I’ve often been accused of being cynical. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, (and would generally add ‘bitter’, ‘twisted’, and ‘jaded’ in there just to make sure there was no room for ambiguity).

  

However, when it comes to dealing with situations like Kashmir, a South Asian impasse which has lingered on and on, due to betrayal, incompetence, intransigence, and sheer stupidity; it’s hard to be optimistic. Currently it’s in the news more than usual because newly elected ‘wonder President’ (of the U.S) Barack Obama, has highlighted the resolution of the Kashmir crisis as the key to greater peace and stability in South Asia, and also to getting to grips with the frightening shambles he has inherited in Afghanistan. It’s all pretty obvious, you solve the Kashmir crisis; India and Pakistan are not exactly best friends, but are less likely to be at each other’s throats; and Pakistan can turn its full attention to its western border. It’s a good idea, and pretty damned obvious one, but seeing as past attempts to get to grips with the problem have come to nothing because of the above stated reasons, I don’t think we’ll be seeing any progress on the issue any time soon.

  

That’s why a recent story in The New Yorker by Steve Coll, which claims India and Pakistan came amazingly close to coming to an agreement on the disputed state in 2007, is something I treat with a little caution. Coll claims that the agreement was to give both Azad, and Indian Occupied Kashmir a high degree of autonomy and allow the citizens of the divided state to pass freely across the Line of Control (LoC) dividing it. So much so that as the years passed, the LoC would become largely meaningless, peace would return, and the some 700,000 Indian security personnel (that spend their time occupying and committing human rights abuses in Indian Occupied Kashmir, but are largely immune from prosecution - bar the odd show trial for media consumption - under the ‘Armed Forces Special Powers Act’), could be withdrawn as there would be no use for them.

  

It sounds like something erstwhile Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would suggest, and indeed I remember him repeated saying that the Indian security personnel should be “returned back to barracks” as Indian Occupied Kashmir became more peaceful and stable after 2004 when he started pushing for a diplomatic solution to the crisis. I don’t see what the Indians would have to gain from it though, considering they don’t even like to admit it is a legacy of or unfinished business from ‘Partition’ in 1947. That is unless they thought that allowing such a ‘soft border’ for Kashmir would eventually lead to their dream of a similar situation for Pakistan as a whole, and sometime in the distant future the reabsorbtion of Pakistan into a ‘Greater India’ or ‘Akand Bahrat’. (That last point is why Pakistan actually still feels an existential threat from India, the sense of irredentism that emanates from New Delhi, and that somehow Partition and the formation of Pakistan is reversible). I still don’t believe the Indians would agree to such a thing though. It’s really only Pakistan that has been progressive in putting forward solutions, and India has been happier to sit tight in the hope that it can win over the Kashmiris with economic advancement, and turn the LoC into a ‘hard border’. When it comes to Kashmir, India is the ‘status quo power’ after all, and there can be no progress without its acquiescence, (in the same vein that East Timor would still be a part of Indonesia had Jakarta not agreed to a plebiscite).

  

Anyway, whatever the real story, Coll claims the plan came unstuck because Musharraf lost his clout and no longer had the power to sell it to the Pakistani public. It’s easy to blame someone who isn’t in power anymore, no matter how plausible it sounds, but after six decades of Indian double dealing and intransigence, and an equal length of time of Pakistani incompetence (having criminally squandered three chances to solve the problem militarily – 1949, 1962, and 1965), it’s hard to believe that the solution could be so simple. The real story may emerge over time, but plausible though this is, I have a hard time believing a solution was so close at hand. It sounds rather like the ‘agreement’ which was reached over the impasse over the Siachen Glacier at the end of the 1980s, where India would have withdrawn from the glacier, but which came to nothing because in the end New Delhi just couldn’t agree to something that rendered pointless what was essentially an act of aggression. Given the new low in bilateral relations at present therefore, it may even take a miracle for this situation to come around again, let alone be agreed and enacted upon.

  

The only really fair solution would be that proposed in 1949 by the UN, and promised by India, who then reneged on it; a plebiscite. It will take hell to freeze over, thaw out, and then refreeze before that happens though. Why would India agree to a solution that would definitely see Kashmir fall from its grasp? Whatever the future holds for Kashmir, I’d wager that in the short to medium term at least we will only see a continuation of the status quo.

