NRO, No More

Lo, and behold. A short order decision of Supreme Court has just come in. It was a unanimous decision handed down by a full-bench court comprising of 17 respected judges of the apex court. Nobody wrote a dissenting note. Its implications and fall out are already being discussed by everyone. Being a student of Constitutional law, I will try to briefly summarize its implication first in legal term and then in layman's term.

In legal term, according to the short order from the court, the NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance) has been declared null and void ab initio. NRO has been found in conflict with Article 4, 25, 62, 89, 175 and 227 of the constitution. All the previous cases have been revived. All previous absconders have been declared convicted as they stood previously on October 5, 2007.

Its legal implications and fall-out can be huge, if seen with a specific interpretation of few clauses of our constitution. The most notorious absconder that comes in my mind is Rehman Malik, who was declared an offender and absconder in 2005. He can stand disqualified if the Article 63(1)p comes in play which states about disqualification of a member of a Parliament:

"he has been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for having absconded by a competent court under any law for the time being in force;"

About the legal implications that it holds to the President, there are divergent views. According to the Article 248(2), the President enjoys legal immunity from all criminal cases 'to be initiated or continued' against him. But certain legal experts have another interesting opinion. As the NRO has been found in conflict with Article 62 too, which deals with the qualification of President and members of National Assembly, so the Article 248 might not be enough to prevent the candidature of Asif Ali Zardari from being brought in question. If this happens to be the case, then many of the sitting members of Parliament can also be sent packing. Is the apex court ready to go this far? I hope it is. Another twist is Article 41(6) which states explicitly that the election of a President can not be called into question. Its anybody's guess but I will rather bet safe that nothing will happen to the President.

In layman's term, NRO has been declared unconstitutional as if it never existed. So all the beneficiaries are again standing at the place where they were on October 5, 2007. Swiss cases will be revived.

This historic decision will act as a great precedent in the turbulent constitutional history of our country. Supreme Court will soon be bombarded with all kinds of petitions since many cases have been revived. It remains to be seen how the Court handles them.

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The surge, the withdrawal, and a failure

published first in 'The Frontier Post'

So finally the much awaited Afghanistan policy of Obama is out in the open. A ‘surge’ with deployment of additional 30,000 troops will take place which will bring the total number of US troops to 100,000 and if all goes well the troops withdrawal will start from summer 2011. Raise your hands if you think that this strategy is nothing but a plan to effectively manage a failure.

Talking about a ‘surge’ in troops and a withdrawal date in the same breath –-- does this not sound a bit like Gorbachev in 1985 as Robert Fisk pointed out? Or probably it is an emulation of ‘hit and run’ strategy inspired from the guerilla fighters. Whatever it is, it is an attempt to strike a balance at home and abroad –-- a balance between the generals who have been demanding an increase in troops and Biden-led democrats who have been lobbying against an increased involvement in the war. >In other words this is what Obama said to his generals, “Look you asked for additional boots on the ground and you got that. But you have only 18 months, and I have an election coming up after that.”

And when Robert Gates said this recently in a Senate committee hearing, “It is neither necessary nor feasible to create a modern, centralized, Western-style Afghan nation-state --— the likes of which has never been seen in that country. Nor does it entail pacifying every village and conducting textbook counterinsurgency from one end of Afghanistan to the other.” If this is not admitting defeat then what is?

The Republicans may criticize as much as they like for announcing a withdrawal date in the middle of conflict and the doves in democrats may not support Obama on increase in troops, yet Obama had to win the ‘war of necessity’ or at least give an impression of winning it. Thus, there were no mention of grandiose goals like ‘nation-building’; it was all about ‘disrupting’ Al-Qaeda, transferring the responsibility to Afghan forces and getting out. Obama was not categorical about what he intended to achieve in this stipulated period of 18 months, the goals were nebulous which left many doubts in the minds of allies. Remember, Obama only announced a start of withdrawal date and that too will be conditional with the progress -- ‘progress’ that needs a definition.

