Maruf Rosul, a Bangladeshi writer and activist who has received death threats from Islamic militants for his blog posts. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Amy Fallon
DHAKA, Sep 29 2016 (IPS)

Like the living room of any proud family, the one in Ajoy Roy’s house boasts photos of the eldest son, Avijit.

A large framed portrait which has a powerful presence in the room hangs on the mint-coloured wall as Ajoy, a retired physics professor who at the age of 80 is frail but still very mentally alert, sits in a chair below it, sipping tea.

It is the image of a popular Bangladeshi writer and bio-engineer, tragically murdered for his beliefs along with scores of other atheist writers, bloggers, publishers, gay activists and religious figures by suspected Islamist militants in the predominantly Muslim country over the past few years.

“Avijit wasn’t an activist on the streets, but he used his pen to protest against social injustice, religious fanaticism and propagate the idea of secularism, the main theme of his writing,” Ajoy, wearing a traditional lungi around his waist, told IPS. “It’s a terrible loss. It cannot be compensated for.”

Ajoy Roy, the father of Bangladeshi writer Avijit Roy, who was murdered in 2015. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

More than 50 writers, activists and others have been killed in Bangladesh since 2013, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Avijit, 42, a U.S. citizen who lived in America with his wife Rafida Ahmed, was hacked to death after the pair went to the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka for a book festival in February 2015.

There have been many more killings since then.

This July, 23 people, including 17 foreigners, were killed at a bakery in the diplomatic zone of Dhaka, in one of the worst terror attacks ever in Bangladesh.

Five of the involved suspects were killed in a police operation at the eatery, while one survivor was arrested and remanded, and another jailed, the Dhaka Tribune later reported.

The suspected ringleader of the attacks and his two affiliates died in a police raid in August, but the search is still on for a coordinator, the arms suppliers and funders of the attacks.

After the murders of two other activists, LGBT campaigners Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, in April, the government, under international pressure over the spate of killings, arrested about 14,000 people.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at HRW, said despite no further attacks since the brutal bakery murders, there were “concerns” that the crackdown was leading to “an arbitrary rounding up of usual suspects”.

The drop in incidents meanwhile “suggest that the state could have acted effectively earlier” to prevent the killings, she said.

There was still a “climate of fear” in Bangladesh among writers and members of minority groups, said Ganguly.

“Some have been able to leave the country, but many more, still in Bangladesh, fear that the government will not do enough to protect them,” she said.

Maruf Rosul, 29, a secular writer, photographer, filmmaker and activist who pens for various outlets, including freethinking site Mukto-Mona, set up by Avijit and now being run by his successors, said Islamic extremists in the country had been silenced.

“But the government has not taken the proper action to uproot these evil forces,” Rosul, who said he was on an extremist group’s hit list, but as a “frontier activist” couldn’t go into hiding, told IPS. “I am worried about the future.”

His anxiety was growing ahead of the Durga Puja, the biggest religious festival for south Asia’s Hindu community, which will begin next week, on Oct. 7.

Rosul said “every year” during the festival there were attacks by Islamic extremist groups in Bangladesh, yet officials did nothing but issue “sympathetic statements”.

“As there is no strong law enforcement, we are worried about our Hindu friends,” he told IPS. A Hindu tailor, hacked to death in April, is among those who have been killed in the country.

The sixth edition of Dhaka Literary Festival (DLF) is also due to take place in mid-November. Director Ahsan Akbar told IPS that preparations were in “full-swing”.

“We have had only a couple of cancellations so far, citing security fears, but the encouraging news is our speakers are really looking forward to the event and we expect no more cancellations,” he said.

Given the recent wave of murders though, Akbar said “writers in the country today are unfortunately self-censoring and thinking twice about what they write and publish”.

“Bangladeshi writers outside of the country are deeply sympathetic and doing many things to raise the awareness amongst the international community, such as engaging with PEN International,” he said.

“It is astonishing how we sometimes forget the interconnectivity in of all this: an attack on a writer in Bangladesh is – in a way – an attack on a writer in the West or anywhere else for that matter.”

Olof Blomqvist of Amnesty International told IPS that “the investigations into the targeted killings are ongoing, and there have been arrests made in some of the cases. Genuine justice will of course take time, but it is worrying that the perpetrators have so far only been held to account in one case, the killing of Rajib Haider in 2013.