Well, I was wrong about Swat. I just didn’t expect the government and the party in power in the NWFP, the Awami National Party (ANP), to fold as easily as wet toilet paper, and hand the Taliban a comprehensive victory. It seems for short term political gain, the authorities are prepared to surrender a part of the country to Neanderthals, but ignore the fact that this will do nothing except undermine the authority of the state, and encourage every trigger happy, gun toting yokel to take up arms at the slightest pretext.

  

Now the Taliban will be implementing ‘their version’ of Sharia, (not sure what that exactly entails, but from what we’ve seen of it so far it sometimes, if not generally, flatly contradicts the ‘official version’). It’s as if there weren’t enough headless people as it is. What many have missed, is that buried in the agreement is a time limit of a matter of weeks for civil and criminal cases, rather than usual practice of years, (or whether the plaintiff or defendant dies of old age first). It’s a stark admission that the failure of the judicial, legal, and law enforcement system as a whole, has basically led to this sorry state of affairs. Not that anyone from the judiciary, (who, as ever, are fonder of dancing about on the streets of Pakistan, rather than doing what they’re supposed to), would admit as much. The absence of a professional and impartial judiciary is beginning to challenge the long term stability of the state. However, though the judiciary would claim to be all for an impartial judiciary, the bitter truth most people see, is that they’re still available to the highest bidder. That’s why people have lost trust in the legal system in Pakistan. Again, the judiciary would disagree, (and by all accounts they aren’t exactly enamoured with the deal), but perception counts more than reality in some cases. In this case, they seem to be very close together.

  

I can’t say what the next step in all of this will be, but at least some of the locals seem happy enough. They’re happy the Army and Taliban will no longer be at each other’s throats, with them being caught in the middle. When the Army was constantly being held back, forced to retreat in the face of government ‘agreements’ with the Taliban when it got the upper hand, only for the Taliban to fill the vacuum they left behind and annihilate people they suspected of supporting the Army, who could blame them? I don’t blame the military. When it came to Swat they were always constrained in what they could and couldn’t do because of politicians seeking to exploit the situation for political gain.

  

That this is a debacle isn’t really open to question. Just whether it is a debacle too far, because that’s what it seems to be. Will this be the final straw? Pakistan will never fall to the Taliban, or any other religious extremists, but will this be the muddy riding boot which kicks Pakistan in the collective rear and injects a little reality into what needs to be done? Sadly, past governments have always taken half measures and have never sought to see matters through to their ultimate conclusion. So, I don’t even think this will provide a collective jolt to wake Pakistanis up enough to do something. All it seems to have done is given the Taliban a new springboard with which to encroach further on Pakistani society.

What’s been terribly obvious for years is that no one could care less about the Rohingyas. They’re a Burmese minority ethnic group who live in Arakan State, along the western border with Bangladesh, who seem to suffer more than most in that blighted nation. Sadly in a country ruled by a barbaric and vile military junta, (a description which isn’t actually strong enough, by a long way), where life has no value whatsoever for those not favoured by the regime (or the general public as seen in the aftermath of last year’s Cyclone Nargis), this means much of what they suffer isn’t exactly unique. We’re of course acquainted with the suffering of the Karen (as featured in the last ‘Rambo’ film - for those who need their memories jogging), and then there’s the Shan, both of whom have felt the full force of oppression from the military.

   

The Ronhingyas face a number of additional restrictions in their own country, primarily that the odious regime doesn’t even recognise them as being Burmese, so they’re denied ID cards, citizenship, and all the benefits that go along with these things (being able to buy land, employment issues, education, and general ‘welfare’ – or what may pass as it in Burma). They also need permission to marry, and there are severe restrictions placed on how many children they can have. The military can use them for forced/slave labour any time it wishes, females are generally sexual abused and forced into sexual slavery. Though the last two points aren’t exactly something the regime reserves for the Rohingyas alone, as a whole it’s clear the situation is pretty grim to say the least. It’s not exactly a new situation either as this has been going on in various stages of severity for decades. Naturally, hundreds of thousands have fled, either into Bangladesh, (which has enough problems of its own), further afield to Saudi Arabia, and onward to the West. Under the circumstances who would stay?

