Heartland - 2008 01 The Pakistani Boomerang

THE PAKISTANI
BOOMERANG
1 2008
contents no. 1/2008
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Allah’s Moths
1. “M OTH-EATEN TRUNCATED PAKISTAN”. THIS WAS HOW, IN 1947,
Pakistan’s founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah, baptised his new-born country, a
Caesarean birth resulting from the British fleeing colonial responsibilities. It is rare
for a parent to speak of his own creature with such despair. And perhaps it is no
coincidence that a distinguished anglophile barrister, both in his soul and his choice of
suits, Jinnah was to die only a year after this ill-fated delivery.
Pakistan is still in search of an heir comparable to Quaid-i-Azam, the “great
leader”. On the other hand the country intermittently co-exists with a grand
godfather: the United States of America. In the Eighties, Ronald Reagan chose
Pakistan as the lethal weapon to be used against a Soviet Union bogged down in
Afghanistan. As instructed by the CIA, in agreement with the Saudis, the Pakistani
secret services launched a multi-coloured international collection of Islamist warriors
against the Red Army. It worked brilliantly. In the autumn of 2001, this time rather
more reluctantly, George W. Bush resorted once again to Pakistan as the logistic
platform for entering Afghanistan, for liquidating the Taleban and tracking down
Osama bin Laden and his associates – among them numerous veterans of this strange
anti-Soviet alliance – from the caves of Hindu Kush from where they were supposed to
have unleashed the attacks of 9/11. Initially this seemed to work. Seen from the White
House today, this well-tested instrument has assumed the characteristics of a
boomerang, threatening to complete its trajectory hitting the thrower on the forehead.
In Washington they believe that after spreading chaos throughout Afghanistan,
jihadists are aiming for the “big prize”: the destabilisation of Pakistan. This would be
a great coup that might lead to the most evil of scenarios: terrorists attacking the heart
of America using the scraps of the Pakistani nuclear complex taken from a
deliquescent regime. The director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, has
spoken of the Pakistani tribal areas as a sanctuary for terrorists ready to carry out
suicide missions in the United States. The American Ambassador to Islamabad, Ann W.
Patterson, felt the need to evoke the “catastrophic” effects of a possible “attack
against the USA launched from Pakistani territory”. While Hillary Clinton warns that
if she is elected to the White House, she will place Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal under
direct American control.
How on earth did Bush get himself into this dead end road? And how will his
successor manage to get out of this situation?
2. If they had more closely observed the weapon they were handling, perhaps the
Americans would have used it more prudently. And they would also have agreed with
Jinnah, because that vast territory, two and half times the size of Italy, inhabited by
165 million souls (of which three quarters survive on less than two dollars a day), set
between the Central Asian mountains and the Arabian Sea, between the Persian
Empire and Indian civilisation, really does seem “moth-eaten” and “truncated”.
Truncated because four of its main ethnic groups – Pashtuns, Balochis, Punjabis
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and Kashmiris – live on contested borders with Afghanistan, Iran and India (coloured
map 1).
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And because although self-legitimated as a homeland for Muslims from the Indian
sub-continent, Pakistan only hosts a third of them, and is however also disturbed by
furious sectarian conflicts with the Sunni majority opposing the Shiite minority (about
20%). And finally, because already in 1971 it suffered the traumatic amputation of its
eastern wing, now Bangladesh.
Moth-eaten because within its territory there exists a cross-section of geopolitical
and social demands of different populations, of which a significant part ignores or
rejects Urdu, the official language, that together with the Islamic culture was meant to
provide an identity for that quickly – and rather bloodily – invented remnant of India
resulting from partition in 1947 (coloured map 2). Also resulting in the devolution of
any real power over the Pashtun tribal areas, where even the British had no illusions
with regards to direct rule. The four provinces (Baluchistan, Sindh, the Punjab and the
North West Frontier) and the district of the capital city Islamabad, together with the
part of Kashmir ruled by Pakistan, draw a map of a pseudo-federal country, marked
by separatisms and various kinds of banditry. Central power attempts to control these
by ruling harshly, playing acrobatic games and using manipulation with the various
local lobbies, gangs and mafias – at times known as political parties.
Pakistan has remained a colony. It is just that the British have been replaced by
internal colonialists; by the military elite of Punjabi stamp – the “martial race”
reared ever since the Victorian era. A State within the State controlling most of the
economy and supervising civilian institutions when not directly running them. All this
while co-existing with the local feudal lords, who share the immense landed estates in
the plains of the Indus, such as the famous Bhutto family. And also, especially during
the first decades of the republic, in agreement with the mohajir, Muslim refugees from
Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other Indian States in which they felt endangered. Among
them Jinnah himself, who came from Bombay (Mumbai), and his extreme epigone
Musharraf, who was born in Delhi.
The uncertain national identity is even reflected in the country’s name.
“Pakistan” means “country of the pure”. Muslims of course. But it is above all a
geopolitical acronym in which “P” stands for Punjab, “A” for the Afghans (meaning
the Pashtuns from the North West Frontier and beyond), “K” for Kashmir, still divided
but always craved for, and “S” for Sindh. The State itself, however, has a clear
characteristic: a praetorian one. This is well-known by society’s most modern
elements, trapped between the jihadist fanaticism created in the Deobandi madrasas
and the Police State, in search of an improbable passage towards western-styled
democracy, and an alternative to “opposing extremisms” – the religious and the
military-dictatorial – which, fighting each other, or pretending to do so, permeate and
justify one another. If not already sufficiently visible, the Islamist threat should be
emphasised as happens when Musharraf and his associates need to ask their elder
brother in stars and stripes for money. Because Pakistan has always exploited the
income linked to its position, deriving, according to the Americans, from its being an
anti-Soviet front line country yesterday and an anti-jihadist one today.
3. It is improbable that Pakistan will fall into jihadist hands. The short circuit
resulting from the manipulation of religious extremism for reasons linked to
neo-colonial divide et impera, is instead already perceivable. The apprentice witch
doctors now dressed-up as defenders of law and order, are losing control of the
jihadist instrument. More than the State being conquered by guerrillas and terrorists,
the risk is a geopolitical chasm, threatening to engulf nearby Afghanistan and
disrupting the extremely fragile order in Central and Southern Asia.
Committed to avoiding such a catastrophe, Islamabad’s elite does not consider
itself only the guarantor of national unity. It is known that so as not to curdle, the
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Pakistani ethnic-geopolitical-religious mayonnaise needs grand dreams. In addition to

defending itself from internal terrorist and separatist groups, the praetorian State has
always addressed matters taking into account two external factors: one regional and
one pan-Islamic, attempting to integrate them in a unitary project. Let us analyse this.
A) Pakistan perceives the Indian/Hindu colossus as an existential threat. Delhi
has never digested partition, or Jinnah’s theory about “two nations” within the British
Raj, one Islamic and one Hindu. The myth of Akhand Barat, the Great India going
from the Afghan Hindu Kush to the Burmese Mouth of the Irrawaddy, remains
undigested by the giant – and not only in its hyper-nationalist and Islamophobic
aspects. On the other hand Islamabad treats Afghanistan with “strategic
profoundness”, compared to Indian pressure, to be managed in cooperation with
jihadist friends, such as Talebans of controlled origin, hence Pakistanis. The same
applies to Kashmir, disputed by two post-colonial heirs, a region that Indian
intelligence sees as the spear point for profoundly destabilising the enemy, while
Pakistani intelligence supplies Kashmiri jihadists, encouraging them to infiltrate
Indian Islamic communities so as to revive “sleeping” brothers (map 1). What matters
is to prevent India from using Afghanistan and Kashmir as the arms of pliers delegated
to squash Pakistan. The historical agreement with Beijing contributes to containing
Indian pressure, although pervasive Chinese penetration – not only in the business
sector – has resulted in increased Pakistani intolerance, to the extent that hunting
down the “yellow” infidels is becoming a national sport.
B) Anti-Indian geostrategies are linked to Islamic-trade ones, deeply rooted in
routes traced over the centuries. Religious guidelines and commercial and financial
networks, both visible and informal, tend to overlap creating a bridge between Central
Asia and the Indian Ocean, between the Middle East and Southern Asia. The best
defence against India is in the bond with the Near East, and especially with Saudi
Arabia, with which Pakistan has established almost confederal relations, ranging from
shared religious sentiments to intelligence, from trade to the atomic bazaar (the
Pakistani Bomb is also to a certain extent Islamic). Former premier Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto, Benazir’s father, liked to repeat that Pakistan’s identity owes less to the Indian
sub-continent’s jungles than to the sands of the Arabian peninsula, Islam’s Holy Land.
Pakistani manpower is widespread in the Gulf and beyond. Islamabad’s troops have
repeatedly marched for the Saudi Arabian flag (40 thousand men deployed during the
Iraq-Iran war) and in neighbouring emirates, but have been requested even in Syria
and Libya.
The East-South expansion route intercepts the one running from the North to the
South, equally inspired by religion and trade. Before the October revolution, trade
routes that from Karachi-Quetta and Lahore-Peshawar, via Afghanistan, led towards
Russian Central Asia, were significantly vital. With the fall of the Soviet atheocracy,
Islamabad thought of reactivating those ancient routes. This vision, blocked by Afghan
instability, was reflected in projects agreed on during the Nineties with Saudi owned
Delta Oil and American owned Unocal to export Turkmen gas and oil to Pakistani
ports. Trade and energy included a grandiose geopolitical scheme: to cement an
Islamic block aggregated around the Pakistani power-centre, enlarged to include
Afghanistan (with the Amu Darja as the “natural frontier” of the “country of the
pure”), the central-Asian republics of the former USSR, or at least some of them,
starting with Tajikistan. All this with Saudi Arabia’s blessing in the name of the faith,
and that of the United States, interested in broadening the gap between Moscow and
its “close neighbour” of more or less Islamic origins.
Pakistan’s ambitious plan soon evaporated for at least three reasons: it
overestimated the Islamisation of the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia, in
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particular that of their clannish-secular elites, which on the contrary devoted

themselves to fighting the “Islamist danger” as the basis of their respective
dictatorships and as a shop-window for the West, China and Russia itself; it did not
believe that Moscow would not have reacted to the disintegration of its empire and
that with Putin, it would have tried to regain control over its former provinces;
Pakistan underestimated the confusion reigning in Washington, incapable of following
a coherent strategy for this region, even after sending troops there and setting up bases
justified by the “war on terror”.
From being an aspiring manipulator, Pakistan has become manipulated. The fall
of the Afghan protectorate, managed by “its” Talebans between 1997 and 2001, is the
best example of this change. After 9/11 Musharraf found an American gun pointed at
his head. “We will return you to the era of stone with our bombs”: this was the
alternative provided by Colin Powell should the General-President intend to prevent
the Anglo-American punitive expedition (Enduring Freedom) from using his country as
a logistic platform for conquering Afghanistan. Islamabad’s military could not oppose
this. They were obliged to observe the destruction of their associates in Kabul, where
on the contrary Indian influence flourished, symbolised also by the very weak Karzai
“presidency”. Reluctantly and half-heartedly they accompanied American campaigns
against real or presumed terrorists – many of yesterday’s friends felt betrayed, and
reacted using their weapons.
But in the winter of 2001, after the fall of Kabul, Musharraf guaranteed the
Talebans a number of escape routes crossing the theoretical Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Mullah Omar himself settled easily in Quetta, where he remains, protected by the
ISI, and linked with subsidiary centres in Miram Shah, Peshawar and Karachi. It is
from here that over the past three years the Taleban galaxy’s counteroffensive in
Afghanistan has been fomented. An insurrection in which jihadism and clan-like
localism, banditry and despair all mingle, capable however of causing problems to the
United States and NATO, as they cling to the Karzai puppet.
By guaranteeing a refuge for the withdrawing Taleban, from which they could
later resume their battle, Islamabad had respected the strategic precept according to
which a number of jihadist groups should be kept as a reserve, as anti-Indian
elements, since sooner or later the United States and NATO will leave and the two
rivals will find themselves face to face. Hence the Pakistani regime avoided the defeat
of its Afghan policies turning into a catastrophe, policies to which it had paradoxically
been obliged to contribute. Hence – also thanks to large amounts of money provided
by Washington – Islamabad’s military nowadays also arms, trains and finances the
jihadists who blow up American soldiers and their allies fighting in the chaos that is
Afghanistan. Simultaneously, Musharraf in his own way is still part of the American
war on terror; he does not fight the Afghan Talebans associated with the Quetta
central organisation, but rather the tribal-jihadist gangs run by Baitullah Mehsud and
his ally Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Uzbek Islamic Movement (ULM), who from the
inaccessible North-West are pushing jihad into the Indus’ rural and urban basin.
Although disowned by the mullah Omar and the “historical” Talebans, who accuse
them of setting Muslims against Muslims, Pashtuns against Pashtuns (the dominant
ethnic group among guerrillas and among the paramilitary in Islamabad, sent to face
certain defeat by the regular troops of Punjabi origin), the insurgents are at the gates
of Peshawar and attacking even the very centre of Karachi (coloured map 3).
According to this coalition of the willing, perfunctorily grouped around the qaidist
brand name, Musharraf is a corrupt traitor, a slave of the Americans, just like
Mubarak or the Arab petro-monarchs. These groups may be allowed at best a truce
that is certainly not without a price to be paid, such as the one announced on
February 6th to reward the “indulgence” shown recently by the government.
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The paradox: while he portrays himself as the State’s protector in fighting rebel
jihadist gangs, Musharraf aims at making himself indispensable both to the Americans
and “his own” Talebans. This is a very acrobatic form of geopolitics, one in which
there is the risk of breaking one’s neck. However, within the game of reciprocal
manipulation, no one any longer really controls anyone; the Americans cannot trust
the Pakistanis, who in turn are no longer capable of managing their “own” jihadists,
who threaten to bring chaos to the country. The final match, the one for the “big
prize”, seems imminent.
4. “Nowadays al-Qa’ida seems to have turned against Pakistan to attack its

government and its people”. Defeat in the “war on terror” is carved in these words
spoken by the American Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates. More than six years after
the fall of Kabul – and while most of America’s troops are tied up in Iraq - Washington
must strengthen its contingent in Afghanistan (another 3.200 marines will land there
before the end of April) and even prepare for an emergency intervention in Pakistan
since the USA fears it may fall into al-Qa’ida’s hands with all its nuclear panoply.
After stepping around its edges, Bush has put his head into the Pakistani volcano – the
epicentre of jihadism – and this has shaken him, to the extent of considering the
hypothesis of penetrating it so as to prevent an eruption in some way.
Until a year ago the Americans had followed the easier route, relying on the
already tested “one-man policy”. Without wasting time on excessively detailed
territorial analysis, they believed they had identified in General Musharraf, “the
democratic dictator”, a Pakistani Atatürk capable of repressing jihadist extremism
and sufficiently ready to cooperate on the Afghan front. Of course the Islamist faction
was appearing among the military and above all within ISI, but all in all Musharraf
seemed capable of containing it, and perhaps one day even opening the path for some
kind of real democracy. From 2001 to today, Washington has filled the regime’s chests
with over 10 billion dollars, of which only 900 million have been spent on social
projects. The rest has been used for weapons – considered more useful as anti-Indian
than anti-jihadist, such as F16 fighter planes – or in private accounts belonging to
praetorians.
In recent months this approach has started to fall to pieces. Challenged by the
judiciary’s liberal fringe groups and by urban public opinion aspiring to become
emancipated from the military dictatorship, and challenged by the jihadists in the very
centre of power (the massacre at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, in July), as well as
being accused of not having been capable of preventing the winter’s food and energy
emergency which caused the price of flour to hit the ceiling, Musharraf now seems just
a ghost. Even worse, he is seen as one of America’s puppets, with 84% of Pakistanis
considering the presence of American soldiers in the region far more of a threat to the
country’s “vital interests” than al-Qa’ida. Renouncing his uniform and handing over
command of the Armed Forces to his trusted (?) colleague Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, is
not sufficient for bringing under control this country which has slipped into a civil war
of varying intensity depending on the areas, but apparently endemic.
To prevent the disintegration of Pakistan, Bush, making an effort to use his
imagination, had initially tried to organise a transition from the “one-man policy” to
the variant “one-man plus one-woman”: Musharraf plus Benazir Bhutto. The former
exiled Premier was meant to restore the military regime’s façade with her pro-Western
touch and her charisma, which however was little acknowledged beyond the Sindh
domain. This was a promise that perhaps involved only a virtual democratic openness
and was anyway welcomed by bombs the moment Benazir set foot in her homeland.
The attack in Rawalpindi (December 27th) swept away the hypothesis of an
improbable diarchy. If, as many believed, this attack was organised by ISI or perhaps
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one of its deviant branches, anarchy is even more serious and hence also the prospect
of a nuclear power out of control.
In any case, the murder of Benazir confirmed that American influence in Pakistan
is extremely restricted, especially when compared to the political, economic and
military resources invested there. If anything the opposite is true: any aspiring
Pakistani leader cannot afford to appear as one of Washington’s people if he cares
about his life. This also applies to Kayani, the extreme reserve card held by the USA,
should Musharraf, either willingly or unwillingly, resign himself to playing golf in
some pleasant foreign retreat. Because even the Americans seem persuaded that,
whatever the civilian government may be, Pakistan is really destined to be led by a
military man from the Punjab. Punjabi uniforms and roots remain the necessary
characteristics for any leader chosen to prevent the collapse of this “truncated” and
“moth-eaten” state.
5. In this strategic void, and faced with a development in the Pakistani crisis, Bush
is ready for direct intervention. A dangerous game. Justifiable only with the framework
of the “big prize”. In Washington they are persuaded that al-Qa’ida is about to gain
possession of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, and also that it is necessary to prevent
jihadists and local bandits from interrupting the logistic artery that from Karachi via
Quetta and Kandahar supplies US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Repeated attacks
on allied convoys in Sindh and in Baluchistan, while in the North-West the insurgents
challenge the demoralised contingents from Islamabad, mean that Pakistani
destabilisation is putting Enduring Freedom and its weak NATO appendix at risk.
According to American public opinion, losing in Afghanistan and hence also losing
Pakistan would be much worse than defeat in Iraq. This is because it was in
Afghanistan that the war on terror was declared and it is there that one day it must
end. With a victory or with a retreat.
But how should one intervene in Pakistan? For years special forces and CIA
agents have been present there, at times unknown to Musharraf. Even when informed,
the General prefers to keep this secret since the news would fire not only religious
extremists but almost all Pakistanis who are jealous of their own territory. On the
contrary, Musharraf thunders that should Americans set foot in his country, “it would
be a day they would live to regret”. He swears that the atomic arsenal is super-safe
and this is a message to the terrorists and to the Americans; the Bomb is ours and
there will be trouble for anyone touching it.
Little impressed, Bush sent the Pakistani President a message stating that he had
two options: either he invites American soldiers or they will invite themselves. These
are elite divisions and experts who are meant to make safe the vast atomic complex,
including waste storage facilities such as the one in Dera Ismail Khan, in the
contended North-West Province. A few hundred very well-chosen men. The plans are
ready, all that is missing is the order from the White House. In addition to this
emergency nucleus, groups of American trainers are already operational or ready to
deploy and teach local soldiers – as American sources reassure with no irony – how
one fights terrorists. To be even clearer, US troops have just inaugurated a new Afghan
base at the Ghaki Pass, three kilometres from the borders with the turbulent Pakistani
Bajaur Agency, right in the middle of tribal lands. And they have few qualms about
crossing the pseudo-frontier created by the British.
Washington does not seem to take into account the lesson learned in the past by
emissaries from His British Majesty, who preferred to devolve to local clans the
management of the tribal territories, unresponsive to all external intervention (map).
Should however American infiltration of Pakistani lands become obvious and massive,
it would probably result in having the opposite effect. It would regroup tribal lords and
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jihadists of all schools in a battle against the infidel invaders. And it would push the
Pakistani government itself to break loose from America’s embrace, so as to avoid
mutiny among its own soldiers and a general uprising.
6. After having dug two geopolitical craters in Iraq and in Afghanistan with large
amounts of bombs - and risking a third far more dangerous one in Pakistan –
America will perhaps one day resign itself to the English charm of indirect rule.
Hence: insoluble problems should be unloaded on others. On locals, or at worst on
future generations. And in fact, from Central Asia to Palestine, the West has hopelessly
attempted for half a century to solve the rebus inherited from the British Empire.
Having recovered from the neocon intoxication, with its revolutionary fantasies,
the team chosen by the new American President might perhaps discover the virtues of
Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. There are already signs of this in the Bush administration’s
final phase. In reality this would mean that local groups and clans would have to fill
those black holes, gently supervised by the USA. America would rely on funds rather
than on soldiers, on political influence rather than on flexing its muscles. It would also
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spare its exhausted Armed Forces, and following Musharraf’s interested advice: “Stop
with your obsession with democracy and human rights. (…) Look at Pakistan through
Pakistani eyes”.
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A scenario that at a geopolitical level pays the price of the involvement, or to say
the least the benign negligence shown by the powers interested in monitoring the
Pakistani volcano. From China to Russia. All the way to India, should the cold
calculation of interest prevail over the drive of Hindu extremism. And including Iran.
However painful it may be for Washington to admit this, it knows that the keys to Iraqi
and Afghan (de)stabilisation (and hence to a certain extent that of Pakistan) are also
in Persian hands. After the cold war between American government agencies with
regards to how to deal with Iran ended with a defeat for the warmongering side led by
Vice-President Cheney, the United States-Iran geopolitical compromise no longer
seems like an illusion.
Any new balance in the Great Middle East will have to include an agreement
between Persians and Americans. This exchange would concern Iran’s reintegration
within the regional and global game for what it is really worth (much more than
Arabs, Sunnis and Americans would like), in exchange for giving up the Bomb and
subversive elements in the areas of Achaemenid-Shiite influence showing moderation,
from the Lebanon to the Indian sub-continent; all this starting with cooperation in Iraq
and in Afghanistan. Hence the Iran-Pakistan border would be the advance barrier set
up against Deobando jihadism’s penetration to the West (coloured map 4).
Furthermore, Teheran could, as during the 2001 campaign, offer the Anglo-Americans
its logistic corridors towards Afghanistan, should the Pakistani ones no longer be
available or even blocked, as reprisal by military forces exasperated by the creeping
American invasion.
We Europeans tend to consider the Pakistani match a distant affair, something the
Americans should deal with, forgetting that we have thousands of men deployed on the
Afghan front; also neglecting the ramifications of Islamist terrorism in the Pakistani
diaspora within Europe. After the bombs in London in July 2005 and various attacks
only just foiled in Great Britain and other countries, last January the Spanish Police
wiped out in extremis a gang of Pakistani and Indian jihadists about to launch an
attack in that country. Nor is Italy immune from danger, although we prefer to repress
this idea.
The eruptions of the Pakistani volcano are not very selective and the lapillii
threaten to fly great distances. We too can contribute to preventing an event
excessively announced in advance. The least we could do is invite our American
partners to repress suicidal impulsions, that encouraging them to enter this crater,
would end up by setting off the most devastating of explosions.
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THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG
IN THE HEARRT OF JIHAD

THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG THE BIG ATOMIC GAME
THE BIG ATOMIC GAME by Rahimullah YUSUFZAI
Is the United States ready to assume control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon sites in case
there is a crisis? Musharraf’s difficult tour of Europe and the justifications of the
president are “under siege”. Dr. A.Q. Khan, enemy of the U.S., hero for Pakistan.
1. T HE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT AND

nation were alarmed by recent Western media reports that the U.S. had prepared
contingency plans for seizing Islamabad’s nuclear facilities to prevent a takeover by
Islamic extremists.
The issue is now being vigorously debated amid assertions by Pakistani
authorities that they had further boosted the fail-safe security system for the country’s
atomic weapons and sites. In fact, Pakistan in recent days came under so much
international pressure concerning its nuclear assets that retired army general Khalid
Kidwai, head of the Strategic Plans Division that handles Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal,
invited foreign journalists to a rare press conference in Islamabad on January 26, 2008
to explain the new measures put in place by the government to safeguard its atomic
facilities.
Kidwai said 10,000 professional soldiers, led by a two-star general, guarded the
nuclear weapons, fissile material and infrastructure and served as a dedicated
intelligence network. He pointed out that a command and control system headed by
President General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf and including top military and political
leaders was in place to oversee the nuclear program and ensure its security.
Such was the distrust of the Musharraf government’s capability to prevent the
nuclear assets falling into the hands of militants linked to al-Qaeda and Taliban that the
President was repeatedly asked this question during his recent eight-day tour of some
countries in Europe. He tried to allay the fears of his European hosts at Brussels, Paris
and London by claiming that there was zero per cent chance of Pakistan falling into
the hands of the Islamic militants but the Western media’s coverage of his visit showed
that many still doubted his claims.
President Musharraf also found it difficult to convince European politicians,
scholars and mediapersons about his commitment to democracy and rule of law in
Pakistan. He faced tough and probing questions regarding his arbitrary decision to
impose Emergency Rule in the country on November 3 last year, sack 55 top
independent-minded judges of the superior courts, imprison political and human rights
activists agitating his dictatorial steps and gag the free media. Highly unpopular at
home and fast losing friends abroad, the embattled President also had to give repeated
assurances to a sceptical world that the general elections on February 18 would be free,
fair and transparent.
The existence of a Pentagon contingency plan to seize control of Pakistan’s
nuclear facilities in case of an Islamic militants’ threat of a takeover has raised alarm in
Pakistan and deepened distrust of U.S. intentions. The issue was first discussed in an
article jointly written by Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon in the New York
Times last November. They wrote: “Given the degree to which Pakistani nationalists
cherish these (nuclear) assets, it is unlikely the U.S. would get permission to destroy
them. Somehow, American forces would have to team with Pakistanis to secure critical
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sites and possibly to move the material to a safer place.”

The writers also mentioned an alternate plan under which a sizable combat force,
not only from the U.S. but ideally also other Western powers and moderate Muslim
nations would be sent to Pakistan to secure the nuclear facilities. The plan in their
words runs like this: “So, if we got a large number of troops into the country, what
would they do? The most likely directive would be to help Pakistan’s military and
security forces hold the country’s centre – primarily the region around the capital,
Islamabad, and the populous areas like Punjab province in its south.” It is worth
mentioning that this is roughly the area where Pakistan’s nuclear facilities are located.
The article with its Doomsday scenario was penned by independent writers associated
with think-tanks, but it was obvious that not only American scholars but the U.S.
government too was concerned about the increase in militants’ activities and the
deteriorating security situation in Pakistan.
The Bush administration’s anxiety regarding Pakistan’s stability had grown in
recent months. The situation in Pakistan had political implications for U.S. efforts to
stabilize neighbouring Afghanistan, where the resurgent Taliban had rendered large
areas insecure and beyond the control of President Hamid Karzai’s government and the
U.S.-led foreign forces. Another major cause of worry in Washington was the
security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. However, the U.S. government functionaries
and scholars were aware that Pakistani authorities were averse to the idea of allowing
American troops into Pakistan.
As David Sanger and William Broad noted in the New York Times on November
18, 2007, a U.S.-sponsored, post-9/11 plan to safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,
“has been hindered by a deep suspicion among Pakistan’s military that the secret goal
of the U.S. was to gather intelligence about how to locate and, if necessary, disable
Pakistan’s arsenal, which is the pride of the country.”
It is, therefore, not surprising that President Musharraf has been vehemently
opposing the deployment of U.S. troops in Pakistan. Though he hasn’t made any
mention of the need to deploy American soldiers to secure Pakistan’s nuclear facilities,
it is obvious that he doesn’t want U.S. troops on Pakistan’s soil at all. One of his major
arguments is that Pakistani people are opposed to any kind of American intervention.
This is true primarily due to the strong anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan. Any unilateral
U.S. military intervention in Pakistan would further inflame the anti-U.S. feelings and
cause domestic upheaval. Rather than the U.S., the immediate target of popular
uprising in such a scenario would be President Musharraf, who is considered by most
Pakistanis as uncomfortably pro-America.
2. Since it was launched by the then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on January
20, 1972, Pakistan’s nuclear program has undergone many twists and turns. It was in
August 1976, that U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited Pakistan and, if one
were to be believe the late Mr. Bhutto, tried to dissuade him from pursuing the nuclear
reprocessing plant deal that was considered crucial for the country’s nascent atomic
program. In Mr. Bhutto’s words, Kissinger threatened to make a horrible example of
him if he didn’t abandon the Chashma nuclear energy reprocessing plant. Kissinger,
however, denied issuing the threat. He did concede telling Mr. Bhutto that, further
down the road, this could create problems for Pakistan.
Whatever the truth may be, it is a fact that the U.S. made efforts and used both
carrots and sticks to stop Pakistan from acquiring nuclear technology. The carrots
included economic assistance and the sticks came in the form of sanctions against
Pakistan. Nothing worked as every Pakistani ruler was determined to pursue the
nuclear program and take it to its logical conclusion. In fact, this was one of the few
policy matters which remained constant despite quick change of governments in
16
Pakistan. The Pakistani people too backed efforts to make the atom bomb even though
it was a costly enterprise and the expenses on nuclear program affected the
socio-economic development in the country.
Pakistan finally carried out nuclear tests on May 28, 1998 in the desolate desert
area of Chagai in Balochistan province. It was kind of tit-for-tat for the Indian nuclear
tests that took place earlier on May 11 the same year in Rajasthan province. India had,
in fact, carried out its first nuclear test in 1974 but had then waited all these years to
conduct further tests. Pakistani nuclear scientists also claim that they too were ready to
carry out small nuclear tests in the early 1980s but didn’t get permission from the
government to do so.
A number of Pakistani nuclear scientists including Munir Ahmad Khan, Ishfaq
Ahmad Khan, Bashiruddin Mahmood, Samar Mubarakmand and Dr. Abdul Qadeer
Khan, or Dr. A.Q. Khan, as he was commonly known, were credited for carrying
forward the country’s nuclear program. Some excelled in uranium enrichment, others
in making centrifuges and other parts. However, it was Dr. A.Q. Khan who got fame
and was hailed as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb.
There are stories galore as to how he and his men secretly shopped for material
and equipment in Western cities while planning how to make centrifuges. It was later
described as “shopping for the bomb.” He acquired scientific skills while working at
the URENCO plant in Almelo, The Netherlands, and later shifted to Pakistan to work
on uranium enrichment. He set up the Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL), later
renamed as Khan Research Laboratories after him, near Islamabad as vital part of
Pakistan’s nuclear program. The same Dr. A.Q. Khan was later blamed as a nuclear
proliferator for selling centrifuges and other nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North
Korea. President Musharraf sent him home in disgrace and, for the last few years, has
kept him under house arrest. Earlier, he was made to confess his mistake on public
television and took responsibility for earning a bad name for Pakistan as a result of his
clandestine activities geared toward nuclear proliferation.
Despite this episode, Dr. A.Q. Khan is still considered hero by most Pakistanis,
who believe he agreed to become a scapegoat to protect Pakistan’s interest. It is
generally believed in Pakistan that Dr. A.Q. Khan would not have sold the centrifuges
or transferred any nuclear secrets without the blessings of the Pakistan government and
its powerful armed forces. Recent reports about his illness once again brought him into
the limelight and there was outpouring of goodwill and support for the disgraced
nuclear scientist. He may be considered a rogue nuclear scientist elsewhere in the
world but in Pakistan he remains a very popular man.
3. Pakistanis are also angry that their bomb is described as the “Islamic bomb” while
there is never any mention of the Indian bomb as the “Hindu bomb,” or Israel’s as the
“Jewish bomb.” They also point out that there is no “Christian bomb.” However, they
don’t want to admit that only Pakistan was accused of nuclear proliferation and its top
scientist Dr. A.Q. Khan publicly admitted having done so.
Strangely enough, there is not much pride left now in the Pakistani achievement
of making the nuclear bomb despite being an under-developed and politically unstable
country. The euphoria that accompanied the nuclear tests in May 1998 was shortlived
and is now a thing of the past. Many Pakistanis say the bomb gave them a false sense
of security because it would never be used and would instead remain a burden on their
fragile economy. Some of them sarcastically remark that the country has to guard the
atom bomb instead of it providing them security.
The fiberglass replicas of the Ras-i-Koh hill in Chagai, where the May 1998
nuclear tests were carried out, erected as a monument in Islamabad and the four
provincial capitals with much fanfare have gradually turned into eyesores. These
17
monuments no longer evoke pride among the people and at least one of them has
already been removed.
Besides Kahuta, Pakistan’s scattered nuclear facilities are located at Khushab,
Sihala and Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab. There could be other smaller facilities as well
as secret locations. About 10,000 people work in Pakistan’s nuclear programme and
among them there are 2,000, who are employed in very sensitive installations and are
subject to intense scrutiny throughout their lives. Pakistan government has admitted
that two of its nuclear scientists, including Bashiruddin Mahmood, who was running
an NGO working in Afghanistan, had met Osama bin Laden in Kandahar during
Taliban rule and both were investigated for three months after the 9/11 attacks on the
U.S. but nothing dangerous was found and they were freed after removing them for
their jobs. Such incidents, however, create doubts about Pakistani nuclear scientists
and their intentions.
4. As stated previously, Lt. General Khalid Kidwai pointed out in his January 26
news conference, up to 10,000 soldiers are deployed to secure the nuclear facilities.
These soldiers are there not only to prevent the nuclear facilities from falling into the
hands of Islamic militants but also any other power, including the U.S. and India.
The general made it clear that the U.S. would not be able to succeed in any
operation to seize Pakistan’s nuclear assets and termed Pentagon’s contingency plans
to prevent these facilities from falling into the hands of Islamic militants as
“irresponsible talk.” He pointed out that Pakistani military had its own contingency
plans for such an eventuality. Arguing that nobody should take on an established
nuclear power, he felt it was serious business and it was irresponsible on the part of
those who talk about seizing another country’s nuclear assets. General Kidwai also
disclosed that the U.S. after 9/11 gave around $ 10 million to Pakistan to enhance the
physical security of its nuclear assets and for training purposes.
Though the U.S. and Pakistan profess to be close allies in the war on terror, it is
obvious that they have differences on certain issues. The U.S.’ insistence that it wants
to send troops to Pakistan to carry out operations against Islamic militants and
Islamabad’s refusal to allow American soldiers on its soil is one such contentious issue.
President Musharraf’s statement that any U.S. troops’ incursion into Pakistan would be
considered an invasion also explains the seriousness of the situation and the growing
divergence in the view of Pakistan and U.S. government. Finally, there are the U.S.
concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear assets falling into the hands of militants and
Islamabad’s tough stance that no such threat existed.
It appears that the U.S. and Pakistan are drifting apart and one reason for this is
failure of their respective armies to defeat Taliban insurgents in both Afghanistan and
Pakistan. Matters could come to a head if the general elections in Pakistan on February
18 are rigged by President Musharraf’s regime or power is not transferred to the
winners. The U.S. could use such a situation to force Musharraf to accept its demands
concerning deployment of American troops in Pakistan to tackle Islamic militants. The
same troops, in case of need, could be then used to secure the country’s nuclear assets.
Or President Musharraf could lose U.S. support and opposition parties in Pakistan
could step up efforts to remove him from power.
18
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG THE MASKS OF THE ISI
THE MASKS OF THE ISI by B. RAMAN
Pakistan’s ISI has always served the current jihadists wherever possible. Futile
pressure from the Americans. Three priorities: Annex Kashmir, control Afghanistan
and maintain the national nuclear program.
1. T HE INTELLIGENCE BUREAU (IB) OF