“The authorities must ensure that those responsible are held to account, but also do more to protect those people at risk,” he said, adding that, “We still get desperate pleas on a weekly basis from people who have received threats and are afraid for their lives if they stay in Bangladesh.”

“Police must create a climate where activists who have been threatened feel safe to approach police and not fear further harassment,” Blomqvist said.

Ganguly also said in order to prevent more attacks, the Bangladeshi authorities needed to deliver a message that they believe in “peaceful free expression”.

“They should not recommend to those at risk that they self-censor to avoid hurting religious sentiment and becoming targets for retribution,” she said.

In 2015, after the killing of writer Niladri Chatterjee Niloy, Bangladesh’s police chief warned bloggers that “hurting religious sentiments is a crime”.

Police killed one of the key suspects involved in Avijit’s murder in June, but two others escaped, they said, and are still at large.

Following his son’s death, Ajoy, who said Avijit had been targeted by extremists in the few weeks before his death, and that he had warned him not to return to Bangladesh, could be forgiven for going into hiding.

But he said he was continuing “my activism” against fundamentalist groups, and had been invited to speak at various institutions.

“I’m not scared,” said Ajoy. “I have lost my son, after that I have nothing to care about.”

Ajoy said he wanted Avijit to be remembered as a “courageous young man who would face any hard situation for democracy, for secularism, for free-thinking”.

It was his wish that “the younger generation follow in his footsteps”.

“I would not discourage these courageous young people to quit blogging, speaking your mind, because Bangladesh is constitutionally a secular, democratic country so we must uphold the constitution,” said Ajoy.

“We have to make the common people understand that this is not an anti-Muslim country, it is liberal,” he said. “Although a large number of Muslims are here, they’re also liberal.”

IPS made several attempts to contact the Bangladeshi police and government for comment, but they did not respond.

Afghan refugees in Pakistan number some three million. Most crossed the border in 1979 during the Soviet invasion and have lived in Pakistan for generations. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 1 2015 (IPS)

They number between two and three million; some have lived in makeshift shelters for just a few months, while others have roots that stretch much further back into history. Most fled to escape war, others simply ran away from joblessness.

Whatever their reasons for being here, Afghan refugees in Pakistan all now face a similar plight: of being caught up in the dragnet that is sweeping through the country with the stated goal of removing ‘illegal’ residents from this South Asian nation of 180 million people.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), some 1.6 million Afghans are legally residing in Pakistan, having been granted proof of registration (PoR) by the U.N. body. Twice that number is believed to be unlawfully dwelling here, primarily in the northern, tribal belt that borders Afghanistan.

“Forced repatriation will expose us to many problems." -- Gul Jamal, an elderly Afghan refugee in Peshawar, Pakistan
Most arrived during the Soviet invasion of 1979, the chaos of war squeezing millions of Afghans out of their embattled nation and over the mountainous border that stretches for some 2,700 km along rocky terrain.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and what was then known as the North-West Frontier Province, now called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), offered an easy point of assimilation, the shared language of Pashto bridging the divide between ethnic Pashtun Afghans and the majority Punjabi population.

But what began as a warm welcome has turned progressively sour over the decades, as Afghans are increasingly blamed for rising crime, unemployment and persistent militancy in the region.

The Dec. 16 terrorist attack on a school in the KP’s capital Peshawar – which killed 132 children – has only added fuel to a fiery debate on the status of Afghan refugees, who are accused of swelling the ranks of the Pakistani Taliban and affiliated militant groups operating with impunity in the tribal areas.

Three days after the massacre, on Dec. 19, KP Chief Minister Pervez Khattak convened an emergency cabinet meeting to demand the immediate removal of all Afghan refugees, claiming that the grisly attack on the Army Public School was planned in Afghanistan.

His call for repatriation joined a chorus that has been growing steadily louder in northern Pakistan as the average citizen struggles to come to terms with an era of terrorism that has resulted in over 50,000 deaths since 2001, when the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan prompted a second wave of immigration into Pakistan.

A heated national debate eventually resulted in a decision to allow lawful Afghan residents to remain in the country until the end of 2015, at which point plans would be made for their safe return.

A previous plan, which followed on the heels of a Peshawar High Court order to repatriate Afghan refugees by the end of 2013, did not see the light of day, largely as it would have entailed over a billion dollars in international assistance.