   

Their plight has only received media attention of late because boatloads of desperate Ronhingyas have started washing up on other shores around the Bay of Bengal as they make a desperate and pitiful attempt to reach Malaysia. Also, because the Thai authorities, (currently doing quite badly with their own insurgency in its three southern most provinces), haven’t exactly been benign in handling any Ronhingyas who may find themselves washed up on Thai shores. The Indian Navy have picked up some who have found their way to the Andaman Islands, and the Indonesian Navy has picked up more. Navies deal with people attempting to leave their place of origin for what ever reason all the time though, and its grim aftermath. It wasn’t so long ago that the beaches of southern Spain were combed every morning for the latest crop of dead bodies of refugees/economic migrants. That is no longer in the news nowadays because of the increased security presence around the Straits of Gibraltar. Instead the problem has been forced eastward to Malta and the Italian islands off the African coast, and westward to the Canary Islands. A couple of years ago I had the fortune to meet a Spanish naval officer whose next posting was to be in command of a warship monitoring the flow of migrants trying to reach the Canary Islands. It was a wretched and unpopular mission, (a similar mission off Australia’s north coast isn’t exactly popular either). Looking out for overloaded and un-seaworthy boats with pitiful cargos, isn’t exactly something navies highlight to attract recruits for good reason. Sometimes the boats would even miss the Canary Islands altogether, and by the time they perhaps made it to the Caribbean clearly no one on board would be claiming asylum.

   

Going back to Burma though why isn’t anything been done about the situation? The global community/UN does what it does best and “tut-tut’s” from a distance. To be honest, the UN is only as powerful as its most powerful members, and if there’s no appetite for concerted direct action with them, well then the UN isn’t going to do a damn thing. Asia’s two aspiring powers, China and India, are currently locked in a bitter competition to secure whatever they can from the junta, whether energy or mineral resources, trade, or what ever else there is to be had. They won’t do anything to spoil their chances and the military regime has proved adept at playing one off against the other. The Chinese can ‘lean’ on the regime, but their ability to do so is limited, and this has to be recognised. The other ‘power’ is actually ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations), of which Burma is a member, but that organisation is as spineless as it is toothless, and hides behind its policy of not interfering in each other’s internal affairs. Burma’s eastern neighbour Thailand likes to shut its eyes and wishes the whole situation would resolve itself of its own accord. In its opinion there are already too many Karen in squalid refugee camps in Thailand as it is. Western neighbour Bangladesh on the other-hand, desperately poor and blighted by bad governance, may have been in a position to take more direct action and do more than most to deal with the military regime. In the January 2009 issue of WIFR I reported on how the two neighbours were potentially about to come to blows over gas exploration in the Bay of Bengal. Not that we should wish for more instability in Asia, but as well as having something to report on I was hoping the Bangladeshis would give the Burmese military a well deserved thrashing, perhaps enough to lead the internal opposition to rise up and cause the collapse of the regime. The Bangladeshis are tenacious fighters, and their military definitely more professional than Burma’s, (which specialises in human rights abuses and little else). Sadly, what the Bangladeshis have in fighting spirit and skill, they lack in hardware. They’re not exactly rich, and bad governance aside, prefer to spend what money they do have on poverty alleviation and other measures to benefit the general population, (unlike the Burmese rulers who couldn’t give a damn about their general population and spend what they have to keep themselves firmly ensconced in power). Both sides backed off. Bangladesh and Thailand could invade on the pretext that refugees fleeing Burma are causing a ‘humanitarian crisis’, which threatens to destabilise their own countries. India after all used this largely fabricated excuse to invade then East Pakistan in 1971, leading to the formation of Bangladesh. In this case there would be nothing to fabricate. The genocidal regime is guilty of a number of crimes not least genocide in trying to wipe out entire ethnic groups, rape as a weapon of war, and so, for there to be reasons a plenty for intervention. We only have to look at some of the war crimes committed in the Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which are now being brought before the International Criminal Court, to see that there is probably a strong legal case for intervention. However, this won’t happen either. There has to be a will to do something first, and then the capacity for action. As the British learnt in WWII, they could only liberate Burma from the Japanese with overwhelming military superiority and a solid, almost inexhaustible, logistical chain. The capacity is as absent as the will in this case sadly.

   

The only option seems to be change from inside Burma, and this centres around Aung San Suu Kyi, a very brave lady, who would be the head of government, were it not for the military. Sadly, despite it being the choice of an overwhelming majority of the Burmese, it isn’t the case. The unrest in 2007 did nothing to make that any more realistic in the near future either. All it seems to have achieved is to have spread the oppression more evenly about the general population instead of certain ethnic and political groups. There are some ‘elections’ planned for next year touted by the regime as introducing democracy, but they’re a military sham. They won’t hand over power, even if they are offered immunity from prosecution.

