After a drone strike had reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud Nov. 1, the spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council declared that, if true, it would be “a serious loss” for the terrorist organisation.

Hakimullah Mehsud. Credit: public domain

That reaction accurately reflected the Central Intelligence Agency’s argument for the strike. But the back story of the episode is how President Barack Obama supported the parochial interests of the CIA in the drone war over the Pakistani government’s effort to try a new political approach to that country’s terrorism crisis.

The failure of both drone strikes and Pakistani military operations in the FATA tribal areas to stem the tide of terrorism had led to a decision by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to try a political dialogue with the Taliban.

But the drone strike that killed Mehsud stopped the peace talks before they could begin.

Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan immediately denounced the drone strike that killed Mehsud as “a conspiracy to sabotage the peace talks.” He charged that the United States had “scuttled” the initiative “on the eve, 18 hours before a formal delegation of respected ulema [Islamic clerics] was to fly to Miranshah and hand over this formal invitation.”

An unidentified State Department official refused to address the Pakistani minister’s criticism, declaring coolly that the issue was “an internal matter for Pakistan”.

Three different Taliban commanders told Reuters Nov. 3 they had been preparing for the talks but after the killing of Mehsud, they now felt betrayed and vowed a wave of revenge attacks.

The strategy of engaging the Taliban in peace talks, which was supported by the unanimous agreement of an “All Parties Conference” on Sept. 9, was not simply an expression of naïvete about the Taliban as was suggested by a Nov. 3 New York Times article on the Pakistani reaction to the drone strike.

A major weakness of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) lies in the fact that it is a coalition of as many as 50 groups, some of whose commanders are less committed to the terrorist campaign against the Pakistani government than others. In the aftermath of the Mehsud killing, several Taliban militants told Reuters that some Taliban commanders were still in favour of talks with the government.

The most important success achieved by Pakistan in countering Taliban violence in the past several years has been to reach accommodations with several militant leaders who had been allied with the Taliban but agreed to oppose Taliban attacks on government officials and security forces.

Sharif and other Pakistani officials were well aware that the United States could unilaterally prevent such talks from taking place by killing Mehsud or other Taliban leaders with a drone strike.

The government lobbied the United States in September and October to end its drone war in Pakistan – or at least to give the government a period of time to try its political strategy.

Obama had already suggested in a May 23 speech at National Defence University that the need for the strikes was fast diminishing and would soon end, because there were very few high value targets left to hit, and because the U.S. would be withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. In August, Secretary of State John Kerry had said the end might come “very, very soon.”

After the meeting with Sharif on Oct. 23, Obama said they had agreed to cooperate in “ways that respect Pakistan’s sovereignty, that respect the concerns of both countries” and referred favourably to Sharif’s efforts to “reduce these incidents of terrorism.”

Shortly after the meeting, Sharif’s adviser on national security and foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that the Obama administration had promised to “consider” the prime minister’s request to restrain drone attacks while the government carried out a political dialogue.

A “senior Pakistani official” told the Express Tribune that Obama had “assured Premier Nawaz that drone strikes would only be used as a last option” and that he was planning to end the drone war once “a few remaining targets” had been eliminated.

The official said the Pakistani government now believed the unilateral strikes would end in “a matter of months.”

But Obama’s meeting with Sharif evidently occurred before the CIA went to Obama with specific intelligence about Mehsud, and proposed to carry out a strike to kill him.

The CIA had an institutional grudge to settle with Mehsud after he had circulated a video with Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the Jordanian suicide bomber who had talked the CIA into inviting him to its compound at Camp Chapman in Khost province, where he killed seven CIA officials and contractors on Dec. 30, 2009.

The CIA had already carried out at least two drone strikes aimed at killing Mehsud in January 2010 and January 2012.

Killing Mehsud would not reduce the larger threat of terrorism and would certainly trigger another round of TTP suicide bombings in Pakistan’s largest cities in retaliation.

Although it would satisfy the CIA’s thirst for revenge and make the CIA and his administration look good on terrorism to the U.S. public, it would also make it impossible for the elected Pakistani government to try a political approach to TTP terrorism.

Obama appears to have been sympathetic to Sharif’s argument on terrorism and had no illusions that one or a few more drone strikes against leading Taliban officials would prevent the organisation from continuing to mobilise its followers to carry out terror attacks, including suicide bombers.

But the history of the drone war in Pakistan shows that the CIA has prevailed even when its proposed targets were highly questionable. In March 2011, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter had opposed a CIA proposal for a drone strike just as CIA contractor Raymond Davis was about to be released from a jail in Lahore.

Munter had learned that the CIA wanted the strike because it was angry at Pakistan’s ISI, which regarded the Haqqani group as an ally, over Davis’s incarceration, according to an AP story on Aug. 2, 2011. The Haqqani group was heavily involved in fighting U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan but was opposed to the TTP’s terror attacks in Pakistan.

CIA Director Leon Panetta rejected Munter’s objection to the strike, however, and Obama had supported Panetta. It was later revealed that the strike had been based on faulty intelligence. It was not a meeting of Haqqani network that was hit but a conference of tribal leaders from all over the province on an economic issue.