undivided India, which was created by the British colonial rulers, to collect domestic
political intelligence was largely a police organization. It had no responsibility for the
collection of foreign intelligence. At the time of the partition of India in 1947, its
personnel, assets and records were divided between India and Pakistan. Most of the
Muslim police officers serving in the IB of undivided India chose to join the IB of
Pakistan. Others stayed behind in the IB of India.
Independent India placed its IB under the control of the Ministry of Home Affairs
and expanded its charter to make it responsible for the collection of internal as well as
foreign intelligence. This position continued till September 21, 1968, when the
Government of India bifurcated the IB and converted its foreign intelligence division
into an independent organization called the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW). The
R&AW too was initially a largely police organization with a small number of military
officers taken on deputation to handle military intelligence. Since then, the
predominance of police officers has been reduced and more officers unconnected with
the police have been inducted into the R&AW. It is a largely civilian organization with
a small number of military officers.
The Intelligence Bureau of Pakistan, which is part of the Ministry of the Interior,
was initially a largely police organization and was given the responsibility for the
collection of internal and external intelligence. However, following complaints from
the Army about the poor performance of the IB and its police officers during the first
Indo-Pakistan War of 1947-48 over Kashmir, the Government of Pakistan created a
new organization called the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate and made it
responsible for the collection of foreign intelligence. The ISI was placed under the
control of the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and its personnel were taken from the three
wings of the armed forces.
Initially, the ISI had no responsibility for the collection of internal intelligence,
which continued to be collected by the police officers of the IB. This position started
changing after the Army started meddling in politics in the late 1950s. Field Marshal
Ayub Khan (President during 1958-69), who distrusted the police officers of the IB,
made the ISI responsible for the collection of internal intelligence to also having a
bearing on national security. He also created in the ISI a Covert Action Division to
provide assistance to the tribal insurgents in India’s North-East.
The internal intelligence role of the ISI was further strengthened under the late
Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto (1971-77) and then under the late Gen. Zia ul Haq (1977-88),
who overthrew Bhutto and seized power in 1977. Both Bhutto and Zia used the
Political Division of the ISI for the collection of intelligence about their political
opponents and the ethnic and linguistic minorities. While the police officers of the IB
continued to perform their internal intelligence collection role, the reports of the ISI
were given greater credence than those of the IB.
Under Z.A. Bhutto and Zia, the role of the Covert Action Division of the ISI was
19
expanded and strengthened in order to enable it to assist Sikh and Kashmiri separatists
in India and radical elements in the Indian Muslim community. The assistance was in
the form of funds, training and supply of arms, ammunition and explosives. Z.A.
Bhutto also ordered the creation of a new division in the ISI to assist the Pakistan
Atomic Energy Commission in the clandestine procurement of nuclear technology and
equipment from abroad. This division played an active role in helping Pakistan acquire
military nuclear capability. Thus, when Zia overthrew Bhutto and seized power in
1977, the ISI had three important roles---collection of internal and external intelligence,
covert action in India and clandestine procurement of nuclear technology and
equipment.
The internal political intelligence division of the ISI came under considerable
criticism after the death of Zia in a plane crash in August 1988. The Pakistan People’s
Party (PPP) of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto won the elections held thereafter. The ISI, then
headed by Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, strongly opposed her taking over as the Prime Minister.
It alleged that she was in touch with India when she was living in political exile in the
UK and hence projected her as a security risk. Under U.S. pressure, the Army and the
ISI agreed to her becoming the Prime Minister on the condition that she would not
have anything to do with the nuclear programme. Even after she had assumed office,
the ISI kept disseminating reports alleging that she was an Indian agent. The ISI’s
animosity to her increased when she abolished the internal political intelligence
division and ordered the Covert Action Division to stop supporting the Sikh separatists
of India. However, she gave it a free hand in Jammu and Kashmir.
The ISI’s animosity to her resulted in her dismissal by the then President Ghulam
Ishaq Khan in August 1990 and started fresh elections. During the elections, the ISI,
with money allegedly donated by a private bank, assisted the Pakistan Muslim League
(PML) of Mr. Nawaz Sharif and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) in their election campaign
and worked against the candidates of the PPP. The two parties won the majority of
seats. After taking over as the Prime Minister, Nawaz ordered the re-establishment of
the internal political intelligence division of the ISI. He also made Brig. Imtiaz, who
used to head the Political Division of the ISI before 1988, the Director of the IB. Thus,
started the process of the militarization of the IB. This has continued since then and
acquired momentum under President Pervez Musharraf.
2. Since 1990, there have been allegations that the Political Division of the ISI has
been interfering in the conduct of the general elections in order to get candidates
critical of the Army defeated through rigging and other means. These allegations have
gained force under Musharraf. In 2002, he was accused of misusing the ISI for
ensuring the victory of the Pakistan Muslim League faction headed by Mr. Shujjat
Hussain, which supported him. In the run-up to the forthcoming elections on February
18, 2008, there have been similar allegations of the misuse of the ISI by him to
influence the results.
Today, the ISI is supposed to report to the Prime Minister, but de facto it
generally reports to the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) and keeps the Prime Minister
in the dark about its activities. There were, however, three instances when the heads of
the ISI were more loyal to the Prime Minister than to the COAS and this created
tensions in the relations between the Prime Minister and the COAS.
The first instance was during the first tenure of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto as Prime
Minister (1988 to 1990). To reduce the powers of the ISI, to reorganise the intelligence
community and to enhance the powers of the police officers in the IB, she discontinued
the practice of appointing a serving Lt. Gen, recommended by the COAS, as the
Director-General (DG), ISI, and, instead appointed Maj. Gen. Shamsur Rahman Kallue,
a retired officer close to her father, as the DG in replacement of Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul in
20
1989 and entrusted him with the task of winding up the internal intelligence collection
role of the ISI and civilianising the IB and the ISI.
Writing in The Nation of July 31, 1997, Brig. A.R. Siddiqui, who had served as
the Press Relations Officer in the army headquarters in the 1970s, said that this action
of hers marked the beginning of her trouble with Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the then
COAS, which ultimately led to her dismissal in August 1990. Gen. Beg stopped
inviting Kallue to the Corps Commanders conferences and transferred the
responsibility for covert action in India from the ISI to the Army intelligence
directorate working under the Chief of the General Staff (CGS).
The second instance was during the first tenure of Nawaz Sharif (1990-93) as the
Prime Minister. He appointed as the DG, ISI, Lt. Gen. Javed Nasir, a fundamentalist
Kashmiri officer, though he was not recommended by Gen. Asif Nawaz Janjua, the
then COAS, for the post. This created friction in the relations between Nawaz Sharif
and his COAS, who excluded the ISI chief from all important Army conferences.
The third instance was during the second tenure of Nawaz Sharif (1997-99) when
his action in appointing Lt. Gen. Ziauddin, an engineer, as the DG, ISI, over-riding the
objection of Musharraf led to friction between the two. These instances would show
that whenever an elected leadership was in power, the COAS saw to it that the elected
Prime Minister did not have effective control over the ISI and that the ISI was
marginalised if its head showed any loyalty to the elected Prime Minister.
In the 1990s, there was a controversy in Pakistan as to who really controlled the
ISI and when was its internal Political Division set up. Air Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan,
former chief of the Pakistan Air Force, filed a petition in the Supreme Court
challenging the legality of the ISI's Political Division accepting a donation of 140
million rupees from a bank for use against PPP candidates during the 1990 elections.
Testifying before the Supreme Court on June 16,1997, Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg claimed
that though the ISI was manned by serving military officers and was part of the
Ministry of Defence, it reported to the Prime Minister and not to the COAS and that its
internal Political Division was actually set up by the late Z.A. Bhutto in 1975.
Many Pakistani analysts challenged this and said that the ISI, though de jure
under the Prime Minister, had always been controlled de facto by the COAS and that
its internal Political Division had been in existence at least since the days of Ayub
Khan, if not earlier.
After the elections of 2002, Musharraf kept the ISI directly under his control and
did not allow the elected Prime Minister to have any responsibility for supervising its
work.
3. During the 1980s, the Covert Action Division of the ISI was used by the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the U.S. for recruiting, training and arming not only
Afghan Mujahedeen, but also fundamentalist elements of Pakistan for fighting against
the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The Saudi intelligence agency recruited over 6,000
Arabs in West Asia and North Africa and sent them to the ISI for being trained, armed
and infiltrated into Afghanistan. All the funds and arms and ammunition from the CIA
and all the funds from the Saudi intelligence for use against the Soviet troops were
channelled through the ISI. Among the Arabs brought in and trained were Osama bin
Laden and his supporters. The ISI’s links with bin Laden and his operatives thus
started from the 1980s with the knowledge and approval of the CIA.
The withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1988-89, which was due
to the jihad waged by the Afghan Mujahideen, Pakistani jihadis and the Arabs under
bin Laden, strengthened the reputation of the ISI. During the same period, the ISI
helped Dr. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, in the clandestine procurement
and transport of nuclear equipment for the Kahuta Uranium Enrichment plant, which
21
enabled Pakistan to acquire military nuclear capability with the technology given by
China and the equipment procured by the ISI. The U.S. closed its eyes to the nuclear
procurement activities of the ISI because of the CIA’s dependence on it for the jihad
against the Soviet troops. Differences started appearing between the CIA and the ISI in
1990. These were due to the CIA’s unhappiness over the non-co-operation of the ISI in
its efforts to buy back from the Afghan Mujahideen the unused shoulder-fired Stinger
missiles supplied to them for use against Soviet aircraft.
The CIA’s concerns over the ISI were enhanced by reports of Pakistani assistance
to Iran in the nuclear field starting from 1988 and Pakistani contacts with China and
North Korea in the nuclear and missile fields.
In 1993, the Clinton Administration forced Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister,
to remove from the ISI, Lt. Gen. Javed Nasir, the then Director-General, and some of
his officers because they were seen as non-cooperative in its efforts to buy back the
Stingers. Nasir was a Deobandi fundamentalist, who belonged to the Tablighi Jamaat,
a Pakistani organization to preach Islam, which was assisting the jihadi organizations
in their recruitment drive in Pakistan and abroad.
In 1994, during the second tenure of Benazir as the Prime Minister, the ISI and
Maj. Gen. Naseerullah Babar, her Interior Minister, acted jointly in encouraging the
formation of the Taliban in order to restore law and order in Afghanistan, which had
collapsed after the Afghan Mujahideen came to power in April 1992. By September
1996, the Taliban, with the ISI’s help, succeeded in capturing power in Kabul and
extending its control over all the Pashtun areas.
Initially, the CIA closed its eyes to it because UNOCAL, the U.S. oil company,
was interested in the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan
through Afghanistan and was facing difficulty in going ahead with this project due to
the break-down of law and order. The U.S. interest in seeking the assistance of the
Taliban for the UNOCAL project disappeared after the UNOCAL itself abandoned it
as not feasible. In 1996, Osama bin Laden and his advisers shifted from the Sudan to
Afghanistan when the Taliban had not yet captured power in Kabul.
In 1996, after capturing power in Kabul, the Taliban welcomed the presence of
bin Laden and encouraged him to shift from Jalalabad to Kandahar. He was permitted
to start his training infrastructure in Afghan territory. Alarm bells started ringing in the
U.S. over the developing nexus between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, the role played by
the ISI in training the Taliban and reports of the resumption of the contacts of bin
Laden with his old friends in Pakistan in the ISI as well as in Pakistani fundamentalist
organizations. The U.S. concerns over these developments increased after bin Laden
formed, in 1998, his International Islamic Front (IIF) for jihad against the Crusaders
and the Jewish People and Al-Qaeda organized explosions near the U.S. Embassies in
Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam on August 7, 1998. The U.S. Cruise missile attacks on
Al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghan territory on August 20, 1998, were not effective.
From then on, there was increasing pressure by Washington on the Government
of Nawaz Sharif to either pressure the Taliban to hand over bin Laden to the CIA or to
permit the U.S. Special Forces to mount a special operation from Pakistani territory to
kill or capture bin Laden. Nawaz did not do either as he was afraid of the
repercussions in Pakistan if he collaborated with the U.S. against the Taliban and
Al-Qaeda.
4. After overthrowing Nawaz Sharif and seizing power in October, 1999, Musharraf
appointed Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, a close friend of his, as the DG of the ISI. The
U.S. was unhappy over what it viewed as non-cooperation by the ISI in its efforts to
have bin Laden killed or captured. Before it started its military strikes on the Taliban
and Al-Qaeda in Afghan territory on October 7, 2001, it pressured Musharraf to
22
replace Lt. Gen. Ahmed as the DG of the ISI. Musharraf appointed Lt. Gen.
Ehsan-ul-Haq as the DG. He was succeeded by Lt. Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, who
has since taken over as the COAS from Musharraf. The present DG is Lt. Gen.
Nadeem Taj.
Kiyani tried to keep the ISI out of political controversies. In recent months, it is
the IB which is becoming increasingly controversial after Musharraf appointed Brig.
Ijaz Shah, a close personal friend of his, as its Director and inducted a number of
retired army officers into it. Before her assassination, Benazir used to complain that
the threat to her security mainly came from Ijaz Shah, Lt. Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul and
Chaudhury Pervez Elahi, former Chief Minister of Punjab, all the three of them Zia
loyalists. She did not make any complaint against the ISI. However, since her
assassination, there have been allegations by her party members that junior officials of
the ISI might have also been involved in her assassination in addition to those named
by her when she was alive.
5. The ISI has always had three operational priorities. Firstly, the annexation of
Kashmir through covert action; secondly, acquiring strategic depth in Afghanistan
through a Government which would be favourable to Pakistani interests; and thirdly, to
help the Government in its clandestine nuclear and missile procurement efforts.
These priorities have not changed. That is why it has refrained from taking action
against the Pakistani jihadi organizations, which are active in India and against the
Neo Taliban of Afghanistan, which is operating against the U.S.-led NATO forces in
Afghanistan from sanctuaries in Balochistan and the Federally-Administered Tribal
Areas (FATA).
While pretending to extend unconditional co-operation to the U.S. in its so-called
war against terrorism, Musharraf has kept the co-operation confined to action against
Al-Qaeda operatives based in Pakistani territory. Even the co-operation against
Al-Qaeda is restricted to action against Al-Qaeda sleeper cells operating from
non-tribal areas. He has not taken any effective action against Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in
the FATA or against the leadership of the Neo Taliban, headed by Mulla Mohammad
Omar, its Amir, operating from the tribal areas of Pakistan. Nor has he acted against
the terrorist infrastructure directed against India.
In December, 2003, Musharraf escaped two attempts to assassinate him at
Rawalpindi allegedly mounted by Al-Qaeda and pro-Al-Qaeda elements with the
complicity of some junior officers of the Army and the Air Force. The failure of the ISI
to detect this conspiracy led to fears that there are elements in the ISI, which are
opposed to co-operation with the U.S. and perhaps even against Al-Qaeda.
Dr. Aamir Liaqat Hussain, the then Minister of State for Religious Affairs, gave
expression to these fears in an interview to the Daily Times of Lahore on May 5, 2005.
He warned that Musharraf had a lot of enemies ‘within’ who could make an attempt on
his life again at any time. He said that there were certain elements within the forces,
who could attack the General. He added: “No common people could attack President
Musharraf, but certainly there are elements in the forces, who can launch yet another
attack against him. There is an ISI within the ISI, which is more powerful than the
original and still orchestrating many eventualities in the country.”
23
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG THE OBSCURE WORLD
OF GOD’S SCHOOLS
THE OBSCURE WORLD

OF GOD’S SCHOOLS by Sabookh SYED
Pakistan’s madrasas are not only full of terrorists. They are pillars of the national
welfare system and they help educate those who are less fortunate. As of today,
Islamabad has been pleasingly tolerant, but now the game is becoming too dangerous.
1. S URROUNDED BY A GROUP OF RELIGIOUS

seminary students, I am sitting in Jamia Muhammadia F-6/4. This religious seminary
is considered as the largest one of its type in Islamabad (Capital of Pakistan). These
students are quite different from the ones we encounter with in our daily life. Instead
of jeans, trousers and tee-shirts, these middle-aged, some of which are bald, have
abnormal attire. Wearing long kurtas, pajamas, some of them have tactfully placed
white turbans and handmade caps on their heads. Most of them come of the Pushtoon
areas of North Western Federal Province of Pakistan. I don’t see many Punjabis in
them. But it doesn’t mean that people of Punjab are against the Madrasa (religious
seminary) system. In fact, most Punjabis prefer joining the religious schools of Lahore
and other major cities of the province.
Since the tragic events of September 11, 2001 most writers, scholars, politicians,
diplomats, development workers, teachers, students and others have been trying to
understand the reasons behind that devastating day. Muslim radicalism, Islamic
fanaticism, Muslim fundamentalism are a few terms that have become very popular. In
addition, as most of the operatives of the Taliban government in Muslim countries has
gained special attention during the past two years. There are many questions. How did
they evolve? How do they function? Where do they get their money? Who supports
them?
Albeit these types of schools existed earlier as well, the Madrasa system grew
rapidly after the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Then a rapid mushrooming of such
schools can be observed during the Afghan Jihad. Dars-e-Nizami is taught in these
madrasas, which, on average, takes eight years for a student to complete.
Most students, commonly known as Talib-e-Ilm, are enrolled for Dars-e-Nizami
after completion of their secondary school education. A significant number of madrasa
students are the ones who cannot afford the expensive modern education in
private/government schools and universities. There are five major Islamic schools of
thought in Pakistan: Deobandi, Bareili, Ahle-hadith, Salafi, and Shia. Each sect has
their own madrasas in which they teach their own version of Islam. The two main sects
of Sunni Islam – Deobandi and Bareili – dominate the Madrasa system in Pakistan.
Deobandi schools are most commonly found along the Afghan- Pakistan border
and within city centers. The Deobandi and Bareili sects originated in the colonial
Indian sub-continent in response to the perceived imperial plot to destroy Islam and its
followers by enforcing its own version of education. The Deobandi sect is considered
the most conservative and anti-western. The Deoband school of thought has a clearly
dominant percentage in the total number of religious schools in Pakistan. Though,
majority population of the country belongs to the Brelvi school of thought. Deoband
school of thought has its roots in Darul Uloom Deoband (Madrasa). Madrasa Darul
Uloom Deoband was established in Hindustan on May 16, 1867. At that point in time,
24
OF GOD’S SCHOOLS
this Madrasa was set up against British rule over Subcontinent and to stop Muslims
from acquiring formal education introduced by the Britons. Deoband school of thought
is an activist sect whose disciples are much involved in political and religious
activities. Similarly, its disciples head major Jihadi, social and social welfare
organizations in the country. Jihadi organizations like Jesh-e-Muhammad,
Harkat-ul-Mujahidin, Harkat-ul-Ansar, sectarian organizations like Sipah-e-Sahaba,
Ahl-e-Sunnat wal Jamat and political parties like Jamiat Ulma-e-Islam are Deoband
organizations.
Religious institutions have played an important role in providing religious
education of the Quran and hadith. They are mostly financed by charity. Teachers and
the management of these institutions believe that it is the religious responsibility of the
people to provide for the teachers and the students there.
There are various kinds of madrasas depending on the level of education. Some
of the important types are Nazira, which focus on teaching the correct reading of the
Quran, Hifz, where Quran memorization is the objective, Dar-ul-uloom, where there is
religious education, the teaching of the Arabic language, ahadith, fiqh and
commentaries on the Quran are also taught and Jamia, which teaches advance courses
in the above subjects with a dissertation and thesis.
The number of madrasas has increased with the passage of time (Table 1 shows
some figures in that regard). According to Akhbar-i-Jehan, these figures were
presented to the president and prime minister of Pakistan during a briefing on religious
madrasas by the intelligence bureau. These figures show only the big madrasas that are
registered and where advanced level of religious education is imparted. The
unregistered and informal madrasas, which are operating on a huge scale in the country,
are not reflected in these statistics.
Table 1. The growth of madrasas over time.
Year No. of registered madrasas No. of students
1957 150 30,000

1971 900 180,000
1997 4500 900,000
Source: Akhbar-i-Jahan (Jang Group)
2. Seeking knowledge has been an integral part of the Islamic tradition. The early
years of Quranic revelations to the prophet where embedded in the oral tradition.
Similar to the verses of good poetry, revelations of the Quran inspired the people of
Arabia into memorizing the verses. However, as Islam expanded and it became
necessary to preserve this vast knowledge, these four verses were written down and
compiled into various chapters. This collection came to be the book of Islam, the
Quran.
From early on, Islam emphasized two types of knowledge, revealed and earthly.
Revealed knowledge comes straight from God, earthly knowledge is to be discovered
by human beings themselves. Islam considers both to be of vital importance and
directs its followers, both men and women, to go and seek knowledge. For Muslims,
the Quran is the perfect word of God, sacred and therefore cannot be changed. It
should be memorized from start to finish. Once a person has memorized it, he/she
must reflect on these verses and have a detailed understanding of its meaning and
interpretation over the lifetime. A person has mastered it would carry the knowledge of
Islam in his\her heart and spread the word to the ones who he/she encounter.
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OF GOD’S SCHOOLS
According to Islam, seeking earthly knowledge is also important because earthly

knowledge compliments the knowledge revealed by God in the Quran and helps
Muslims to obtain productive and good lives in this world.
However, as Islam expanded to other regions and came into contact with other
indigenous traditions and languages, it became necessary to create a cadre of Muslim
experts who would develop sophisticated writings and textbooks on fiqa – Islamic
jurisprudence, sunna – prophet’s traditions, hadith – prophet’s sayings, and tafseer –
the interpretation of the Quran, to cater
to the needs of non-Arab Muslim populations. Thus began the tradition of madrasa, the
center for higher learning the initial purpose of which was to preserve religious
conformity through uniform teachings of Islam for all.
There are three main types of religious institution in Pakistan: Quranic schools
(where only the Quran is taught), mosque schools (where both Quranic and secular
subjects are taught) and madrasas (where only Islamic learning takes place).
At Quranic schools, every Muslim child in Pakistan is expected and encouraged
to read the Quran either in a mosque or at home. Quranic schools usually function in a
mosque where the mullah teaches the Quran to children, both boys and girls. At the
basic level, the Quran is taught in words only and no translation or interpretation is
provided to students. The end objective is that all Muslims must be able to read the
Quran in Arabic even if they do not understand that language itself.
Mosque primary schools, due to a lack of resources to provide schools in every
village, in the mid-80’s the government of Pakistan experimented with the idea of
converting some Quranic schools into mosque primary schools in rural areas. The plan
was to add some additional subjects such as basic Urdu and mathematics, which would
be taught to the students by the local imam. The plan faced serious challenges because
the local imams were not academically prepared to teach Urdu and math since many of
them had not attended formal secular schools and the government did not provide any
training to prepare them for the new task. While some mosque schools closed down,
some also survived. Currently, there are approximately 25,000 mosque primary
schools in Pakistan.
In the end, the mission of most madrasas in Pakistan is to prepare students for
religious studies. Adhering to strict religious teachings, madrasas teach Islamic
subjects such as the Quran, Islamic law and jurisprudence, logic and the prophet’s
traditions. Depending upon the level of the madrasa (primary, middle or high), the
concentration of religious teachings increases. Hafiz-e-Quran (the one who memorizes
the Quran fully) or qari (the one who can recite the Quran with good pronunciation
and in a melodic tone) are produced at the lower level of madrasas. The higher levels
of madrasas produce alim — the Islamic scholar and/or teacher. And alim certificate
from a madrasa is equivalent to a MA degree in Islamic studies or Arabic from a
regular university. A madrasa student, after graduating from grade 10, is qualified
enough to declare fatwas – religious edicts. Those students who enrol in madrasa full
time do so with the knowledge that they will become well versed in religious studies
only and will only find jobs in the religious sector since very few madrasas supplement
religious education with secular subjects.
As can be seen in Table 2, there is no mention of modern sciences, such as
chemistry, biology or technology. However, since September 11, several madrasas in
Pakistan, especially those located in urban centers, have tried to include science
subjects in their curriculum.
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OF GOD’S SCHOOLS
Table 2. The curriculum of Pakistan’s madrasas.
First Year: Biography of the prophet (syrat), conjugation-grammar (sarf), syntax (nahv),
Arabic literature, chirography, chant illation (tajvid)
Second Year: Conjugation-grammar (sarf), syntax (nahv), Arabic literature, jurisprudence (fiqh)
logic, chirography (khush-navisi), chant illation (tajvid)
Third Year: Quranic exegesis, jurisprudence: (fiqh), syntax (nahv), Arabic literature, logic,
chirography (khush-navisi), chant illation, (tajvid)
Fourth Year: Quranic exegesis, jurisprudence (fiqh), principles of jurisprudence, rhetoric’s,
hadith, logic, history, chant illation, modern sciences (sciences of cities of
Arabia, geography of the Arab peninsula and other Islamic countries)
Fifth Year: Quranic exegesis, jurisprudence, principles’ of jurisprudence, rhetoric, beliefs
(aqa’id), logic, Arabic literature, chant illation, external study (history of Indian
kings)
Sixth Year: Interpretation of the Quran, jurisprudence, principles of interpretation and
jurisprudence, Arabic literature, philosophy, chant illation, study of prophet’s
traditions
Seventh Year: Sayings of the prophet, jurisprudence, belief (aqa’ed), responsibility (fra’iz),
chant illation, external study (Urdu texts)
Eighth Year: Ten books by various authors focusing on the sayings of the prophet.
Pakistani madrasas pay heavy emphasis to the teachings of Arabic and Persian.
The languages in the Pakistani madrasas are not taught for their intrinsic worth but
because they facilitate mastery of the religion and because they are necessary for
becoming an alim. For this purpose Arabic, of course, occupies center stage. Persian,
which was socially and academically necessary in Muslim India, still forms part of the
curriculum. Urdu is generally the medium of instruction in Pakistani madrasas.
However, in the Pashto-speaking parts of the NWFP, Pashto is the medium of
instruction while Sindhi is the medium of instruction in many madrasas in
Sindhi-speaking parts of Sindh. Urdu is indeed, the language in which madrasa
students become most competent in most of the madrasas.
Most of the books, from which the languages are taught, are very old Arabic and
Persian books that were written in the 1500’s or before. Pakistani madrasas today still
teach many of the dars-e-nizami texts. These are some of the oldest existing Arabic
books. Students also study the Persian translation of Arabic books. “The Arabic books
are treatises on grammar in rhymed couplets. One of the best known among them,
kafia ibn-e-malik, is so obscure that it is always taught through a commentary called
the sharah ibn-e-aqil. The commentary is often the dread of students and a source of
pride for the teacher who has mastered it.
In the madrasas, Arabic is not taught as a living language. The student is made to
memorize the rhymed couplets from the ancient texts as well as their explanation. As
the explanations in a number of texts are in Persian, which is also memorized, the
student generally fails to apply his knowledge to the living language. Some ancient
texts, such as the mizbah-ul-nahv, are explained in Urdu. However, in this case, the
Urdu is much arabicized. The explanation is scholastic and would not be understood
by, let alone convince, somebody who is not familiar with the special branch of
medieval Islamic philosophy on which it is based.”
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In addition, many of the madrasas teach muallimul insha which is written by an

Indian alim, which is a response to modernity. Whereas the ancient books never felt it
necessary to prescribe an Islamic form of behavior as it was not in dispute or under
threat. In this book, history begins with the fall of Spain by the hands of the Moorish
prince, Tariq bin Zayad. It also states that the English were always the enemies of
Muslims.
3. For this reason, the madrasas in Pakistan present a unique example of what can go
wrong with the religious education system if it is not monitored in a positive manner.
For most of Pakistan’s history, madrasas numbered in the low hundreds and
focused on training the next generation of religious leaders, beginning in the mid-70s,
the number of madrasas began to grow, the reasons was that the government of
Pakistan failed to provide for the growing number of students. The rise of
jamat-e-islami (an Islamic political party), and the active support from the Bhutto
Government to, essentially, declaring Pakistan a theocracy led to the expansion of the
Madrasa system where children could receive religious education free of cost. Because
of these reasons, no serious efforts have ever been made to utilize their capabilities for
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OF GOD’S SCHOOLS
developmental initiatives in the country.