So when Obama said this to Afghans, “We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government --- and, more importantly, to the Afghan people --- that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country”, he meant, “It’s your mess now, take this broom and sweep it yourself because we are not going to stay here for long, Oh yes after that you will keep hearing from us on the phone once in a while."

This obviously sent shudders in Kabul. Karzai cannot stand up against the insurgents once the US forces leave. He has a poorly equipped demoralized Afghan National Army, 70% of which is illiterate and cannot even read basic orders. So the urge to talk and renegotiate with Taliban will be greater now, and it has the support of US also.

To the Taliban, it leaves two comfortable options. One, either you can sit out the 2010 summer and the party fiesta will start in 2011. Two, negotiate with Karzai regime right now.

For Pakistan it means many things. To be very honest Obama did not get into specifics relating to Pakistan. He knew it will again fuel anti-Americanism if he talked about covert operations in Pakistan. The New York Times reported that Obama has authorized expansion of covert operations in Pakistan. The result of that is yet to be seen, but the mantra of ‘do more’ is once again in the headlines.

Pakistan is already taking blows in this war, and it is going after the militants who are fighting against the state. The Pak-US relationship will only worsen if US keeps on insisting to go after a specific set of militants when the Pakistan army has already too many fronts open. The announcement of withdrawal date also sends a signal to Pakistani establishment that they can also try to talk with Afghan Talibans –- if assuming they have not been doing that -- who knows Taliban might be in power three years down the road.

What Pakistan can do is to learn from its past follies. The time has gone when few generals could arbitrarily decide to distribute tags of ‘good Taliban’. As Clemenceau had said, “War is too serious a business to be left to the generals.” Instead of betting on a single horse in Afghanistan, Pakistan should support any representative government in Afghanistan. Instead of trying to control Afghanistan through some proxy, it should engage Afghan people directly. We have been watching Afghanistan through the Indian lens for too long. Notions like ‘strategic depth’ have no reason to be the sole determinant of formulating a foreign policy in the contemporary globalized world; it’s an era of ‘economic depth’.

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A story of a prince and his powers

published first in The Frontier Post

We will only discuss Machiavelli’s prince today and his powers, for he is the only thing that is relevant now, the only character that makes sense, irrespective of all the chaos prevailing around him. As it was said, to understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be the people. So here is a story of the people, and a prince who ruled over them and, not taking into account a few setbacks here and there, enjoyed absolute powers.

So the prince came on the throne, rather he acquired the throne when nobody was expecting he would. But the throne had its own fascinations and inclinations. His job was tough and the work was cut out for him. The last benevolent prince had left plethora of problems for his succeeding mate – benevolent because he was too merciful to be leaving nothing for his predecessors even the things that were duly his - but he had left some powers also, and as long as these powers were there the prince was never to be mistaken as a nominal or a constitutional head. He had to be a partisan in executing all those powers for this is what a prince is supposed to do.

There were many diseases afflicting the state when the prince ascended the throne. Machiavelli had urged the prince to address them instantly. Machiavelli wrote, “And what physicians say about disease is applicable here: that at the beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, not having been treated or recognized at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same thing occurs in affairs of state; for by recognizing from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure.” These gifts to the prudent ruler were never identified well in time.

The prince scrupulously followed Machiavellian views that benefits should be conferred gradually; as they would taste better in this manner, but he at the same time forgot when Machiavelli had said that a wise man does at once what the fool does finally. Resultantly, the prince delayed a restoration of a people’s figure, not knowing that it was something inevitable, and in the end he had to beat a hasty retreat. His prestige seemed to wane but he still had the powers; the powers that he was not willing to shed; the powers that earned him many envious enemies.

The prince knew the quote, “Promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.” Machiavelli had taught him that a prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise, and hence he told his people that his promises are not ‘decrees of heaven’, and every prince is supposed to play shenanigans on the board of chess. He knew that he must keep the illusion of keeping his word and be reliable, but he must only do that when it suits his purpose.