Afghans own 10,000 of the 20,000 shops in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and also run a range of informal businesses, such as street stalls where they hawk goods. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Tired of waiting for government action, however, local authorities have taken the law into their own hands by embarking on a major crackdown on Afghan refugees.

“About 80 percent of crimes in KP are committed by Afghans,” alleged KP Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani.

“They are involved in murders and kidnapping for ransom, but they disappear after committing these crimes and we cannot trace them,” he told IPS.

“Therefore we demand that those having PoR be restricted to camps, and those without [their papers] sent home,” added the official, whose province is home to an estimated one million Afghans.

Police Officer Khalid Khan says his force is arresting roughly 100 people each day. “Every house is searched,” he told IPS, adding that even those who live in “posh localities” are being investigated as possible unlawful residents.

Terror and crime are not the only problems for which Afghans are being blamed. Trade and industry experts here claim that illegal ventures established by refugee communities have destroyed local businesses.

According to Ghulam Nabi, vice president of the KP Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Afghans run 10,000 of the estimated 20,000 shops in Peshawar; but since they are not registered residents, they are not subject to the same taxes as Pakistani shop-owners.

He told IPS his department has been “urging” the federal government to repatriate Afghans so locals can continue to do their trade. He also alleged that refugees’ demand for housing has pushed rents to unaffordable prices.

Besides hosting hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, the KP is also saddled with scores of displaced Pakistanis, the most recent influx arriving in the midst of a government military campaign in North Waziristan Agency aimed at rooting out insurgents from their stronghold.

Abdullah Khan, a professor at the University of Peshawar, told IPS that two million displaced Pakistanis from adjacent provinces are now residing in KP, many of them in makeshift ‘tent cities’ erected in the Bannu district.

According to Khan, Afghanistan’s gradual return to democracy has paved the way for safe return for refugees. He, along with other experts and officials, see no further reason for Pakistan to continue to host such a massive international population within its borders – especially with so many domestic issues clamouring to be dealt with.

Former cricket legend Imran Khan, whose Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice) party rules the KP province, has also echoed the demand.

“The government issues 500 Pakistani visas to Afghans at the Torkham border [a major crossing point connecting Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province with FATA] everyday but an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people cross the border daily,” he said on Dec. 18.

“The illegal movement takes place because we don’t have a system to track these people and their activities here,” he added.

In a bid to rectify gaps in the system, police in KP are now blocking cell phones belonging to Afghans and taking steps to regulate the movements of refugees who may be in violation of their visa status.

But many Afghan residents claim the allegations are unfounded, while those who have lived here for generations consider Pakistan their home. Others are simply afraid of what will be waiting for them if they do go back.

Gul Jamal, an Afghan elder, told IPS that while his family was eager to return, the situation back home was “extremely precarious”.

“There are no education or health facilities, and no electricity,” he claimed, adding that job opportunities too are few and far between in Afghanistan.

He hopes the Pakistan government will “take pity” on his people. “Forced repatriation will expose us to many problems,” he explained.

In an interview with IPS on Dec. 22, Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions Abdul Qadir Baloch categorically stated that legal refugees would stay on until the end of 2015 as per the government’s agreement with UNHCR.

“The registered Afghan refugees have never been found to be involved in terrorism-related incidents in the country and they won’t be sent back against their will,” Baloch stressed.

“The government will protect legal Afghan [immigrants] against forced repatriation,” he asserted.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Sheik Oumarou Malam Djibring, a member of Cameroon’s Council of Imams, called on the country’s Muslims to be vigilant against the extremist group Boko Haram and to report any strange and suspicious-looking individuals. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
YAOUNDE, Jul 31 2014 (IPS)

Motari Hamissou used to get along well with his pupils at the government primary school in Sabga, an area in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s North West Region.

In the past, Hamissou also lived in peace with his neighbours. No one was bothered by his long, thick beard or the veil his wife, Aisha Hamissou, wore, or the religion they followed.

According to the 2010 general population census, Muslims constitute 24 percent of this Central African nation’s 21 million people, most of whom live in Cameroon’s Far North, North and Adamawa Regions; all on the border with Nigeria. Cameroon’s north western boarder runs along the length of Nigeria’s eastern boarder, stretching all the way to Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north — a stronghold of the Nigerian extremist group, Boko Haram.

But the intermittent attacks and abductions perpetrated by Boko Haram in Cameroon’s North West Region has destroyed the peace and accord that Hamissou enjoyed with his pupils and neighbours.