During the mid-80s, the number of madras’s grew at an even greater rate under
Zia’s regime because of financing from the Pakistani Government and the CIA. Large
theological seminaries were established along the Afghan-Pakistan border to create a
cadre of religiously motivated Mujahedeens to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Students in these seminaries were taught to fight the godless Russians and ensure that
Afghanistan is free to become a religious state. Since then most of the madrasas
strongly advocate and work for the implementation of the same set of laws as the
Taliban were introducing in Afghanistan.
The events of the Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) have provoked perplexity about
Pakistan’s Madrasa system and about the way in which they have managed them. In
particular, there are fingers being pointed at the possession of arms and munitions by
the madrasas even though it’s still not clear who actually supplied the weapons to the
madrasas and who is propitiating a gospel of jihad. Today, after years of disinterest in
intervention, the Pakistani government has found itself having to devise a way to keep
these Muslims school under watch and under thumb.
30
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG WHY WE HATE
THE UNITED STATES
WHY WE HATE
THE UNITED STATES by Mohammad SHEHZAD
The Pakistanis detest the Americans because they blame them for Pakistan’s problems.
The United States has always sustained, instrumentally, control over Pakistani
authorities. For this reason, extremists and terrorists are operating within the country.
Now is time to turn the page.
1. T HE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE

United States and Pakistan has always been unpredictable since the inception of
Pakistan. Both countries were not equal in any term. The U.S. was always a
superpower and Pakistan a colony of Britain when it was part of the British India.
Elements like respect, love, friendship and human feelings were missing in the
U.S.-Pak relations. The relations had no roots among the people. That is the reason the
people of Pakistan never loved the U.S. The people of Pakistan hate the U.S. because it
is the only country that is responsible for all the evils in Pakistan. The people of
Pakistan are right to a great extent if they have developed such feelings about the U.S.
The U.S. is the country that did not let democracy flourish in Pakistan. The U.S.
supported the military dictators in Pakistan – from General Ayub Khan to General
Parvez Musharraf.
Pakistan’s first military dictator General Ayub Khan used to be a great ally of the
U.S. As time passed and he learnt more about the U.S. mind, he was convinced that
the U.S. is nobody’s friend. He was so disappointed with the U.S. that he authored a
book – Friends not Masters. No doubt that the U.S. always treated Pakistan as a master.
Pakistan for the U.S. was always a ‘diaper’ that was thrown in the trash after the job
was done. The U.S. could never become for Pakistan a friend like China – a trusted,
long-term friend. The U.S.’ reputation is ugly in Pakistan. It is considered as a selfish
partner. And trust me these are the feelings of the educated class as well. The feelings
of Islamists and Jihadis are far more negative, aggressive and strong. For them, the
U.S. is the biggest terrorist in the world. I will explain it in detail in the following
paragraphs.
2. The disintegration of Pakistan in 1971 is the greatest tragedy for any Pakistani. A
majority of the people of Pakistan considers the U.S. responsible for this tragedy. The
people, like the army generals, were thinking that the U.S.’ 7th Fleet will come to
Pakistan’s help. The U.S. promised to send it but it never reached. Pakistan could have
been saved had the U.S. sent the 7th fleet. Pakistanis have still not forgotten this
tragedy. They believe that the disintegration of Pakistan was a U.S. conspiracy; the
U.S. broke apart Pakistan with the help of India.
The U.S. relations with Pakistan have been erratic since the start. They still go on
like this. The U.S. came close to Pakistan whenever the country was ruled by a
military dictator. The U.S. cleverly used this opportunity. The U.S. on the basis of its
past experience knew it very well that dealing with a dictator is far easier than an
elected government. Dictators could be bribed or influenced easily than a parliament.
So, the dictators are the best choice to work with to achieve all the ulterior objectives
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THE UNITED STATES
easily. The myopic leadership of Pakistan could never realize that U.S.’ friendship was
never in the country’s interest. It was the former USSR that had extended a hand of
friendship to Pakistan. But the Pakistani politicians did not accept this offer – the
acceptance of which was guided by every standard of rationality. The USSR was a
neighbor. The U.S. was too far from Pakistan. The system of governance of the USSR
was close to the system that Islam advocates. Islam discourages capitalism.
Thus, ideologically, understanding with the USSR would have been compatible.
But the Pakistani rulers did not demonstrate wisdom. The first prime minister of
Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan proceeded to the U.S. to forge ties. The U.S.-Pak relations
strengthened when the country came under the rule of military dictator Ayub Khan.
The U.S. supported Ayub Khan’s illegitimate rule for more than ten years. The country
became a colony of America. The U.S. was allowed to set up military bases in Pakistan.
Pakistan unnecessarily antagonized its neighbor USSR by becoming the U.S.’ ally in
the cold war. Supporting the U.S. became a lucrative business for the military rulers.
They did nothing for the welfare of the country. They destroyed every institution so
that they could continue their business with the U.S. Ayub’s pro-U.S.’ policies caused
Pakistan’s disintegration in 1971.
The U.S. completely abandoned Pakistan after its disintegration. Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto’s People’s Party came to power in Pakistan. After the disintegration of Pakistan,
Z.A. Bhutto decided to make Pakistan a nuclear power – because India had already
started a nuclear program and the fear was that it will use that nuclear power to
eliminate Pakistan. In fact, this was just a fear. India had become a nuclear power
years before Pakistan. If its intention were to eliminate Pakistan through nukes, it
would have done it instead of giving Pakistan time to become a nuclear power.
Bhutto also wanted to make an Islamic Union like the European Union. He had
convened a conference of Muslim countries in Lahore in this effect. He wanted to
educate the Arab countries about the exploitative U.S. policies. He wanted Arab
countries to use oil as a weapon to seek the resolution of the Palestine issue. Z.A.
Bhutto wanted a respectable position for the Muslim countries in the world which was
not acceptable to the U.S. In other words, his vision was in conflict with U.S. interest.
He was firm about pursuing a nuclear program. The U.S. eliminated him through a
military ruler – the late General Zia ul Haq.
When the former-USSR invaded Afghanistan and the U.S. broke apart the USSR
through a proxy war. The U.S. used Zia in the name of Islam. The U.S. glorified jihad
and provided Zia with billions of dollars to break apart the USSR through jihad.
During his 10-year rule, Pakistan did nothing to boost its economy. Pakistan did jihad
at the behest of the U.S. and the Muslim fundamentalists were supported by the state.
Pakistani civil society was completely destroyed. The country became a hub of illegal
weapons, drugs and extremism.
When the USSR broke apart, the U.S. proceeded to ditch Pakistan. It abandoned
Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan was left alone to clean the dirt that the U.S. had left.
By then, jihad had become a profitable business. Pakistani generals and holy warriors
had become used to ‘easy-money’. They decided to extend their agenda of jihad in
Kashmir. Meanwhile, Zia had earned a reputation of a great Mujahid. He started
dreaming of becoming an Amir ul Momineen. He wanted to make an Islamic bloc
against the western bloc. He too was eliminated by mysterious circumstances in a
plane crash.
3. The period of 90’s witnessed the worst U.S.-Pak relations. The U.S. slapped
several sanctions on Pakistan – the harshest was the notorious Pressler Amendment.
This was the period when civilian governments were in power. This period –
1988-1999 – once again proved that U.S.-Pak relations are marred by ‘hate’ when
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THE UNITED STATES
civilian governments are at the helm and by ‘love’ when the military dictators are
running the country. The period of love started in October 12, 1999 when General
Musharraf ousted the elected prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif. Almost two years
later, 9/11 took place and thus started the so-called war against terror. The Pressler
Amendment was gone. USAID was back. Dollars started pouring once again into
Pakistan. The business of military dictators was again on a roll.
Musharraf destroyed all the institutions of Pakistan to consolidate his illegitimate
rule for which support was coming from Washington. He imposed Emergency Rule
twice – the first time to get rid of an elected prime minister and the second time to clip
the wings of the judiciary that had started working independently under the Chief
Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Musharraf committed worse atrocities against lawyers,
journalists and judges but the U.S. did not budge. The U.S. still treats him as an
important ally in the war against terror.
When President Bush came to Pakistan in 2006, people cursed him. All the roads
were blocked. All the shops were forcibly closed down. The working class – laborers
and shopkeepers who sell daily commodities on streets commented that Bush has
deprived them of ‘bread’. Today, a common Pakistani would curse two entities for all
the social evils in Pakistan – the Pakistan army and the U.S. Even the educated and
liberals would also tell the diplomatic community in private gatherings that the
solution of conflicts in the region lies in democracy. Militancy and extremism will
increase as long as the U.S. continues to support the dictatorial regimes in Pakistan.
All the sections of Pakistani society are convinced that it is not the desire of the
U.S. that Pakistan should be a peaceful country. Pakistan is the victim of terrorism and
the U.S. is responsible for it. The U.S. spent dollars like water to spread extremism and
jihad in every nook and cranny of Pakistan. The U.S. nurtured jihad for more than ten
years. The U.S. glorified mujahedeen in the past and now it recognizes them as
terrorists. This hypocrisy enhances the hatred against the U.S. among the holy warriors.
They are provoked when they see the U.S. supporting Israel’s nuclear program while
picking up faults with Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. The double standards of the
U.S. are simply enhancing hatred against it.
4. The U.S. has destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq. It will reap for what it has sown.
The U.S.’ policies have pushed the world into the fire of terrorism and extremism. I am
not a fan of jihads. In fact, I am strongly against them. But when they say in their
speeches that the U.S. is the biggest terrorist in the world, I find myself helpless to
defend the U.S. They say that the U.S. is the most irresponsible and rogue nation when
it comes to the use of nuclear weapons. Thus, if there is a country that poses nuclear
dangers to other nations, it is the U.S.
The U.S.’ current policies will never lead the world to peace. It is due to the U.S.’
policies that Iraq and Afghanistan have become volatile countries. There was no
presence of al-Qaeda in Iraq. But today, al-Qaeda has a strong presence in Iraq. There
are no signs of peace in Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO forces have failed to win the
sympathies of the Afghan people. The people of Afghanistan curse them because they
are killing the civilian population more than the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Independent
think-tanks are claiming that the Taliban control 54% of Afghanistan. The Afghan
President Hamid Karzai feels insecure even in his palace. His influence does not
extend outside of Kabul. The recent suicide attack at the Serena Hotel in Kabul proves
that the Taliban has become so strong that they can prepare strategies for bigger
attacks and implement them.
The militancy in Afghanistan has now entered Pakistan. Earlier the militancy in
Pakistan was limited to its border areas. But now, it has spread out to the settled areas
like Swat, Bannu, Kohat and even Islamabad in the form of Lal Masjid. This simply
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THE UNITED STATES
shows that the U.S.’ sponsored war against terrorism has failed. The U.S.’ polices have
made the world a more vulnerable place. If the world has to be a peaceful place, then it
will have to make polices based on justice, respect, love and caring. The world will
have to respect the human dignity for peace.
34
THE PAKISTANII BOOMERANG
BURNING PROVINCES
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG THE BALOCHISTAN CRISIS
THE BALOCHISTAN CRISIS by Sanaullah BALOCH
With a mix of repression and political manipulation, Islamabad attempts to neutralize

the Baloch separatists, while maintaining its hold on a strategic province because of
its size, location and resources. However, with violence increasing, the population is
growing restless.
1. B ALOCHISTAN IS THE LARGEST

province of Pakistan, comprised on more than 43% of the land mass of the country.
The province is home to eight million Baloch people, who have a distinct language,
culture and liberal values.
The province is of strategic importance since it shares a long border with the
Iranian province of Balochistan and a Baloch populated region of Afghanistan. The
province is the major source of natural gas supply to Pakistan, but contrary to the
national and international laws, Baloch people are deprived of its own natural wealth.
The population in province has also been systematically denied modernization,
practical education and health. Balochistan has the highest infant mortality rate in
South Asia and the lowest literacy rate in the region. Economically, the region is the
most backward. It doesn’t have basic infrastructures like roads, power supply and
sanitation. The Baloch voice and legitimate demand for self-rule has been suppressed
by the respective central government and, since 1999, the conflict has turned bloodier.
The tempting strategic significance of Balochistan has long been a source of
constant suppression and threat to Baloch nationalism. It’s strategically situated at the
eastern flank of the Middle East, linking the Central Asian states with the Indian
subcontinent and the Indian Ocean. It also possesses the northern part of the Gulf and
Arab Sea from the strait of Hormoz to Karachi. The country’s navel facilities and
Chinese financed Gwadar deep sea port located at the world’s key oil supply route is
also located on the Baloch coast.
Balochistan’s vast and geographically intact region is the only potential land
route for some of the world’s costly proposed gas pipelines. These include
Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI), Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) and Qatar-
Pakistan-India gas supplying pipelines.
The majority of the proposed 2,600 kilometer-long IPI gas pipeline, with an
estimated cost of $ 7 billion which will connects Iran’s Pars gas field to the Indian
boarder, will pass through Baloch territory. Islamabad is expected to earn $500 million
per year from a transhipment fee from this project. Due to rising prices of energy in the
world market, Iran is expected to earn six to eight billion dollars a year from gas
exports.
As usual, Islamabad can careless about Baloch’s wellbeing on proposed
developments. Baloch’s opposition to the transnational pipelines voiced itself early in
2005, when the Baloch nationalist, Akbar khan Bugti, who was killed by the Pakistani
security forces in August 2006, when it stated that “only the goodwill of the Baloch
people would let the proposed gas pipeline from Iran and Central Asia to India pass
through its soil.”
On June 9, 2006, exhibiting unprecedented unity, members of the treasury and the
opposition in the Balochistan Provincial Assembly unanimously passed a resolution
seeking royalties for the province by the proposed multi-billion dollar
36
Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project. The Assembly also demanded

Balochistan’s representation in the IPI talks, free gas for the population, hundred % of
the available jobs and a major share of royalties. However, prevailing unrest in
Balochistan is a major cause for concern and would critically influence the
practicability of the Gwadar port project and proposed transnational gas pipelines.
Moreover, 9/11 has further increased the significance of Baloch territory.
Currently, Dalbanden, Shimshe and Pasni air bases are used by the U.S. forces and, in
return, Islamabad is receiving a sizeable amount of revenue without sharing it with the
poverty stricken Baloch population.
2. There is a Baloch saying: “a Baloch child may be born without socks on his feet,
but when he grows up, every step he takes is on silver and gold.” But the politically
enslaved and economically deprived Baloch region been has forced to live in hunger.
37
Balochistan possesses significant reserves of oil and natural gas. The region is
based on the geological belt which is known for its world-class mineral deposits.
These include chromites, copper, gold, silver, iron ore, lead, zinc including number of
precious non-metallic minerals. Balochistan has an estimated 19 trillion cubic feet (Tcf)
of proven gas and an estimated six trillion barrels of oil reserves both on-shore and
off-shore. Pakistan’s other three provinces possess only 6.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of
gas stock.
Presently, Balochistan and Sindh together produce over 90 % of Pakistan’s
natural gas. According to Pakistan Energy Book 2005, 1.5 million tons of coal was
mined from Balochistan in 2004, which is 40 % of Pakistan’s production. Pakistan’s
major gas installations are largely located in Balochistan. Existing gas fields in
Balochistan supply 45% or 11 billion cubic meters of Pakistan’s total gas requirements
that generates $1.4 billion annually in revenue but Balochistan receives only $116
million in terms of royalties.
Baloch people feel totally exploited because they are not only deprived of energy
but also from jobs and socio-economic benefits of Baloch wealth. Pakistan is saving
two billion dollars worth of foreign exchange annually due to the natural gas produced
from Balochistan. Providing fuel to the national economy for years, gas reached
Balochistan after 25 years. Six decades have passed but, even today, Balochistan has
only 3.4 % of gas consumers as compared to 64 % of Punjab alone, which produces
only 4.75 % of gas.
The world largest copper-gold deposits are also situated in Baloch region.
Presently, the Chinese have invested over $350 million in the world’s fifth largest
copper-gold Saindak project. This project was supposed to employ and train local
youth but the fully fenced and heavily guarded site is now no-man’s land for Baloch
youth. Tethyan, an Australian company has anticipated spending $1 billion to develop
the Reko Deq copper mines, which is projected among the world’s top deposits.
Balochistan also possesses enormous economic potential in farming, livestock
and fisheries. These resources provide the base for setting up a large number of
agro-based industries.
In spite of being a resource-rich region, Balochistan is Pakistan's least developed
province with high rates of poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition. With disturbing figures
for poverty, Pakistan Integrated Household Survey 2001-02 revealed that Balochistan
has the highest poor population with 48 % and the worst in rural areas with 51 %
living below the poverty line. As compared to the 75% in country only 25% population
in province have access to electricity.
According to the “Social Policy and Development Center” (SPDC), “An
overview of the development scene in Balochistan is discomforting and the extent of
relative deprivation in the province is appalling.” The percentage of districts that are
classified as “high deprivation” are 92% in Balochistan, 62% in NWFP, 50% in Sindh
and only 29% in the Punjab. The SPDC review also revealed that the percentage of the
population living in a high degree of deprivation stands at 88% in Balochistan, 51% in
NWFP, 49% in Sindh and 25% in Punjab. According to poverty-related reports the
percentage of the population living below the poverty line stands at 63% in
Balochistan, 26% in Punjab, 29% in NWFP, 38% in rural and 27% in urban Sindh. The
years of military operations, ill-conceived and discriminatory policies and poor
governance has resulted in extreme underdevelopment of the province. Furthermore,
recent military operations and restrictions on free movement have further deteriorated
the socio-economic conditions. According to UNDP Human Development Report
2003, Dera Bugti the wealthiest and sole gas producing district of the province ranked
last among the 91 districts of the country on the Human Development Index.
The province has an 18.3 % male and 7% female literacy rate against the 63.6%
38
literacy rate for the Punjab province. Islamabad is pursuing a planed “literacy control”
policy to keep the population untaught. The establishment in Pakistan perceives that a
literate and politically conscious Baloch population will not allow for easy plundering
of Baloch wealth. 76 % of schools are shelter-less, 60% of primary schools have only
one untrained and unqualified teacher. However, strong growth of religious schools
has been reported in province during pro-Taliban MMA and the Musharraf-led PML
coalition.
The systematic denial of basic education and education-related facilities in
Balochistan clearly indicates the disrespect and discriminatory policies of Islamabad.
In the private sector, the lack of basic infrastructure, lack of industries and agriculture
is regarded as the major causes of unemployment. However, in the government sector,
Baloch youths are also denied access to jobs. Non-Baloch and recently settled
populations from other parts of Pakistan have a greater chance of receiving important
positions. The Baloch and local populations are denied access to even unskilled jobs in
gas producing and gas supplying companies. In Dera Bugti, the heavily guarded
compound of Pakistan Petroleum Limited is a no-go area for Baloch youths. All the
glitzy mega-projects launched in Balochistan including the Gwadar port, the Mirani
Dam, the coastal highway, cantonments, and the extraction of copper and gold deposits,
do not envisage any participation nor direct benefit to the people and the province.
3. Islamabad's unpleasant policies are resulting in deep alienation of the Baloch

masses. There is total ignorance and lack of understanding among the civil-military
establishment in Islamabad about Baloch and Balochistan.
Unlike the military rule of Zia-ul-Haq (1977-88), who had an overt policy of
oppression and controlled development, the Musharraf regime is pursuing a policy of
absolute suppression. Nationalist parties have been sidelined and their representatives
have been harshly targeted due to their struggle for greater autonomy and opposition to
military rule. The Baloch leader, Nawab Bugti, was killed in August 2006, Mr. Akhter
Mengal, the former chief minister of Balochistan and head of Balochistan National
Party has been detained since November 2006. Balach Marri, a young Baloch
politician and son of prominent Baloch leader, was recently killed. Each day police
and paramilitary troops continue to detain innocent citizens without lawful procedure,
although the government has always tried to discredit the Baloch leadership, blaming
them for anti-development, anti-social and even anti-state elements.
In November, 1999, the militarily created National Accountability Bureau
published a list of more than 320 names of Pakistan's top loan defaulters, but none of
the Baloch nationalists, politicians or businessmen were among the non-payers of the
$4 billion loan embezzlement. 80% of these debtors were from the Punjab province
and a majority of them were close allies of the president, holding important political
offices during 2002 to 2007.
In November, 2004, Islamabad agreed to resolve the province’s political matters
by constituting a Parliamentary Committee on Balochistan. The Baloch Nationalists
Alliance responded politely and politically, in which they came up with calculated and
legitimate political issues which caused grave irritation among the civil-military
establishment in capital. The Parliamentary Committee on Balochistan approved that
military and paramilitary forces start mobilizing against Baloch people, when the
Baloch leadership was in negotiations with central government.
Islamabad used the December 17, 2005 rocket attack, when Mr. Musharaf was
visiting the Kohlu district, as an excuse to start an unending operation. The subsequent
military operation resulted in killings, displacement, disappearances, harassment and
stirring deep frustration among the powerless. Security forces in Balochistan have
since committed dozens of unlawful killings as documented in the HRCP January
39
2006 report. High levels of intimidation, harassment, arrests, and torture are persistent
against opposition supporters. Peaceful protestors have been suppressed, political
representatives have been detained unlawfully, and so has the freedom of expression
and the right to assembly.
Today, Islamabad is determined to politically marginalize the natives of this
strategically significant and resource rich province and seems determined to uproot all
nationalist forces to pave the way for the “Talibanization” of the province. The central
government’s oppressive policies have compelled Baloch and Pushtoon nationalist
parties to boycott upcoming elections. Their boycott will certainly give the
government an opportunity to re-install a pro-military religious puppet government in
Balochistan to continue its unpopular policies. In the 2002 elections, General
Musharraf successfully sidelined the Baloch nationalists and paved the way for
pro-Taliban MMA elements. The systematic exclusion of Baloch moderate parties
resulted in political violence and the 2008 elections will further alienate the moderate
Baloch and Pakhtoon political forces from the center.
In July 2007, the International Crisis Group’s report on Pakistan expressed
serious concerns about Islamabad’s support towards religious groups in Balochistan.
Although, the central government seems determined to hold elections in Balochistan,
any future government in this volatile province would not be in position to function
properly. It will lack a mandate from the people and the parties, who enjoy very strong
support, which will make it difficult for any regime to smoothly function. The Baloch
resentment, by all means, is genuine. The continued plundering of natural resources,
economic and political marginalization and militarization are all major causes for the
mounting of tensions between Baloch and Islamabad.
Now, the cost of political instability is on rise. Peace in Balochistan is not only
important for Pakistan but peace and stability in the Baloch country is vital for
economic and strategic gain in broader terms. Islamabad’s reliance on brute force may
help the center government create short-term cosmetic calm, but simmering unrest and
political frustration will lead to an unending crisis.
Baloch demands for fair distribution of fiscal wealth include control over the
natural resources and the right to self-development are all genuine political demands.
Islamabad must not discredit and discriminate the Baloch people and their
representatives. Their lawful demand for development and politico-economic
empowerment is guaranteed in international conventions and enshrined in Pakistan’s
constitution.
40
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG GILGIT-BALTISTAN
THE WORLD’S LAST COLONY
GILGIT-BALTISTAN,
THE WORLD’S LAST COLONY by Ajai SANHI
In a remote northern region of Pakistan lives a Shiite majority, which has been living
under the iron fist of Islamabad. Under military control, underdeveloped and
‘sunnification’ are all of the ingredients for repression; all done in the name of unity
for the country.
1. I N APRIL 2007, THE EUROPEAN UNION

(EU) brought fleeting international attention to focus on the darkest corner of Pakistan
– the Gilgit-Baltistan region that Islamabad refers to as the ‘Northern Areas’ of
Pakistan; occupied Kashmir (PoK) – when the EU Parliament passed in overwhelming
majority its rapporteur, Baroness Emma Nicholson’s report ‘Kashmir: Present
Situation and Future Prospects’. The report excoriated Pakistan on the conditions
prevailing in this forgotten corner of the world, ‘the last colony in the world’ as its
people describe it, deploring “documented human rights violations by Pakistan” in the
region, and declaring unambiguously that “the people of Gilgit and Baltistan are under
the direct rule of the military and enjoy no democracy”.1
Nicholson’s report was scathing, both on sheer oppression of the people, on the
complete absence of legal and human rights as well as on the enveloping
backwardness that had evidently been engineered as a matter of state policy in the
region: “The Northern Areas Council, set up some time ago, screens, in reality, a total
absence of constitutional identity or civil rights”, the report assesses. “The people are
kept in poverty, illiteracy and backwardness, counting on just 25 small hospitals
serviced by 140 doctors (1 doctor per 6,000 people) as compared to 830 hospitals and
75,000 doctors in the rest of Pakistan, an overall literacy rate of 33% (with especially
poor educational indicators for girls and women) and only 12 high schools and 2
regional colleges. Apart from the problematic tourism sector, the only other form of
employment is government jobs, which are hard to obtain by locals and paid up to
35% less than non-native employees.”2
The report provoked strong protestations from Islamabad. In continued efforts to
mislead the international community without altering the circumstances within the
region, President Pervez Musharraf announced a new ‘comprehensive development
package for the Northern Areas’ in October 2007, purportedly to “help bring the region
at par with the rest of the country”. While a critique of the details is not intended here,
it is useful to note that the ‘comprehensive package’ failed entirely to attract any
favourable reviews.
2. Spanning an area of approximately 72,496 square kilometres, the Gilgit-Baltistan

region is an area that has historically been of pivotal strategic importance and so
remains. This is the ancient ‘axis of Asia’, where South, Central and East Asia
converge. Gilgit-Baltistan was traditionally both India’s and China’s gateway to
Central Asia and beyond, into the heart of Europe, along the ancient Silk Route that
1 Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, Rapporteur, Report on Kashmir: Present Situation, Future Prospects, European
Parliament Session Document, A6-0158/2007, 25.04.2007.
2 Ibid.
41
contributed so much to the wealth and civilization of the many peoples it touched.
Bordering China, Afghanistan and India, Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan – occupied
Kashmir (PoK) has been divided into five districts: Gilgit, Baltistan (Skardu), Diamir,
Ghizar and Ghanche, with administrative headquarters located in Gilgit town.
According to the 1998 population census, the region had 870,347 inhabitants from
varied ethnic groups including the Baltees, Shinas, Vashkuns, Mughals, Kashmiris,
Pathans, Ladhakhis and Turks, speaking a variety of languages such as Balti, Shina,
Brushaski, Khawer, Wakhi, Turki, Tibeti, Pushto and Urdu.
When the British granted Independence to India, the 565 ‘Princely states’ –
including J&K – technically became ‘sovereign states’. Consequently, following the
collapse of British paramountcy in 1947, the entire Gilgit agency was restored to the
then Dogra King, Hari Singh. Pakistan, however, fomented and supported a rebellion
in the region, and seized control, consolidating its administration through a succession
of illegal ruses, such as the Karachi Agreement of 1949, under which entirely
unrepresentative officials signed ‘letters of accession’ and ‘ratified’ Pakistani
42
administrative control over the region.3 Crucially, a Supreme Court judgement in 1999
took note of the legal and constitutional anomalies, as well as the denial of basic rights
and development in Gilgit-Baltistan and explicitly directed the Pakistan Government,
among other things, “to initiate appropriate administrative/legislative measures within
a period of six months from today to […] ensure that the people of Northern Areas
enjoy their fundamental rights, namely, to be governed through their chosen
representatives and to have access to justice through an independent judiciary”.4
The Government has failed to meet even the minimum requirements of the clear
and specific direction of the Supreme Court. In the interim, despite the existence of
nominal political institutions such as the Northern Areas Legislative Assembly
(NALA), there has been no impact on the political rights of the people of the region,
which continues to be “directly administrated by fiat from Islamabad. The bureaucracy,
primarily drawn from the North West Frontier Province and Punjab, has intensified the
sense of alienation and negated any semblance of self-rule in the NAs.”5 Balawaristan
National Front (BNF) leader, Nawaz Khan Naji, notes, “In every department, the chief
is from Pakistan, the other, secondary positions are locals.”6
3. Three different sects of Islam: Shia, Sunni and Ismaili are prevalent in
Gilgit-Baltistan, with the Shias dominating, unlike other parts of Pakistan, where
Sunnis constitute the overwhelming majority. With the very small exception of Chilas,
Darel and Tangir villages of the Diamer District, Shias constitute the clear majority
across the rest of the region.7
The Pakistani administration has long been involved in a campaign that seeks to
alter the demographic profile of the region and reduce the local Shia and Ismaili
populations to a minority. In the Gilgit and Skardu areas, large tracts of land have been
allotted to non-locals, violating the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan
(UNCIP) resolutions and the Jammu and Kashmir State Subject Rule, and outsiders
have also purchased large tracts of land. One unofficial estimate suggest that over
30,000 Gilgit residents have fled the city and its suburbs since 2000, in the wake of
discriminatory and repressive action by the state Forces, that the non-governmental
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) described as “a distinct pattern of
brutality and violence towards citizens”.8
Moreover, Islamabad has opened up the region for colonisation by Sunnis who
are brought in with a number of incentives, including ownership of lands and forests,
which were earlier the preserve of the Shias. Following the construction of the
Karakoram Highway connecting Pakistan to China in 1978, the region saw a swelling
Sunni influx from the Pakistani ‘mainland’, essentially Pathans and Afghans traders,
that today control the lucrative trade between the two countries, having pushed out
local businessmen. 9 Sources in Gilgit-Baltistan indicate that large tracts of land
continue to be allotted to Afghan refugees and Pashtuns.10
3 See A. SAHNI & S. CHERIAN, “Gilgit-Baltistan: The Laws of Occupation”, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict &
Resolution, Volume 18, January 2007, pp. 155-184 New Delhi: ICM-Bulwark Books.
4 Al Jihad Trust through Habibul Wahab al-Khairi vs. Federation of Pakistan through Secretary, Ministry of
Kashmir Affairs, Islamabad, 1999, Supreme Court Monthly Review (SCMR) 1379, Lahore, August 1999.
5 K. LAKSHMAN, “Northern Areas: Legal Ambivalence and Rising Unrest”, South Asia Intelligence Review,
Volume 4, No. 6, August 22, 2005.
6 “The Rediff Interview/Balawaristan leader Nawaz Khan Naji”, March 16, 2004.
7 See "Report on curfew in Gilgit", Report by HRCP core group, Northern Areas in
http://www.hrcp-web.org/report_curfew_gilgit.cfm
8 “Gunning down of students in Gilgit an outrage”, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Press Release of
October 14, 2005.
9 M. FATHERS, “Political Limbo”, Time, July 13, 2001
10 “The Rediff Interview/Balawaristan leader Nawaz Khan Naji”, March 16, 2004.
43
Sectarian polarization in Gilgit-Baltistan is not new. It has been continuously

encouraged since the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto regime in the mid-1970s. When Sunnis in
Gilgit objected to Shia processions and the construction of a stage on the city’s main
road, these activities were immediately banned. Shia’s subsequently protested the
ban and the police fired on them. But the situation worsened dramatically under
General Zia-ul-Haq, who encouraged cadres of the radical Sunni Sipah-e-Sahaba
Pakistan to extend its activities to the Gilgit-Baltistan region. A local (Shia)
insurrection broke out in Gilgit in May 1988, with people demanding wider rights. In
order to suppress the rebellion, the Special Services Group of the Pakistani Army
based in Khapalu was dispatched. Pakistan’s present President Pervez Musharraf, then
a young Brigadier, was in charge of the operations, in which he used Sunni tribal
irregulars to execute a brutal pogrom against the locals, something unprecedented in
Pakistan’s history. After eight days of sustained violence, the Army ‘stepped in’ to
‘restore peace’.
The anti-Shia pogrom resurfaced in 1993, when sectarian riots started again in
Gilgit, leading to the death of 20 Shias. Later, the Shia population was further alarmed
when large numbers of Sunnis were brought in from Punjab and the NWFP to settle in
Gilgit. This Government-supported migration towards Gilgit-Baltistan has been hugely
successful and, according to unofficial estimates, the 1:4 ratio of non-local to local
people in the region, which prevailed in January 2001, has now dipped to an alarming
3:4.11 The Shia retain a slim but continuously diminishing regional majority, but there
are areas where concentrations of Sunni already outnumber them. A cycle of sectarian
killings has, moreover, become a continuous feature of the Gilgit-Baltistan political
landscape, escalating repeatedly during religious festivals and periods of political
tension.
4. Another aspect of Islamabad’s mischief that has fed violence in the region is the
effort to impose a Sunni curriculum in the schools in Gilgit-Baltistan, even where the
Sunni have no or negligible presence. This has provoked a widespread Shia agitation
which underlines Islamabad’s efforts to change the ethnic composition of the region.
Sporadically, since 1999, and almost continuously since 2003, trouble has been
brewing in the Northern Areas over the Islamic textbooks that the Pakistan Ministry of
Education has issued as part of the curriculum for the schools in the region. According
to Shia community leaders, the textbooks promote Sunni thought and values and are an
attempt to promote sectarian hatred between the two sects. Protests and violence have
been continuously simmering in the region over this issue.
In 1999, the Shia community raised the issue of curricula taught at schools and
school children filled the streets in protest. In response, the local administration, in
close collusion with the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs & Northern Affairs at Islamabad,
arrested the school children and subjected them to untold humiliation and harassment.
By the way, right after this unprecedented violence the curriculum issue was
“resolved” at the local level and all the sects of the region agreed to the settlement on
three points formula: in Shia majority areas, the controversial aspects of the curriculum
would not be taught; in Sunni majority areas, the curriculum would be taught as it is;
in the areas where there is mixed population, the curriculum would specify the faith of
both the sects.
After reaching the settlement, the local government sought time to get final
approval from the Chief Executive Northern Areas Legislative Council (Minister
KANA) and the Deputy Chief Executive of NALC was assigned with the task of
getting approval from the competent authority. The Chief Executive NALC refused to
11 R. BEDI, 'An enclave on the boil', Frontline, Volume 21 - Issue 11, May 22 - Jun 04, 2004
44
assent to the settlement for reasons best known to him, due to which the situation
aggravated. The Shia leadership, in response to the adamant attitude of the authority,
called for a peaceful strike on June 3rd 2004. The local government decided to arrest
the top leadership and to impose a curfew in the area, which resulted in further
violence from both sides.12
Tension and strife orchestrated over curriculum distortions in educational
institutions only compounds an extended campaign of intimidation, terror and inspired
sectarian violence. There is cumulative evidence of an accelerated radicalization of
Sunni organisations in Gilgit-Baltistan, especially since 2001, with the shifting of
bases of a number of terrorist groups – some affiliated with Al-Qaeda – to ‘Azad
Jammu and Kashmir’ and to Gilgit-Baltistan. Abdul Hamid Khan of the BNF records:
“There has been a steady inflow of Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives into the Ghezar
Valley. Terrorist training to Afghan mercenaries and various groups active in Indian
held Kashmir is being provided in the remote hilly areas of Hazara, Darel Yashote,
Tangir, Astore, Skardu city and Gilgit city. These Pakistan-sponsored terrorist camps
remain active despite President Musharraf's apparent crackdown against terrorism.
Besides the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen camp in Tangir, Diamar District, camps were
located in Ghowadi village in Skardu, Juglote near Gilgit and Konodas, Gilgit. After
the post-January 12, 2002, ‘crackdown’ on jehadis, while the offices of certain terrorist
groups have been closed down in Pakistan, many cadres of banned groups have been
shifted to the NAs. No reports of arrests of terrorist cadres have been made from this
region. As many as 3,000 terrorists are said to have recently secured training in the
HuM camp in the Darel and Tangir area.”13
There is, moreover, “evidence to indicate that the sectarian violence in the NAs,
in particular at Gilgit, is being planned and orchestrated from other Pakistani provinces,
especially the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).”14 Very significant quantities of
weapons have also been seized in Gilgit-Baltistan, and are shipped in from the
neighbouring provinces, even as “the tactics used by sectarian terrorists in places like
Quetta, Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and elsewhere are now being employed in the
NAs.” 15
5. As the Nicholson Report clearly noted, the entire Gilgit-Baltistan region remains
mired in extreme poverty and backwardness, with a pervasive absence of most basic
amenities. Even the KANA Ministry, which is charged with the development of the
region, conceded, in the late 1990s, that the ‘Northern Areas’ “have been neglected for
the last 50 years and still rank in the most backward areas of the country.”16
In late August 2005, a 10-member group from the Human Right Commission of
Pakistan (HRCP) visited the Northern Areas to assess the level of social services and
infrastructure in the region. The mission was fiercely critical of the inadequate
structures of governance, the appalling justice system, and the paucity of social
services available to the people of the region. It identified the absence of a unifying
and conducive socio-political environment as one of the main factors behind the
ongoing violence in the region, noting further that the local communities were drifting
towards sectarian conflict because of this absence.17
12 http://www.hrcp-web.org
13 A.H. KHAN, “Balawaristan: The Heart of Darkness”, South Asia Intelligence Review, Volume 1, No. 5,
August 19, 2002
14 Ibid
15 Ibid.
16 Press note issued by the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas Affairs on 3rd July 1996
17 I. KHAN, "The Northern Areas' dangerous limbo", www.jang.com.pk/thenews/sep2005-daily/27-09-2005/
oped/o2.htm
45
Another index of regional backwardness can be found in the education sector.