But the CIA simply refused to acknowledge its mistake and continued to claim to journalists that only terrorists had attended the meeting.

After the strike, Obama had formalised the ambassador’s authority to oppose a proposed drone strike, giving Munter what he called a “yellow card.” But despite the evidence that the CIA had carried out a drone strike for parochial reasons rather then an objective assessment of evidence, Obama gave the CIA director the power to override an ambassadorial dissent, even if the secretary of state supported the ambassador.

The extraordinary power of the CIA director over the drone strike policy, which was formalised by Obama after that strike, was evident in Obama’s decision to approve the CIA’s proposal for the Mehsud strike. The director was now John Brennan, who had shaped public opinion in favour of drone strikes through a series of statements, interviews and leaks as Obama’s deputy national security adviser from 2009 to 2013.

Even though Obama was determined to phase the out drone war in Pakistan and apparently sympathised with the need for the Pakistani government to end it within a matter of months, he was unwilling to reject the CIA’s demand for a strike that once again involved the agency’s parochial interests.

A late July 2013 survey had shown that 61 percent of U.S. citizens still supported the use of drones. Having already shaped public perceptions on the issue of terrorism, Obama allowed the interests of the CIA to trump the interests of Pakistan and the United States in trying a different approach to Pakistan’s otherwise intractable terrorism problem.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Victims of a May 17 explosion at a mosque in a village in Malakand district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which killed 13 people. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 27 2013 (IPS)

Peshawar is breathing a little easier. Prime minister designate Nawaz Sharif’s offer of talks with the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has rekindled hope for peace in this Pakistan border town.

The TTP have had a long run of terror in Pakistan’s northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, of which Peshawar is the capital. And the terror had intensified in the run-up to the May 11 elections in the country, as bomb and suicide attacks left a bloody trail of political casualties in the region.

Tackling terrorism, therefore, would have been the foremost priority of any government that came to power. And when the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) emerged the winner, the mandate before it was clear.

Sharif’s statement that “talking to Taliban was not a bad option” has sent a wave of relief among the residents of KP, and of FATA in particular, which has borne the brunt of the militancy since 2001.

Especially as the TTP has responded favourably. Its spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan welcomed the offer and considered it a positive sign. “We are devising a strategy over the course of action to be taken in response to the peace talk offer,” he said.

Terrorism is the number one problem the new government needs to solve if it is to put Pakistan on the path to progress, PML-N activist Rehmanullah Khan told IPS. “We have lost 49,000 people, including 5,000 soldiers, to the Taliban since 2005,” he said.

Other parties too have endorsed this initiative. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), under the leadership of former cricket legend Imran Khan, had, in fact, been at the forefront of a campaign to hold a dialogue with the militants.

The party will now be forming a government in coalition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It has appointed Pervez Khan Khattak as the chief minister.

“We are according top priority to the establishment of peace and ending terrorism,” he told IPS. Without stopping terrorism, he said, there can be no prospect of social and economic development.

“The army has been engaged in a military operation in FATA since 2005,” Khattak added. “But the outcome has been zero and the TTP is still calling the shots in the majority of the seven tribal districts under FATA.”

If you have not been able to eliminate them by force in the last eight years, he said, talks would be your best option.

Regarding Sharif’s offer of the olive branch to the Taliban, Dr Said Akram at the political science department of the University of Peshawar told IPS that the Taliban had in March this year offered to talk with the government. “But the then government (led by the Pakistan People’s Party) did not show an interest, due to which no headway was made,” he said.

At that time, the TTP had also asked Nawaz Sharif, who was then in the opposition, as well as religious leaders like Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and Syed Munawar Hassan of the Jamaat-e-Islami, for guarantees before the dialogue.

“While in opposition, Nawaz didn’t become the guarantor, but now that he is in government and prime minister, it would be his first priority to start negotiations with the TTP,” said Akram.

Both the PML-N and PTI have also sought the help of Maulana Samiul Haq, chief of JUI’s other faction, and patron-in-chief of Pakistan’s biggest Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom Haqqania, to facilitate talks between the government and the TTP.

The influential cleric is referred to as the ‘Father of the Taliban’. “Most of the Taliban leaders are my students,” Haq told IPS. “I have been in contact with the Taliban leadership and the response has been positive.”

But he needed the full guarantee not only of the PML-N and PTI but also of Pakistan’s army chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, he said, before launching a formal dialogue process with the TTP.

“We are sure that peace will prevail if the government, opposition, army and the Taliban display sincerity,” he said.

Muhammad Aslam Khan, a Pakistan Studies teacher at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, 50 km northeast of Peshawar, says it’s the brightest chance for the government to rein in the TTP. “The government needs to take the peace offer seriously if it wants to have peace in the future,” he said.

In fact, the people had voted for the PML-N and PTI precisely because of the failure of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Awami League Party (ANP) to maintain peace, Khan added. They saw hope in the former’s slogans of peace and would be very disappointed if they too failed to contain terrorism.