The most recent attack by the group was on Jul. 27 when the wife of Cameroon’s Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali was kidnapped in the northern town of Kolofata. The group is said to have increased its attacks from Nigeria into neighbouring Cameroon. Since the group first took up arms five years ago for a Muslim state in Nigeria, more than, some 12,000 people in that West African nation have died in the crisis, according to figures from Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan.

Now Hamissou’s own pupils call him “Boko Haram” in reference to the group. The name, Boko Haram, means “Western education is a sin” in the local Nigerian dialect, Hausa.

“They see our beards or the veils our wives [wear] and immediately link us to the sect,” Hamissou tells IPS.

“I am a teacher. I teach Western education. How can I teach Western education and at the same time say that it is forbidden? That’s incomprehensible,” he adds.

Arlette Dainadi, a 12-year-old schoolgirl who attends the same primary school that Hamissou teaches at, tells IPS some of her peers have gone as far as taking off her veil and shouting: “Boko Haram! Boko Haram!”

Aisha Hamissou tells IPS that even adults have taken to name-calling.

“I can’t move and interact freely with other people without being called names. People call me Boko Haram,” she explains, almost bursting into tears.

In a concerted effort to distance themselves from the extremist group, Muslim groups and leaders in Cameroon, including the Association of Muslim Students and the Cameroon Council of Imams, have been organising workshops, seminars and public demonstrations to sensitise the general public about their stance against the extremist sect.

Sheik Oumarou Malam Djibring, a member of Cameroon’s Council of Imams, tells IPS that Boko Haram’s campaign against Western education, as well as the atrocities it exacts on innocent people, has nothing to do with Islam.

“Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Departing from these precepts is actually against Islam,” he says.

Members of the Cameroon Council of Imams and Muslim leaders have embraced “Boko Halal”,”an Hausa idiomatic expression which means education is allowed or permitted as contained in the Quran.

Islamic teacher and religious leader Sheik Abu Oumar Bin Ali tells IPS that Muslim scholars have been major drivers of education.

“Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a leading Muslim scholar who founded the branch of mathematics known as algebra… So it’s stupid for anyone to link Muslim with a hatred for Western education,” he says.

But Ahmadou Moustapha, a traditional Muslim ruler in Cameroon’s Far North Region, tells IPS that Boko Haram has definitely been recruiting young Muslims in the region.

“They come here and forcefully whisk away our young people,” Moustapha explains.

“I believe they go and intoxicate them with their hate beliefs.”

According to Professor Souaibou Issa, from the University of Ngaoundere in Cameroon’s Adamawa Region, the group is even more dangerous because “you never know what their linkages are, you don’t know what exactly their focus is, and you don’t know who the actors are. There is widespread suspicion, and the states are fighting invisible enemies.”

Mallam Djibring called on the country’s Muslims to be vigilant and report any strange and suspicious-looking individuals.

Editing by: Nalisha Adams

Senior defence officials say that Cameroon has been infiltrated by Nigeria’s Islamist extremist group Boko Haram and there are fears that this central African nation, known for its stability, is drifting into chaos.

“Right now, we are being infiltrated by Boko Haram. The military has decided to strengthen the intelligence system to effectively counter this threat, which seems to be gaining local support,” Colonel Didier Badjeck, spokesperson for the Cameroon Ministry of Defence, told IPS.

Governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region, Augustine Awa Fonka, told IPS that the precision with which the extremist group attacked a military post in the region on May 5, lends credence to the fact that the attack was carried out with the help of local informants.“It’s difficult to live in a place where even the rustles of tree leaves jolt you out of a rare sleep, and where you know you and your kids could be killed without warning.” -- Cameroonian El Hadji Numbao

Cameroon’s north western boarder runs along the length of Nigeria’s eastern boarder, stretching all the way to Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north — a Boko Haram stronghold. In March, the government set up a number of military posts along Cameroon’s northwestern border with Nigeria in response to Boko Haram’s insurgency.

But on 2am, May 5, over 30 suspected Boko Haram insurgents struck the Kousseri military post in Far North Region and killed a Gendarmerie officer and a civilian being held in custody. Several people were wounded as the group freed one of their members, who was also being held at the post.