While current data for the region remains unavailable, in 1998/99 the overall literacy
rate in the Northern Areas was estimated to be 33 % – substantially below the national
rate of 54 %. There were significant disparities between the male and female
population: the estimated literacy rate for males was 40 %, whereas the estimate for
females was only 25 %.18
More significantly, there are wide disparities between the number of educational
institutions in the Northern areas and the ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’, reflecting
Islamabad’s peculiar orientation towards, and biases against, Gilgit-Baltistan: Thus we
find a total of 787 educational institutions at all levels, servicing a total population of
870,347 in Gilgit-Baltistan, as against 6,094 institutions in ‘Azad Jammu and
Kashmir’, PoK second and relatively privileged region, servicing a population of 2.97
million (population figures: 1998 Census).
According to the Northern Areas Strategy for Sustainable Development report,
the health sector remained an area of extraordinary neglect as well: “[…]Although
official statistics suggest that 40% of the region’s households have access to piped
water services, a recent, independent study concluded that actual coverage may be as
low as 20%. Similarly, most of the NA’s settlements lack proper sewerage and
drainage systems. As a result of these conditions, virtually all the water supply systems
in the Northern Areas are contaminated with human and animal waste, leading to a
wide range of diseases.”19 A comparison of the number of public health facilities in
the Northern Areas and ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’ again reveals Islamabad’s
partiality. Gilgit-Baltistan has a total of 305 public health facilities in all categories,
hospitals, dispensaries and first aid posts. ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’, in sharp
contrast, has a total of 4,585 public health facilities across a much wider range of
categories.20
The region also suffers from under-utilization of its natural resources. Although
the Northern Areas have tremendous potential for hydropower generation, and are,
indeed, seen as a primary source of both water and power for the rest of Pakistan, the
present system of energy production is unable to meet the region’s own energy
demands. As a result, the Northern Areas currently have the lowest per capita rate of
energy consumption in Pakistan.21 Firewood is, still, the main source of domestic
energy and is used for cooking and heating. Field surveys conducted by the Water and
Power Development Authority (WAPDA) with German technical assistance (GTZ)
revealed that 99.6% of all respondents used firewood as fuel for domestic purposes.
Kerosene is currently the second most widely used energy source in the Northern
Areas. Even in Gilgit-Baltistan’s ‘electrified’ regions, kerosene is commonly used
because of limited coverage of the population and frequent disruptions of the power
supply.22
6. Despite a long history of protests against Islamabad’s discriminatory policies,

against growing sectarianism and violence, and against brutal state repression,
Gilgit-Baltistan remains a neglected centre of inequity and widespread suffering.
Pakistan has utterly and continuously suppressed the people of Gilgit-Baltistan; denied
them the most basic constitutional and human rights; blocked access to development
and an equitable use even of local natural resources; and repeatedly and brutally
suppressed the local Shia majority, even as it seeks to violently promote Sunni
18 Ibid
19 Northern Areas Strategy for Sustainable Development report
20 Schools Census Report of AKESP cited in www.ips.org.pk/publications/ Perspectives/Vol2/Chapt7.pdf.
21 ‘Energy’, Chapter 10, Background paper in the Northern Areas Strategy for Sustainable Development report, p.7
22 Ibid
46
sectarianism in the region. Gilgit Baltistan consequently remains an ‘area of darkness’,

of deep neglect and exploitation, and of the denial of political rights and identity –
indeed, a violation of every conceivable element of the very ‘self-determination’ that
Pakistan prescribes abroad.
Circumstances in Gilgit-Baltistan constitute an international humanitarian crisis.
Yet, for decades, Pakistan has set a distorted international agenda of discourse, treating
areas under its occupation – ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’ and Gilgit-Baltistan – as
settled issues, even as it violently promotes and stridently proclaims a ‘dispute’ over
the Indian-administered State of Jammu & Kashmir. Regrettably, the poorly informed
international community has accepted this travesty of history. It is now time to
administer correctives and to deny Pakistan the fruits of aggression and criminality
that have accrued for six decades, in the process creating immense suffering on a
hapless sectarian minority in Gilgit-Baltistan.
47
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG KARACHI, THE NEW YORK
OF PAKISTAN
KARACHI, THE NEW YORK

OF PAKISTAN by Kamal SIDDIQI
Karachi, the economic and financial capital of the country, is a multi-ethnic

megalopolis, where all the souls of Pakistan convene. However, terrorism, crime and
corruption threaten the delicate equilibrium and exacerbate the polar opposites of the
city. There remains a sense of hope.
1. A PART FROM BEING PAKISTAN'S

largest city, Karachi is also the country's commercial capital and trading hub. No one
knows how many people live here. The last census held showed the population may be
at 9 million. Today, officials claim that this number has surged to over 14 million.
Thousands come here to seek a better life. However, the fortunes of the city have not
been that bright.
The city has seen much violence in the past two decades. Initially the violence
had to do with the rise of the ethnic-based Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) party,
which first fought against the religious parties and then the government in a bid to
establish its writ over the city. In the mid-90's, the city saw some its worst violence.
There was rioting in the street and ethnic violence but settled down by the turn of the
century.
While that turf war has been settled, the violence has resurfaced in other forms.
Terrorist organizations took hold of the city's fortunes and used it as a base to launch
operations. Foreign nationals, including diplomats, were targeted in Karachi and there
were bomb blasts on American diplomatic properties. This made Karachi an unsafe
place for visiting westerners, particularly Americans.
With the arrival of General Musharraf in 1999, the fortunes of the city improved.
Under a special package plan, the city underwent a massive plan to improve basic
infrastructure. As a result, the city boasts a good road network and also other amenities
including a plan to increase the water supply to residents. However, while there were
improvements in some areas, the law and order situation remained unpredictable.
After a lull in violence, the problems have returned with a vengeance. These days
the city is undergoing turmoil in the wake of terrorist attacks as well as surge in crime
and lawlessness in the city. Citizens say that 2007 was a particularly bad year for them
as several hundred people died in terrorism related attacks in the city. They say that
they are fearful of 2008.
2. Despite the claim of the MQM on the city, in practice, Karachi is not the bastion
of one party or community. It is a multi-layered city, which also houses the largest
number of Pashtuns in any city in the world and is also home to most of the country's
minority members. This includes Hindus, Parsis and Christians. Many say that Karachi
offers them the freedom they do not find elsewhere in Pakistan. But that freedom is
now under threat from the rise in crime, mostly patronized by a number of local mafias,
and the increase of incidents from terrorists.
On October 18, 2007 over 400 people were killed when a bomb exploded at a
political rally held to welcome former Pakistan PM, Benazir Bhutto. Earlier that year,
in May 2007, several people died as rival militant groups fought it out on the streets of
48
OF PAKISTAN
49
OF PAKISTAN
Karachi as the government's law enforcing agencies withdrew from their duties,
ostensibly from pressure coming from the ruling MQM party. More than the deaths,
people of the city say that they are uncertain about what the future holds for them. The
local police chief has been replaced but residents say that the police and law
enforcement agencies are too politicized and corrupt. They say that the police usually
sides with the criminals and honest / law abiding persons are targeted and harassed.
There is a prevalent culture here of police taking protection money from small
traders and shopkeepers. This has not changed.
However, the city is the country's business hub. Karachi is without doubt the
financial capital of Pakistan. It accounts for the lion's share of GDP and revenue. It
generates over 60% of total national revenue (federal and provincial taxes, customs
and surcharges) and produces about 42 % of value added in large scale manufacturing.
In February 2007, the World Bank identified Karachi as the most business-friendly city
in Pakistan despite the problems with law, order and criminal acts. The biggest
advantage that Karachi offers is a vibrant market and the ease of business.
As of today, Karachi is a melting pot for Pakistan. After the independence of the
country, millions of refugees from India were drawn here to set up their new life. In
the 60's, this wave was followed by people coming from the northern parts of Pakistan.
Even today, there is an influx of people from all over Pakistan, who come to Karachi
because they feel this city has the capacity to give them jobs and food. Most people
come from rural areas and start their lives here as labourers and day workers in houses.
At the top of the social ladder here are the Western educated elite. In between is a
bursting middle class which has been empowered by an economy that has done well
over the past decade.
3. Even though Karachi is in the driver seat of the Pakistani economy, it is seething
with problems. The recent rise in fuel prices coupled with a jump in flour rates as well
as other essential qualities has left people bitter and angry. Two years back, the city's
main electricity company was privatised. This year, President Musharraf admitted that
the sale was a mistake. The service had not improved. As a result, power riots are a
common occurrence in the city during the summer months when people come out on
the streets to protest when power is shut off for prolonged periods. And people are
angry over the lack of basic amenities in the city.
Some of this anger could be witnessed on the streets of the city following the
death of Ms. Benazir Bhutto, whose hometown was Karachi. Private and public
property worth billions was torched by mobs as looting and arson incidents took place
all over the city in the days following the murder of the former Pakistan PM. Cars
were torched and houses robbed as police tried its best to maintain law and order in the
city. There has been a general outcry that the performance of the police in the riots as
well as the para-military Rangers be investigated. This has been met by silence from
the government. But investors and businessmen are angry that the government has
done little to protect their properties in the riots. Most of Pakistan's public and private
banks are headquartered on Karachi's I.I. Chundrigar Road, while most major foreign
multinational corporations operating in Pakistan have their headquarters in Karachi.
Some of these were attacked in the rioting in December. The government has promised
compensation but many businessmen and investors say that the real damage has been
to the image of the city as a place to invest and do business.
At the same time, the city is run by a number of parallel mafias. The public
transport mafia ensures that the city's commuters travel in old and dilapidated buses
and that the city is deprived of a proper and safe public transport system. The water
tanker mafia ensures that many areas go without water supply so that these tankers can
sell water to them. The local protection racket exists whereby people can happily
50
OF PAKISTAN
encroach on government land and public space as long as they pay money to the local
police station. The corruption in the police has left the city poorly protected.
Many Western analysts say that Karachi is also emerging as a major melting point
for terrorists and terror-related organizations. In the past, the city has been used as a
transit point for many. However, the government of President Musharraf came down
strong on militant outfits after an attack on the convoy of the regional army
commander took place within the city in 2004. This led to the arrest of militants
affiliated with a Pakistani extremist organization called "Jundullah." The army
crackdown on extremist outfits in the city bore some fruit between 2004 and 2006 but
now the militants and most wanted persons are believed to be using Karachi as a
transit point. The attacks on military installations and personnel, which had lulled,
seem now to be making a comeback.
For example, Karachi has a number of madrasas, where it is believed a number of
children are indoctrinated into the ways of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The leadership of
the Taliban trace their roots to a religious institution in Karachi called the Binnori
Town Mosque. This is where many received their initial religious instruction. The
madrasas have not seen the reform program that was promised by the government to
the West as part of its moves to check extremism in the country. Possibly Karachi has
the most madrasas in Pakistan and many of them are left to their own. This is
disconcerting considering that a number of extremist organizations gather their
manpower from Karachi. The government acted in 2002 and 2003 to expel foreign
students from these madrasas. However it has done nothing to check what is being
taught here and to work towards modernizing the syllabus.
4. Despite these problems, the city is one that is on the go and yet, despite all the
gloom, there is optimism. The Karachi Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in
Pakistan, and is considered by many economists to be one of the prime reasons for
Pakistan's 8% GDP growth across 2005. After some dips in 2007, the market is up and
running again. During the 1960s, Karachi was seen as an economic role model around
the world, and there was much praise for the way its economy was progressing. Many
countries sought to emulate Pakistan's economic planning strategy and one of them,
South Korea, copied the city's second "Five-Year Plan" and World Financial Centre in
Seoul is designed and modelled after Karachi. The city's fathers say that one of the
problems for the lack of development of the city was that the capital was shifted from
Karachi to Islamabad in the mid-sixties and with that went all the government's focus.
To date, this is also the most liberal city in Pakistan. Women can be seen working
in offices and shops and driving cars. There is little discrimination amongst men and
women at most places of work. There are also numerous clubs in the city where,
despite a ban on consumption of alcohol due to religious reasons, the drinks flow
freely. The music scene is also thriving. Bands play at concerts and clubs and many are
in much demand. There is too a coffee house culture that has emerged in the swanky
Zamazama area where young men and women spend hours chatting and sipping coffee
and smoking shishas. Many Pakistanis who have returned from jobs abroad say that
the situation has never been better for Pakistani professionals, who are very much in
demand.
Today, despite the multi-billion rupee infrastructure projects, most small roads
having potholes, overflowing sewerage, corruption, organized crime networks and
terrorism; there is still hope for Karachi. Despite the bad news in 2007 and the fear of
2008, the people of Karachi continue to survive and their survival instinct makes them
different from most people of the country.
51
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG JAMMU AND KASHMIR:
THE IMPROBABLE PEACE
JAMMU AND KASHMIR:

THE IMPROBABLE PEACE by Praveen SWAMI
In a region that both India and Pakistan lay claim, the violence is dropping. However,
the promises for an agreement are yet to be seen. The instability in Pakistan risks
restructuring the current border. Is Northern Ireland a similar example?
“S PRING, WILL RETURN TO THE

BEAUTIFUL Valley soon,” India’s former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
promised a Srinagar audience in April 2002, quoting a passage from the Kashmiri poet
Ghulam Ahmed Mehjoor, “the flowers will bloom again and the nightingales will
return, chirping.”
Six years on, trite poetry is no longer needed to imagine an end to one of the most
bitter conflicts in the world. Both India and Pakistan are engaged in quiet diplomatic
dialogue intended to arrive at an abiding resolution of the conflict in Jammu and
Kashmir, and some accounts suggest a broad framework of agreed principles have
already been hammered out.
Other signs are just as heartening. A ceasefire put in place along the Line of
Control — once described by former United States President Bill Clinton as the most
dangerous place on earth — has, against all expectations, held since 2002. Political life,
containing within it a rich profusion of secessionists, nationalists, centrists,
communists and Islamists, has flowered in the run-up to elections due to be held in the
Indian-administered part of the region later this year.
Most important of all, perhaps, violence has declined to its lowest levels since
1988. Last year, Jammu and Kashmir, for the first time, witnessed fewer than 1,000
combat-related fatalities in the course of a year — a common definitional benchmark
used to determine whether conflicts are acute. Some 777 people, just 121 of whom
were civilians, are estimated to have been killed in the course of the year. By contrast,
some 5,946 people were killed in combat-related violence in 1995, the worst single
year of fighting in Jammu and Kashmir.
Now, however, the still-unfolding crisis in Pakistan has raised fears that what
many had characterised a slow but irreversible peace process may be headed towards
an unexpected demise.
First, some fear, Pakistan’s President, General Pervez Musharraf, no longer has
the legitimacy needed to make important concessions needed to prepare the way for a
negotiated settlement of the conflict — the acceptance of the Line of Control as a
border, for example, in return for Indian’s acceptance of greater autonomy for Jammu
and Kashmir. More important, the Islamist surge in Pakistan could sweep away the
keystone of the peace process: the de-escalation of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir,
which Islamabad was compelled to deliver after an attack on India’s Parliament House
almost led both countries to war in 2001-2002.
How credible are these fears? No simple answer is possible, but this much is clear:
the path to peace is indeed littered with pitfalls — and the occasional land-mine.
52
Peace and the ‘Islamist Peril’

Banners emblazoned with the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s crossed scimitars-and-Quran
logo fluttered outside the Bihisht-e-Shauda-e-Kashmir, the Srinagar graveyard where
many of the protagonists of the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir are buried.
Among them is Mirwaiz Mohammad Farooq, the father of the Srinagar cleric
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who heads the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a secessionist
coalition that supports General Musharraf’s peace efforts, and has engaged in a
now-on now-off dialogue with New Delhi. So, too, ironically, is his assassin, Abdullah
Bangroo.
53
“Lashkar ayi, Lashkar ayi, [the Lashkar is coming, the Lashkar is coming]”
shouted the crowd which had massed at the graveyard for hard-line Islamist patriarch
Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s April 22 rally, 2007, rally intended to signal rejection of
General Musharraf’s efforts to wind down the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. The
bilious polemic at what was without dispute the largest Islamist gathering in recent
years, served to demonstrate the growing aggression – and impunity – of the far-right
in Jammu and Kashmir.
Principal among the threats to the peace process is that represented by these
voices, which we might call the ‘Islamist Peril’: the prospect that Pakistan-based
pro-jihad groups will be freed of the shackles imposed on them after the 2002 crisis,
and proceed to wage an increasingly ferocious war against India.
At first glance, the notion is credible: the waning of the jihad in Jammu and
Kashmir has been mirrored by a sharp escalation of operations conducted elsewhere in
India by Islamist terror groups. Since 2006, when a murderous series of bombings
believed to have been conducted by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba claimed over
200 lives in Mumbai, similar strikes have taken place in several cities in north, west
and southern India — new-economy hubs like Hyderabad among them.
To discern the intentions of Pakistani sponsored-groups of terrorism in India, it is
useful to turn to their mass-media productions. In essence, three themes can be
discerned in this body of literature: the need for Islamist activists to educate their
audience in Pakistan of the legitimacy of jihad both in Jammu and Kashmir and
elsewhere in India; the representation of Hindus, Jews and Christians as eternal
enemies; and the proposition that the Pakistani state has, under General Musharraf,
betrayed its historic role as a sponsor of the jihad.
All three themes were laid out at a National Consultative Conference organised
by the Jamaat ud-Dawa, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s parent religious-political organisation,
in January 2007, to formulate an Islamist response to the peace process. Ghazwa
magazine, a Lashkar-e-Taiba house organ, approvingly quoted a participant in the
Conference, retired Pakistan Army General Faiz Ali Chishti, as asserting that “jihad
remains the only solution of this conflict.” According to Ghazwa, “he vociferously
lamented, ‘we have neglected to educate our younger generations about the Hindu
mindset.’ He said Hindus have never accepted Pakistan’s independence and are
continually scheming to destroy it, one way or another.”
A January 30, 2007, editorial in Ghazwa fleshed out these themes, arguing that
“Indo-Pak negotiations on the Kashmir have never borne any fruit.” “Up until now,”
the magazine’s editors argued, “only India has enjoyed the benefits of the Islamabad
Declaration. All Pakistan received from that agreement is an exchange of cultural
troupes. And as if that wasn’t enough, Indian politicians have taken the exchange of
such cultural troupes as a step forward by suggesting eradication of borders between
India and Pakistan. On the other hand, our own rulers are trying to weaken our
ideological borders, instead of strengthening them. Efforts are under way by the
Pakistani government to remove facts and material from the curriculum which
educates our youth about the designs of the Hindus, and exposes their real mindset
about Muslims in general and Pakistan in particular.”
Writing in Daily Jasarat, a Jamaat-e-Islami linked publication which has an
estimated circulation of 50,000, Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Abdul Rehman Makki recently
demanded that General Musharraf’s regime “discard the pro-United States policy that
has weakened the Kashmir cause. It is time to adopt a pro-jihad and pro-jihadi policy.
You give us the country for six months and we will conquer Kashmir. We will also
force the Americans out from Afghanistan.”
In a subsequent editorial published in its Friday supplement, the Daily Jasarat
54
demanded that the “slogan of jihad should reverberate in every nook and corner of
Pakistan. If Pakistan allows jihadis to infiltrate into India then Kashmir could be
liberated in six months.” “Within a couple of years,” the newspaper asserted, “the rest
of the territories of India could be conquered as well, and we can regain our lost glory.
We can bring back the era of Mughal rule. We can once again subjugate the Hindus
like our forefathers.”
How seriously ought we be taking such polemic? Two points are perhaps
important. First, Islamist opposition to the peace process is not new. In 2004 — with
General Musharraf’s regime firmly ensconced in power — the Lashkar-e-Taiba
affiliated Zarb-e-Taiba saw in an ongoing India-Pakistan cricket series evidence of a
moral degradation which in turn was represented as the cause of the waning jihad. “It
is sad,” the magazine lamented, “that Pakistanis are committing suicides after losing
cricket matches to India. But they are not sacrificing their lives to protect the honour of
the raped Kashmiri women. To watch a cricket match, we would take a day-off from
work. But for jihad, we have no time! Israel is a very tiny country. It does not play
cricket. Therefore, it is progressing. We should throw the bat and seize the sword and
instead of hitting ‘six’ or ‘four,’ cut the throats of the Hindus and the Jews.”
Despite such hostile polemic, though, the Pakistani state succeeded in ensuring
jihadi groups were compelled to wind down the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. There is
nothing in the 2007 data that suggests a need to revise the belief that Pakistan’s covert
service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate can calibrate the jihad in Jammu
and Kashmir at an intensity it believes best serve that country’s strategic interests.
Under intense international pressure, mired in domestic crisis, and with much of its
northern Army reserve committed to counter-insurgency operations, Pakistan simply
cannot afford to risk a 2002-like crisis with India. Hence, the steady decline in
violence seen within Jammu and Kashmir since 2002 is likely to continue — perhaps
escalating somewhat as elections due for later this year draw closer, but only for a
short time.
Indeed, the terror strikes seen elsewhere in India in recent months have, for the
most part, been of low and medium intensity — not the kinds of large-scale bombings
the Lashkar-e-Taiba demonstrated it had the capability to execute in 2006. What
evidence is available suggests these operations — most often conducted by the Harkat
ul-Jihad-e-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad with the assistance of
Islamist terror groups of Indian origin, like the Students Islamic Movement of India
and Mujahideen-e-Hind — have the consent of the ISI, which sees them as an
instrument with which to sustain pressure on India during the ongoing negotiations
process.
As such, the ‘Islamist Peril’ is a concern — but not the imminent crisis it is
sometimes represented as within and outside Jammu and Kashmir. Of more concern is
the fact that the Pakistani establishment is unwilling to abandon its use of Islamists for
waging covert warfare in India — or to decisively dismantle their infrastructure.
Despite the forward movement in India-Pakistan negotiations, both sides bottom-lines
are still profoundly divergent. Neither side is, moreover, in a position to sell major
concessions to their domestic constituencies. For all practical purposes, there remains
an impasse, albeit one that masquerades as a forward march.
Can events in Jammu and Kashmir move the peace process on?
Peace and the Dying Jihad

In the crumpled photograph found on his bullet-ridden body, Sartaj Ahmad has
his arm wrapped around the shoulder of a slender young woman: a woman, his
55
neighbours in the small south Kashmir village of Okay say, he hoped one day to marry.
The assault rifle that Ahmad fired from at Indian troops in the minutes before his death
is draped over his right shoulder.
Hours after Hizb ul-Mujahideen battalion commander Ahmad and his bodyguard,
Ashiq Husain Paddar, were shot dead near Kulgam, the Pakistan-based United Jihad
Council [UJC] announced a unilateral ceasefire on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr. In an
October 8, 2007, statement, UJC chairman and Hizb ul-Mujahideen supreme
commander Mohammad Yusuf Shah commanded “the mujahideen leadership and
cadres engaged in armed confrontation to strictly comply [with] the directions with
regard to the unilateral decision to cease fire.”
While the ceasefire achieved little, developments since then have been instructive.
Shah — a north Kashmir apple-orchard owner who prefers to use the somewhat
vainglorious pseudonym Syed Salahuddin, after the liberator of Jerusalem — has since
called for a Northern Ireland-model solution. Since the formulation suggests the Hizb
ul-Mujahideen is open to disarming itself, and because it would presumably be
followed by the organisation entering political life, both the ceasefire and the
announcement are of obvious significance.
Here, the peace process confronts the second peril: are Jammu and Kashmir’s
major secessionist forces in a position to forge, and implement, a workable peace
solution with India?
Ever since Nasir Ahmad Bhat took charge of the Hizb ul-Mujahideen’s Kashmir
Valley operations in 2004, his message to his Rawalpindi-based organisation was
simple: the terror group is comatose and its decline possibly terminal. Bhat discovered
that the organisation no longer had the popular legitimacy or political influence that it
needed to remain a credible force. Internecine feuding had plagued the organisation
since 2000-2001, when the Hizb first aborted a ceasefire announced by the
pro-dialogue commander, Abdul Majid Dar, and then arranged for his assassination.
Bhat sought to ship in new operatives, often Islamists to the right of the Hizb
ul-Mujahideen’s rank-and-file, from across the Line of Control to revive its dwindling
fortunes.
For the most part, the strategy failed. Hizb ul-Mujahideen central Kashmir
division commander Tajamul Islam Abdullah, for example, proved unable to mount a
single operation of consequence in over six months. Although he had served with
distinction for over six months with an al-Qaeda — linked Taliban communications
unit in Afghanistan, his organisational skills proved useless in Jammu and Kashmir.
A planned series of bombings scheduled for October 30, 2007, to commemorate the
historic battle between the forces of Prophet Mohammad and his opponents in the tribe
of Quraish at Badr, was betrayed to the Jammu and Kashmir Police. Abdullah’s
failures, like those of his superiors, were linked to his lack of local political legitimacy.
His family migrated from Srinagar to Karachi during the first India-Pakistan war of
1947-1948, and although it retains ties of kinship and marriage within Srinagar, it has
little direct relationship with the Islamist networks within Jammu and Kashmir from
which the Hizb draws its sustenance.
Evidence of the Hizb ul-Mujahideen’s diminishing influence is not hard to come
by. Earlier this month, People’s Democratic Party [PDP] dissident Ghulam Hasan Mir
made a bid to harvest support among Islamists by offering prayers at the graves of nine
Pakistani terrorists killed by the Indian Army along the Line of Control in Tangmarg
— not the ethnic-Kashmiri Hizb ul-Mujahideen cadre his party has historically
supported. Mohammad Ashraf Shah’s own funeral rites were ignored by politicians
in Jammu and Kashmir, a marked departure from 2001-2003, when the PDP actively
courted the terror group’s support. Nor, it bears mention, did a single south Kashmir
56
politician see it fit to condole with the families of Sartaj Ahmad or Pervez Ahmad
Padder.
In a startling demonstration of that change, both Ahmad and Abdullah are
believed to have quietly surrendered to a Jammu and Kashmir Police-run covert group
in December, 2007, in whose informal — and undeclared — custody they remain.
Just four years ago, when tacit Hizb ul-Mujahideen support helped propel the PDP to
power, the terror group seemed to hold the keys to power. Today, its own long-term
prospects are in question.
“I believe,” Shah told the Pakistan-based Islamist newspaper Jasarat on
September 20, 2007, “that Kashmir will only be freed through jihad, not dialogue.” In
practice, though, Hizb insiders have long known that Shah has wearied of the long
jihad he helped initiate in 1988.
An affluent apple farmer who participated in Kashmir’s electoral politics, Shah
was from the outset an improbable radical. His family embodies traditional Kashmiri
middle-class aspirations — not neoconservative Islamism. Shah’s oldest son, 35-year
old Shahid Yusuf, works as a teacher, while 30-year old Javed Yusuf is an agricultural
technologist. Twenty-six-year-old Shakeel Yusuf works as a medical assistant at a
government-run hospital. Wahid Yusuf, 24, graduated from the Government Medical
College in Srinagar, where the family’s contacts helped him obtain a seat through a
quota controlled by the Jammu and Kashmir Governor. Momin Yusuf, at 20 the
youngest of Shah’s sons, is an engineering student.
Starting in 2006, Shah gave a series of interviews that fuelled speculation that he
was in search of a road that could bring him home. Speaking to the Srinagar-based
Kashmir News Service in August 2006, for example, he said the organisation was
willing to initiate a dialogue with New Delhi. A ceasefire, he said, could also come
about if India brought troop levels “in Jammu and Kashmir to the 1989 position”
adding that “it should release detainees, it should stop all military operations, it should
acknowledge before the world community that there are three parties to the dispute.”
New Delhi flatly refused to meet the Hizb ul-Mujahideen’s extravagant terms.
Now, however, that the Hizb ul-Mujahideen seems willing to come to the table on
more reasonable terms, the political space for such a move seems to have diminished.
Should the group, or the Mirwaiz Farooq-led APHC be willing to participate in a
future election, most analysts agree they would harvest only a small percentage of
power. During their time in office, both the ruling Congress-PDP alliance and the
National Conference, which held power earlier, built significant constituencies. Even if
it should form a united front with Mirwaiz Farooq’s APHC — which, at present, has
neither the stomach nor resources to contest elections — there is little hope that the
new coalition would gain over a quarter of the seats to the Jammu and Kashmir
legislative assembly. For the both the APHC and the Hizb ul-Mujahideen, a political
process which holds out the prospect only of euthanasia is, after all, of little value.
Humiliated adversaries might be expected to be a source of satisfaction for New
Delhi — but aren’t. For one, the ceding of space by the Hizb ul-Mujahideen and
APHC to organisations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Geelani’s Tehrik-i-Hurriyat
means there is no credible force within Jammu and Kashmir which can endorse a
final-status settlement. As the Hizb ul-Mujahideen disintegrates, moreover, at least
some numbers of its more committed Islamists are likely to join the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a
phenomenon already evident in parts of northern Kashmir. New Delhi has promised to
facilitate the rehabilitation of Hizb ul-Mujahideen cadre and facilitate the return of
those still in camps across the Line of Control. Little, however, has been done. Nor
does the Government of India seemed to have applied its mind to creating a political
process in which the APHC and Hizb ul-Mujahideen might find space and a voice.
57
What, then, might the future hold out? When we speak of the conflict in Jammu
and Kashmir, we are in fact referring to a complex maze of entwined historical
contestations. It is precisely the fact that the conflict is not made up of a single crisis
but several that has rendered it so intractable — and will, inevitably, make the search
for a peace infinitely complex.
In search of solutions, it is tempting to seek a deux ex machina that will relieve us
of our obligation to engage with complexity. However, the history of the conflict has
demonstrated that one-pill cures often create more problems than they solve. We have
real reason for optimism — to recapitulate, growing people-to-people contact, the
ceasefire on the Line of Control and, of course, the decline in violence — but these are
fragile and could, only too easily, disintegrate with the next large bomb blast or
massacre.
In essence, a continuing decline of violence Jammu and Kashmir seems the most
likely short-term outcome — but it isn’t yet clear if the end of war will mean the
beginning of peace.
58
BETWEEN AMERICA AND ASIA

THE INTERNATIOONAL CONTEXT
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG PUNJAB TROUBLE-MAKERS
ABOUND
PUNJAB TROUBLE-MAKERS
ABOUND by Sandipani DASH
The Secret Service of Pakistan finance and train militant Sikhs, who dream of their
own state in North-Western India. In spite of their defeats, these independent groups
still make increasingly large threats.
1. T HE NORTH-WEST INDIAN STATE OF

