes received and the questions raised, again, over the identity of those killed. Perhaps it is because of government ownership and high profile nature of talks, but strikes in NWA seem to come under the spotlight ever since Nawaz Sharif took power. This has given yours truly renewed hope that some truth about our war on terror might be on its way to a screen/newspaper near you, and that blatant lying about the dead may end in the distant future.

The partisan nature of our media and media men is such that for the truth to ever come out; their interests/agendas must be aligned with it. With 4 separate agendas coming to the fore this time around, we have a tiny window of opportunity.

The first group comprises of earnest supporters of democracy who can be seen cheering on the army to bomb without political approval.  They are pretty much set in their ways, and will not bring about desirable effects. Expect newfound patriotism and alignment with Pak army lover for life crowd.

The second are the mostly right-wing guys. Always uneasy with the ops, it has however been difficult to choose between the mullah and the military. If the NS government falls out with the army, they could spin into action and start pointing out transgressions of the army.

Third - the drone-mongers. An unhealthy obsession with robots killing people, to ultimately save mankind (Hello Hollywood), means they will continue to preach the lesser evil. Pointing out heavy collateral from strikes is imperative.

Finally we have the “can’t deal with being out of power” ANP, PPP types. Hard-core fans of military operations, they are looking to somehow use casualties from bombings as a stick to beat anti-ops people with.

The media, its incompetence and its agendas are one of the most important factors in this war, and certainly the most powerful in shaping public perception. It’s for that reason that the bullshit about 50,000 people killed by TTP persists in our discourse. It persists regardless of what the interior ministry says, regardless of what independent research says, and regardless of how many people you irritate by pointing it out.

To what extent do the intellectulas in media mutilate the facts? Dawn, a newspaper that has emerged as consensus “sane voice” these days owing to media infighting, should serve as a reliable enough barometer.

On the pages of Dawn one among many seasoned, former PPP and current, columnist, professed in February of this year that 40 K innocents had been killed by our enemies in the tribal badlands. By March, that number had climbed to 50 thousand innocents killed. And in April it had come to the attention of said author and paper that at least 55 thousand fatalities had been incurred.

The paper and the author have a strictly anti-talks approach on the matter, and if 15 thousand killed extra over two months reinforces their argument, why not? You could see their desperation, and the number of dead, growing as the talks moved forward.

Fact is, media people couldn’t care less how many lives have been lost, or how. Meanwhile, “reporting” is an alien concept. What happens here is they reach a conclusion among their little cliques, and then invent facts & arrange events to help everyone else reach the same conclusion. After-party sees them tell each other how objective and balanced they are.

This is why the new agendas emerging are an exciting prospect. If they can go to such lengths with their own faeces, imagine what these “news” organizations could do with facts.

The most dangerous lot is the right-wing, pro gov one. Granted they will only go into overdrive if PMLN takes on the army, but the potential is enormous. They are the only group, because conservative and Nawaz, that will touch the heavy “collateral damage” accumulated in the last decade, and the façade of the 50 thousand killed.

The drone-mongers, ANP-PPP dudes are only going to do little teasers. Their “liberal” orientation dictates that collateral damage happens and lying for a good cause is not really lying, so 50 K stays. The best outcome they can achieve is pique the interest of people in collateral damage with their jibes.

Hopefully then some idiots with “journalist” in their bios can look into it. Well, stranger things have happened.

Say for arguments sake that enough idiots start looking into the whole thing. By the law of averages, one of them could reach the logical conclusion that if suicide bombings, the most lethal weapon in our enemy’s arsenal, have claimed 6 thousand lives, it is unlikely that IEDs and hit and runs etc. would have killed another 44 thousand. From there it could follow that perhaps the numbers put out by organizations like PIPS are more credible than the numbers pulled out of their own assess by senior columnists?

And what about collateral damage? Is there any collateral damage at all? Is that picture photoshopped? I bet everyone who’s dead because of our bombardment deserves it. Twitter has become a court where credibility is judged by witty one-liners rather than by facts & patterns.

There’s this report at the Costs of War website that talks about Pakistani civilians killed by Pakistani military operations. The figures it quotes for civilians we have killed are pretty impressive, which it has sourced from PIPS.

Interestingly, the PIPS annual security reports, available for download at its website, do not label these deaths as civilian deaths. They are defined just as deaths in “operational attacks”.