“In all of the cases [of Boko Haram attacks], especially the attack on the military post, there are quite a number of arrests that have been made. The attack couldn’t have been carried out without local informants and we believe we are going to identify these accomplices,” Awa Fonka said.

He admitted that the attack on the military was spreading fear among locals.

“The forces of law and order are there to protect the population. When they [the military] are now being attacked, it destabilises everyone,” he said.

He described the attackers as “faceless” terrorists would could only be tracked down with help of locals. He added that “every measure will be put in place to track down the attackers, or at least get their accomplices.”

Attacks in Nigeria have also resulted in refugees fleeing to safety in Cameroon. On May 6, Boko Haram — which means “Western Education is a sin” in the local Nigerian dialect, Hausa — raided a market in the Nigerian border town of Gambourou. More than 200 people, including four Cameroonians, died in the attack. Around 3,000 Nigerians, many of whom were wounded during the violence, crossed over to the Cameroonian town of Fotokol.

“The forces of law and order cannot do it alone. They need the population to denounce people of doubtful origin who are in their neighbourhoods. We need to unite, because a nation unified against its enemy is invincible,” Awa Fonka said.

But the readiness of locals to cooperate remains in doubt.

“People are suspicious of each other. You can’t possibly trust even your nextdoor neighbour because you do not know with whom they sit and dine,” Alamine Ousman, a resident of Kousseri, Far North Region, told IPS.

“But we know that Boko Haram members are here among us — they move about like anyone else, and you can’t even tell they are from Boko Haram.”

Many in the region remain afraid for their lives and are reluctant to volunteer any information about Boko Haram’s members.

Hawe Aishatu, who escaped the attacks in the Far North Region and fled to the capital, Yaounde, cast a furtive glance before she spoke in a subdued tone.

“It can mean death talking about these people. They are fundamentally evil,” she told IPS.

The recent attack on the Kousseri military post forced El Hadji Numbao and his family to flee the town. He told IPS that if the insurgents had the nerve to attack military posts, then ordinary people like himself were not safe.

“It’s so scary,” Numbao said just as he stepped off a train at Yaounde station.

“It’s difficult to live in a place where even the rustles of tree leaves jolt you out of a rare sleep, and where you know you and your kids could be killed without warning,” he said.

Adouraman Halirou, a university don and specialist on border issues, told IPS that he feared Cameroon, which frequently prided itself as being a fountain of peace in a troubled African continent, may be drifting into chaos.

He urged the government to make use of all its available human and technical resources to stem the threat.

“The conflicts, the crises and the tensions plaguing the region, particularly Nigeria, have not failed to have repercussions in our country,” Minister of Communications Issa Tchiroma Bakary told IPS.

Military posts have also been set up on the country’s eastern border with Central Africa Republic (CAR) as Cameroon has also faced attack there. In Cameroon’s East Region over 18 locals were kidnapped on May 2 by insurgents from CAR.

“Cameroon is subject to attacks perpetuated from neighbouring countries, and by nationals of those countries,” Tchiroma Bakary added.

Until then Cameroonians like Numbao will continue to flee for safety.

“I have left everything back-my businesses, my cattle…everything. But I am happy my seven children and three wives are safe,” Numbao said. He has relocated to the capital with his entire household.

Former provincial assembly member Shagufta Malik and former national assembly member Bushra Gohar at Peshawar Press Club. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 8 2013 (IPS)

“Women in Pakhtun society have traditionally helped their men in hard times,” declares former Pakistani lawmaker Shagufta Malik. They are doing so again, and how, going by their hectic campaigning activity in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

An erstwhile member of the provincial assembly, Malik is spearheading the election campaign for Awami National Party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan, who is running for a seat in the national legislature.

The ANP leader had narrowly survived a suicide attack in October 2008 in Charsadda, one of the 25 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the birthplace of the party, and has since been confined to the federal capital Islamabad and restricted from visiting his constituency as often as he would have wished.

Now, as the May 11 election date looms near, the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has stepped up its deadly exploits against the ANP primarily, and other parties such as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). Accordingly, Wali Khan and other leaders have been instructed to stay away from electioneering in the province, which is adjacent to the Afghan border.

A band of women leaders from the ANP has therefore taken it upon themselves to campaign for their leaders in their absence. “The Awami National Party is not the type to be frightened by acts of terrorism,” says Malik, who hails from Nowshera district and is leading the campaign for Wali Khan in the NA-7 constituency in Charsadda. “It’s high time we supported our leaders and campaigned for them,” she adds.