Punjab remained peaceful through 2007, though it was marred by a single and
significant terrorist strike at Ludhiana in October. This is the 14th consecutive year the
State has remained relatively free of major political violence after the widespread
terrorist-secessionist movement for ‘Khalistan’ was comprehensively defeated in 1993.
Central intelligence sources, however, indicate that a concerted attempt to revive
militancy in the State is under way. Sources disclose that Pakistan-sponsored terrorist
cells are plotting to trigger sectarian violence, and that there had been a three-fold
increase of narcotics and arms trading into Punjab from Pakistan. The Intelligence
Bureau has reportedly indicated that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s
external intelligence agency, had chosen five groups in Pakistan, including the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), to train Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) militants. The BKI
has reportedly set up a common office with the LeT in Nankana Sahib, in West Punjab,
Pakistan. There is also a substantial amount of overseas funding and support for the
militant groups, coming primarily from Khalistani operatives in Germany, U.S., UK
and Canada, a trend that has been sustained since the separatist movement was
defeated.
On January 10, 2008, the Director General of Police in Punjab, N. P. S. Aulakh,

stated that the ISI was behind the regrouping of the BKI in Punjab. Addressing a Press
Conference at Chandigarh, he claimed the that
the BKI had engineered the Ludhiana bomb blast,
and had planned the elimination of the Dera
Sacha Sauda chief Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh,
Baba Bhaniarewala and certain other heads of
religious sects operating in Punjab. He added that
the BKI operatives arrested by the Ludhiana
Police had revealed that they secured arms
training in Pakistan. The Punjab Police chief
further disclosed to the media that the police had
identified a new terrorist group in the name of the
International Liberation Revolutionary Force
(ILRF) working in the Malwa region and had
arrested all six persons behind the formation of
this outfit, along with one AK 47 rifle and other weapons.
The most significant among the surviving leaders of the Khalistani militant
groups and many cadres are currently hosted by the ISI in Pakistan, and there is a
60
ABOUND
constant effort to revive recruitment and terrorism in Punjab, as well as a continuous

vigil for opportunities that may help provoke a favourable extremist mobilisation.
In early May 2007, for instance, intelligence agencies revealed that the LeT and
the ISI were trying to revive militancy in Punjab through sympathisers of Sikh militant
groups like the BKI, the International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF), Khalistan
Zindabad Force (KZF) and Khalistan Commando Force (KCF). Information was
reportedly sent to the Punjab Police about plans to target towns in the Jalandhar,
Ludhiana and Pathankot regions. Instructions had, at this junction, been issued to the
authorities to monitor the activities of sympathisers of these groups, who were
allegedly sending funds through hawala (illegal money transfers) to "re-launch their
separatist movement."
2. The revival of forgotten slogans for ‘Khalistan’ was again witnessed on the
‘lunatic fringes’ of the State’s politics in 2007. A constant campaign was
re-orchestrated by the radicals against the Dera Sacha Sauda – a group regarded as
‘heretic’ by orthodox Sikhs – and its head, Baba Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh, accused of
‘blasphemy’ and of ‘hurting Sikh sentiments’. The Dera had published advertisements
with Ram Rahim Singh dressed as the Tenth Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh. The
controversy had dovetailed into party political conflicts, since the Dera had supported
the Congress Party in the Legislative Assembly Elections in February 2007, helping
the Congress secure 37 of 65 seats in the Malwa belt, where the Dera boasted hundreds
of thousands of followers. The Congress Party was, nonetheless, defeated in the
Assembly Elections, but the victorious Shiromani Akali Dal, a party that secured its
mandate from its claim to represent Sikh interests, was left with an issue to pick with
the Dera. Further, intelligence sources did confirm that the troubles had started from
61
ABOUND
the Gurudwara at Talwandi Sabo after "a significant amount of ‘chatter’ between
priests there and Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence handlers as well as Wadhawa
Singh, the Babbar Khalsa International ‘chief’, who is being retained in comfort – with
a small surviving rump of cadres – at Karachi."
There was only one terrorist attack in Punjab during 2007 – Sikh militants did
manage to trigger a bomb blast inside a cinema hall in Ludhiana, killing seven persons,
including a 10-year old child, and injuring 40 others on October 14, 2007. The victims
were identified as migrants from other States, who were watching a Bhojpuri language
film at the city’s Shringaar Cinema. Two days after the blast, on October 16, National
Security Advisor (NSA) M.K. Narayanan stated that attempts were being made in
Pakistan to revive Sikh extremism in Punjab. On board Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan
Singh’s aircraft, the NSA stated, "There has been a manifest attempt in Pakistan to
build up a radical Sikh environment. Sporadic blasts were creating sensation, but the
desired effect of sustained tension was not working. We had intelligence about four to
six months back that a lot of effort was going into attempts to foment militancy." He
added further, "We have tracked intelligence information, we have studied the way
such attacks take place and we can read a pattern. We have also seen signs of
resuscitation of militant groups in Canada, U.S. and Germany. We had been bracing
for such a move by such elements."
3. The Punjab Police registered a number of counter-terrorism successes in 2007, as

had been the case in previous years. On April 14, Balbir Singh alias Beera, a
Pakistan-trained terrorist, was arrested from his native Chak Thaliwal village in the
Ferozepore District. He was part of Paramjit Singh Dhadi’s gang of the ISYF, and
cases of terrorism, murder and kidnapping for ransom were pending against him.
Again, on June 15, Punjab Police claimed to have foiled an attempt to reorganise the
terrorist base in the State through a conspiracy to kill some high profile religious and
political leaders. The General Secretary of the Shiromani Akali Dal’s youth wing in
Rupnagar District, Swaranjeet Singh alias Bobby of Bahadarpur, and a Bhindranwale
Tigers Force (BTF) militant Gurcharan Singh alias Kala of Bawani village were
arrested. Bobby and Kala had planned to assassinate religious leader Baba Piara Singh
Bhaniarawale and had formed the Khalsa Action Committee, to recruit ‘like-minded
persons’.
In September 2007, 3.5 kilograms of RDX were recovered from a car owned by
Jagraon resident Gurpreet Singh, son of a former terrorist. Police said that Gurpreet
Singh, who is absconding, met BKI chief Wadhawa Singh earlier in 2007, after
travelling to Lahore through Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. The Punjab Police foiled
another attempt by BKI terrorists to assassinate Gurmeet Ram Raheem Singh, and
heads of two sects other than the Dera Sacha Sauda, when three members of a BKI
module were arrested along with explosives on December 13. The Senior
Superintendent of Police (Kapurthala), Rakesh Aggarwal, disclosed that 12 other BKI
gang members, including its kingpin Gurpreet Singh, were still at large.
The Additional District and Sessions Judge in Chandigarh Ravi Kumar Sondhi,
on July 27, convicted six persons out of a group of nine accused in the assassination
case of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh. Jagtar Singh Hawara of the BKI,
Shamsher Singh, Lakhwinder Singh, Balwant Singh and Gurmeet Singh were held
guilty on charges of murder, attempt to murder, abetment to suicide, criminal
conspiracy under sections 4, 5 and 6 of the Explosives Act. Nasib Singh who was also
accused of murder, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy and abetment to suicide,
was acquitted on these charges, owing to lack of evidence, and was held guilty only
under Section 5 of the Explosives Act. The only accused who was acquitted of all
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ABOUND
charges was Navjot Singh. Proceedings against Paramjit Singh Bheora, declared a
proclaimed offender in the case, are still pending. The ninth accused, Jagtar Singh Tara,
was still absconding. On July 31, the Judge awarded the death sentence to Hawara and
Balwant Singh. Three other convicts were awarded life imprisonment for their
involvement in the criminal conspiracy, while the sixth, Naseeb Singh, was given 10
years imprisonment under the Explosives Act, along with a fine of INR 10,000.
However, since Naseeb, the oldest of the accused at 72, had already undergone more
than the sentence awarded to him, he was freed soon after the sentencing.
4. Outside Punjab, a BKI militant, Gurdip Singh Rana, was sentenced to three years’
imprisonment on June 11, after being convicted under the Arms Act at Kurukshetra in
the neighbouring State of Haryana. Wanted by the Punjab Police, Rana, who was
hiding in the Sujra village of Kurukshetra District, was arrested on October 17, 2005.
In 2007, Punjab also became an extended area of operation for the banned
Assam-based outfit, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). On August 13,
2007, two ULFA militants were arrested from Jalandhar following a joint operation by
the Western Command Military Intelligence and Punjab Police. The duo was identified
as Hemanta Roy and Jagdish Das. Roy, who hails from Shingrapara village in Assam’s
Baksa District, is a member of the outfit’s ‘709th battalion’ and a relative of Hira
Sarania, ‘commander’ of the unit. Das was reportedly living in Jalandhar for the past
four months and was arrested from the Domariapull area. Roy had joined Das three
months earlier, and was working as a waiter in the hotel, from where he was arrested.
Senior Superintendent of Police Arpit Shukla stated that five driving licences, two
PAN cards, a camera, defence maps and some sensitive documents, were recovered
from the militants. An unidentified Army official involved in the operation disclosed,
"This is perhaps the first time that we have had specific information on ULFA militants
in Punjab. The cell could have been tasked with procuring guns from across the border
or via Jammu and Kashmir or could have had nefarious designs to destabilise the
region with the help of Pakistan’s ISI."
The ISI supports and coordinates its operation with a number of active Diaspora
groups across the world, using its embassies and consulates as points of contact,
coordination and recruitment. SAIR noted in an earlier assessment:
On May 6, 2007, a meeting organised by the Council of Khalistan at Birmingham
in the United Kingdom (UK) was attended by the habitual India-baiter in the UK
Parliament, Lord Nazir Ahmed, and by ‘representatives’ of a number of other groups
including the obscure ‘Tehrik-e-Kashmir’ represented by Muhammad Ghalib. On June
6, 2007, similarly, a rally was successfully organised at Frankfurt in Germany (part of
a series planned on that date for Chicago, San Francisco, Vancouver, Surrey, Frankfurt,
Sydney and London – the other rallies made little impression) by a combination of
Diaspora groups under the banner of the "German Sikh Community", which sought,
among other things, strong action against the Dera Sacha Sauda and its "criminal
Baba" Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh. Such ‘events’ are regularly stage-managed by
extremist Diaspora groups in close coordination with the ISI, which uses Pakistani
embassies and consulates in various countries as contact points with anti-India
extremist elements, not only for propaganda activities and fund generation, but,
crucially, for recruitment. A trickle of volunteers continues to be diverted by these
radical Diaspora organisations into Pakistani training camps, building the ‘reserves’
that are to be activated when conditions become ‘favourable’.
In violence-afflicted South Asia, Punjab is the rare exception where the state
recovered territorial and administrative control after extremist violence had led to a
near-complete breakdown of governance. However, the Sikh militants’ calculus, as of
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ABOUND
their supporters and sponsors in Pakistan and among Diaspora elements, is that, at
some stage, "a convergence of political incompetence, an emotive public issue, and
public discontent, will abruptly catalyse a resurgence of terror." Although such a
resurgence of terror in Punjab remains a remote possibility, there are compelling
reasons not to lower the guard in this strategically crucial State.
64
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG THE IRANIAN DOSSIER:
IN WASHINGTON THE
BUREAUCRATS ARE WINNING
THE IRANIAN DOSSIER:

IN WASHINGTON THE
BUREAUCRATS ARE WINNING by John C. HULSMAN, Ph.D
The report by the American intelligence agencies on atomic weapons in Tehran has
inflicted the harshest blow to Bush and his supporters for a military option. The
problem, however, remains: the country of the Ayatollahs wants the Bomb.
R ARELY HAS A SEEMINGLY BLAND

government report become so sexy. In early December 2007, global newspaper
headlines shrieked the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the
educated guess of the 16 U.S. spy agencies as to the state of Iran’s nuclear program.
The simplified story ran as follows: as was true with Iraq, once again the Bush
administration has been made to look very foolish, as Iran, far from looming as a
nuclear threat, actually stopped its weapons program in 2003. This was sweet
vindication for enemies of the neo-conservative president, yet another sign of his
tendency to shoot first, and ask questions later.
The newspapers are right. The National Intelligence Estimate is vitally important,
but not in the way that they think. It is not just another chapter in the story of an
administration’s incompetence. Rather, it lifts the lid on the current state of
bureaucratic politics in Washington, signaling the beginning of the end for one of the
most contentious presidencies in American history. Unfortunately, the Bush White
House’s intelligence bungling has obscured the second key finding of the report, one at
odds with the condescending smiles of many in Europe; Iran’s pursuit of nuclear
weapons will be the major foreign policy test of whoever is elected to succeed the
hapless Texan.
What It Says
The National Intelligence Estimate, released on December 3rd, 2007, was the
combined report of the U.S. intelligence community into the state of Iran’s nuclear
program. It involved the opinions of hundreds of officials and evaluated thousands of
documents, critically, including recently intercepted communications and other fresh
information. Beyond the headlines, the NIE made certain controversial and politically
important statements.
First, it was an about-face from the 2005 NIE on Iran, which had categorically
stated that the Islamic Republic had an active nuclear weapons program. Certainly,
America’s spies were wrong either two years ago or now; as such the agencies were
tacitly admitting to yet another American intelligence failure over a matter of primary
American security.
Second, it maintains that Iran had indeed possessed a long-running covert nuclear
weapons program, while lying about its nuclear intentions to the international
community for well more than a decade. This is not a finding that should reassure the
world.
65
IN WASHINGTON THE
Third, this covert program was suspended in 2003. While the report fails to make
clear exactly why the mullahs hesitated, the NIE does assert that the Iranian regime
seems amenable to the traditional rational inducements of great power politics, carrots
and sticks. Such an assertion is a serious blow to neo-conservatives, caught as they are
saying that the Iranian government’s irrationality makes deterrence of a Persian bomb
impossible. If Iran responds normally to international diplomatic pressure, then it is
obvious that negotiations, and not preventive bombing, must be the policy tool of first
resort.
However, the report does not make clear what inducements caused the mullahs to
hesitate. While general international diplomatic pressure was ratcheting up at the time,
more specific American military sticks, the then-successful invasion of next-door Iraq,
may have made the difference. If this was so, inadvertently the disastrous Iraq war
may have served a very salutary purpose. But the rest of the world does not want to
hear that sticks, despite their misuse by the administration, still play a major role in
global diplomacy.
Fourth, while accepting the weaponization program is on hold, the NIE notes that
Iran is rapidly moving forward with uranium enrichment, under the guise of civilian
use. Enriching uranium in sufficient quantities has always been the difficult part of
acquiring nuclear weapons. In engineering terms, the warhead itself is relatively easy
to construct. In other words, in plain view of the rest of us, Iran is working on the
hardest single problem they need to overcome in obtaining a bomb.
Lastly, the report speculates that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons between
2010 and 2015. This can be looked at in a couple of ways. While it certainly makes the
administration’s all-too-often heard claims of imminent danger look hysterical, 2010 is
not all that far way. Whoever succeeds President Bush will have to navigate this
demanding timetable.
What It Means
In the wake of the report, the president was left defending the indefensible,
his current bellicose policy toward Iran. Defiantly ignoring facts, President Bush
insisted that, “nothing has changed,”1 but of course this was nonsense. The NIE
became the last in a series of checks on the Bush administration’s power.
Indeed, the report cannot be seen in isolation; rather, it is strongly influenced by
the Iraq debacle, where neo-conservatives in the administration, particularly in the
Vice President’s office, ran roughshod over the objections and hesitations of senior
diplomats and intelligence officers. Worse, in the wake of the failure to find the
weapons of mass destruction that the President had made his raison d’etre for the
invasion, many of these same officials were left holding the bag, being blamed by
neo-conservative allies of the administration for the misadventure. They were
determined that this would not happen again. The NIE signals the bureaucratic victory
of career staffers over the President’s ideologues; it is the beginning of the end of the
neo-conservative adventurism that has so marred the Bush policy record.
In 2004, following the Iraq intelligence debacle, U.S. spy agencies were
restructured giving intelligence chiefs more autonomy from political pressure. As a
result the White House was effectively locked out of the NIE process. A number of
those who had questioned the Iraq invasion congregated in the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence (ODNI), which played the critical coordinating role in the
1P. BAKER and R. WRIGHT, “US Renews Efforts to Keep Coalition Against Tehran,” Washington Post,
December 5, 2007.
66
IN WASHINGTON THE
drafting of the report. At last, administration critics from within the government had a
chance to bureaucratically push back at the excesses of the Bush White House.
The NIE, in saying that Iran presently does not have an active nuclear weapons
program, that such an effort was suspended in 2003, and that Tehran will be unable to
produce a bomb until 2010-2015, dealt a decisive bureaucratic blow to
neo-conservative efforts to mount a military strike against Iran in the last year of the
Bush presidency. Such an outcome was bitterly admitted by their bureaucratic foes. A
long-time neo-conservative aide to the Vice President acknowledged the report’s
authors, “knew how to pull out the rug from under us.”2 Former UN Ambassador,
John Bolton, was characteristically blunt, “You could not read the judgments and not
assume that this was intended to change policy. It shredded the Bush administration
policy.”3 Robert Kagan, an influential neo-conservative thinker close to the White
House, went so far as to urge that the NIE merited a change in administration policy.
He noted grimly that the military option is, “now gone,”4 and that the Bush White
House should recognize this, throw in the towel, and begin direct talks with Iran.
For the neo-conservatives rightly saw the context of the NIE as bureaucratically
the last stake in the heart of the administration. Following the Democratic victory in
the mid-terms, the age-old American constitutional system of checks and balances,
both formal and bureaucratic, has begun to reassert itself. Court rulings have made
clear there are limits to any president’s ability to hide behind the commander-in-chief
rationale as a pretext for possessing almost unlimited power. The Congress, long
shamefully dormant, has begun a series of hearings on the war, exposing some of the
administration’s most grievous flaws. Party identification, evenly divided when the
President came to power, now runs a staggering 50-36%, in favor of the Democrats,
part of the political price for the Iraq war. The President has also made some
accommodation with reality, installing a second term team of Secretary of State Rice
and Secretary of Defense Gates, far less eager to go along with the neo-conservative
demands of the Vice President’s office. The revenge of the careerists is just another
example of the American ship of state righting its course.
But if this bureaucratic shift is undoubtedly good news for both America and the
world, there is also something worrying about the aftermath of the NIE. Amid the
neo-conservative sour grapes, Robert Kagan, one of the most thoughtful members of
the school of thought, made an interesting observation. The NIE, he observed, made
the chance of winning European support for further sanctions, “impossible.”5 Given
the fact that the NIE makes clear Iran is amenable to carrots and sticks, this would be a
disastrous development, as the puny first two rounds of UN sanctions are unlikely to
sway anyone in Iran from developing a nuclear program.
Yet Kagan, at least initially, seems to be right. Since the NIE has been issued, U.S.
diplomats have reported that there is little appetite for a third round of UN sanctions,
which, even if enacted, would still fail to really pressure the mullahs into coming clean
about their enrichment program and giving up the dream of possessing a nuclear
weapon. As Michael Rubin, a leading analyst at the neo-conservative American
Enterprise Institute, makes clear, the NIE, “almost gives Berlin, Beijing, and Moscow
an excuse not to come together for a third round of sanctions.”6 Indeed, China’s
Ambassador to the UN, Wang Guangya, complacently said, regarding further sanctions,
2 J. SOLOMON and S. GORMAN, “In Iran Reversal, Bureaucrats Triumphed Over Cheney Team,” Washington
Post, January 14, 2008.
3 Ibid.
4 Baker and Wright, Washington Post, December 5, 2007.
5 Ibid.
6 Baker and Wright, “A Blow to Bush’s Tehran Policy,” Washington Post, December 4, 2007.
67
IN WASHINGTON THE
“I think we all start from the perception that things have changed.”7 One can be
excused for not thinking the ambassador is assessing the case on its merits; China
recently negotiated a major new deal with Iran for oil exploration and production.
Such an attitude is both irresponsible and alarming. Paradoxically, the baleful
result of the NIE seems to be to make forming an international coalition to stop Iran
acquiring nukes far harder. The NIE signals to the rest of the world that the pressure is
off; why even the Americans do not think Iran will momentarily acquire a nuclear
weapons capability. As a result, why should the rest of the world think through the
hard choices that await us all in the medium-term?
The simple answer is that without international consensus over a diplomatic
strategy to deal with Iran in a couple of years the world will again face the dire
existential policy options that, presently, it is so relieved to have avoided – either
accepting an Iranian bomb (and the Middle East nuclear arms race that is sure to
follow) or a bombing campaign, with all the catastrophic side effects (the end of
NATO, the destabilization of pro-American regimes by the Arab street and Islamic
radicals) that implies. The NIE must not be the excuse for the international community
to back off from dealing with this vital problem.
Conclusion: Some Good News

And yet, if evaluated properly, the NIE does one thing more; it shows the
way forward for dealing with Iran in terms of policy. For the fact that Iran has
suspended its nuclear weapons program means that there is time to assemble the
intricate international coalition necessary to deal with the problem. As Iran’s leaders
hid the existence of the program for more than a decade, it can be assumed that they
were (and are) serious about the possibility of acquiring a nuclear capability. The
suspension in 2003 does give room for hope; the Iranians seem rational and amendable
to diplomatic carrots and sticks. All the more reason for the international community to
devise a comprehensive strategy with both, including American diplomatic recognition,
increased global investment and a nonaggression agreement, while sticks would
include an investment freeze (with Russian and Chinese, as well as European
participation), which could drag the Iranian economy to its knees. Iran’s continued
efforts at enrichment, as well as the 2010-2015 timetable for acquiring the capability
for nuclear weapons, means one thing more: there is time to come up with a diplomatic
solution, but it is not infinite.
As usual, President Bush is mistaken. No matter how many times he says it, the
NIE does not signal business as usual. Rather, it heralds the end of the adventurism
that so damaged his presidency. This is undoubtedly good news for all. Sadly, in
discrediting the President’s efforts to characterize Iran as an imminent danger, the NIE
has given cover to all those who would rather not think through the complexities of the
current situation. Lastly, and hopefully, the very assertions in the report signal a
diplomatic way forward that may allow the mullahs to change their calculations about
acquiring a nuclear capability, based on a reading of their own national interests.
Rarely has a government report mattered so much.
7 Baker and Wright, Washington Post, December 5, 2007.
68
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG THE WORST CASE SCENARIO
IS NOT AS BAD AS IT SEEMS
THE WORST CASE SCENARIO

IS NOT AS BAD AS IT SEEMS by Ariel COHEN
An American study simulates one of the worst nightmares for the West: the blockade of
the Strait of Hormuz by Iran. A timely and concentrated response could check Tehran.
And avoid the possibility of a world thirsting for oil.
1. T ODAY, Not since the Team A – Team B

debate over the Soviet threat in the 1970s, has an intelligence estimate played such a
major role in U.S. foreign policy. It may be argued that the Iran National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) is the pivotal event in U.S. foreign policy in 2007, with repercussions
for 2008 and beyond.1 The NIE may lay the ground work for a dramatic turnaround
of the U.S. foreign policy on Iran and herald a further decline in the perception of
American power in the world.
The report acknowledges that Iran managed a clandestine and sophisticated
nuclear weapons program until the fall of 2003, when it allegedly stopped it due to
international diplomatic pressure and sanctions.2
Skeptics are already piling up to criticize the report. First, its three top authors are
not Iranian experts. Nor are they intelligence officers with experience in field
operations and spy tradecraft. They are arms control analysts and diplomats. 3
Therefore, their understanding of Iranian politics and of “sources and methods” of
intelligence collected in preparation of the report is somewhat limited.
Secondly, some commentators blamed the NIE authors, Thomas Fingar, the
former head of the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR),
Ambassador Kenneth Brill, and Vann H. Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer
for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Non-Proliferation, of harboring partisan
agendas.4
Thirdly, the published partial Estimate, 9 pages out of 150, declares that Iran
stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, but never mentions the fundamental
events of that era. This was when the U.S. went to Iraq after liberating Afghanistan.5
Many in Iran, including then-president Mohammad Khatami, wanted to negotiate with
the U.S. to prevent their country’s encirclement by the U.S. troops and pro-American
regimes. A temporary halt in the nuclear weapons program made sense as a negotiating
tactic then, but does not make sense since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office and
launched his blood-curling rhetoric in 2005.
The NIE bottom line is, whether or not Iran took a breather in doomsday weapons
development in 2003, the intelligence community is not sure whether these activities
have restarted. Those who say that Iran “does not have “a nuclear weapons program”
1 National Intelligence Council, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” November 2007, at
http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf (December 07, 2007).
2 Ibid.
3 R. KENNETH, “U.S. Intel Possibly Duped by Iran,” Newsmax, December 4, 2007, at www.newsmax.com/
timmerman/iran_nukes/2007/12/04/54359.html (December 06, 2007).
4 Ibid
5 J.R. BOLTON, “The Flaws in the Iran Report,” The Washington Post, December 6, 2007, at
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.27201/pub_detail.asp (December 07, 2007).
69
today are utterly misleading – deliberately or otherwise.
2. The NIE release is the latest blow in the long-running battle between
supporters of a hard line towards Iran and robust American foreign policy, and those
who give absolute preference to diplomacy over the use of force, or the threat to use
force. The former include Vice President Dick Cheney, while the latter count today
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Admiral
Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Admiral William Fallon, Central
Command, who would be waging the war. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte
is among NIE supporters, government sources said.
Outside the executive branch, the NIE is likely cheered by the Baker-Hamilton
Commission members, including the former national security adviser General Brent
Scowcroft and other heavyweights from the Bush One Administration.
The NIE already has created winners and losers – domestically and
internationally. Among the winners, President Ahmadinejad, who claimed credit for
Iran’s achieving ranks of a “nuclear state” and derided the U.S. and its intelligence
community, which based the report on “faulty intelligence.”6 He takes credit for the
rejection of Western demands by his London negotiator Saeed Jalili.
Ahmadinejad came awfully close to admitting that Iran either has a bomb or is on
track to get it. Otherwise, why would Teheran spend billions building an arsenal of
increasingly long range ballistic missiles?
Other winners include Russia and China. They will implacably oppose the future
U.S. sanction demands in the UN Security Council. Now they can say that the
sanctions are unnecessary as the U.S. intelligence assessment claims that there is no
Iran nuclear program.
Vladimir Putin would reiterate that the European deployment of a U.S. ballistic
missile defense system is against Russia, not Iran, and hence Moscow’s fervid
opposition to it.7
Russia and China are major suppliers of military and nuclear technology to the
mullocracy, while Germany will be happy to continue business as usual in Iran. The
only question is, why has Iran educated hundreds of nuclear physicists and engineers
in the best military technology colleges – in Russia and around the world? Just to run a
civilian nuclear reactor?
Domestically, the U.S. intelligence community, celebrates that this time it has
distanced itself from the White House’s policy on Iran. The analysts are trying to do a
“mea culpa” after Iraq. They believe that they were unjustly blamed for Iraq’s initial
failures when their assessment of the Iraqi WMD program was rejected, then made the
fall guy. Another executive branch winner is the State Department, which is now riding
high after losing the turf battles to the White House and the Pentagon in the run-up to
the Iraq war.
Among the losers are President Bush and Dick Cheney, U.S. credibility, and the
remnants of the neo-cons. The neo-cons get payback for beating the drums for the
Iraq war. Maybe they cried wolf too early. But now, the real wolf may have fled the
barn.
Another loser is Israel. Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Deputy Defense
Minister Efrain Sneh, who spent the last fifteen years tracking Iranian missile and
nuclear program have rejected the report. As Barak told an Israeli Army Radio, "It
6 Iran: Nuclear report a ‘victory,” CNN, December 05, 2007, at http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast

/12/05/iran.nuclear/index.html (December 06, 2007).
7 T. SHANKER and S.L. MYERS, Putin Criticizes U.S. Officials on Missile Defense, The New York Times, Oct.
13, 2007, at www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/world/europe/13russia.html?_r=1&oref=slogin (Dec. 2007)
70
seems Iran in 2003 halted, for a certain period of time, its military nuclear program but,
as far as we know, it has probably since revived it."8 But what may be portrayed as
Israel’s “alarmism” will be now used to draw a wedge between the U.S. and the Jewish
state. For the neo-cons, the loss may be tactical and political. For Israel, it may be
existential and fatal.
Finally, the biggest loser – the Iranian people. Now the chances of the U.S. going
after the mullahs, militarily or through regime change, are minimal. Iranians are on
their own.
The U.S. cannot credibly lead as our key policy on Iran is repudiated by its own
intelligence community. If the U.S. won’t lead on Iran, our reputation is undermined
from Warsaw and Prague to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. For the moderate Gulf states,
with large and strategically placed Shia minorities, Iran is an aspiring hegemon that
might overturn the apple cart of autocracy and oil profits. U.S. Gulf allies are terrified
by Teheran.
Thus, an internal Washington power game, between the Cheney camp and the
State Department-CIA-Realpolitik supporters, is affecting U.S. policy towards Iran
and the Middle East in a major way.
3. The debates about a possible war with Iran was preoccupying Washington for
the last 18 months, despite the fact that the probability of a real military confrontation
never raised above 25-30%. This is because Iraq, with its high costs and questionable
justifications, has left its indelible mark on the Bush Administration. Moreover, one of
the lessons of Iraq was to exhaust diplomacy and not to rush to war.
One of the clear consequences of the global war on terror and especially the Iraq
war was a great escalation in the price of oil, from the high $20s before 9/11 to $99 in
November of 2007. Thus, it was important to explore the costs and domestic and
international repercussions of a U.S. military strike against Teheran’s nuclear program,
especially its oil market consequences.
From December 2006 to March 2007, the Heritage Foundation scholars and an
outside economic modeling firm conducted a gaming exercise and a computer simula-
tion that examined the likely economic and policy consequences of a major oil
disruption in the Persian Gulf. The exercise utilized a realistic scenario, state-of-the-art
macroeconomic modeling, and a knowledgeable team of subject-matter experts from
government, business, academia, and research institutes from around Washington,
D.C.9
This project was a proof-of-principle investigation that combined computer
modeling and gaming to capture how U.S. decisions during a crisis might affect how
global energy markets and the U.S. economy adjust to sudden and significant
disruptions of oil supplies. In this scenario, the United States responded to a crisis
precipitated by an attempted Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
The game began with a series of economic results based on a scenario in which
Iran began blockading the Strait of Hormuz in January 2007. The assumption was that
Iran may succeed in fully blockading the strait for up to one week, but after that, some
oil shipping would slowly resume.
The Heritage Foundation economics team, supported by analysts at Global
Insight, then modeled the blockade's likely economic effects on world oil prices and
the U.S. economy. They found that under worst-case circumstances: the price of West
8 T. McGirk, “Iran Assessment Creates an Israeli Headache,” Time Magazine, Dec. 06, 2007, at
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1691682,00.html (December 07, 2007).
9 W. BEACH, J. CARAFANO, A. COHEN, L. CURTIS, T. L. FOERTSH, A. ACOSTA FRASER, B.
LIEBERMAN and J. PHILLIPS, “If Iran Provokes an Energy Crisis: Modeling the Problem in a War Game,” The
Heritage Foundation, July 25, 2007, at www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/cda07-03.cfm
71
Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude10 would peak in the third quarter of 2007 at $150 per
barrel, an increase of $85 per barrel; real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product
(GDP) would fall by over $161 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007; private non-farm
employment would decline by over 1 million jobs by the middle of 2008; and real
disposable personal income would be more than $260 billion lower by the fourth
quarter of 2007.
With this set of economic forecasts, the game participants devised policy
responses to mitigate the oil price shock and subsequent economic harm. They
recommended a number of policy moves, which are described later in this report. The
economics team ran new economic simulations based on these policy responses and
found that: the price of WTI crude would peak in the first quarter of 2007 at $75 per
barrel, an increase of less than $12 per barrel; real GDP would remain at roughly
non-crisis levels during 2007; employment would expand by 109,000 in 2007; and real
disposable personal income would grow at non-crisis rates during 2007.
The project demonstrated the feasibility of modeling the economic consequences
of crisis decision making and responses during an oil price shock induced by a hostile
foreign government.
The results of the game suggest that an official response to an actual crisis based
on an Iran blockade of the strait might be effective. The experts who played the roles
of the U.S. government officials opted for a focused but restrained use of military
power. This use of force demonstrated the U.S. determination to uphold freedom of
navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. The American response did much to calm global
markets and reassure American consumers. In addition, the experts chose to take a
minimalist approach to interfering in U.S. domestic markets.
As global energy demand grows—especially among China, India, and other
developing countries—competition for access to oil is escalating. The Persian Gulf is
becoming the most important bottleneck, making freedom of navigation through the
strait a vital American and global interest.
Indeed, serious thinking about policy decision making during an energy crisis is
needed more than ever before. Global energy markets have never been more integrated
or more competitive. U.S. decisions during a crisis will affect not just every
American consumer, but the worldwide economy.
The purpose of this exercise was to gain data on how the United States would
respond to an oil crisis resulting from an attempted blockade of oil flowing from the
Persian Gulf. From these data emerge insights into policy decisions that should or
should not be made during an energy crisis.
Heritage Foundation experts developed the scenario used in the simulation.
Day 1: After one month of debate (which gives markets time to factor action into
oil prices), the United Nations Security Council imposes significant sanctions on Iran
over its suspicious nuclear program.
Day 2: Iran withdraws from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and tests a nuclear
weapon.
Day 3: The U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites, air bases, and air defense targets
but spares Iran's oil infrastructure to minimize disruption of the world oil market.
Day 4: Iran announces that it will deny its oil exports to any country that does
not condemn the U.S. action, but it continues to produce oil at the same levels. Most
countries that refuse to condemn the U.S. action either are oil exporters (e.g., the
United Kingdom and Canada) or do not import Iranian oil anyway.
Day 5: Pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq stage an uprising, attack coalition forces,
10 The price of WTI crude is one of many benchmark spot market prices for petroleum.
72
and shut down Iraqi oil production in the southern oil fields. This takes roughly 60%
of Iraq's oil exports off the world market for an indefinite period. Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez announces an oil embargo against the U.S. in support of Iran.11 Most
other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries condemn the
U.S. "aggression" but ignore Iran's call for an embargo. Sudan and Libya embargo
oil exports to the U.S., but this has little effect because the U.S. imports very little oil
from them. China, Japan, and the European Union condemn the U.S. and escape
Iranian oil threats. Russia condemns the U.S. and continues oil production at
maximum capacity to exploit higher oil prices.
Day 6: An oil tanker is sunk by a mine in the shipping channel in the Strait of
Hormuz. Iran is believed to be responsible but does not claim responsibility. U.S.
intelligence believes that the mine was laid by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in
civilian clothes operating from a fishing vessel or an Iranian Kilo-class submarine.
Saudi Arabia announces that it will divert as much oil as possible to Red Sea ports
through secure pipelines.
Based on this scenario, Heritage Foundation analysts estimated the losses in oil
shipping out of the Persian Gulf and their effects on world oil spot prices. These
estimates also became a central parameter of the game. Participants were presented
with two levels of oil price spikes associated with a short interruption of oil supplies
and a more protracted disruption.
Scenario 1. The moderate-case scenario is the loss of 2.5 million barrels per day
(mbd). This amount is insufficient to trigger International Energy Agency (IEA)
emergency mechanisms. Demand is reduced, but not enough to drive prices much
higher than they were in the summer of 2006. Provided the U.S. government makes
the appropriate decisions, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is utilized at a rate of
15% of the total decrease in supply.
Scenario 2. In the worst-case scenario, oil shipping drops by 6 mbd or more and
supplies are disrupted significantly for the first two calendar quarters of 2007. This is
sufficient to trigger IEA mechanisms, which start at a loss of 7% to IEA members in
total or to an individual member. IEA Integrated Energy Policy calls for a 7% cut in
demand when the policy is triggered, but analysts at Global Insight12 who assisted
Heritage Foundation scholars in estimating the economic effects of the oil disruption
assumed that the cuts were less than this. If demand is cut too much and the SPR is
released, there are no real problems with supply, stocks rise too much, and there is no
justification for a high price. SPR is utilized as in the moderate-case scenario.
Heritage Foundation experts also facilitated the actual game. The game began
with a briefing on the scenario, including the trigger that disrupts oil production and
the reactions of key world players. The policymakers directed policy; the federal
agencies and industry members determined the best way to implement and meet the
technical needs of the policy.
Chart 1 shows the changes in crude oil prices in the scenarios. In the
11 If Venezuela actually followed through, this could lead to short-term disruptions and higher world oil prices.
The U.S. would be forced to find substitutes for Venezuelan oil, which would be difficult in the short run because
U.S. refineries are configured for the heavier and sourer Venezuelan oil.
12 Global Insight provides the most comprehensive economic, financial, and political coverage of countries,
regions, and industries available from any source, covering over 200 countries and spanning more than 170
industries and using a unique combination of expertise, models, data, and software within a common analytical
framework to support planning and decision making. Recognized as the most consistently accurate forecasting
company in the world, Global Insight has over 3,800 clients in industry, finance, and government, with revenues
in excess of $95 million, 600 employees, and 23 offices in 13 countries covering North and South America,
Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The Heritage Foundation worked with Global Insight to determine
some of the results outlined in this report. For more complete information on the methodology and
macroeconomic model used, see the appendices.
73
moderate-case and worst-case scenarios, prices increased significantly, but the