Everything seemed fine on the surface. The prince liked visiting other countries, making friends at important places. He was living his tenure to the fullest amongst all his enemies. What he did not know was that a constant hatred was building up among his people, and that was the very feeling Machiavelli had warned him against. There were other portents as well against which he was warned.

He had been taught that the first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him. But alas, the people around him were no better than sycophants who could only cajole him and could not tell him the truth. He could not guard against flattery; he could not convince people around him to speak the truth. He still would have been the powerful ruler, had he shed some superficial powers to isolate his enemies. But his advisors were not smart enough to comprehend this. They persisted that the prince should be obstinate about it. And at last, this very obstinacy proved to be his last and the final undoing.

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A comprehensive strategy

What happened in Peshawar was not just another terrorist attack. It was a heinous and despicable act of brutality, devoid of even the lowest ebbs of humanity. The bomb exploded in a crowded market filled with innocent people – including a large number of children and women – and the catastrophic images soon followed. Let’s face it; our security agencies have failed us – not because they failed to prevent such a disaster – but because they have allowed the situation to deteriorate this far by pursuing arbitrary policies of expediency for a long time. We are harvesting only what we had sown.

I had written in May 2009 in one of my articles, “To consider use of force an inevitable tactic is one thing and to call it an ultimate solution of the ongoing crisis is totally another.” I am afraid we have not still understood the difference. Somebody recently asked me about the biggest problem with our strategy and I replied we do not have any strategy. Yes there was once a nebulous story of 3 D’s – dialogue, development and deterrence – as the time passed it looked more like ‘drones, damage and daze’.

The policies currently being followed are only reactionary in nature. Problems in Swat? The Fazlullah do not obey anymore? Okay, let’s throw the troops in. TTP is getting too hot to handle? Send the soldiers to Waziristan. Somebody inquired what about Hafiz Gul Bahadur who hails from North Waziristan. Oh, well let us make a deal with him as he hates Hakeemullah as much as we do.

The problem is not confined to Waziristan only. It is very much amongst us – in our towns and cities. It is not that we are not trying to put out the fire, it is just that we are only throwing water on a single tree while the rest of the woods are burning and will soon burn down everything. Let’s see how any other government would have dealt with the situation.

Bali bombings in 2002, which killed more than 200 people, were a rude awakening for the Indonesian government. Indonesia, being the largest Muslim nation on the earth, faced a serious internal terror threat. The Indonesian society was riddled with conservatives, who the authorities fear will swell the ranks of extremists. Jemaah Islamiah, an organization said to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda, was recruiting actively young people not only from Indonesia but also from Thailand and Philippines to carry out terror acts. That was the year 2002. Since then there has been a remarkable decline in the terrorist activites. The top leaders of Jemaah Islamiah were caught, its terrorist centres were dismantled, and all this was achieved with major public support within few years.

Indonesian leaders knew that they could only win this battle through public support, by making sure that each day they catch few militants there are not dozens of other recruits to replace them. Ultimately to win the hearts and minds, even of the militants, they started deradicalization programs. What they did was that they reached out to militants who were willing to renounce violence in order to receive some incentives like reduced sentences. They hired those militants to fight terrorism itself by sending them to places like breeding grounds of Jemaah Islamiah, or by sending them to jails, in order to preach other terrorists about the un-Islamic nature of their mission, to tell them about the sanctity of human life in Islam. It did not just stop there. The former militants often came on televisions to remorse their role in terrorist activities. The media campaign was very much effective in this regard.

Similar radicalization programs are being adopted by other Arab countries. Los Angeles Times reported on that recently in these words: “Under the Saudi version, militants in jail who agree to undergo intense classroom sessions receive shorter sentences. The sessions, designed to convince extremists that Islam does not condone terror, come combined with psychological deprogramming. The deprogramming resembles techniques used on cult members, and it also allows psychologists to assess whether militants are joining the deradicalization program just to be released and return to extremism”.