Assisting Malik in her effort are other prominent ANP women leaders, among them Bushra Gohar and Jamila Gilani, both former members of the National Assembly. Carrying lanterns – the election symbol of the ANP – these feisty women are going from area to area, talking to the female population.

“We have decided to reach out to the people through our women,” says Malik.

Gohar adds: “We gather them in spacious homes in different villages and hamlets and address them.”

Currently, the National Assembly has 60 seats reserved for women and 10 for minorities; there is direct election for the remaining 272 seats. And forget contesting elections – women in some provinces cannot even cast their votes as it would amount to going against local tradition.

That situation has undergone a sea change now, says Gohar. Malik and her team are not only convincing women in the region to cast their votes in favour of ANP candidates and persuading their menfolk to do the same, but also educating them in the whole process of casting a ballot.

There are a total of 12,266,157 registered voters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: 5,257,624 women and 7,008,533 men. The ANP won the largest number of seats in the last general election in 2008, getting its first chief minister since 1948.

Attacks on the party, however, have made the going tough for the ANP. The 2008 attempt on Wali Khan’s life took its toll and he has had to pay the price of being away from his constituency. Incidentally, his mother, Begum Nasim Wali Khan, was the first woman to win a general seat in the National Assembly, in the 1977 elections.

The ANP, says Gilani, who is also a staunch activist with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, has already lost some 800 leaders and workers to the Taliban and can’t afford to lose their leader. If the terrorists succeed in killing him, she says, it would be difficult for the party to stay united because he is a binding force.

The ruling party is standing steadfast in its resolve to face up to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Despite the blasts and the killings, party leaders are continuing their electoral campaign and holding meetings, though perhaps with less fervour than in the last elections.

The effort is to garner sympathy among the electorate by highlighting the sacrifices of its leaders and the ANP’s bravery in not backing down despite the constant threat to lives from the militants. Impressed by their efforts, people are joining the party in droves, the leaders claim.

Senior leader Ghulam Ahmed Bilour survived a suicide attack as recently as Apr. 16. His younger brother, Bashir Ahmed Bilour, a senior minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was killed Dec. 22 last year.

Regardless of this, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour is in no mood to give up and cede ground to his rivals, particularly Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan, against whom he is running in the NA-1 constituency of Peshawar.

Barely a fortnight before the elections, he was found addressing a meeting of the elders of the Mohmand tribe. Ghulam Ahmed’s nephew – the deceased Bashir’s son – Haroon Ahmed Bilour is contesting PK-3, a constituency they have won five times in a row.

Former chief minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti is also holding election-related meetings in Mardan, a city and district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He is cautious about the unsafe environment, but is managing to stay in touch with workers.

Likewise, the ANP’s general secretary Malik Ghulam, who is standing in PK-2, in Peshawar, is leaving no stone unturned to reach out to his electorate.

In a meeting at Bilal Town Grand Trunk Road on May 2, where he says many people announced their intention to join the ANP, he tore into rival Pakistan People’s Party candidate, former minister Syed Zahir Ali Shah, and presented himself as the credible alternative. He argued that his party’s track record would help them win.

At their end, Shagufta Malik and other women leaders are spreading the same message of development and the need to battle against Islamist militancy.

At a public meeting of women in Prang Mamakhel in Charsadda district on May 2, Malik said the party was confident of showing better results due to the massive development work it had undertaken during its five-year rule in the province.

“Our party executed development schemes at the cost of the lives of its workers and leaders, and won’t spare any effort to continue their struggle for the uplift of the Pakhtun population (the majority in the province),” she said.

She exhorted people to vote for ANP leader Wali Khan and other candidates, to enable the party to resume its efforts to crush militancy and establish peace.

Gilani and provincial assembly member Yasmin Pir Muhammad Khan also addressed the meeting.

Muhammad Khan emphasised yet again that the ANP was the main target of the militants and the only party taking them on. She also said the matchless sacrifices were bearing fruit: even the women are out in support of the party.

The surviving Boston Marathon bomber reportedly told authorities the U.S. “war on Islam” drove him and his brother to commit their terrorist act. Their linking the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a perceived global war on Islam is at the heart of the Jihadist message Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda issued to the Muslim world almost two decades ago.