worst-case scenario clearly delineates the policy challenge. As a prudent measure, the
participants quickly decided to address the worst-case outcome, in which the price of
WTI crude rose to $150 per barrel by the third quarter of 2007, compared to $65 per
barrel if no crisis had occurred.
This significant jump in crude prices caused a substantial economic response. For
example, real GDP fell by more than $150 billion in both the fourth quarter of 2007
and the first quarter of 2008. (See Chart 2.) In fact, the simulation forecasted that the
two-quarter crisis could depress GDP for 10 quarters, or two and a half years.
This fall in real GDP is mirrored by reductions in private non-farm employment
and real disposable income. (See Chart 3 and Chart 4.) The simulation forecasted that
the worst-case scenario would result in roughly 1 million fewer jobs one year after the
strait was blocked. If Iran's blockade of the strait produced an $85-per-barrel increase
in crude oil prices, employment would not recover for almost three years.
In addition, households would have slower income growth. The oil-induced
economic slowdown would reduce real disposable personal income by nearly $260
billion by the fourth quarter of 2007, and real disposable income would average
roughly $100 billion lower during 2008. It would not recover until the first quarter of
2010.
In the exercise, the game managers assumed that the crisis started on January 1,
2007, and tasked players with finding practical policy responses to the crisis that
would have the likely effect of reducing the spike in oil prices and mitigating the eco-
nomic harm that inaction would likely produce.
At the end of the game, the participants recommended that:
The U.S. and its allies deploy sufficient military forces to protect freedom of
navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. The participants assumed that the military response
would be extensive, swift, and effective. They further assumed that the U.S. and allied
military response to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would reduce Iran's
obstruction of tanker traffic by 50% by January 31, 75% by March 31, and 100% by
October 1, 2007.
The U.S. government employs the Strategic Petroleum Reserve according to the
rules laid out in international treaties. The participants assumed that every country
with SPR inventories would respond according to these rules beginning on January 1,
2007. (Full compliance in sharing, much less in reducing demand, is highly unlikely.
Global Insight optimistically assumed 50% compliance.)
Congress and the Administration temporarily reduce regulatory burdens that
would otherwise cause energy prices to increase. The participants assumed that, in
March 2007, Congress would delay implementation of fuel economy standards and
relax compliance with the Jones Act and clean air regulations regarding power plant
improvements.13
To determine whether these policy recommendations would offset some of the
economic harm produced by the oil blockade, Heritage Foundation analysts
implemented these recommendations in the same economic model that was used to
estimate the original economic effects in order to allow accurate comparisons.
13 Global Insight noted that power plant improvements (adding pollution-abatement equipment) are far too
advanced to have any impact in the short or medium term. Utility companies have ordered equipment that is
scheduled to be installed through 2012. They have already paid money that they cannot recover through rates
unless the equipment is installed. There may be some ability to waive NOx emission standards for a few months,
but this would have minimal impact. Oil consumption by power generators is extremely small and is limited to a
few East Coast states that have little capacity to turn to coal. To the extent that oil consumption could be reduced
further, it would require increased reliance on natural gas—a fuel already in short supply.
74
4. The results were impressive. The policy recommendations eliminated

virtually all of the negative outcomes from the blockade. Charts 1 through 4 show the
simulation results for the price of crude oil, real GDP, employment, and personal
income under the three scenarios: moderate case, worst case, and the participants'
policy responses. In virtually every economic indicator, incorporating policy responses
neutralized the negative effects of the crisis.
Overall, the military response had the greatest effect, because it shortened the
length and severity of the crisis. However, supplemental budgetary appropriations
increased defense spending, which helped to keep GDP from falling significantly even
with increased oil prices.
Additionally, the lack of government response (or limited influence on the market
through regulations) helped by allowing market forces to adjust to the crisis without
artificial constraints, keeping the overall price shock from being too severe.
The analysis suggests that the right blueprint for an American response to any
attempt by a hostile state to use armed force to disrupt global energy supplies is that
the United States must lead the effort to defeat such a purpose. An American-led
military response focused on objectives that are clear, relevant, and obtainable would
demonstrate U.S. determination to uphold freedom of navigation, which would be
essential to calming global energy markets and reassuring producers and consumers.
At the same time, minimizing disruptions and focusing on measures that liberalize
energy policies and roll back regulatory restrictions would allow the marketplace to
find the best market-based solutions to meet global energy needs.
President Bush has declared that the U.S. will continue its policy of applying
diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions on Iran. In fact, the NIE recommends
diplomacy and sanctions as the main tool to modify Iranian behavior. The top priority
in such “modification program” is making Iran come clean about the scope and the
nature of its nuclear program.
It is possible, but not very likely, that with the U.S. Administration change in
2009 the policy towards the Islamic Republic. Regardless of the future U.S. policy,
Iranian ambitions in the Gulf are here to stay, at least as long as the hardliners
dominate the government in Teheran. And, because of that, the United States will
deploy its full array of foreign policy tools to guard the oil lanes and support its allies
in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East.
75
THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG THE SHIA FACTOR
THE SHIA FACTOR by Kayhan BARZEGAR
The new rivalry between two main Muslim communities is the result of the political
developments in Iraq. The pragmatic relationship between Iran and the Shia factions in
other countries. The fears of Sunni regimes of a Shia crescent moon.
F ROM CONSIDERING THE POLITICAL

developments after the 2003 Iraqi invasion, this paper investigates the role of the Shia
factor in Iran’s foreign policy conduct. With coming to power of the Shia factions in
Iraq and its implications in the region, the Shia factor is becoming a significant
element in shaping Iran’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Some assessments tend to
agree that the revival of Shiite factions and their conflict with Sunnis will shape the
future of Middle East politics; Iran has a key role in this respect.1 Some tend to
discuss that the current potential in Shia factions is to create a coalition in a more
temporary capacity and that, when the Iraqi Crisis settles down, Iranian and the Shia
factions’ relations will loosen.2 Lastly, some other focus on Iran’s intentions and aims
in empowering an ideological coalition of friendly Shia factions in the region, a policy
that is called by some Arab leaderships as a supposed Shia crescent.3
How does the Shia factor influence Iran’s foreign policy conduct toward the
region? What are the aims of Iran and the Shia factions in establishing close
relationships in the region and especially in Iraq? What are the roots of the new rivalry
between Shia and Sunni factions in the region? Answering these questions, I first
investigate the significance of the Shia factor in Iran’s foreign policy. I then argue that
close relations between Iran and the Shia factions are based on pragmatic aims and for
securing both Iran’s national interests as well as the factual interests of Shia groups.
Lastly, I discuss that the emergence of a new Shia-Sunni rivalry in the region as a
result of Iraq’s new political development and an attempt by Shia factions to institute
their new status in Iraqi domestic politics as well as relations with states in the region,
rather than a rivalry stemming from Iran’s policy in building a Shia crescent.
For two reasons, the Shia factor was not properly employed as an opportunity and
instrument of conducting Iran’s foreign policy before the 2003 Iraqi crisis: 1) the
secular nature of the Shah’s regime and foreign Policy conduct 2) the suppressive
policies of Arab regimes especially Saddam Hussein toward the Shia Factions.
Because of its secular nature, the Shah’s regime had no desire in appreciating or
employing the decisive role of ideology and religion in boosting Iran’s foreign policy
capacities. Meanwhile, the regime rarely followed a policy of engaging Iran intensely
with the Arab world’s political affairs such as Arab-Israeli wars and peace process
since it conceived those issues to be out of Iran’s national interests. This standpoint
prevented Iran in benefiting from the advantageous role of the Shia factor in Iran’s
foreign policy conduct. Some experts tend to agree, however, that the Shah’s regime at
certain points took advantage of the Shia factor in the 1970s, especially in Lebanon
through Imam Musa al-Sadr’s Shia movement, and in Iraq by indirectly supporting the
1 V. NASR, “Behind the Rise of the Shiites,” Time.com, December 19, 2006, http://www.belfercenter.org
2 F. Gregory Gause, “Symposium on The Emerging Shia Crescent: Implications for the Middle East and U.S.
Policy,” June 5, 2006, at: www.cfr.org
3 The concern on the emergence of a “Shia crescent” was first warned by King Abdullah of Jordan in 2004.
76
77
Dawa Party.4 Yet again, if Iran in the past took the slightest advantage of the Shia
factor in regulating its foreign policy, it was mostly focused on supporting the certain
groups and political factions that were opposing the regimes or groups that primarily
supported radical Arab nationalism i.e. those regimes in Iraq and Lebanon that had, by
that time, unfriendly political positions toward Iran.5
The advent of the 1979 Islamic revolution was a turning point for empowering
the place of the Shia factor in Iran’s foreign policy regulation. The Islamic revolution
indeed emboldened the Shias to express their factual identity and to show their
existence to other entities. However, the suppressive policies adopted by Arab regimes
and especially the Baathist regime in Iraq were major impediments to take advantage
of the Shia factor in Iran’s foreign policy. Since the Islamic revolution served to
intensify the ideological differences, the fundamentalists of the Islamic Republic, with
their own brand of Shia Islam, came into conflict either with the regions’ conservative
Sunni Islam i.e. in the Persian Gulf or Arab secular nationalist in the Saddam’s Iraq.
Because of its ideological and revolutionary philosophy, the Islamic Republic,
especially in the days of the revolution, attempted to change the region’s political
status quo by means in which it perceived itself at the time. The driving force for Iran’s
new endeavor was the Shia factions who were kept for a long time out of their own
countries’ politics by Sunni governing elites who essentially considered the Islamic
revolution as a more Shia revolution. Subsequently, any attempts by Shia factions in
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq to establish a close friendship with Iran were
suppressed.
The worst suppression occurred in Iraq and by the Saddam Baathist regime.
Given the long backgrounds of cultural-societal connectedness, the Islamic Republic
tried to establish close relationships with Iraqi Shia factions. However, its attempts
ended with more imposing restrictions on Shia factions’ activities by the Bathsist
regime. The Saddam regime called the Shias elements of expanding Iran's influence.
The subsequent Iran-Iraq war changed the sentiment of friendship between Iran and
the Iraqi Shias due to the war being propagated by the Baathist regime as a war
between two states in line with the Persian and Arab nationalistic identities.
Iran’s endeavors to employ the Shia factor experienced ups and downs during the
1980s and 1990s. Although, it is believed that by employing the Shia factor in Iran’s
foreign policy, Tehran had advanced an idealist-ideological foreign policy in the region,
one should argue that, except a few months after the revolution, pragmatic aims have
always derived Iran’s foreign policy during this period. Some assessments tend to
agree that in action, a rational, pragmatic and accommodating policy prevailed in
Iran’s relations toward the region.6 “Various indications show that Tehran’s foreign
policy from the beginning was mainly regulated and reacted to the threats posed from
the region and international arena in presenting the Islamic Republic as a new regional
and international threat.”7
Iran and the Shia Factions: Strategic Link

The installation of a Shia-dominated government in Iraq following the 2003 Iraqi
crisis, however, has been a turning point in empowering the place of the Shia factor in
4 G.E. FULLER and R.R. FRANCKE, The Arab Shi'a : The Forgotton Muslims( in Persian) Translated by
Khadijeh Tabrizi, Tehran-Qom: Center for Shia Studies', 2005, pp. 171-172
5 Ibid., p. 203
6 A.M. HAJI-YOUSEFI, “ The Shia Factor in Iran-Iraq Relations,” The Iranian Journal of International affairs,
August 2007, at: http://www.theiranianjournalofinternationalaffairs.org
7 Ibid.
78
Iran’s foreign policy. Under the new circumstances, the Shias, who were “the forgotten
Muslims”8, suddenly entered the regional power equations as a determining force. The
new change has influenced the political developments in the entire Middle East. The
new development has enhanced Iran’s relations with Shia factions for the first time
both at the level of the masses and the states. With changing the traditional power
structure, which was based on the rule of Sunni minority, the Shia factions have found
it momentous to establish close relations with friendly states and nations in the region
such as Iran thereby withdrawing from their traditional marginalization.
Iran’s close relationships with Shia factions in the region are aimed at building a
strategic linkage for establishing security as well as creating economic–cultural
opportunities. In Iraq, one aspect of establishing this strategic linkage is the installation
of a new generation of friendly elites at the level of states, who have no backgrounds
or feeling of enmity toward Iran. Another is the creation of Iran-Iraq’s coalition to
cooperate for shaping new political-security arrangements in the Persian Gulf with
inclusion of all littoral states. Similarly, advancing relations at the level of states for
the first time can provide the grounds for developing Iran-Iraq’s mutual economic
activities in the region.
The logic of this strategic linkage through the Iraqi Shias is based on the fact that
the future power games in the Middle East will be more based on securing states'
economic and security roles. Iran’s role in the region would hence depend upon the
degree of strategic relationship with Shia political allies in the region, its support these
factions’ role within the states’ political structure and building political camps. In the
long run, no doubt, the Shia factions are only able to sustain their activities within the
frame of states and through public support. Iran’s relations with Shia factions,
therefore, should transgress its short term security-factional relations and be directed at
the state-oriented strategic level.9
Based on the strategic linkage, the Shia factor could be a base of creating
opportunity in Iran’s foreign policy at the national, regional and international levels. At
the national level, the Shias’ presence as the ruling power is an appropriate ground for
bolstering bilateral economic, political and security cooperation. Since the new Shia
government in Iraq has the executive power, unlike the past, the two countries can
expand cooperation in such domains as mutual trade, cultural and social activities,
media relations, religious tourism, academic and scientific exchanges, expansion of
ties among religious seminaries, implementation of joint research projects. This close
cooperation would play an important role in the re-engineering of cultural interactions
and could lead both states away from past mutual distrust. The absence of interaction
in the past has been costly for both nation-states.
At the regional level, the Shias’ empowerment in Iraq plays an imperative role in
balancing Iran’s relations with other Shia factions in the region. Before a close relation
with the Iraqi Shias, Iran had less presence and influence in the region’s politics. The
objective of Iran’s foreign policy in the last four years has been in accordance with
geopolitical and cultural-religious realities. The key to this strategic friendship
between Iran and Iraq is a legacy of centuries of historical, cultural and religious
connectedness. Regionally, Iraq has a special place in Iran’s national interests and
calculations. Beyond the existing historical-cultural commonalities, the two countries
have a long way to go for establishing economic and political cooperation in the
region.
At an international level, bolstering the role of the Shias in the new Iraq and its
8FULLER, op. cit.

9For further information on the logic of Strategic linkage see Kayhan Barzegar, Iran’s Foreign Policy in the
New Iraq (in Persian), Tehran: CSR publications, 2007.
79
effects on Iraq’s international relations will provide many opportunities for Iran’s
foreign policy. It also provides some grounds for resolving some strategic challenges
between Iran and the United States. One significant aspects of the National
Intelligence Estimate report released recently is Iran’s “cost-benefit” attitude to
achieve its security, status and prestige in the region.10 This finding shows that Iran’s
main driving force in the region is establishing security and creating economic
opportunities.
The ongoing challenge for the American troop withdrawal from Iraq is the fear of
a comprehensive civil war spreading throughout the entire region. Even before the war
started, the main concerns were post-war Iraq, how to meet Iraq’s neighbours’
expectations and how to engage them. Focusing on the region’s geopolitical realities
after the crisis, the Baker-Hamilton Plan was a momentous opportunity to address a
major concern that was unfortunately missed by the Bush administration. Instead of
isolating Iran, the Plan, focused on engaging Iran, its positive role and even addressing
its security concerns. It is not too late to address this geopolitical aspect of the crisis.
Even with the inevitable American withdrawal, there is a need to work with Iran to
preserve the already fractious and tenuous stability that will emerge in the
post-withdrawal era. Iran undoubtedly wants a stabilized, united and prosperous Iraq.
Spreading insecurity in Iraq would mean insecurity for Iran as well. On the Iranian
side, there is great motivation to help the U.S. secure Iraq, while at the same time
addressing Iran’s security concerns.
By glancing at some statistics and features one can see that there is the possibility
for the Shia population to enhance their role and status in the region. At present, the
Shia population stands at 120 to 200 million people. They constitute the majorities in
Iran, Iraq, Bahrain and the Republic of Azerbaijan. They are also living as minorities
in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen,
Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.11 The Arab Shia population has been estimated at 14
million most of which pertains to the littoral states in the Persian Gulf.12 Concerning
the Shias' access to energy sources, some 50% of the total global proven oil reserves
are located in the areas where the Shias live. Countries with Shia majorities account
for some 30% of the world total oil reserves which include Iran, Iraq (together 25%)
and Azerbaijan. If the eastern part of Saudi Arabia is taken into consideration, the
figure will increase to some 50%. With these capacities, Iran will play a significant
role as the hub of Shia development in the coming years.
Iran and the New Shia-Sunni Power Equation

The current conflict between Shia and Sunni factions in the region is the result of
ascendancy in the Shia factions’ role in the region following the rise to power of a
Shia-dominated government in Iraq. Ignoring the Shias’ political demands in the
region has planted a rift and potential sense of resentment within Shia-Sunni relations.
Some analysts tend to discuss that this sense of hostility has been triggered by two
elements: 1) Zarquawi and al-Qaeda attempts to plant sectarian violence by bombing
the Shia sacred shrines in Samara; 2) The U.S. democratization policy and attempts to
create participatory politics, which pushes Iraqis to look for new identities.13
10 National Intelligence Estimate, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” November 2007.
11 A. MALEKI, “Extremism in Islamic Shiite's Faith," in: Roots and Routes of Democracy and Extremism, T.
HELLENBERG and K. ROBINS (eds.), Helsinki: University of Helsinki Publication, Alxandria Institute, 2006,
pp. 256-257.
12 For further information on the Shia population in the region see Vali Nasr, “When the Shia Rise,’’ Foreign
Affairs, July-August 2006. See also Fuller, op. cit., p. 23
13 N. FELDMAN, “Symposium on The Emerging Shia Crescent: Implications for the Middle East and U.S.
80
However, what is happening today in the region is the result of the region’s
struggle to change to a new order in which the Shia factions are taking control of their
destinies. In other words, the revival of Shias in Iraq has changed the bases of power
and politics in the Middle East in favor of Shia groups. Although the Shias, in Iraq and
Bahrain have been a driving force for political-social movements and reform, it was
only recently that the Shiite factions gained the power to assert themselves politically.
The rise to power of Shiites in Iraq has made the Sunni governing elites extremely
concerned not only because of the Shiite populations’ demands for acquiring further
political-social rights but also for a process that can eventually lead to the Sunnis’
removal from power.
One manifestation of this concern is related to the debates about the emergence of
a Shia crescent in the region. The concern was first warned by King Abdullah of
Jordan in 2004 mentioning that a Shia crescent under Iran’s leading role was appearing
in the region. Ever since, this concern has been frequently echoed by other Arab
leaders including Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and foreign minister of Saudi
Arabia, Saud al-Feisal. As Mubarak puts it, ''the Shias in the region are more loyal to
Iran than their own countries."14 Saud al-Feisal voiced Saudi Arabia’s concern about
Iran's increased role in Iraq by saying that, “all Arab countries assisted Iraq to not be
occupied by Iran (in the Iran-Iraq war) but now we are handing the whole country
(Iraq) over to Iran without reason.”15
The Arab world’s concerns about the emergence of a supposed Shia crescent are
based on some realities. First, any alliance between Iran and Shia factions in the region
will imbalance the position of Sunni governing elites in governmental institutions.
Some assessments even say the emergence of a Shia crescent is a fear tactic by Sunni
autocrats to cement Washington’s political and financial supports for their regimes.16
Second, such an alliance takes place in countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon
(Hezbollah) where the regimes are against the existing political status quo. Third, the
establishment of such an alliance, which confronts the U.S. presence in the region, will
question the legitimacy of the region's conservative regimes who have, in several
stages, agreed the American troops’ presence in the region. 17 This is especially
imperative in terms of influencing the Shia minorities in the Persian Gulf littoral states.
In this context, undoubtedly, the creation of a democratic Shia government in Iraq will
be a serious challenge to the Sunni regimes of the region. If indeed Iraq’s progressive
constitution is fully implemented, for instance, instituting a participatory politics in the
region would be a threat to the existing regional political-social regulations in the
Persian Gulf region.
However, despite all these new concerns raised by the Arab world, the Shia factor
in Iran’s foreign policy is mostly acting in line with Iran’s pragmatic policies in
establishing friendly relationships with states in the region. It mainly aims to tackle
security concerns as well as creating economic-cultural opportunities. The role of the
Shia factor in expanding Iran’s relations with the new Iraq is a good example. Because
Policy,” June 5, 2006, at: www.cfr.org.

14 Remarks expressed by Hosni Mobark caused anxious among Shia communities in the Arab world and Iran.
Baztab Site, 21 Farvardin 1385, 10 April 2006. Also for an Iranian reaction of what Mobarak expressed on the
Arab Shiite's loyalty toward the Iranian government see" Mobarak: The Loyalty of Arab World Shiite to Iran,"
Baztab, 21 Farvardin 2006.
15 For an analysis on Saud al Fiesal's remarks see E. GNEHEM," Iraq: A View from the Neighborhood,"
February 23, 2006, at: http://www.gwu.edu/elliott/news/transcript/shapiro5.html.
16 F. AJAMI, “Symposium on The Emerging Shia Crescent: Implications for the Middle East and U.S.
Policy,” June 5, 2006, at: www.cfr.org.
17 S. ZUNES, "U.S. Policy toward Political Islam," Foreign Policy in Focus, 12 September 2001, at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/11479; K. BARZEGAR, "The Middle East and the New Terrorism," Journal on
Science and World Affairs, Vol. 1, Summer 2005, p. 116
81
of the nature of opportunities and challenges, Iran has ultimately pursued a pragmatist
foreign policy in Iraq. This is because of the range and involvement of the different
layers of Iranian society as well as the nature of the political-security issues, which are
affecting Iran’s foreign policy in Iraq.
Since 2003, the involvement of various layers of Iranian society such as average
Iranians traveling to the sacred cities, merchants for developing trade, intellectuals and
executives elites in expressing their security concerns, etc., have greatly affected Iran’s
Iraq policy. Meanwhile, the perils resulting from the immediate security threats such as
the U.S. troop’s presence, civil war, sectarian violence, ethnic fragmentation, etc., from
the new Iraq, have forced Iran to direct its foreign policy pragmatically and in line
with its national interests.
In addition, Iran has vast economic interests in the new Iraq. Traditionally Iraq’s
economic and political exchanges were oriented to the Arab world through Jordan in
the west, Turkey in the north and the Soviet Bloc countries. In the new circumstances,
orienting to the eastern areas and Iran as well due to the long borders and
cultural-societal commonalities could play a major role for increasing economic and
political exchanges thereby narrowing the gap with other regional nations. The more
diverse exchanges with the neighboring countries further mutual interactions leading
to an appropriate level of political-security relations.18
Yet, despite all the new opportunities, employing the Shia factor in Iran’s foreign
policy conduct will bring about some challenges. The main challenge for Iran’s foreign
policy is to create a balance between Iran’s foreign policy in the new Iraq on the one
hand, and its' regional and international relations on the other. It is certainly in Iran’s
interest to develop an alliance with Iraq for creating opportunities for Iran’s foreign
policy. Yet, Iran's increased presence in Iraq will lead to some constraints in regulating
its relations with the Arab world particularly with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This move,
in fact, weakens Iran's current confidence-building policy towards the Arab world
especially in the Persian Gulf.
On the Shia side, similarly, the logic for establishing close relationships with Iran
is mainly based on strategic interests and pragmatic policies. Shia factions in the
region perceive Iran as a source of logistical and political support. Therefore, their
attitude and response toward Iran will be in line with how to preserve their factional
interests. A weak regional position for Iran is somehow equated to a weaker role for
the Shia factions. Institutionalizing the Shias factions’ power in the region requires
some alliances with the regional states and the establishment of a coalition of friendly
governments in the region.
In Iraq, for instance, empowering and defining a new role for the Shia factions
within Iraq and as a Shia state in the Arab world requires the support of a powerful
regional state like Iran. In other words, demand by the Iraqi Shias for expanding ties
and initiating new political, cultural, and economic interactions with Iran arises from
the region’s political realities. Put differently, being encircled in a Sunni neighborhood,
having less sympathetic neighboring states, and for balancing its domestic politics and
regional relations, a Shiite government in Iraq would inevitably require Iran’s political
support. Some assessments even go further and argue that the Shia factions in Iraq are
temporarily looking for new allies. “Once Iraq gets settled down, they (Shias) are
going to assert their state interests. But in their current struggle they need a regional
ally.”19
18 K. BARZEGAR, Iran foreign Policy in the New Iraq, op. cit., pp. 90-92
19 F.G. GAUSE, op. cit.
82
Conclusion
I have argued that the Shia factor, since the 2003 Iraqi crisis and the
establishment a Shia-dominated government in Iraq, has become a determining force
in shaping Iran’s foreign policy toward the region. However, Iran’s policy to install the
Shia factor is more pragmatic rather than ideological. I have also argued that Iran and
the Shia factions’ aims in establishing a close relationship is mainly aimed at creating a
strategic linkage in the region to tackle security threats and creating opportunities at
the level of the masses and the states. The logic of a strategic linkage is based on the
fact that, given the nature of politics in the Middle East region, the future games
between states will be more based on securing domains of political role and economic
zones. In this context, Shia factions in the region need Iran’s support and presence to
balance their domestic politics as well as their relations with the Arab world while it is
considered as a new Shia state. Lastly, I have debated that the new rivalry between the
Shia and Sunni factions in the region is the result of the Iraqi transformation; it is also
because of the latitude and role given to the Shia political groups following the
removal of Iraq’s traditional Sunni-oriented order. In this respect, exaggerating on
Iran’s intentions to build a Shia crescent is more based on the concerns that the Shia
factor gives Iran a larger role in the region’s politics.
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THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG AMERICA CAN
MAKE THE PEACE
AMERICA CAN
MAKE THE PEACE by John C. HULSMAN, Ph.D.
The CIA., this time, will not cover the White House if it decides to attack Tehran. Yet,
the gun remains on the table. The war would be a disaster. The alternative is to return
to the TNP and freeze the investments in Iran. Without giving up extreme dissuasion.
I n the unhappy, waning days of the Bush

administration, the Iranian nuclear crisis towers above all others. This is reflected in
the foreign policy positions of the major candidates for president in 2008. While a
gloomy consensus has emerged over Iraq (the U.S. cannot leave immediately but
should begin to draw down troops, train up the army and the police, and follow the
oft-ignored recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report and secure the support of
neighboring regimes not to meddle in Baghdad’s internal affairs), policy over Iran has
exposed clear differences. The Democratic field has stressed ‘more diplomacy’ to the
exclusion of how this bumper sticker would stop the Iranians acquiring a nuclear
weapon. The Republicans have thundered that Iran must not be allowed to have a
nuclear weapon, and that ‘force must not be taken off the table,’ without looking at
what this would mean strategically. These are slogans, not foreign policy positions. If
the Iranian crisis is to be dealt with coherently, it is instructive to look at both the
dangers of military action, as well as the dangers of doing nothing (i.e. increasing
‘diplomacy’ without genuine carrots and sticks undergirding such an approach). For
beyond the campaign’s ritualized positions, there is a monumental crisis brewing here,
and scant few policy proposals for dealing with it.
The Problem with ‘Diplomacy’

What will be the likely result of continuing as we are, using the UN to impose a
third round of sanctions on Iran for refusing to stop its enrichment program, in the face
of complaints from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)? If the
neo-conservatives are utopian in their one-note view that unbound American force can
solve most problems, many Democrats (and most Europeans) are equally theological
in their belief that ‘diplomacy’ or endlessly talking in international forums without
regard to power realities, is a panacea for the world’s ills. For, as was the case with
Saddam flouting endless UN resolutions, international diplomacy quickly runs into a
brick wall, if diplomatic efforts have little to do with genuine inducements and
punishments being put on the table.
Iran is a prime case in point. Evidently, the current European response to the Iran
crisis is an effort to bore the Iranians to death, as if endless communication alone
would solve the problem. To put it mildly, the UN sanctions put on the table up to now
have not been remotely weighty enough to persuade Tehran to change its mind about
enrichment. European diplomats respond to this criticism, with glazed looks of
religious zeal, patiently intoning to skeptics like myself that the key is to keep the Big
5 of the Security Council plus Germany together (U.S., UK, France, Russia, China),
even if this means going slower on sanctions than the Western countries would like.
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The fatal flaw in such comfortable thinking is that it presupposes that at some
level the Big 5 have overriding common strategic interests; keeping Iran at all costs
from producing a deliverable nuclear weapon. Given the empirical reality of Chinese
and Russian foot dragging, this is a very dubious hypothesis. While it is clear that
Russia is rightly nervous about Tehran’s nuclear intentions (after all, they live next
door), the Putin government - over issues such as Kosovo, missile defense, and the
CFE treaty - has made it abundantly clear that it is moving in a Gaullist direction; that
it reflexively is against the U.S. and its allies dictating international outcomes. With oil
at $98 a barrel, Putin’s genuine popularity with his countrymen is primarily based on
his getting Russia up from its knees, where many believe it was in the bad, old days of
the Yeltsin regime. Iran having a bomb is a problem, but Russia’s fears of U.S. power
may trump this concern.
China has different, but no less compelling reasons to be wary of tightening the
screws on Iran. A cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy remains the non-interference
in a state’s internal workings. In this sense, China is the greatest defender of the
Westphalian state system that has dominated international relations since 1648. Given
its own record of humiliation at the hands of Western powers in the 19th and early
20th centuries, Chinese nationalism leads its leaders to fear, ‘thereby but for the grace
of God go I,’ that if the U.S. is prepared to intervene in others state’s affairs merely
because it does not like their internal arrangements, regime change in Beijing cannot
be far behind on the U.S. list of things to do. Also, as the primary new consumer of oil
and natural gas, Iran and China have growing economic interests in common that may
well override China’s concerns over Iran acquiring a bomb. Certainly, the glacial pace
that Beijing and Moscow are setting in the Security Council calls into question how
serious they are about the Iranian nuclear threat.
If Europeans blithely keep repeating the mantra that the Security Council must
remain the primary venue for dealing with the Iranian nuclear crisis, the sanctions
regime imposed on Tehran is likely to remain laughably short of the serious diplomatic
sticks needed to change the Iranian leadership’s calculations. In such a case, in a few
years hence, Iran will announce to the world that it is abrogating the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and that they indeed have a deliverable nuclear
weapon. Contrary to the standard UN and EU mantra, this will not amount to
‘success,’ but will instead be a strategic failure of the gravest order. Worse yet, many
stressing ‘diplomacy,’ especially in Europe, will not even notice.
What the World Looks Like With An Iranian Bomb