Operational attacks are further defined as “Pre-emptive attacks launched by military and paramilitary troops to purge an area of militants.” Hmm, what could that mean...

A report by CIVIC titled “Civilian Harm & Conflict in Northwest Pakistan” came out in 2010 and it sheds some light onto the purging pre-emptive assaults we have used.

Artillery fire and mortars used by our military, according to those interviewed by CIVIC, “were the most common causes of harm suffered by civilians during military operations”.

The report cites some chilling interviews, from a boy who saw scattered organs of his mother, a man whose grand-daughter was blown to pieces and one who lost 5 members of his family in a single strike.

Military jets and gunships are not very forgiving either. One resident cited in the report recalls, “They were shelling just in the bazaar... it was indiscriminate fire, not discriminating between people and militants...the shrapnel struck me in the leg and the head.”

Another incident cited goes like this “On April 10, 2010, Pakistani jet fighters bombed targets in Sra Vela, a village in Khyber Agency, believing they were hitting a meeting attended by a high-level militant commander.

Instead, they hit the home of a pro-government family with three brothers serving with government forces. A second bomb hit crowds of neighbors as they tried to help those injured in the first strike. At least 60 civilians were killed and 30 injured.”

This, totally guessing, has to create resentment against us. The kid who lost his mother had this to say,

“If my mother was killed by the Taliban, one can expect it from them because they are crooks. But one can’t expect it from a trained army…they are to protect us not to kill us like rats.”

These pre-emptive, purging attacks claimed a staggering 14,148 lives from 2008 to 2012. The PIPS reports break them down as:

3,182 deaths in 2008

6,329 deaths in 2009

2,631 deaths in 2010

1046 deaths in 2011

960 deaths in 2012

It should be noted that these numbers do not include any terrorists engaged and killed by security forces. These are only the people we have bombed to death. The terrorist fatalities in confrontations with security forces, initiated either way, are separate and much lower than fatalities in these purging attacks.

A total of 6198 deaths were reported when terrorists have been engaged by security forces in the same period, according to PIPS, with the breakdown as follows:

655 deaths in 2008

1,163 deaths in 2009

2,007 deaths in 2010

1668 deaths in 2011

705 deaths in 2012

Another hushed up aspect of the war are the rights violations. While Balochistan has made enforced disappearances famous, the practice was probably first used by the Musharraf government against those suspected of supporting the jihadist cause. More importantly it has not stopped since Musharraf’s departure.

Amnesty International’s 2012 report titled Hands of Cruelty speaks of many violations committed by both the Taliban and the army. Ours include deaths in custody, torture and enforced disappearances. The report noted that 2000 cases pertaining to missing persons are registered in the Peshawar High Court, but the actual number could be much higher.

Tough break.

Now we do not hear about all this in the media because it does not fit with the picture they want to paint. The “liberal” voices, usually no fans of the military and usually big fans of human rights, are especially keen to look away because “the Taliban deserve it”. Additionally, and more importantly, highlighting killings, torture and other abuses taking place in military operations weakens their case for use of force, and could raise sympathy for the TTP.

The greater good coming into play again here.

Problem? By rigorously lying about how much damage the enemy has done, and resolutely ignoring any that we are doing, a fabricated identity of the war has been created.

That the national discourse about the war is carried out in the same fictional environment does the rest of us a great disservice. The thousands that have lost loved ones in the theatre of war, and the millions that have been forced to flee it, end up with a very different perception of the war than we do.

Theirs is based on what has happened on the ground; the number of dead, the number of missing, the loss of property is all real to them, not made up to suit one narrative or the other. And they don’t have the luxury of looking away when it isn’t pretty anymore.

War is dirty business, and perhaps we have no choice other than to do what we have been doing. But disregarding half of what's happening will bring us no closer to understanding how to deal with it, and is likely to keep us clogged in this circle of violence.

Stupid APC

It took Nusrat Javed all of 10 minutes after the martyrdom of a PTI MPA to call his party “cowards”. Ironic as he usually taunts opponents for being too brave. Anyhow, that set the pace for another round of point scoring matches which have essentially replaced discourse on all things political in Pakistan.

The sometimes sober journalist and others are increasingly vicious these days because of the much maligned APC. Called with the stated aim of creating an elusive consensus in Pakistan on how to deal with terrorism, the APC has had the opposite effect.