   

The situation is likely to remain as it is therefore. More Rohingyas are bound for a dangerous attempt to reach Malaysia in rickety boats, running the gauntlet of both the Burmese and Thai militaries, as we “tut-tut” disapprovingly. 

 
Further information can be found at the following sources:
 
www.rohingya.org
 
www.mizzima.com

Articles about Swat always seem to mention the same things; it’s a scenic former tourist resort, ‘the Switzerland of Pakistan’, and all the rest of it. Though it was the mountainous scenery that gave it this latter moniker, it appears to have unfortunately become a lot more like Switzerland recently; and it’s nothing to do with chocolate and overpriced watches. For the past two years it’s been in the news solely because it’s the haunt of narrow-minded backward, xenophobes, but far, far in excess of what you’d find in Switzerland, the Taliban.

 

The Taliban in Swat are on a self-appointed mission, at the behest of their leader, Maulana Fazlullah, (a big fan of spouting bile over FM radio), to implement their ‘own version’ of Islamic Sharia law to the Swat valley.  They don’t mind violating the laws of Islam to do it either. It would all be rather Pythonesque, somewhat reminiscent of a certain stoning scene from the ‘Life of Brian’, were it not for the fact that they kill anyone who they even suspect of disagreeing with them, let alone those that actually do.

 

They mete out other punishments in accordance to their version of Sharia law too. This unfortunate soul in the photo, is apparently about to get lashed with a stick for thievery. Though to be honest, it looks more like he’s about to suffer a fate worse than death, the type men generally don’t talk about afterwards. (Considering Russian soldiers used to keep one last grenade for themselves to avoid capture during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when fighting against guys like these, it can’t be discounted either – hypocrisy is after all their trademark).

 

Jokes aside who are these people? They appear to be yet another manifestation of what Islam would class as ‘khwarij’, or ‘renegades. They’re the same type of people who have periodically arisen in Muslim countries during times when the state has been historically weak, or suffering a period of chaos or anarchy. Proximity to Afghanistan (a country which has known nothing but anarchy for over thirty years now), is therefore clearly a factor. They’re the same people the Saudis had to fight in the 1920s order to establish the modern state of Saudi Arabia. Tales of horrific and wanton slaughter up into modern day Iraq, (where the RAF killed hundreds as they attacked the southern part of that country), are fairly well documented. They even wanted to limit the influx of technology such as the telegraph and radio, because they deemed it ‘unislamic’. Their defining characteristic appears to be that they consider anyone who doesn’t support them in their quest to implement their version of ‘God’s will on earth’ to be an ‘apostate’, and therefore their death is mandatory, not just desirable. Takers of the now dearly departed Bush’s view that those who were not with him were against him may find this easier to understand. The Saudis can therefore at least be thanked for annihilating them, (though obviously the ideology still remains to some extent, as well as some adherents). Closer to our own time however, is the sorry example of the hell which was Algeria in the 1990s. Once more the same ideology led to slaughter on an unimaginable scale as so-called ‘Islamists’ did their level best to eclipse the most savage examples of French genocidal colonialism in that country. Though the government didn’t exactly hold back in trying to come to grips with the situation (and I don’t seek to excuse that), blame for starting the wave of terror and counter terror can be laid at the feet of those opposing the government. It isn’t a chicken or egg argument. They were clearly in the wrong. Their actions led to death on sickening scale.

 

The situation in Swat is thankfully nowhere near as bloody, but it’s not for want of effort. Bodies regularly turn up in the morning, dumped minus their heads, and those who don’t share the views of the Taliban are left in no doubt that they enjoy a rather short life expectancy. The problem is however, the Taliban enjoy a degree of local support, but why? The sad fact is that the forces of law and order, the legal system, and in fact the whole structure of obtaining justice in Pakistan simply doesn’t work as it should. It’s not a complete failure, but it’s in dire straits. Transparency International consistently holds the Police and Judiciary up as the most corrupt institutions in the country. There’s a saying in Pakistan: ‘Heaven forbid a person should get sick or have to fight a court case’. Both are sadly situations where you can expect to be bled dry of your money, and a successful resolution is probably not something you can bank on (unless you cough up of course).