There will be dire consequences to such a hapless outcome. For Iran with a
bomb signals the final death knell of the NPT, already badly wounded over the Bush
administration’s acquiescence in India’s nuclear program, as well as the weapons
produced by Israel and Pakistan. Without an international regime of any kind, we
would be truly living in the jungle. The very international institutions so prized by
Wilsonians around the world would be fatally compromised. A nuclear arms race in
the Middle East is bound to follow, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey likely
candidates to quickly acquire nuclear weapons. One can see the logic from Ankara’s
point of view. Speaking to the U.S., they would rightly say, ‘You allowed your greatest
enemy to acquire nuclear weapons, how can you stand in our way, your long-term
ally?’
The problem here is Israel. For them, unlike for the United States or Europe, the
Iranian nuclear program certainly can be seen as an existential threat. Certainly, a
nuclear arms race in the region would do much to erode their strategic position. Also,
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strategic culture plays a role here; it is simply not like the Israelis to decide that they
can live with the balance of terror in their region, that reasonable minds on both sides
of the Arab-Israeli divide will prevail. To put it mildly, that has not been the lesson
Jerusalem has drawn from history. An ineffectual effort at diplomacy by the United
States and the Europeans greatly increases the chances of an Israeli air strike as Iran
moves forward with its nuclear program. A nuclear arms race in the region practically
assures an Arab-Israeli conflict, perhaps between sworn adversaries with nuclear
weapons. We must be clear-eyed about this, for this is what the world will look like,
given the continued resort to feeble UN diplomacy.
Give this endlessly complex scenario, as well as the genuine dangers associated
with failure, the neo-conservative drumbeat of military action seems an immensely
attractive option. However, it is but another siren song from this discredited school of
thought. For in looking at outcomes of an American military strike, it becomes clear
that the only thing worse than doing nothing militarily about the Iran crisis is to do
something.
One of the key problems lying at the heart of the current American foreign policy
malaise is that policy analysts are not being held to account for what they have
predicted and advocated. Norman Podhoretz, a senior policy adviser to former
frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani, is a prime case in point. For thirty years he has been
as off the mark as he has been shameless, never stopping to let facts get in the way of
his neo-conservative theory. It is important to remember that this is the man who so
wrongly saw communism as monolithic; it is not surprising that he now groups all of
America’s enemies in the Middle East, be they secular socialists or radical Islamists,
together as ‘Islamo-fascists.’ Podhoretz feared, well into the 1980s, that the USSR was
so strong and American democracy so pathetically weak that unless Washington went
to war with Moscow quickly, it was doomed. It goes without saying that events
proved to be otherwise. In his new book, World War IV, Podhoretz straightforwardly
calls for regime change in Tehran, and a military response to the Iranian nuclear
program. Given his remarkably wrongheaded past record alone, the rest of us should
have doubts.
The practical limitations of such a military attack are clear. After Iraq, the army
finds itself overstretched. The National Guard, which performs many of the vital
technical aspects of any invasion, such as engineering, policing, and medical work, is
in even worse shape. There are not the troops and certainly not the specialists for a
full-scale invasion of a country far larger than Iraq. If one is to talk of military action
at all, it is of a strategic bombing of Iran nuclear and command and control sites, with
perhaps some special forces on the ground guiding in American smart bombs. But it is
primarily a bombing campaign, rather than an invasion, that is on offer.
Historically, bombing campaigns have not had a very distinguished record.
German war production in World War II continued apace, despite the carpet-bombing
of many of its cities. Likewise, the overwhelming bombing campaign of the Vietnam
era did not deter Ho Chi Minh, destroy Communist morale, or turn the tide of the war.
As was true for Britain in World War II, sustained bombing campaigns often
paradoxically seem to stiffen civilian morale, inducing a rallying-round of whatever
government happens to be in power. It is highly likely that such would be the outcome
of a bombing campaign launched against Iran today.
Another basic political problem with bombing Iran comes from ignoring its
internal politics. While it may be comforting for neo-conservatives to see America’s
enemies as monolithic, history would lead one to the conclusion that this has never
been the case; the world is simply more complicated than this. Iran, with its
quasi-democracy, has more checks and balances in its politics than many of the
regimes in the Middle East, even if they are certainly not Madisonian in nature. For all
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his rantings, President Ahmadinejad does not control the nuclear program at present;
the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei does. Former President Rafsanjanni,
conservative head of the Guardian Council tasked with choosing Iran’s next Supreme
leader after Khamenei’s death, is also an enemy of Ahmadinejad. The current Iranian
president has failed to deliver on his populist promises to divert more of Iran’s oil and
natural gas resources to the poor, and has instead run the economy further into the
ground. While almost all Iranians, taking pride in ancient Persian nationalism, feel
they have a right to their nuclear program, to see Iran only through a monolithic lens
misses out on these internal political developments, many of which lead to the
conclusion that a deal is still possible. However, a military attack may satisfy
American hawk’s desire to ‘do something’ (that fatal phrase), but it will dramatically
worsen the internal political situation within Iran and catastrophically affect America’s
strategic position in the world.
The Day After A Bombing

While the pilots of the American Air Force are the best in the world, in the end
they remain men; they will occasionally be off-target with their payloads. The Iranian
leadership has learned of the lesson of the Israeli strike on the Iraqi nuclear program at
Osirak in the 1980’s, whereby the concentration of the program in an isolated area
meant that it could be taken out cleanly and with few casualties. Cynically, the Iranian
leadership has constructed part of their program in high-density population centers,
where casualties are bound to be high from a bombing campaign. Also, the Iranians
have duplicated facilities and placed many of the key components far underground.
While a sustained air strike would set back the Iranian nuclear program, it would
hardly destroy it.
The political costs for this partial success would be exorbitant. Contrary to the
neo-conservative Michael Ledeen’s twisted logic, it is overwhelmingly likely that an
air strike would not lead to regime change; it is beyond belief that a recently attacked
Iranian populace would blame its leadership, rather than American planes, for the
carnage on the ground. There would be a rallying round Ahmadinejad, which is the last
thing the United States ought to want, as well as quite likely redoubled efforts to
acquire a bomb as soon as possible, as a way to make sure such a bombing never
happened again. In other words, bombing Iran is unlikely to make its people want to
ally with the United States. Instead, the political blow-back from such a strategy will
make America’s worst enemies far more secure, creating just the atmosphere of crisis
in which demagoguery is likely to flourish.
The second political cost is likely to be felt by America’s allies in the region.
After a sustained bombing of Iran, the street in the Middle East is likely to rise up in a
way that it has not since the heyday of Nasser. The pro-American, pro-Western Kings
of Oman, Jordan, and Morocco, would all be imperiled. Mubarak’s brittle regime in
Egypt, the House of Saud in Arabia, and the mess that is Pakistan, would all come
under great internal pressure. If even some of these states experience revolution, the
likely successor regimes would all be frightful from an American perspective.
Here, unwittingly, the neo-conservatives would at last have linked Iran with
al-Qaeda. In his speeches, Osama bin Laden is quite clear which states must be
central parts of his dreamed-for Caliphate, which he hopes to mold into a global power.
He mentions Pakistan, in terms of its nuclear program; Saudi Arabia, as the symbolic
keeper of the holy places and swing producer of OPEC; Jordan, as having the best
diplomats; and Egypt, as the spear of Islam, possessing the most potent army. A
caliphate with all these attributes would surely be a great power. It is not a bad metric
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to observe that as long as these countries remain broadly anti-al-Qaeda the War on
Terror is proceeding well; if any of these states were to be taken over by radical
Islamists such a judgment would have to be revised. Bombing Iran is the best way to
help al-Qaeda meet this strategic goal. That alone should be reason enough not to
support such a campaign.
The third political cost would involve the Western alliance. After the wrenching
disagreements over Iraq, it is hard to see the alliance surviving a unilateral bombing of
Iran. Such an outcome would be a public diplomacy disaster for the United States, so
turning European public opinion against America that even sympathetic governments
would feel the need to distance themselves from American policies they might
otherwise agree with. For example, it is hard to imagine that President Sarkozy of
France could continue his pro-American drift if such a bombing took place. Instead,
Washington could well see the crack-up of NATO and the end of the alliance as we
know it. While America and individual European countries might work together
discretely when their interests were in line, any sort of coordinated, general Western
position on anything would be almost impossible to achieve, given the likely further
dive in European public opinion toward America. Bombing Iran would mean the end
of the 50-year alliance.
In laying out this case, it becomes very clear that if even one-third of this
scenario comes into being, bombing Iran is entirely counterproductive to America’s
strategic position in the world. But it is not enough to merely point out the gigantic
flaws in the current debate about Iran. The ultimate question for policy-makers
remains: What is to be done?
A Plan With a Chance of Success

The best way forward is to accept the criticisms these two basic approaches
toward Iran have of each other. The neo-conservatives are right; diplomacy without
sticks is merely strategic surrender. The Wilsonians are right; the political price to be
paid for a bombing campaign makes such an option utterly counterproductive. A
successful policy toward Iran must incorporate both of these realities if it is to stand a
chance of success.
Realistically, the best way forward is to go back to the NPT as the basis of all
further negotiation, but it must be the treaty as it reads, and not merely confirming
Iran’s right to enrichment. While the treaty confirms this, as well as Iran’s right to a
civilian nuclear program, it also makes clear that lying about Iran’s nuclear program,
not allowing intrusive spot inspections, not answering all the IAEA’s questions to its
satisfaction, or weaponizing its program, are breaches of its terms. As such, it is
present and future Iranian behavior that must drive the international diplomatic
outcome. If Iran agrees to all the terms of the NPT, the United States must be ready
with carrots: a venue to discuss the many outstanding differences between the two
countries; a promise not to push for regime change by military means (such as was
given to Kim Jong-Il of North Korea); the prospect of full diplomatic recognition; the
lure of future American foreign direct investment, and a promise not to hinder other
nation’s efforts to cut trade and investment deals with Tehran.
But if Tehran balks at the terms of the NPT, and in line with these American
concessions, the EU-3 (France, Germany, the UK), plus the Security Council of the
UN, must commit to common sticks. Foremost among these would be an investment
freeze. The Iranian economy has been run into the ground by the mullahs. Given its
current demographic bulge, Iran must create hundreds of thousands of new jobs every
year just to keep even with the rising economic demands of its youth. While trade
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sanctions seem a dead end, an investment freeze would quickly stop Tehran in its
tracks; this alone may cause the Iranian leadership to rethink their headlong rush
toward a nuclear weapon.
There are problems with this approach. Many Americans suspect that the
Europeans, through their current efforts at diplomacy, are merely trying to play out the
string with America, to so tie Washington in knots that it will come to acquiesce in an
Iranian nuclear capability. In other words, many Europeans are more afraid of
American military action than Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. This is a dangerous
misreading of American strategic culture, which in both parties is still more about
solving problems, than living with them. The EU-3 must be made to see that
counter-intuitively the tougher they are on Iran, the less likely there will be American
or Israeli military strikes. But it is the Germans and the Italians that have significant
investments in Iran, which could grow to be more significant still. It is they who
possess the diplomatic stick, and given their record in wielding it, that is worrying.
Europeans are sure to reply that the Chinese, even more than the Russians, will
gratefully fill this investment vacuum, thus guaranteeing a primary source of natural
gas and oil for their fuel-starved country. This is indeed a possibility. However, recent
changes in Chinese rhetoric over Myanmar as well as their grudging acceptance of the
limited sanctions on Iran up to now, mean that at the very least, it is worth a try to
bring the Chinese on board this new strategy. The timing is propitious. In the Olympics
of next year, China is having its coming-out party as a great power. If they refused to
go along with such a plan, after the Americans, Europeans, and Russians endorsed it,
the adverse international public reaction is certainly something Beijing would like to
avoid. This is particularly so as an international solution to the problem leading to a
nonmilitary outcome, would genuinely secure China’s energy interests in Iran for the
long term.
If the Chinese went along, then it would be up to the Iranians. For in the end, it is
the Iranian leadership, and not the rest of the world, which will determine whether they
are going to acquire nuclear weapons. Perhaps whatever we do the Iranians will go
forward anyway. But this plan would place the onus for the security threat squarely
where it belongs-on the Iranians themselves. It allows for both real carrots and sticks,
and is likely to at least change the Iranian leadership’s calculations. It keeps the
international community together around a plan with at least a chance for success,
enforcing both international norms and the desire to genuinely stop Iran acquiring
nuclear weapons. It is the best that we can do.
Sunshine Amid the Gloom

If the Iranians do, in the face of all this, acquire a bomb, there are still cards left
to play. However, convincing America and especially Israel not to act militarily in such
an event will be very difficult. It should be brought to both countries attention that
deterrence still works. The U.S. deterred the far more malignant Stalin and Mao
because in the end, as President Eisenhower shrewdly guessed, they did not want to
personally die, or see their civilization die. Ayatollah Khomeini seems to show no
signs of having a death wish, either for himself or Persia.
The Iranian leadership knows that if, God forbid, one of their nukes was stolen
and used by Islamic radicals, such as Hezbollah they, and not the other nuclear powers,
would be blamed. Such an outcome would lead to their total eradication. This is a
powerful and seldom discussed incentive for Iran to keep close command and control
over their nuclear program. The situation could even then be stabilized between Iran
and Israel; it is the regional arms race that would prove almost impossible to stop.
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But any analysis of scenarios predicated on the current strategies leads to the same
conclusion: new thinking and a new initiative are desperately required and quickly.
For the new plan to have a chance, there must be an intellectual sea of change on both
sides of the Atlantic. The general problem in dealing with Iran is that the Americans
have the carrots, and the Europeans the sticks. To put it mildly, these are not the tools
of choice for either side. But without the use of both, global diplomacy will become
ever more dysfunctional, with the list of unsolved crises growing ever larger. What is
really needed on all sides is the rebirth of statecraft, seeing that carrots and sticks must
be wielded together to solve diplomatic problems. It is our last, best chance.
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THE PAKISTANI BOOMERANG HOW THE ARAB REGIMES
DEFEATED DEMOCRACY
HOW THE ARAB REGIMES

DEFEATED DEMOCRACY by Barry RUBIN
In spite of sporadic domestic reforms, the relation between democracy and Arab
regimes has always been one of repression and negation. Today’s response to the
liberalization challenge is defining how Arab governance will work in the future.
1. I N RECENT YEARS, FROM WITHIN AND

without, Arab regimes have faced a democracy challenge. Originally, this arose from a
domestic challenge by reform-minded groups that were frustrated by the shortcomings
of their countries’ governments. It became increasingly clear that the numerous
failures of Arab rulers over many years were not being addressed by changes. Arab
states were increasingly falling further behind others in the world in terms of living
standards, the level of rights, the treatment of women, responsiveness to rapid changes
in the world, and other areas.1
This effort was joined and reinforced by Western policies—especially by the U.S.
government. Finally, around 2004, Islamist groups also began to take up the demand
for more civic rights and freer elections. By 2006, however, the impetus toward
democracy—at least as a high-profile agenda theme—began to fade. One reason for
this was the relative success of Islamist groups in using the issue for their own
purposes. However, paramount was the way in which the incumbent Arab regimes
dealt with the question.
Yet the region has now entered a new era characterized by the following points: a
rise in radical Islamist movements, though the Arab nationalist regimes are still
holding onto power and might well not lose it; growing hatred of the United States and
Israel, at least compared to the levels in some places during the 1990s; the belief that
total victory can be achieved through terrorism and other violent tactics; euphoric
expectation of imminent revolution, glorious victories, and unprecedented Arab or
Muslim unity; a disinterest in diplomatic compromise solutions as unnecessary and
even treasonous—to concede nothing is to lose nothing because you still have the
claim to all you want and have thus left open an opportunity to gain everything; and
the death of hope for democracy due to both regime manipulation and radical Islamist
exploitation of the opportunities offered by some openings in the system.
The only real difference between the new and the old concepts is that what was
formally expressed in Arab nationalist terms is now stated in Islamist, or at least more
Islamic, ones. The idea is that Islamism can succeed where Arab nationalism failed.
Yet aside from the obvious difference in the content of the two ideologies, their basic
perceptions and goals are quite parallel. They both believe that the Arab/Muslim world
faces a U.S.-Israel (or Western-Israel) or Zionist-Crusader conspiracy to destroy it; a
secondary enemy is the majority of Arab rulers whose relative moderation shows them
to be traitors. Only those who preach intransigence and struggle are upholders of
proper Arab and Muslim values.
1These issues were examined in great detail in the author's The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for
Democracy in the Middle East (New York: Wiley, 2005) to which readers are urged to refer.
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In the 1950s and 1960s, this distinction pitted Egypt, Syria, and Iraq as the
progressive states against “reactionary” Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other monarchies.
Today, it is Iran and Syria against Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia; since this enemy is
purely evil, there can be no compromise with it. By the same token, more or less all
types of violence are justified. This cannot be terrorism because the violence is
defensive, responsive, necessary, and against a satanic foe; total victory is achievable
and therefore anything less is treasonous. Consequently, the people must unite under
governments with the proper ideologies and that are able to mobilize the entire
society—that is, a dictatorship that will destroy Israel, expel Western influence, and
bring rapid development without sacrificing traditional identity, thus creating a just,
even utopian, society.
In contrast, the idea of liberalism and reform is essentially a trick of the enemy.
As this is all so necessary and workable, anything other than struggle and
resistance—more citizen rights, reform, modernized economic structures, and the
like—is a distraction. Only after total victory is achieved can these luxuries be
managed. Thus, while Islamists and Arab nationalists compete for power, sometimes
even violently, they mutually reinforce the intellectual system and worldview that
locks the Arab world into the very problems they purport to remedy. If the priority is
on resistance, reform is at best a distraction, and at worst it is treason.
“In a state of war,” wrote the Egyptian playwright Ali Salem, whose works are
banned in his own country, “No one argues... or asks questions.” They are told that this
is not the right time to talk about free speech, democracy, or corruption, and then
ordered, “Get back to the trench immediately!”
When in March 2001, Ba’th party members asked Syrian Vice President
Khaddam at a public meeting why the regime did not do more to solve the problems of
corruption, incompetence, and the slow pace of reform, his answer was that the
Arab-Israeli conflict permitted no changes at home: “This country is in a state of war
as long as the occupation continues.” The irony of this argument is that the regime had
turned down Israel’s offer to return the entire Golan Heights a year earlier.
2. Arab regimes have usually neutralized democracy by using a multilayered

response that included repression, redefinition, and cooption. In some cases — which
deserve more attention than they have received to date — governments even made
some actual domestic changes. Clearly, every country managed the issue in different
ways.
What is most significant, however, is not that the democracy project was largely a
failed effort but rather that the way regimes responded to this challenge is defining
how Arab governance will work in the coming decades. Assessing whether Arab
regimes will become weaker and more unstable due to this reaction and how such
efforts have affected the relative chances of competing forces in the future is extremely
important.
Among the main responses, with the balance different in each country, are: a
reassertion of a traditional agenda; the delegitimization of opponents; repression and
harassment; pretense and cooption; and finally, actual reforms. Both liberal and
Islamist opposition have adjusted to this process, and their strategies will also be
examined.
Punishing dissidents is the most obvious way of silencing the democratic and
liberal forces. It should be emphasized, however, that this is only one tool in the
regimes’ repertoire. Taken alone, it would be far less effective than a broader strategy
composed of a wide range of instruments. Such a strategy would include the
mobilization of the masses around a positive program that promised them success,
though the victory might be one of feeling better rather than material improvement of
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their lives; an alternative interpretation of the facts so as to suggest that reform or

democracy would be damaging; the harnessing of nationalist and religious sentiments
in the service of the regime and as enemies of reform; the discrediting of dissidents as
traitors among the general population; and the infliction of costs on dissidents, which
might include death, imprisonment, torture, injury to their families, the loss of jobs and
positions, forbidding them to travel abroad, making them unpopular and dishonored, or
forcing them into exile.
It should be remembered that for every one person punished, dozens more are
intimidated by these events to stop, decrease, or redirect their activism to avoid
suffering a similar fate. At the same time, for every negative treatment there is a
positive one—the carrots as opposed to the sticks. People can be offered money, jobs,
honors and privileges, patronage, and so on to get them either to cooperate or to keep
quiet. Again, many observe such things and act as the regime prefers in order to gain
these benefits for themselves. Humans are more often weak, meek, or selfish rather
than heroic. The best thing of all is to appear heroic while selling out.
Another tactic employed by the regimes is to instil fear that reform or
democratization brings the risk of chaos or an Islamist takeover. This is an especially
effective weapon in turning people who would otherwise advocate change to cling
fearfully to the status quo. It is even stronger because it has a material basis in truth,
given the presence of Iraq as a vivid example. Of course, that country’s instability and
bloodshed is due in part to those who want it to serve precisely that purpose as
opposed to being a model that encourages emulation by their own people.
Furthermore, these regimes persuade the large traditionalist and conservative bloc,
often a majority of the population, that the existing government and status quo is
preferable to liberalization. This is often an easy task. At the same time, by combating
such changes—and posturing as combatants against the West and Israel as well as
pious rulers—even those who might otherwise be radical Islamists are won over.
At the same time, the regimes can tell would-be liberals they must support their
rulers against the Islamists and the would-be Islamists that they must support their
rulers against the liberals. This is, of course, contradictory, but that does not prevent it
from working.
In addition, the regimes sometimes pretend to be the real reformers. Governments
have many ways of acting as if they are themselves the main advocates of democracy
and implementers of reform. There are many ways to do so: conferences, rhetoric,
promises, fixed elections, the creation of their own substitute institutions (such as
state-sponsored human rights groups), and so on. These efforts are also often
successful in fooling the Western media, governments, and others, or at least they give
them an excuse not to take action or criticize.
Finally, of course, some regimes actually do make reforms, though often face
popular opposition. The clearest examples here are Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain,
and the United Arab Emirates. Perhaps Jordan, to a lesser extent, could also be listed
here.
3. Perhaps the single most active and consistent measure among regimes was to
reinforce and revitalize the existing Arab nationalist ideology, which already offered
significant defenses against the democracy challenge2. Basically, this view has been
that the key danger facing the Arabs is Western—especially American—imperialism,
Zionism, and their collaborators among the Arab rulers or intellectuals. This threat is to
2 More detailed documentation is provided in the author's books: The Truth about Syria (New York:
Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007); The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East
(New York: John Wiley, 2005); and The Tragedy of the Middle East (New York: Cambridge Uni. Press, 2002).
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be countered by Arab unity in general and by solidarity around their existing, proper,
leaders.
The basic argument was that given the threat of imperialism (both American and
Western generally) and Zionism, democracy was not only a distracting luxury and still
one more example of Western hypocrisy, but indeed even an integral part of the
conspiracy against the Arabs. For example, in January 2001, Syrian Information
Minister Adnan Omran proclaimed that civil society was an “American term” and that
“neocolonialism no longer relies on armies.” It was by using subversion through
cultural products and political ideas that the enemy was attacking.3
The West was said to be attacking the Arab world—sometimes used
interchangeably with Islam itself—on many fronts: not only on the traditional
Arab-Israeli one, but in Iraq, Lebanon, and many other places, utilizing economic,
intellectual, and cultural, as well as military weapons. The response had to be that of
uniting around one’s own leaders, in particular the local regime. The “war on
terrorism” was reinterpreted as a war on Arabism or Islam. Polls showed that these
claims had a great appeal popularly, more so than did the idea of democracy or
liberalization.
A second campaign was to focus directly on the revitalization of Arab
nationalism, which often included its mixing with Islamism, or at least put a greater
emphasis on Islam. This tactic was both to undermine the Islamist opposition and to
strengthen the appeal of nationalism. A particularly powerful use of this measure was
the development of the concept of “resistance,” especially in Syria.
This idea was most clearly laid out in Syrian President Bashar al-Asad’s speech
to the Fourth General Conference of the Syrian Journalists Union on August 15, 2006.4
It should be stressed that while his rhetoric was far more extreme than that of other
Arab leaders, his basic ideas can be found throughout the Arab-speaking world in
diluted form, especially in the majority of the media. It was nothing less than an
alternative interpretation of the problems and solutions of the Middle East to that
offered by the advocates of reform, cooperation with the West, and democratization.
According to Bashar, the Arab world’s principal problem was not
underdevelopment or dictatorship, but the threat to mind and spirit as well as to
identity and heritage by a “systematic invasion.” To make matters worse, many Arabs
had betrayed their fellows through the “culture of defeat, submission, and blind
drifting” that accepted the enemy’s plan. To change course was tantamount to
embracing extinction.
For Bashar, the democratization/moderation program was merely a cover for the
“submission and humiliation and deprivation of peoples of their rights,” to be killed
without mercy and enslaved without appeal.5
“They wanted Israel to be the dominating power in the Arab region and the Arabs
would be laborers, slaves, and satellites revolving in the Israeli orbit.” As an example,
he cited Iraq, whose “destruction and ruination” had taken the country back to the
Stone Age. The same point applies to the Arab-Israeli peace process of the 1990s.
Bashar’s diagnosis was that the Arab mistake had been to adopt diplomacy and cancel
“all the other options.”6
Regarding the moderate Arab bargaining position, Bashar characterized that as
“to offer everything to Israel” and get nothing at all. The Arab mistake, according to
3 G. GAMBILL, "Dark Days Ahead for Syria's Liberal Reformers," Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Vol. 3, No.
2 (February 2001).
4 Speech by Bashar al-Asad, Syrian Arab Television, Damascus, August 15, 2006. Translation in U.S. Department
of Commerce, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) GMP20060815607001.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
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Bashar, was not rejecting compromise but rather not even considering that as an option.
By trying “to appease Israel and the United States” they abandoned intimidation and
ensured the indifference of the rest of the world. Instead of pressuring and criticizing
Israel, the West demands things such as better treatment for Syrian dissidents, and the
UN passes resolutions protesting massacres in Sudan. According to Bashar, this is
what happened when the Arabs wasted their time “discussing and negotiating with
[them]selves, convinced about a promised peace with an imaginary party that is [in
fact] preparing itself for its next aggression against the Arabs.”7
Bashar then stirred up passions quite effectively. Not only was it more heroic to
fight the West and Israel while rejecting change, it was more likely to be effective. “If
wisdom, according to some Arabs, means defeat and humiliation, then by the same
token, victory means adventure and recklessness.” His model was the Hizballah-Israel
War of 2006, which not only did he proclaim to be a victory over Israel but also one
over the treacherous Lebanese majority which had opposed Syrian domination.
Hizballah had not only won, he claimed, but its actions had been wildly popular in the
Arab world. This all proved that Arab nationalist sentiment had not declined at all; it
was not a thing of the past to be replaced by liberalism, but rather “is at its peak.” If
there is an unfavorable balance of power, righting it is only a matter of willpower,
which will be overcome “When we decide—and the decision is in our hands—to
overcome this gap.”8
He summed up the strategy of willpower over material power in the following
words: “We have decided to be weak but when we decide to be strong this balance will
be changed.” As for the global community, the UN Security Council, or other
countries’ views, it was unnecessary to take their opinions into consideration.
“National decisions take precedence over any international resolution, even if this
leads to fighting or war.”9
This did not mean that other Arab regimes, or even Syria itself, were eager for
war or that more moderate governments wanted a confrontation with the West.
However, they did want to use this kind of rhetoric to stir up pro-government emotions.
The real line of conflict did not stand, as the United States or local reformers said,
between the dictatorships and their own people, but rather between all Arabs—from
top to bottom—and their outside enemies.
This was an old argument whose effectiveness had appeared to decline in past
decades. Nevertheless, it did continue to be spectacularly successful in shaping
perceptions and mobilizing loyalties. The result was overwhelming opposition to the
alternative, democracy-oriented, program. It should be noted that Islamists, even those
who opposed the existing regimes, shared their basic approach. Ironically, perhaps, the
Islamists’ arguments often, albeit unintentionally, helped strengthen the status quo.
Both of the main forces in the Arabic-speaking world agreed that the best course was
not to abandon past practices, but to reinforce them properly.
Clearly, the strengthening of the Arab nationalist narrative—reinforced by the
partly contrasting Islamist one—tended to delegitimize the democratic opposition.
This practice was followed in a far more direct manner as well. Reformers were
branded as traitors and subversives. In the milder version, they were unintentionally
doing the devil’s work, though ultimately it was explained this did not matter.
Many examples of this situation can be offered, but one of the clearest is the Saad
Eddin Ibrahim case in Egypt. Ibrahim, one of the Arab world’s best social scientists,
headed the Ibn Khaldoun Center, a think tank. In 2000, after Ibrahim and his center
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
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examined such sensitive issues as fixed elections, the treatment of Egypt’s Christian
minority, the quality of Egyptian schools, and the plan of President Husni Mubarak to
name his own son as successor, a major campaign was launched by the government to
discredit him. He and his staff were arrested, the center closed, and its staff charged
with embezzlement, receiving foreign funds illegally, defaming Egypt’s reputation,
and bribery. In May 2001, Cairo’s Supreme State Security Court found them all guilty.
Twenty-two defendants were given suspended sentences, but Ibrahim was ordered to
serve seven years of hard labor for “harming society’s interests, values and laws.”10
4. While direct repression was certainly one instrument used, what was ultimately
more important was the ability to convince Egyptians that the regime was their friend
while the reformers were their enemies. These tactics both, of course, discouraged
others from following Ibrahim’s example. When foreigners criticized the treatment of
Ibrahim or tried to help him, this became another factor used in the government’s
campaign of discrediting its rivals.
The editor of a pro-government weekly wrote, “Those who ally themselves with
foreign quarters to harm Egypt's national security… should be executed in a public
square.”11 He sneered that Ibrahim’s supporters thought defending his “crime” was
more important “than defending Iraq and Palestine.” Those advocating civil society
and human rights in Egypt were merely proving themselves to be Western lackeys
threatening to lead Egypt into an “age of darkness.”12
While Ibrahim was eventually released from prison and continued to voice his
views, such intimidation was effective. A number of groups shifted their attention from
domestic human rights to safer, populist issues such as supporting the Palestinian
intifada and condemning sanctions against Iraq.13 In other words, organizations that
may have otherwise criticized the governance of their own country and demanded
change were coopted into being allies of the regime, furthering its trump issues and
foreign policy agenda.
There were an infinite variety of repressive acts. On one end of the spectrum,
Summir Said, an Egyptian working for the Reuters bureau in Cairo, was threatened by
the secret police in 1996.14 In Syria, the government denied an operating permit to the
National Organization for Human Rights in 2006.15 Such actions lay at the lower end
of the scale of repression. Merely calling in a dissident for questioning (which might
include threats) or a brief jail term might be expected to yield results.
However, regimes do not hesitate to throw individuals seen as rally points for
democratic oppositions, such as Fathi al-Jahmi in Libya, Ayman Nur in Egypt, or
Michel Kilo in Syria into prison for longer terms. Again, every country is different,
with Morocco and Jordan, for example, preferring cooption to repression, except in the
case of clearly violent oppositionists.
Repression is often multilayered. For instance, the influential Kurdish cleric
Mashuq al-Khaznawi was murdered in Syria under suspicious circumstances that made
it appear to be a government operation. When his son accused the regime of the deed,
he was arrested along with 49 Kurds who had participated in a rally demanding to
know the truth about the killing.16
10 Al-Ahram, May 25, 2001; al-Akhbar, May 27, 2001.

11 Ibid.
12 N.A. EL-MAGD, "Seven Years," Al-Ahram (Cairo), May 24–30, 2001; Al-Usbu, October 7, 2002. Translation
in MEMRI, No. 429 (October 15, 2002).
13 Cairo Times, May 31-June 6, 2001.
14 Reporters sans Fronti?res, press release, September 11, 2006.
15 AFP dispatch, Sunday Times, September 2, 2006.
16 The Syria Monitor, September 28, 2006.
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With its enormous resources for buying off dissent, Saudi Arabia and the other
members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the
United Arab Emirates) rarely revert to force. In February 2007, for example, Saudi
authorities arrested ten men on suspicion of funding terrorism charges, though their
actual sin was apparently planning to form a political party. Three of them had
previously signed a petition calling for free elections. Typical, too, of Saudi Arabia,
those demanding reforms were Islamists. The petition accused the government of
preventing reformers from traveling abroad, closing Internet sites, banning public
demonstrations, and threatening state employees with dismissal for expressing
opinions contrary to government policy.17
In effect, this minor incident revealed a great deal about the nature of the current
struggle. On one hand, there are Islamists using the democracy card and employing
nonviolent methods, though others continue to engage in terrorism. On the other hand,
the regime wants to brand these dissenters as being linked to terrorism, which also has
the advantage of appearing as a viable reason for suppression in Western eyes as well
as scaring Saudis.
Still, it should be emphasized that there is no country that is the equivalent of
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where a word of criticism could lead to torture and murder.
Although they define what is a misdemeanor or felony, there is some relative scale in
terms of letting the punishment fit the crime. Perhaps the most repressive, other than
Syria, is Libya. Its leader, Muammar Qadhafi, openly called on his supporters to kill
anyone who asked for political change in the country: “If the enemy shows up you
must finish it off because the enemy [wants] to exterminate you. We cannot tolerate
that the enemy undermines the power of the people and the revolution.”18
It should be remembered, though, that when threats against liberals come from
Islamists, the regime usually does nothing to protect them or punish those
making—and sometimes implementing—such warnings. In such circumstances, the
radical Islamists become an arm of regime interests for all practical purposes. For
example, in May 2006, a Saudi Islamist Internet site published a statement
condemning reformists as dangerously anti-Islamic Westernizers. The statement’s
signatories included government officials such as judges and employees of the
education department. If anyone working for the government had signed a parallel
reform manifesto, he would have been immediately fired.19
The fear that a loosening of political and social bonds might lead to instability
was a real and logical concern for many. Abroad, they could look at the collapse of the
USSR and Yugoslavia; or at how the impending election of Islamists in Algeria,
blocked by a military coup, brought on a long and bloody civil war there. Iraq was also
a warning of what might be, for in addition to an Islamist takeover, many
countries—notably Syria and Lebanon—faced ethnic strife. Turkey too, though less
often cited, showed how Islamists could win elections. More recently, gains by the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and an election victory for Hamas in the Palestinian
Authority drove the lesson home. Even the rise of low-level insurgencies, as in Saudi
Arabia, set off warning signals of what might potentially happen. In light of all these
things, the status quo did not look so bad for many people.
Regimes found many ways of incorporating these issues into their rhetoric. For
example, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayif bin Abd al-Aziz, in charge of that
government’s counterinsurgency campaign, told his people that al-Qa’ida was a
17 Reuters, April 4, 2007.