One side is convinced that their narrative has won out, while the other has a newfound resolve to correct the error. Instead of coming closer, both have dug their heels in. So much so that it isn’t about finding a solution to the problem, not even about mourning the fallen. It is all about proving the other side wrong.

And it’s hard to resist doing that. It really is. Especially when the guys on the other side are such assholes.
But it doesn’t get us anywhere. So I am trying these days not to do that. Very proud.

I recently read this article about Uzbek fighters in Waziristan and how the army was trying to tackle them and Al-Qaeda in Waziristan. Way back in 2004.

The most striking thing about the article was how it spoke of the Uzbeks and Al-Qaeda, but not of the Taliban. It was just the 700 or so Uzbeks that were the issue, everyone else is referred to as “the tribesmen”. Splendid how we got from there to here isn’t it.

Good old days.

Wasn’t it simple? Just take money from the US to fight “our war” in the tribal areas. No blowback. No TTP. Should have known it wouldn’t last.

How does this work really. I can’t get someone to fund my studies, but the gracious American’s fund our war. War! Who does that!?

“Here is 50 bucks. Go take a shit. Remember to wipe afterwards.” - “Why thank you sir. Oh I will!” Happens to everyone right?


There is so much rehashed shit. And so much bullshit. Beware of the one who pulls figures out of his behind. 13 K have been killed in terrorist attacks. This includes 6k in suicide attacks. Excludes 3K in drone attacks (good killings).

But who really gives a flying fuck. Numbers are cooler if they are higher. You tell someone less people have died and they are actually fucking disappointed. It’s like you have snatched candy from a kid. I am sure one guy cried himself to sleep. Retards.

See, your argument will have more weight if you quote a higher figure. But nobody quotes the highest figures. How many killed by military ops? How many displaced? How does that make them feel?

“I had a family member blown to bits by artillery fire. Home destroyed and shit. Love the army. Pakistan XOXOX”

Nationalists won’t talk about it because it makes the Pak Fauj look bad. Humanitarians will not talk about this because it makes military ops look bad. Clusterfucketh.

Also. Shut the fuck up. ANP. Really. Give Swat to Taliban. Fight Taliban. Call APC and say we should talk to Taliban. Then kill people in Karachi. Then say terrorism is bad. Then say everyone is confused and we have clarity. The fuck.

Anyways. There won’t be a military operation. And there won’t be peace talks. It started with Sethi getting everyone hormonal with his “Army wants to take action but politicos won’t let them” drivel. That was based on Kayani’s speech, 14th Aug I think.

Kayani sahib was the handpicked COAS of Hazrata Shaheed Mohtarma (R.A) and Gen Musharraf and Amreeeka. As with the above three, he never had a hard on for mullahs. But as with the above three he never let principles stand in his way.

What Kayani did with that speech and other noises was to get drunk columnists off his back. They were political statements. When we say we want action, we speak of North Waziristan. North Waziristan already has Pakistani troops stationed in it.

But Kayani will not touch the Haqqani’s. That’s it. So you can wank off to his speech all you want, when it comes to doing the North Waziristan op, they won’t do it. They have actually done it everywhere they could without touching the Afghan Taliban. They are not shy of ops. Just not there.

If the US couldn’t get them to do it, they will.not.do.it!

And he’s been releasing Afghan Taliban after that statement as a goodwill gesture. FFS!

Nawaz Sharif just wants to make some money. Stalling is the name of the game. He won’t commit one way or the other until after the 2014 thing happens.

Meanwhile we are kicking each other in the balls over the APC.

Lying To Ourselves

Bashir Bilour’s martyrdom, understandably, resulted in an outpour of sympathy and support. Unlike his brother, I have only heard good things about Bashir Bilour who was brave and steadfast in his stand against terrorism.

The attack on Bilour has reignited the debate on terrorism and its remedies, but with strong emotional overtones. That is a dangerous road to take.

Fahd Hussain and Feisal Naqvi are two people you can read and be assured that, mostly, they will talk sense. Emotion though often trumps reason, and this has been an emotional week. Yet what they betrayed in their moment of anger, of hopelessness, of pretty much sheer emotion, is that they, like many of our “intellectuals”, live in a bubble which doesn’t have much to do with reality.

I know this might not be the best time to burst this bubble, with grief and emotion still in the air, but I believe it is necessary if we are to overcome the menace of terrorism. I believe we owe Bashir Bilour some honesty.