Are our Ulemas ready to play such role? Will they for once stop blaming others for our own follies and start proposing solutions in which they are an active part of it? We have in jails a large number of alleged militants waiting to be put on trial. The anti-terrorism law is in place but is not proving effective. Whilst the government is busy extending ordinances (read NRO plus) to exempt felons from justice, no one is paying attention to strengthen the procedure through which terrorism or extremism can be checked. Well, who would need an anti-terrorist act when you can just walk free by filing a petition mentioning the word of ‘political victimization’? Tough times for courts may lay ahead as they will soon be bombarded with petitions from every criminal in the country seeking exoneration under the newly proposed NRO plus.

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Testing times

First Published The Frontier Post

So it has come to this. The desperadoes will now not discriminate between the combatants and non-combatants. Well, the line between ‘infidels’ and ‘believers’ was always hazy and fluctuating, and innocent civilians always took the blows but this time there were no lines whatsoever. Every young student had to pay the price. The bombings at International Islamic University brutally demonstrated the fact that the make or break point has come for Pakistan.

Sun Tzu had written centuries ago in ‘Art of War’, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat”. And here we stand not knowing what we are up against; what has been eating us from within. We are still confusing too conveniently the growing American influence in our lands with the ever increasing radicalization of our society. Ask anyone from a religious right wing party to condemn an act of terrorism or extremism and he will start his harangue about how the Americans have penetrated inside Pakistan and you will hear every conspiracy theory in the market.

We are yet to define victory in this war for Pakistan’s survival. How can you defeat a certain ideology? The victory here is certainly not ascertained by body count. The important thing to defeat terrorism is to get public support and to alienate the miscreants from the local population. All roads of terrorist attacks may lead to South Waziristan but all solutions will not emanate by only sending the army there. The operation Rah-e-Nijat is the mother of all battles but it has got to be followed by some concrete changes in the mindset of establishment. Few heads will have to roll. The distinction between a good Taleban and a bad Taleban will have to be done away with. The policies of pursuing strategic objectives with the help of proxy elements might have worked in the past but there is no space for it in today’s world.

It is true about the Americans, the more they try to help the more they hurt us. And they are too dumb to understand this. Condoleezza Rice once asked French President Sarkozy on his victory in elections what she could do for him. “Improve your image in the world”, said Sarkozy. Alas, she never understood the importance of it. Kerry Lugar bill may contain all good things for Pakistan over a long period of time. But then again Quetta and Muridke are mentioned as terrorist bases in the document. Intelligence agencies have been asked to ‘cease’ support to terrorists codifying that they have already been doing that. Pakistan has sacrificed too much to be humiliated like this and that too only for $1.5 billion. We should say to the Yankees, “Thank you very much. If you really want to help us, keep your drones away from our lands.”

It is important that we distance our efforts to curb militancy from the Americans’ War on (t)error. We are fighting because all the Baitullahs, Fazlullahs, Hakeemullahs have no place in Jinnah’s Pakistan. We have got nothing to do with the follies of Americans stranded in Afghanistan. They have always started wars which they could not finish. History is happening to them but we have a crisis of our own to deal with.

The government is at loggerheads over the deteriorating security situation in the country. Status of Rehman Malik has been reduced to that of a story teller and of a prophecy maker who comes on the television after the blast only to say, “See I had told you, it would happen”. Whoever said that TTP was history after the death of Baitullah should say no more. This Frankenstein is boiling and spilling all over. The battle of Waziristan will be tough. There are said to be more than 10,000 militants operating there who are well-fortified and well-equipped.

Then there is another element. It is the militancy in South Punjab. Men who planned GHQ attack are said to be from Punjab. With our heads turned towards Waziristan, one may dare to ask, is there any strategy whatsoever to check extremism in other parts of the country? The government has not even made a serious effort to register all the religious seminaries, what to speak of regularizing their syllabi or keeping tab on their revenues.

Leadership, the most important commodity in times of crisis, is something that we are short of. All we have got are accidental captains of our ship and they have been suddenly asked to steer us away from the storm. We will have to manage the best from the available resources.

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