However, even the ANP, which had been in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the last five years and on a collision course with the TTP, having lost 800 of its leaders and workers in sustained attacks by the group, is in favour of making peace with them. “We want peace at any cost and will support the government because people have become sick of terrorism,” ANP spokesman Zahid Khan told IPS. Peace, it would seem, finally has a chance in Pakistan.

ANP candidate Syed Masoom Shah on his way to the hospital after an Apr. 14 bomb attack in Charsadda, a town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, that injured four people. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 10 2013 (IPS)

If you can’t beat them, at least innovate. That seems to be the lesson that Pakistan’s Awami National Party (ANP) has drawn from its predicament.

Exhausted of being at the receiving end of an endless barrage of bomb and suicide attacks by Taliban militants, the party has turned to technology for succour.

It is using the Internet to reach out to the electorate across its various constituencies in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, its main support base.

ANP leader Mian Iftikhar Hussain told IPS what a blessing it was to be able to reach the people through Skype ahead of the May 11 elections.

“Through it, we can reach the electorate without putting our lives in danger,” he said. Technology has helped them protect not just their own lives but also those of the people who come to listen to them.

Hussain, a former information minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, lost his only son, Mian Rashid Hussain, in a terror attack by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in October 2010.

The ANP, which has been in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s four provinces, for the last five years (2008-2013), had earned the wrath of the outlawed TTP due to its firm stand against Islamist militancy.

It has paid a high price. Around 800 of its leaders and workers have fallen prey to attacks by the TTP in the past five years. And the violence has only worsened in the run-up to the elections.

The ANP remained its primary target, but the other liberal parties – such as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan People’s Party – have also been victims of its ire. Bombs and suicide attacks on ANP and MQM candidates and offices became the order of the day.

“It was the ANP (provincial) government which took the most successful military action against militants in the Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” said Muhammad Jamil, who teaches Pakistan Studies at the University Public School in Peshawar. “The TTP had ruled Swat from 2007 to 2009 till it was evicted by the ANP-led government in 2010.”

Swat is also where the brave Malala Yousafzai comes from. The 14-year-old was shot in October last year by the Taliban for championing the cause of girls’ education.

The ANP, Jamil told IPS, was the only party carrying out an “open and brave campaign” against the Taliban, which made it the focus of their violent agenda.

“The TTP is afraid it could face more stern action if the ANP is voted to power again. It is therefore making every attempt to keep the party away from election and to pave the way for parties which have a soft spot for the Taliban,” he added.

It may not quite succeed, given the ANP’s ability to get around obstacles. First, its women leaders took charge where the more prominent candidates could not canvass, going from village to village soliciting women to vote for their candidates and trying to persuade men to do so as well.

Now it has included the internet in its armoury to circumvent the militants and communicate with its supporters.

And people have taken very well to seeing their leaders communicate with them on internet, said ANP leader Bushra Gohar.

“Our workers appreciate the new move because the ANP couldn’t put the lives of workers on the razor’s edge by holding public meetings. Via Skype, we are able to communicate our message to the people in an atmosphere of peace,” she told IPS.

“Many of our candidates have wanted to be present physically in public meetings but could not because of the threat from militants,” she added. “The use of internet has resolved our problem.”

Hussain turned to Skype again in Taro locality, some 15 kilometres from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa capital Peshawar, to spread his own and the party’s message.

Ali Haider, who organised the Skype address, said it was an unqualified success. “We are planning more such meetings where ANP’s leaders and candidates can address the people on Skype. These are very safe,” he said.

“Where there is a will, there is a way,” Sanaullah Khan, a Mardan-based ANP worker, told IPS. “We have been listening eagerly to the speeches being delivered by our leaders via Skype.”

Former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister and ANP leader Ameer Haider Khan Hoti is contesting the national assembly seat from his hometown. Having survived a suicide attack on Feb. 15, 2013 in Mardan, he, like the others, could not campaign in person for the elections.

People are organising Skype speeches for him as well in Mardan.

Khan said they had also been working on developing the party’s webpage and were posting regular election updates on Facebook.

“The response is unprecedented because a majority of our leaders have also opened Twitter accounts to send their message to the workers,” he said.

Muhammad Namir, a schoolteacher in Mardan, was among those who heard Hoti’s speech on the internet on May 3. The leader, Namir said, recounted the many projects his government had executed in the five years of its rule and asked the people to give their vote to the ANP’s candidates again in this election.

“Party workers say that the use of internet has saved them from attacks,” Namir told IPS. “For public meetings, you have to make arrangements. But for an internet campaign, all that is required is a laptop.”

The ANP has also been using songs to motivate the masses,” said Muhammad Shoaib, a local journalist in Swabi. ANP candidates have survived three terror bids in Swabi, the fourth most populous district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The party’s election songs have elevated the people’s mood. The ANP put out an album of 11 Pashto songs for the election campaign. Sung by well-known singer Gulzar Alam, the songs reinforce the themes of peace, democracy and progress – the very things the ANP is promising to the electorate.

“The songs are enticing the people because they relate to the protection of Pakhtun soil,” Shoaib said. The Pakhtun population forms a majority in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In an electoral battleground bloodied by the militants, the songs seem to be more than a small comfort.

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.