The message, which continues to lure some vulnerable Muslim youth across the globe, is powerful, simplistic, repetitive, deceptive and violent. It appeals to alienated and angry youth because they see in it a reaffirmation of their self-articulated religious narrative even though such a narrative has very little basis in objective religious teachings.

Of course, the tipping point of moving a young man from anger into killing innocent people varies from case to case. Once he accepts the universality of Bin Ladin’s message, he proceeds with plotting to terrorise regardless of place and cause.

When I was in government, I frequently briefed senior officials on the long-term danger of Bin Ladin’s message because it charted a path for individual radicalisers and radicalised alike without traceable connections to international terror organisations.

We also briefed them that more and more “lone wolf” potential terrorists who would be receptive to the Bin Ladin message live in Western societies and are usually “under the radar”. Part of my responsibility at CIA was to analyse all Bin Ladin’s messages for senior policymakers.

Bin Ladin’s simple articulation of Jihad, which continues to be propagated in the blogosphere by Al-Qaeda and its franchise groups, includes four key themes. First, the Islamic faith and territory are under attack, as exemplified by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Western-led wars on individual Muslim countries, he told potential recruits, are part of a global “Christian-Zionist” war against Islam.

Second, Bin Ladin asserted that U.S., Western, and “Zionist” policies are anti-Islamic, as evidenced by what’s happening in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Philippines, Sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere.

Third, in response to these attacks, he argued all Muslims are duty bound to engage in Jihad against the “near” enemy (Muslim regimes) and the “far” enemy (the U.S., European states, and Israel). In addressing his followers through so-called fatwas and media messages, Bin Ladin claimed such “jihad” is an existential fight for the survival of the global Muslim community or umma. His successor, Ayman Zawahiri, has repeated the same message.

Fourth, the war between Islam and the “infidels” and the “apostates” will last until the “final days” when the “enemies of Islam” will be defeated. Islam will emerge victorious awaiting the coming of the “Mahdi”.

For Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda, infidels and apostates included, in addition to non-Muslims, Islamic majorities who disagreed with this radical ideology and terrorist methods.

The four-pronged message is theology at its most simplistic level. Many grade school graduates, high school dropouts, and other youth with limited knowledge of their faith tend to accept it blindly as immutable truth. Many mainstream Muslims, including clerics and scholars, have had difficulty refuting Al-Qaeda’s calls for violence because radicalised youth have no interest in reasoned discussion or in learning about their faith.

Many Muslim youth, like their counterparts across the globe, have grown up with the new social media and a worldview grounded in the Internet, Facebook, short texting, and tweets. Longer treatises on religion or any other subject for that matter turn them off.

When Western governments began to implement so-called strategic communications strategies in an attempt to engage mainstream and “moderate” Muslims and refute extremism, radicalised youth were already inculcated with Bin Ladin’s violent rhetoric.

My analysts and I frequently briefed senior policymakers on the need to study Al-Qaeda’s radical rhetoric and fight it with more convincing messaging. Accomplishing such a goal should have been easy since vast majorities of Muslims worldwide rejected violence and extremism. But it wasn’t.

Radicalisation did not succeed because of religion or values. Terrorist groups have cynically used Muslims’ disagreements with specific Western policies to spread their message of terror. They also used the politics of nationalism – including in Bosnia, Chechnya, the Arabian Peninsula, Kashmir, Western China, and Sub-Saharan Africa – for their global Islamic agenda.

They stoked opposition to the United States and other Western countries by exploiting popular anger on the “Islamic street” against invading Muslim countries, Guantanamo, drone strikes, and other “dirty wars” tactics.

Some Muslim youth, immigrants or children of immigrants who live in Western societies find it difficult to adjust to life in their adopted countries. As alienated adolescents and even college-age kids, they become easy prey to radical recruiters, whether in person or on the Internet.

Where do we go from here? The news from Canada about the role of Canadian Muslims in foiling the recent terror plot to blow up a train is a useful guide on how to proceed.

Canada, the UK, some European countries, and Australia have done a commendable job making their Muslim communities feel a sense of belonging to the country where they live. Several U.S. cities, especially New York City and Las Vegas, Nevada, have implemented similar policies.

Real engagement of Muslim communities in Western societies usually begets a sense of belonging, especially if it is accompanied by official condemnation of hate crimes and rhetoric, such as “Islamophobia”. A well-grounded feeling of belonging empowers mosque imams and other community leaders to spot signs of radicalisation in their community and report them to the authorities.