Fahd and Feisal, the former more than the latter, lamented our inaction regarding the Taliban threat. One asked “what would it take for us to wake up?” and the other branded us cowards, over and over again, urging the Pakistani state to “take off its bangles and pick up the gun.”

This is the basic bubble, the belief that we haven’t fought back. Put simply, it is a myth of Mayan proportions.

By my reckoning, there are 4 distinct conflicts going on inside the country. The Balochistan crisis, the sectarian targeting of Shias (more massacre then conflict, I know), the political war in Karachi and the Taliban or TTP’s war with Pakistan.

Precious human lives, Pakistani lives, are lost in all of these, with none more equal than the other, right?

What has been our reaction to the first three conflicts?

Balochistan has been left on its own, with the FC tasked with both manning the borders and policing its vast interior, which largely means fighting off the Baloch nationalist/separatist elements. Meanwhile many have accused government figures of running the kidnapping for ransom rackets, apart from smuggling and other minor offences.

Shias have been pretty much mocked. No relief whatsoever and the press’ flirtations with them seem to have run the course now that their ISI funded champion of democracy, Nawaz Sharif, has formed an electoral alliance with ASWJ.

Karachi? MQM-ANP-PPP have been rewarded for the slaughter with five years in government and various plaudits by the intellectual community as harbingers of a secular and progressive Pakistan.

Let’s now review the “inaction” and “surrender” against the Taliban.

The military has been in the tribal areas since 2002. At present there are more Pakistani Army troops, roughly 140,000, in the “bad lands” than the total foreign troops occupying all of Afghanistan. Numerous operations have been conducted by the military in almost all of the tribal agencies and some adjoining areas, the most notable in Swat and South Waziristan, the former hub of TTP.

Not exactly turning the other cheek, is it?

They HAVE our attention. This is the ONLY battle we have chosen to fight, and we have been fighting, using the Army and the Pakistan Air Force, for years now. It is time to accept that, mostly because it’s the truth. It’s fact. People have died fighting, people have been killed and hundreds of thousands of IDPs are testament to it.

The second bubble is the numbers bubble. Feisal Naqvi quoted the 10,000 figure as the number of people killed by TTP in a previous article. Emotion however got the better of him this time and he resorted to a higher number, 20K civilians and 3K LEAs. Fahd Hussain went with the standard issue 40K number.

This is again false narration which lingers because we avoid specifics, and although it might appear to be a moot point, it is not.

The number of people killed by suicide bombings is 5 to 6 thousand. The official number of people, civilians and LEAs, killed by terrorists, including those in suicide bombings, was close to 10K at the start of 2011 and independent sources now put it anywhere from 15K-20K.

What we hear all the time though is the 40 thousand killed. Want to know why?

The combined death toll, killed by the army and by the terrorists, is where the 40 K comes from and depending on your source ranges from a low of 35K to a high of 44K by SATP.

I have failed to find the government’s tally on it, but by all independent accounts that I have come across, the military has killed more people, and possibly more civilians (12K from just 2008-2010 by one independent account), than the terrorists.

This is why anyone who actually knows this will never say “TTP killed 40K”. They will always say “Terrorism has killed 40K” Or “We have lost 40K to terrorism”.

That 40K has thousands and thousands of what are the "forgotten dead" of Pakistan. Numbering easily more than victims of suicide attacks in the last 10 years, these are the cursed civilians killed by their own military, lumped with the terrorists and disowned by the Pakistani press.

Why? Why has our “vibrant” media let the vile military off the hook when they have killed thousands and thousands of innocent civilians in collateral damage?

Because collateral damage occurs in military operations, silly!!

Because military operations is what every pure breed human rights campaigner and progressive intellectual wants. Because if military operations are the cause of deaths of thousands of civilians, then what the hell am I supposed to sell?

The 40K thus remains intact and opaque, quietly drowning the forgotten dead in it even as the number is used to build a narrative in support for what killed them in the first place; military operations.

The last bubble is the bubble of ideology.

For some as yet undiscovered reason, a lot of people believe that they are on the left. They relate with leftist figures abroad and make fun of FOX News.

In an amusing twist, Mr. Naqvi pointed to the Newtown massacre and how the NRA punctured any chances of gun law reforms in the US. The irony is somehow lost on him but what he’s saying, using Patton’s golden words, is pretty much what the NRA have said, i.e.

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun; is a good guy with a gun”.