18 "Qaddafi Urges Death for Foes on Anniversary of 1969 Coup," New York Times, September 1, 2006";
Reuters, August 31, 2006.
19 Translation in MEMRI, No. 294 (September 21, 2006), www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=IA29406
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Western front group, part of an overall effort to sabotage Saudi Arabia, of which
liberalization was another tactic.20
5. The growing power of Islamists is clearly evident and has been enhanced by
elections. Aside from state balloting, the professional organizations, whose leaders are
elected in relatively fair elections, have become dominated by Islamists in, for
example, Egypt and Jordan. Even though the Islamists are enemies of the regime, the
government often favors their activities over those of liberals since the Islamists
often—though of course not always—produce parallel ideas that reinforce the regimes’
positions. Moreover, the Islamists’ strength also frightens people into supporting the
regime. As one Egyptian analyst has written, “Propagators of extremist [Islamist]
thought are given a free hand to spread their ideas by all means (as long as they are not
overly critical of the regime). On the other hand, efforts by civil society are
systematically obstructed….” On programs broadcast on state television, Islamist
preachers condemn liberals and reform while not being allowed to voice negative
remarks toward the regime.21
Aside from their “objective cooperation” with the government, the Islamists also
block a movement for reform in their own right, even if they support fairer elections as
being in their own interest. As the Syrian researcher Burhan Ghaliun put it, also
indicating the heightened pessimism of liberals:
The main problem…is that the clerics have become the leading shapers of public
opinion…. Arab societies are held hostage by two authorities: [One is the] political
dictatorship…. [The other is]… the clerics—even those opposing these regimes—who
tyrannize Arab public opinion nowadays…. There is a kind of undeclared, practical
alliance between the political dictatorship and the dictatorship of the religious
authority [which accuses reformers] of secularism, which means heresy, or by
accusing them of modernism, of having ties with the West, or of collaborating with
colonialism. In their conduct, they do not really differ from the Arab dictatorial
regimes…. They have won the war of culture….22
Consequently, as Bruce Maddy-Weitzman explains in discussing Tunisia:
The… elites and middle class alike, fearful of the consequences of a rising
political Islam in a society noted for its relatively liberal and secular ambience,
essentially agreed to their indefinite political emasculation in return for the regime's
repression of the Islamist movement and the maintenance of a liberal economy and the
existing legal and social frameworks.23
Arab rulers and their supporters—including government employees in the media,
education, and even religious institutions—often stress that their countries are already
wonderfully governed and truly democratic. In Qadhafi’s words, “Our political path is
the correct one as it grants freedom to the whole people, sovereignty, power and
wealth to the whole people.”24
An easy and low-cost response is for governments to state that they have already
made reforms, are in the process of doing so, are studying such measures, or will do so
in future. There are many such statements and claims. Entire supposedly civil society
20 Al-Majd TV, Sep. 25, 2006. Transl. by MEMRI, No. 1305 (Oct. 4, 2006), www.memritv.org/search.asp?
ACT=S9&P1=1283
21 A. GUINDY, "The Islamization of Egypt," Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal,
Vol. 10, No. 3 (September 2006), p. 94, http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2006/issue3/jv10no3a7.html
22 Al-Jazeera, January 22, 2007,: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1372, Clip #1372
23 B. MADDY-WEITZMAN, "Maghreb Regime Scenarios," MERIA Journal, Volume 10, No. 3 (September
2006), p. 115.
24 Reuters, August 31, 2006.
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institutions are created under state control to propagandize for the government’s virtue
and to crowd out independent counterparts.
For example, Bahrain created a High Council for Women that was used,
according to a woman’s rights activist there, to hinder non-governmental women’s
societies and to block the registration of the independent Women’s Union for many
years.25 In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Abdallah established a forum for national
dialogue and invited a wide variety of people to attend, but the recommendations
arising from the discussions, which were held in a beautiful building created solely to
house the meetings, were very conservative and at any rate had no effect. In the media,
al-Watan, a publication owned by a prince, ran more liberal articles, but then its editor,
Jamal Khashoggi, was fired by the regime shortly after criticizing clerics for
supporting Islamist terrorists. Husayn Shobokshi was allowed to publish an article
describing a liberal future Saudi Arabia in an English-language paper but not in Arabic;
he soon lost his column as a result.26
Prince Sultan bin Turki bin Abd al-Aziz made liberal pronouncements but then
was reportedly lured by Saudi officials to a meeting in Geneva, drugged, and forcibly
returned to a house arrest in Riyadh.27 In March 2004, the Saudi government approved
the establishment of an official human rights association, whose members flew off to
London to explain how the kingdom was moving toward liberalization. A few days
later, 13 prominent independent liberals were taken into police custody and charged
with endangering national unity. Those who promised not to petition for reform or to
talk to reporters were quickly released. One reformer remarked, “This will make
people lose trust in the government and their promises. It contradicts 100% what they
have been promising.”28
6. A useful gimmick regimes use is the creation of their own human rights or civil
society groups, which can then be guaranteed not to cause any problems for the
government. In the Saudi case, a leading prince explained that dissidents were those
rebelling “against their fathers and their country” and thus could not expect support
from the state-backed human rights body. “I urge you not to think that the national
human rights association was founded to assist offenders” against the law, he said. The
new chairman of this National Organization for Human Rights, Abdallah bin Salah
al-Ubayd, explained that “there are those who consider certain issues a violation of
human rights, while we consider them a safeguard to human rights. For example,
executions, amputating the hand of a thief, or flogging an adulterer.”29
In Egypt, the state-backed National Council for Human Rights remains quite
vague in its discussion of issues, including nothing that would offend the government,
indeed avoiding any serious discussion of the country at all.30 The regime even
sponsored a journal on democracy, producing more copies in English than in Arabic
and publishing little about the Arab world and almost nothing about Egypt in its pages.
25 "Committee of Women's Petition" President to British House of Lords: "The Struggle for Women's Rights in
Bahrain Has Become More Difficult," December 19, 2006. Translation in MEMRI, No. 1401 (December 20,
2006),
26 Transcript of, interview with Jamal Khashoggi, "Saudi Arabia: Is Reform on the Way?," BBC Television,
August 1, 2003.
27 R. HARDY, "Saudis 'Kidnap Reformer Prince,'" BBC, January 21, 2004.
28 Arab News (Saudi Arabia), March 10, 2004; Reuters March 16, 2004; Washington Post, March 17, 2004; Mai
Yamani, "Arrests Make Mockery of Saudi Reform Talk," International Herald Tribune, March 22, 2004.
29 Al-Hayat, March 12, 2004. Translation by MEMRI, No. 167 (March 26, 2004); Cited in Democracy Digest,
"Focus: Democracy in the Middle East," April 5, 2004.
30 See its site, http://www.sis.gov.eg/eginfnew/humanrights/html/hr.htm
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In addition, the government presented its own reform program. Reformists did not
expect any real change but were uncertain as to how they could respond effectively.31
Similarly, there were promises in many countries of reforming education to make
it more tolerance-oriented, but these were accompanied by little action and sometimes
even high-level denials that any change would indeed be made.32 In Saudi Arabia, no
government action was taken against 160 clerics, many of them government
employees, who accused liberals of being traitors loyal to infidels and denounced
educational reform as a plot by “the Zionist-Crusader government in Washington… to
convert the Muslims to another religion.”33 If any government employees would have
made such strong statements demanding reform or liberalization, they would have
been immediately fired.34
Even the most transparent exercises were used by regimes to claim democracy.
While this might not have been so effective, it certainly seemed to please the regimes
themselves as a strategy. In Yemen, Ali Abdallah Salah, who had ruled for 28 years,
had himself elected in 1999, with 96%35 of the vote and in 2006, by 77%.36 In 2000,
Bashar al-Asad was elected president of Syria with 97.29% of the votes.37 Since his
father was elected in 1999 by 99.9% of the votes,38 the 2.7 reduction in unanimity
might be taken to represent the degree of democratic opening represented by his new
regime.39 Syrian parliamentary elections in 2007, for example, were also conducted
without opposition candidates and with the regime’s party choosing two-thirds of the
candidates as well as approving the remaining “independents.”
In Bahrain, there were fair, multiparty elections in October 2002, despite a history
of unrest from the majority Shi’a Muslims against the minority Sunni-controlled
government.40 The opposition was legalized and security forces curbed. Kuwait also
held periodic free and fair elections, with Islamists doing well but not gaining control
of parliament.
The way things could be was illustrated by an event in tiny Bahrain in January
2004. Bahrain’s elected parliament held a special televised session to denounce alleged
government corruption in managing the country’s pension funds. Members, including
Islamists, demanded that accused cabinet members resign for making bad investments
that benefited themselves, change the system, and return the lost money. One liberal
member declared that the special session showed the people that parliament was not a
“rubber stamp” for the regime.41
The government denied the accusations and presented its defense to the
legislators. Yet a high official proclaimed himself “happy” to be part of “this historic
day” on which Bahrain’s democracy showed itself so well. “The government supports
the Parliament's eagerness to exercise its monitoring role,” he added. “I am really
proud of the work done by the special committee.”42 In turn, parliamentarians praised
the ruler’s democratic reforms and the government for its cooperation.43
31 AP, December 16, 2006.

32 Mid East Times, January 11, 2004; Saudi Gazette, January 4, 2004.
33 Cited in Z. BAR'EL, Ha'aretz, January 7, 2004.
34 Z. BAR'EL, "Even the Saudi Public Discourse on Reforms is Conducted in Secrecy," Haaretz, July 1, 2004.
35 "Country Profile: Yemen," BBC, July 14, 2007.
36 "Yemeni Leader Wins By Landslide," BBC, September 23, 2007.
37 New York Times, June 12, 19, 21, 28 and July 12, 2000.
38 Al-Sharq al-Awsat, February 12, 1999.
39 Syrian election results available online.
40 Economist Intelligence Unit, Bahrain Country Profile (London: Economist Intelligence Unit, 2003), pp. 6-7.
41 Reuters, January 11, 2004; Gulf News, January 14, 2004.
42 M. ALMEZEL, "Bahrain Government under Fire for 'Misuse' of Public Funds," Gulf News (Dubai), January
11, 2004.
43 Reuters, January 11, 2004.
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Still, even in Bahrain there are many questions about both government
manipulation and the problems of Islamist gains. Ghada Jamshir, president of the
Committee of Women's Petition there stated, for example, “There is a lot of talk about
progress and achievements in regard to women's rights…. [Yet] on the other hand, the
injustice and suffering continue.” She notes that ten of the eleven women who became
members of the 40-member legislature were appointed because they supported the
regime, while only one who won the election on her own was nominated by the
government in a district with few people and no competing candidate. Still, this might
be held in the government’s favor since it did not have to give 25% representation to
women.
The point is that while the government was willing to have women on the council,
it preferred they support it. Jamshir also charges that in the assembly:
As a result of government manipulation of elections, the majority… are members
of Islamist groups who have other priorities than women’s rights. Many campaigners
for human rights, including women, lost the election to Islamists backed by the
government, as a result of using the floating votes of military men and newly
nationalized persons.44
If so, this is a good example of the government-Islamist alliance at work.
She also points out that while women now serve in positions as the minister of
health and social affairs, the head of Bahrain University, and a candidate to head the
UN General Assembly, only 8% of high government positions are held by women.
Reforms, of course, do take time, and the key question is whether progress continues
or not. Another issue is that the great majority benefit relatively little from these
changes. Women still have great difficulties with divorce and child custody issues, and,
according to Jamshir, the government is holding up a family law reform as a
bargaining chip with the Islamists, another common problem. She concludes that the
reforms so far are counterproductive: “The struggle for women’s rights in Bahrain has
become more difficult. That is because of the new government approach and policies,
which pretend to be the protector of women’s rights by implementing artificial and
marginal reforms.”45 Whether valid or not, this certainly reveals the pessimistic tone
of reformists today.
The system allowed for more openness while setting strict limits. After the human
rights activist al-Mazal Abd al-Hadi al-Khawaja criticized Bahrain’s prime minister in
a public lecture in October 2004, he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to one year in
prison for “inciting hatred of the regime by publicly calling it corrupt.” His Bahrain
Center for Human Rights was disbanded. Within hours of the sentencing, however, he
was pardoned by the country’s monarch. Khawaja then stated he would continue his
efforts on behalf of human rights. An undertone to the affair was that Khawaja, who
had recently returned to the country after 22 years living in Europe, was a member of
the Shi’a Muslim majority in a country ruled by a Sunni Muslim dynasty. Thus, either
repressing him or allowing democracy became immediately entangled in potentially
explosive sectarian issues.46
7. However, these are exceptions and limited ones at that. In contrast, consider
Jordan, rightly seen as one of the most moderately ruled Arab state. In an article for a
Western newspaper, Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher explained that the Arab world
44 G. JAMSHEER, Transcript of address to the British House of Lords, MEMRI Special Dispatch Series, No.
1401, December 18, 2006.
45 Ibid.
46 B. RUBIN, "The Region: The Rocky Road to Arab Reform," Jerusalem Post, May 27, 2007; Gulf News,
October 5, 2004; Beirut Daily Star, November 23, 2004. On liberalism in Bahrain, see also Beirut Daily Star,
September 7, 2004.
102
DEFEATED DEMOCRACY
must “take the initiative” to become more democratic. This cannot happen overnight,
of course, and forcing the pace could lead to radicalization. U.S. pressure to do so is
“alienating Arabs and jeopardizing the efforts of genuine reformers, who now cannot
advocate democracy without being accused of doing America’s bidding.” Yet the Arab
world is ready to manage this transition itself. How do we know? Because, he explains,
Jordan’s king and queen have endorsed the UN Arab Human Development Report!47
Is this sufficient? Jordanians elected a new parliament in 2003, choosing mostly
pro-government representatives. The elections were honest but unfair. Ever since the
prime minister had dissolved the previous parliament two years earlier, he had decreed
dozens of “temporary laws” limiting free speech, tightening press controls, and
gerrymandering districts to ensure the regime’s victory. Amman, with a higher
proportion of dissidents, had about one parliament member for 52,000 voters,
compared to just 6,000 people in Kerak, a regime stronghold. The number of seats was
expanded from 80 to 110, giving more power to pro-government areas. As a result,
Islamists received only 17 out of 110 seats, far fewer than they might have won in a
fair system.48 However, if Islamists were to win, the result would hardly be conducive
to stability or holding any future elections, much less the changes required to raise
living standards and expand civil rights.
The main concern of Jordan’s government seemed to be to appease the Islamists
without giving them any real power while making empty promises of more
consultation and partnership.49 At the same time, though, Jordanians do enjoy more
freedom than most other Arabs. It is probable that this greater openness provides an
escape valve, reducing the level of Islamist violence in Jordan.
Jordan, then, is more of a democracy in appearance than in practice, since
elections are not fair reflections of the population’s views. In theory, parliament can
dismiss the prime minister and cabinet; in practice, the opposite is more likely to
happen. All the senate’s members are appointed by the king. The legislature is
dominated by opponents of reform, either because they are instruments of the regime
or radical Islamists.
Kuwait’s parliament, elected freely, has a variety of groups, representing a
spectrum from Islamists through tribal conservatives to liberals, Sunni and Shi’a,
though the balance of power is still held by the monarch through his ability to appoint
a large share of the members.50 In Jordan, there is no organized liberal party as such,
in part because the monarchy plays the role of reformer, albeit to a very limited extent.
The Islamist opposition is partly coopted by being allowed to have a sizeable, but
always minority, share of seats in parliament.
An important example of genuine reform has been the Tunisian educational
system, even in the Islamic university, which stresses tolerance and a pluralistic
interpretation of Islam. Tunisia also has the most advanced laws on gender equality in
terms of rights and family law. However, this makes it stand all the more in contrast to
the form and content of the educational process in other countries.51 At the same time,
Tunisia is authoritarian and repressive, marked by fixed elections and a dismal human
rights record. This is an example of how complex and contradictory the situation with
which reformers must contend is.
47 M. MUASHER, "A Path to Arab Democracy," New York Times, April 28, 2003.
48 T. FAISAL and I. Urbina, "Jordan's Troubling Detour," Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2003; King Loyalists Win
Jordan Poll," BBC, June 19, 2003.
49 Al Ahram Weekly, November 20-26, 2003.
50 G. NOONEMAN, "Political Reform in the Gulf Monarchies: From Liberalisation to Democratization?: A
Comparative Perspective," Sir William Luce Fellowship Paper No. 6 (2006), University of Durham.
51 L. LAKHDAR, "Moving From Salafi to Rationalist Education," MERIA Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1 (March 2005).
103
DEFEATED DEMOCRACY
In Morocco, there is a lively civil society and strong women’s groups.52 King
Hassan, who died in 1999, used the phrase “homeopathic democracy,” which meant, in
Bruce Maddy-Weitzman’s words, “controlled, measured steps at political liberalization
while the makhzen (the traditional term for Morocco's ruling security-bureaucratic
apparatus), headed by the monarch, continued to maintain overweening control.” His
son and successor, Muhammad, quickened the pace of change. The slogan used was
“development and ijtihad,” meaning liberalization within the parameters of Islamic
law rather than a mere imitation of tradition. This includes holding fair elections. The
goal is to stabilize the regime, including the recruitment of allies among liberals and
women who will join it in opposing Islamism, as well as taking into consideration their
goals and demands. While the regime also tries to appease Islamists, this may be the
country where the regime-liberal alliance has gone the furthest. Still, Morocco’s
democracy involves a large amount of cooption in which the palace manipulates
political parties by offering them a share in power.53
Particularly impressive are steps toward democratization and reform being taken
in the smaller Gulf Arab states. For example, the 2007 Qatar municipal elections saw
51.1% of the total eligible voters voting. Almost half of them were female. The polling
went smoothly, and the voting stations were policed to avoid violations of law. “Gone
are the days when people voted for members of their family or tribe. Now the voters
are more critical and they are looking at the qualifications of the candidate and
whether they are capable of doing some good job in their constituency,” said one
voter.54
Of course, there are definite limitations and flaws in the developments regarding
Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Hereditary rule remains, and
the royal families still dominate the system. Yet the progress has been undeniably
impressive. There also seems to be a strengthening of what might be called the
democratic mentality. Islamists participate in this process and often win parliamentary
seats in large numbers. Yet their attitudes seem far more moderate than those of their
counterparts in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia.
Generally, with the notable exception of Saudi Arabia, a greater dynamism at the
bottom and flexibility at the top seems evident in the “reactionary” monarchies of the
Gulf and in Morocco, as compared to the “progressive” Arab nationalist regimes,
which increasingly seem like the Soviet Union in its most dinosaur-like period. Yet
again this is relatively more democratic and pluralist than the intransigent alternatives.
Also, fears of instability or an even worse regime due to a too rapid or extensive
change are not merely phony.
8. How did the reform movements respond to all these difficulties and pressures?
Two factors should be emphasized.
First, the liberals were generally depressed and discouraged, seeing their lack of
progress and popularity as well as the obstacles put in their way clearly. No doubt, this
situation prevented others from joining their ranks, making some of them reduce or
abandon activism, and contributed to splits in their ranks.
Second, seeing this, there was a strong temptation for liberals to water down their
arguments, sometimes themselves coming to advocate radical and populist views long
typical of their Arab nationalist and Islamist rivals.
Each individual and group faced an extraordinarily difficult choice. Given the
fact that the main struggle was between the Arab nationalist regimes and the Islamists,
52 A. JAMAL, "Morocco's Choice: Openness or Terror," New York Times, May 31, 2003.
53 Maddy-Weitzman, "Maghreb Regime Scenarios."
54 Al-Jazeera, April 2, 2007.
104
DEFEATED DEMOCRACY
liberals needed to consider taking sides. If they feared an Islamist takeover would lead
to an even less free society, they might side with the government against the Islamists.
The fact that the regime would reward them for doing so and that most reformers had a
relatively Westernized, secular worldview—at least compared with the average in their
society—dividing them from the Islamists were additional incentives. This pattern
prevailed, for example, in Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Even though Saudi
reformers were highly religious compared to liberal counterparts in other countries,
they faced the political alternative of an al-Qa’ida regime.
Another possible choice was to side with the Islamists against the regime. This
decision arose from a deep hatred for the regime. Given his personal experience, it is
understandable that Saad Eddin Ibrahim was the most important liberal to take this
road. In an article explaining why he advocated an alliance with the Islamists, Ibrahim
showed how deeply impressed he was by the popularity of Hizballah, Hamas, Iran,
al-Qa’ida, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their leaders in Egypt. “The pattern here is
clear, and it is Islamic.” In contrast, the incumbent leaders of Arab countries are less
popular. Egyptians are moving toward Islamism, he concludes. “More mainstream
Islamists with broad support, developed civic dispositions and services to provide are
the most likely actors in building a new Middle East.” Clearly, he sees the Islamists as
the winning side and believes that since they cannot be defeated they must be
coopted.55
Yet this strategy also coincides with a belief that the Islamists can be “tamed” by
participating in the system or even in taking power. At times, it has been suggested that
having to develop pragmatic solutions to real problems and deal with the exigencies of
electoral political life—if it were no longer possible to merely repeat the slogan,
“Islam is the answer!”—they would face splits and a reduced popularity. The idea of
alliance with the Islamists against the regime most often appeared, but not exclusively
so, in Egypt, in part because Islamists successfully infiltrated the reform movement.
A prime example of the populist and Islamist-oriented strategy took place with
the Kifaya movement in Egypt. When the group focused its criticism on the
government of President Husni Mubarak and such sensitive issues as his possible
intention of having his own son as successor, it was harassed and repressed. Thus, it
turned to attacks on America and Israel instead, the historic distraction and scapegoat
strategy of nationalists and Islamists. In a September 2006 meeting, attended by both
the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya leaders, a campaign was launched to try to get
Egypt to repeal its peace treaty with Israel.56 Nevertheless, even engaging in such
demagoguery did not help. The organization’s decline continued with a December
2006 demonstration attracting only 100 people.57
Of course, liberals have not had to choose between alliance with Arab nationalist
regimes or Islamists but can keep their principled independence and criticize both
sides. Many did in fact do so. However, this was an even more difficult strategy to
follow, one isolating them to a greater extent and limiting any role they might play in
actual events. Furthermore, there is always the hope of influencing one of the far more
powerful groups—the government toward greater openness or the Islamists toward
more moderation.
Things were clearly not going well for the reformers. Kifaya, as a December
2006 AP report on the organization stated, “is divided and demoralized its members
split over a host of issues…. 'Nobody is listening. They've demonstrated so many
55 S. E. IBRAHIM, "The 'New Middle East' Bush Is Resisting," Washington Post, August 23, 2006.
56 Al-Quds al-Arabi, September 8, 1996; AP, September 14, 2006.
57 M. MICHAEL, "Once Energetic Egyptian Democracy Movement Divided Its Second Year," Associated Press,
December 16, 2006.
105
DEFEATED DEMOCRACY
times but nothing has changed,’” said a young student watching a small Kifaya protest.
Within the organization, Marxists, leftists, Arab nationalists, Islamists, and secular
liberals battled each other. Indeed, some of Kifaya’s own members, “deep inside, are
against democracy and reform,” said Bahay al-Din Hassan, director of Cairo Center
for Human Rights Studies. One of those leaving Kifaya said its leaders were acting
like “dictators.” Islamist leaders quit to protest Kifaya issuing a statement supporting
Egypt’s culture minister, who had criticized the Islamic veil as a sign of “backward
thinking.”58
The reformist Wafd party also split when a leadership struggle ended in gunfire
between two factions in a battle for control over the group’s headquarters.59 This
conflict may well have been intensified by the provocations of infiltrating government
agents who staged an internal coup. The ousted head of the party was arrested by the
government.
9. Another serious problem is that liberal forces are unwilling to respect democracy
when they fight radical Islamists, sometimes in alliance with the regimes. An
interesting example took place in November 2006, when a columnist wrote in the
Kuwaiti newspaper al-Siyassa that deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a
hero and that the Arabs should support the Iraqi “resistance,” both positions contrary to
those of Kuwait itself. In response, Kuwaiti Information Minister Muhammad
al-San’usi said that the newspaper would be charged with “publishing reports that
negatively impact Kuwaiti society.”60
A further inconsistency was pointed out by Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, who said that
liberals “were driven into a collective 'craze’ when the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt,
Jordan and in other Arab countries decided to become political parties and to take part
in the 'democratic’ game, in accordance with the existing rules,” despite
anti-democratic government policies limiting rights. If liberals really wanted
democracy they would welcome the Islamists’ decision and participation.61 In fact,
what liberals really wanted was only:
'Democracy’ that will bring them to power, without their having to take it upon
themselves to descend to the level of the 'masses,’ the 'rabble’—or, in more elegant
terminology, 'the man on the street’—and without having to rub shoulders with him
and to understand his situation.62
To act this way, he concludes, is an “intentional falsification of the values of
rationalism and liberalism.” The problem, of course, is that the liberal and reform
movement is simultaneously one that advocates a specific method and a particular
outcome. It argues that democratic norms are best but also aims for a large number of
changes in society as well. To isolate elections from the entire reform program brings
up, in the context of radical Islamist movements, the well-known problem of
authoritarian movements using democratic means to come to power.
Even if one restricts the scope of discussion to democratic methods, there still
remains the problem—raising understandable concerns among reformers—of the use
of anti-democratic methods in terms of argument (terming opponents as heretics and
traitors) and strategies (violence, including incitement to kill). Beyond that lies the
doubt in the sincerity of democratic professions on the part of Islamists, the likelihood
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Al-Siyassa, November 9, 2006; al-Watan, November 13, 2006; and al-Ray al-Am, November 16, 2006,
translated in MEMRI, No. 1364 (November 22, 2006).
61 Al-Masri al-Yawm, August 17, 2006. Translation in MEMRI, No. 1259 (August 23, 2006).
62 Ibid.
106
DEFEATED DEMOCRACY
of what has been called, “One man, one vote, one time.” That is, if victorious, the
Islamists would revoke the democracy that brought them to power.
Still, these are real difficulties, not so much because liberals will be criticized for
hypocrisy, but because they genuinely do face the potential triumph of an
anti-democratic movement, or perhaps what should be called two anti-democratic
ones—Arab nationalism and Islamism.
At any rate, Abu Zayd demonstrates this very point by revealing that he is
advocating the popular stance of subordinating everything to the struggle against
foreigners. He writes:
Resistance is not 'adventure,’ but rather the only existing option at the moment
for our peoples, after the [true] face of the modern Arab nation has been exposed...
You are against Hamas, against Hizballah, and against the Muslim Brotherhood
because of their religious ideology. You are afraid that their growing stronger will lead
to the establishment of religious states, but [by ignoring] Israel, you reveal that your
liberalism and rationalism are not just phony; they are destructive rationalism. This is
American rationalism, in which an idea is correct to the degree that it is useful.63
So quickly, as often happens—indeed, usually happens—the liberal concern over
Islamism is transformed into proof that they are in fact Zionist and American agents,
traitors, and hold ideas that are heretical in patriotic terms. With such delegitimization
as the norm, of course, democratic debate is impossible.
Nevertheless, the liberals’ twin problems remain. Arab nationalists and Islamists
are more popular than reformers, are willing (and by their doctrines, able) to use more
extreme methods, fit better with the traditional and existing worldviews, and are adept
at employing demagoguery and xenophobia to succeed. Moreover, the regimes have a
wide repertoire of tools—including both the Islamists themselves and fear of the
Islamists simultaneously—to inhibit democracy and reform.
10. As so often happens with Middle East issues, this leaves the West, and the United
States in particular, with unpalatable policy alternatives. A primary emphasis on
democratization is both unlikely to succeed and raises problems of its own. In this
context, however, two policy themes are both important and reasonable.
First, support for reform and democratization should be an important part of the
U.S. policy arsenal. This is true for several reasons. In the long term, the erosion of
dictatorship and the mentality that accompanies it is the only way that regional
problems might be solved; for dictatorship stands in the way of a more peaceful,
tolerant region, not to mention the spread of human rights, a decline in extremism, and
socioeconomic progress. Such a policy is both morally right and expedient in terms of
U.S. interests.
At the same time, however, the fact is that the United States needs good relations
with key regimes for a variety of purposes, ranging from Iraq to the Arab-Israeli
conflict to the war against terrorism, as well as economic relationships. In addition,
pressure on these regimes for reform and greater democracy could be destabilizing and
bring increasingly extreme and repressive governments, even if they achieve power
through democratic means. Of course, the existing regimes are likely to ignore U.S.
efforts to change them and even turn U.S. efforts into anti-American propaganda as
examples of imperialistic interference.
The way to deal with this contradiction is not to ignore it, but to develop a
reasonably balanced policy that deals with both aspects. A stated policy of support for
change and small-scale aid to reformers can accompany a realpolitik approach to
63 Ibid.
107
DEFEATED DEMOCRACY
alliances with Arab dictatorships. Achieving a balance has often been difficult for U.S.
policy, but that does not mean this is an incorrect strategy.
Special recognition should be given to the fairly successful efforts of countries
such as Morocco and the smaller Gulf Arab states to evolve their systems in the right
direction. The United States also should not be afraid to intervene energetically, if
verbally, on specific cases of human rights abuses. It does not have to endorse unfair
elections, for example, and it should wage ideological struggle against both of the
extremist ideologies that dominate the Arab world. After all, the United States too
provides a wide variety of strategic, diplomatic, and economic services to the
relatively more moderate Arab states, and it has a right to ask for things in return up to
a reasonable point.
Every country, certainly, is different in its mix of politics, ideology, problems, and
policies. This leads to a second important point. With the exception of Saudi Arabia,
there is a real distinction between more moderate and more extreme states, not only in
the fact that they are friendlier to the West and less aggressive externally but also in
regard to their internal nature. Many criticisms can be made, for instance, against
Egypt’s domestic policies and system. Yet Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Morocco—to
pick several countries—are genuinely more moderate and less oppressive than Syria,
Sudan, and Libya, or Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
The United States, then, can and should legitimately draw distinctions. Greater
effort and a higher level of criticism or even sanctions can be employed against the
radical states precisely because they are radical. The level of free speech or civil
society in Egypt is far more open than that in Syria. While it can be charged that the
United States is inconsistent or using criticism over dictatorship as a strategic tool,
setting priorities along these lines makes sense not only in terms of national interests
but also on the merits of the cases themselves.
Finally, there should be a realistic assessment of the situation. With the exception
of the few countries mentioned above where progress is apparent, the democratic
movements are not doing so well. Generally, they are lagging far behind the radical
Arab nationalists—whose staying power should not be underestimated—and the
radical Islamists. Even given the gains made by the Islamists, with the exception of the
Palestinians, the Arab nationalist status quo is still winning and enjoys majority
support.
In short, the regimes’ strategy worked to turn back the democratic challenge. In
the long run things might turn out differently, but it is going to be a very long run
indeed.
108
109

Heartland - 2008 01 The Pakistani Boomerang

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THE PAKISTANI

Pakistani ethnic-geopolitical-religious mayonnaise needs grand dreams. In addition to

particular that of their clannish-secular elites, which on the contrary devoted

4. “Nowadays al-Qa’ida seems to have turned against Pakistan to attack its

IN THE HEARRT OF JIHAD

THE BIG ATOMIC GAME by Rahimullah YUSUFZAI

1. T HE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT AND

sites and possibly to move the material to a safer place.”

THE MASKS OF THE ISI by B. RAMAN

1. T HE INTELLIGENCE BUREAU (IB) OF

THE OBSCURE WORLD

1. S URROUNDED BY A GROUP OF RELIGIOUS

Table 1. The growth of madrasas over time.

Year No. of registered madrasas No. of students

1957 150 30,000

Source: Akhbar-i-Jahan (Jang Group)

According to Islam, seeking earthly knowledge is also important because earthly

Table 2. The curriculum of Pakistan’s madrasas.

In addition, many of the madrasas teach muallimul insha which is written by an

developmental initiatives in the country.

1. T HE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE

THE BALOCHISTAN CRISIS by Sanaullah BALOCH

With a mix of repression and political manipulation, Islamabad attempts to neutralize

1. B ALOCHISTAN IS THE LARGEST

Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project. The Assembly also demanded

3. Islamabad's unpleasant policies are resulting in deep alienation of the Baloch

1. I N APRIL 2007, THE EUROPEAN UNION

2. Spanning an area of approximately 72,496 square kilometres, the Gilgit-Baltistan

Sectarian polarization in Gilgit-Baltistan is not new. It has been continuously

Another index of regional backwardness can be found in the education sector.

6. Despite a long history of protests against Islamabad’s discriminatory policies,

sectarianism in the region. Gilgit Baltistan consequently remains an ‘area of darkness’,

KARACHI, THE NEW YORK

Karachi, the economic and financial capital of the country, is a multi-ethnic

1. A PART FROM BEING PAKISTAN'S

JAMMU AND KASHMIR:

“S PRING, WILL RETURN TO THE

Peace and the ‘Islamist Peril’

Peace and the Dying Jihad

BETWEEN AMERICA AND ASIA

1. T HE NORTH-WEST INDIAN STATE OF

On January 10, 2008, the Director General of Police in Punjab, N. P. S. Aulakh,

constant effort to revive recruitment and terrorism in Punjab, as well as a continuous

3. The Punjab Police registered a number of counter-terrorism successes in 2007, as

THE IRANIAN DOSSIER:

R ARELY HAS A SEEMINGLY BLAND

Conclusion: Some Good News

7 Baker and Wright, Washington Post, December 5, 2007.

THE WORST CASE SCENARIO

1. T ODAY, Not since the Team A – Team B

today are utterly misleading – deliberately or otherwise.

6 Iran: Nuclear report a ‘victory,” CNN, December 05, 2007, at http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast

moderate-case and worst-case scenarios, prices increased significantly, but the

4. The results were impressive. The policy recommendations eliminated

THE SHIA FACTOR by Kayhan BARZEGAR

F ROM CONSIDERING THE POLITICAL

Iran and the Shia Factions: Strategic Link

8FULLER, op. cit.

Iran and the New Shia-Sunni Power Equation

Policy,” June 5, 2006, at: www.cfr.org.

I n the unhappy, waning days of the Bush

The Problem with ‘Diplomacy’