 

The Police, (the guys who walk around dressed in a black and tan uniform – which may have a particularly unfortunate resonance with Irish people of a Catholic persuasion), who have to walk around with badges proclaiming ‘The Police is your friend’, (such is their unpopularity with the general public), can’t exactly be relied upon either. Generally poorly equipped, trained, paid, and forced to work very long hours, it’s easy for them to succumb to taking bribes. Unless of course they’re the ones who are committing the crimes in the first place, (which can’t always be discounted either). Local government is similarly so despised due to the common requirement to pay bribes to get even the most simplest of things done isn’t exactly popular either. That is at least the perception, and as in most cases, and definitely in this case, perception is more important that reality. Therefore when the Taliban roll into town espousing the need to implement Sharia (albeit their severely twisted version), and the common man thinks the property dispute that he’s been entangled in for 12 years because he keeps getting screwed over by his lawyer and the judge milking him dry, can be resolved in an afternoon, the Taliban definitely have takers.

 

Most of the information I have on the situation in Swat has I have to admit come from the BBC, who in my opinion have done a commendable job. Their reporter M Ilyas Khan, who penned the above article, has done a good job getting the situation in Swat to a wider audience. It’s obviously not easy to report from such a location which is in the midst of an insurgency. It’s clear the situation is dire however. The Police, who would normally be expected to keep a lid on illegal activity and challenges to the authority of the state, (if not law and order in general), have given up the game and pretty much fled. They were simply outgunned. The Army, whose job it certainly is not to maintain law and order, and should be the last resort in such cases, now find themselves trying to restore the writ of the government. Given they can’t clearly identify who it is they’re fighting, are conducting operations in hostile mountainous terrain, get blamed for anyone caught in the crossfire, and don’t have the complete support of the local population, they have an immensely tough job on their hands. They haven’t even been able to track down and destroy the mobile FM transmitter the Taliban use to spout their bile. The transmissions apparently can’t even be blocked because the equipment required to do so is not something western nations are willing to sell. I would have thought that the normal EW equipment at the disposal of the military could handle this, but apparently not.

 

The most powerful voice however, is an anonymous seventh grade girl whose diary appears in Urdu on the BBC website, and then is translated into English. Her observations really bring home the tragedy of Swat, the frustrations of the locals, and just how badly they’re suffering at the hands of the insurgents. This is because the Taliban have paid particular attention to ensuring that girls schools are made a thing of the past, and are busily threatening to blow up the schools (and are doing so on the pretext that they are being occupied by the Army who have moved in to try and protect them), and also kill any girls going to school (which thankfully they have not yet done). They deem education of females to be ‘unislamic’, conveniently ignoring all the educated females who have ever made a contribution to Islamic history over the centuries. Islam has nothing against the education of females, in fact the ‘attainment of knowledge’ is considered mandatory for all Muslims. It’s this that allowed for Islam’s ‘Golden Age’ when Europe was steeped in the Dark Ages. Islam doesn’t say anything about knowledge only being mandatory for males, and that females being excluded as some background characters in society. If anything this is cultural not religious.

 

The assault on female education is doubly tragic for Pakistan as a whole and Swat in particular. Any idiot can tell you that female education is a mandatory aspect of a society being able to progress, in fact of a nation being able to progress. Wider access to education is an essential tool of poverty reduction, not just progress, and if nothing else, a mother is a child’s first teacher. That holds true even if you prefer the model of the nuclear family where dad earns a living and mother stays at home as a housewife. Teaching children doesn’t just happen at school. Apart from that, there simply has to be female professionals like doctors, (which is again a major aspect of Taliban/Khwarij hypocrisy, because they by and large aren’t exactly fond of male doctors attending to female patients). Seeing as Pakistan has consistently failed to fulfil its potential for a myriad of reasons since 1947, the last thing it needs is for someone to put the brakes on what progress is being made.

 

Therefore it isn’t exactly a pretty picture in Swat, and the writ of the government must be enforced. In the past few days the Army has announced they’re determined to win back the valley and enforce the writ of the government. The Army and the Frontier Corps have already fought a very tough battle under difficult circumstances, and it’s about to get tougher. There’s a major operation brewing and quite frankly I would like to go see the situation first hand, (partly because I have a strange desire to stay at the Pearl Continental hotel in Mingora, and spend at least one night dressed in my dinner jacket enjoying a drink and cigar in the dining room as Pakistan Army 130mm artillery pounds the hell out of the Taliban in the distance – don’t ask me why, I don’t know, I’m just enamoured with the mere possibility of being able to do so). I hope to do a proper article on the situation some time in the near(ish) future, but I guess we’ll see. Until then, I wish the Army luck. Hopefully they can ensure our seventh grade friend can stop writing diaries, and go back to school to get the education she deserves.