Here’s the thing.

We HAVE been fighting this enemy, and we have been fighting it, militarily, for longer than any other enemy in the last two decades. We HAVE KILLED thousands and thousands of terrorists, but even more of our own, innocent, people. And we don’t talk about them because that tells us the real ugly truth; we are becoming what we fight.

Understand this; when we kill thousands in collateral and don’t even care, don’t even acknowledge, and when we talk about drawing blood and about digging up corpses, the
Taliban have already won!

We are all in this together. We all need the madness to stop. We all mean well and we might be angry and grieved at this hour, but lying to ourselves won’t solve anything.

Of The Kamra Reaction

Here we are, ready for another wave of bloodshed. There was always the pressure, now there’s a provocation.

What actually matters to us? Blood? Lives? Huh. That’s cute. As Kamra was unfolding, so was the psyche of a segment of the Pakistani population, on social media and on TV. The war, and the blood, seems to have made them irritable, angry, and ready for the fight.

It only seems to. Modern man, or modern society, is incapable of independent thought. They eat up what is fed to them, and a certain narrative has been in great supply for quite some time now.

It’s not the killing that will serve as catalyst for what’s to come next. There’s plenty of killing everywhere in Pakistan. Is it the barbarity? Severed heads are used for football practice somewhere else. It is only the spotlight, the high profile and the politics. The politics is what drives us. Without the politics mutilated bodies don’t warrant discussion and without the high profile a bloody Ramazan night isn’t worth comment.

So spare me the emotion, and boy was there emotion. Abuse, not just towards the Taliban, but towards plenty of their “sympathizers” - mixed with grandiose declarations of war. We have a mess on our hands yes, but it’s a war that’s been declared before.

It’s been how many years since we grew tired of this war? If memory serves there was a yearning for peace and there were peace agreements. Then there was Swat, and we have been tugging along since. How long before we reach that point again?

Let’s be honest in our assessment of what’s going to happen. The long desired operation in North Waziristan, best case scenario, quashes the TTP presence there. They disperse into neighbouring agencies, but many go into Afghanistan, as was the case in Swat.

There they regroup, and attack us from time to time, as is the case with Swat. "Safe Havens" exist on both sides of the Durand Line.

The TTP is but one faction, albeit the most notorious one, while the Taliban are a different, more daunting proposition.

The most powerful nation in the world, with around 40 allied countries, sits across the border unable to conquer the Afghan version. In fact, the US has stopped trying to conquer, and is now more focused on containing. And if the strategy of containment is the best US and NATO and whoever else is there can hope for, what exactly is on our mind?

Since I am being honest let me state another fact, however ill timed it maybe. This was Musharraf’s war. A dictator’s war; the military’s war. Critiques of the military never do criticize it for this.

But now it’s getting personal. There is an ever more vocal outrage, there is finger pointing and there is plenty of animosity. Attitudes are changing thanks to years of dying and killing, and emotional rallying cries to boot.

So here we are; ready to fight a war that is “our own”. Here to prolong our dying and killing for a few more years. Rallying cries galore.

Just a little about that. The war won’t be fought by me or you, and it never mattered if it was ours or not. It was always going to be fought, and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s been going on for years.

Kamra wasn’t an isolated incidence and an act of wanton, unexpected, aggression by the TTP. There is trouble in Orakzai, in Kurram, in Khyber. North Waziristan isn’t exactly the last refuge of the TTP. However, it is an opportunity, an opportunity we look determined to squander already. As momentum gathers for the push against TTP, there is also confusion and infighting.

There are those who want to broaden the fight and take on all Taliban factions – because the more militants out to kill us, the better. As stated earlier, they believe that we are bound to succeed where the rest of the world has failed.

Others mock the very soldiers they eagerly want to “do more” because everything American, even a slogan, has to be our own. One group wants to eradicate the evil of militancy but they are not prepared to pay the cost. Apparently it’s shocking that the TTP would dare an attack, and that in itself is a failure of security forces.

Hate to break it to you, but it’s a bloody war! What do you expect? Your enemy will roll over and die because you are annoyed? War is ugly business, and this particular enemy now has a presence “Khyber se Karachi tak”. So this will continue. More attacks will take place, more finger pointing, more anger, more emotion; more death.

Meanwhile, talking about peace is sympathizing with the terrorists. So buckle up, “our war” isn’t going to get any prettier.