As one Muslim resident of New York City once said, “This is my city and don’t want anything to happen to it.”

The good news is that vast majorities of Muslims oppose terrorism and focus on improving their lives. As the Afghan war winds down, and as Al-Qaeda Central weakens, a time should come when Guantanamo is closed and “dirty wars’’ become subject to public scrutiny. That is when Bin Ladin’s message becomes irrelevant, the threat of radicalisation wanes, and the “See Something, Say Something” slogan gains acceptance among Muslims.

*Emile Nakhleh, a former director of the CIA Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World”.

Malian Defense soldiers learn logistics with U.S. Army Special Forces. Credit: US Army Africa/CC-BY-2.0

By Emmanuel Haddad
NIAMEY, Jan 23 2013 (IPS)

A column of Chadian soldiers – members of the region’s most battle-hardened army – moved north from Niger’s capital Niamey on Tuesday to join French and African forces battling to free northern Mali from the grip of armed Islamic groups.

For the past year, the north of Mali – nearly two-thirds of the country – has been occupied by armed groups belonging to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), and Ansar Dine. These groups have committed abuses against people in the region while strictly applying Islamic law.

“The Chadian army is the best army in Africa at the moment,” said an enthusiastic Boubacar Tidjani, a young Nigerien international relations student, as the arrival of the Chadian troops in Niamey was announced on Jan. 18. “It’s simple: they have always known war and more, they are proud. I admire them for that.”

The Chadian government will eventually deploy a total of 2,000 soldiers to support French and Malian troops fighting against the militant groups in northern Mali, and more soldiers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will eventually join the operation.

According to the Reuters news agency, Chad’s troops moved along the road to Ouallam, some 100 kilometres from the Malian border, on Tuesday, in order to enter the war zone without first passing through Mali’s capital Bamako.

Their participation has raised hopes of a quick end to the crisis in Mali, where the Chadians’ reputation as warriors precedes them.

The Chadian army has experience fighting in a desert climate, suppressing numerous internal rebellions in an arid environment identical to that of northern Mali. Chad also fought and won a border war with Libya between 1983 and 1987.

Its forces number 30,000 in total and have regularly taken part in stamping out insurgencies in neighbouring countries. The army’s most recent intervention was in December 2012, in support of the Central African Republic’s government against a threat by rebels from a coalition known as Seleka.

The Chadian armed forces could also potentially provide some air power, with six Sukhoi bombers and several Mi-17 and Mi-24 attack helicopters.

The deployment to Niamey was confirmed on Friday, Jan. 18, by a member of the Chadian army, who told Agence France Presse, “Our units left on three aircraft. Their tanks were transported by a C-130, their pickups in an Antonov and the troops flew in a Boeing belonging to the Toumai Air Tchad company.”

A new front?

During a Jan. 19 conference organised in Niamey by the civil society organisation Alternative Niger to consider the regional consequences of the military intervention in northern Mali, its secretary-general, Moussa Tchangari, raised the possibility of opening a second front in northern Niger, in order to trap the terrorist groups being hunted by the French and Malian armies.

Speaking at the conference, Olivier de Sardan, a researcher at the Niamey-based Laboratory for Studies and Research into Social Dynamics and Local Development (LASDEL), said that northern Mali and northern Niger are contiguous, “raising the fear that after Mali, the next country on the list of narco-terrorist groups will be Niger”.

The Nigerien army does not have the reputation or effectiveness of the Chadian army. Despite its frequent involvement in pushing fighters from AQIM and MUJWA back from its border with Mali, the Nigerien army expects to contribute only 500 soldiers to AFISMA, the African-led International Mission to Mali. The Chadian reinforcement will be welcome, analysts say.

Two concerns remain over Chadian participation. The first is linked to accusations, levelled against the armed forces, of abuses against civilians. Human Rights Watch has gathered testimony about such abuses committed during the Chadian intervention in the Central African Republic in 2008.

The second worry is over possible repercussions for Chad itself. Speaking to Germany’s Deutsche Welle Radio, political scientist Helga Dickow, from the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg, said, “Boko Haram has already indirectly threatened President (Idriss) Déby with the destabilisation of Chad, if Chadian troops are sent to Mali.” Boko Haram is the terrorist Islamist group currently active in the north of Nigeria and which has links with AQIM.

(END)