Author: Idrees Ahmad

I am a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling and a former research fellow at the University of Denver’s Center for Middle East Studies. I am the author of The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). I write for The Observer, The Nation, The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Al Jazeera, Dissent, The National, VICE News, Huffington Post, In These Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, Die Tageszeitung (TAZ), Adbusters, Guernica, London Review of Books (Blog), The New Arab, Bella Caledonia, Asia Times, IPS News, Medium, Political Insight, The Drouth, Canadian Dimension, Tanqeed, Variant, etc. I have appeared as an on-air analyst on Al Jazeera, the BBC, TRT World, RAI TV, Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon, Alternative Radio with David Barsamian and several Pacifica Radio channels.

Confusion over Taliban muddies the issues in Pakistan

Refugees Flee Fighting in North-West Frontier Province
A man sits at a camp in Mardan, Pakistan, for those who fled the military offensive in Swat Valley, where helicopters and jets are pounding militant positions. Militants reportedly fired rockets at an army base in Mingora. (Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images)

‘Are fighters religious zealots, thugs or revolutionaries? The perceptions of the public, leaders and U.S. are at odds’, writes Mark Magnier, ‘but the overriding sentiment in Pakistan is that “America created this problem”‘. (thanks Tina)

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan — Islamic militants who burn schools and threaten women in the name of religious purity. A righteous force battling corrupt and venal officials. Or gun-waving gangsters who conceal their crimes under a banner of spiritual renewal.

Weeks of turmoil have made it appear as though a unified Taliban is on the march out of the wild northwest, staking out strategic ground for an assault on Pakistan’s heartland.

But who exactly the Taliban is may rest in the eye of the beholder.

Many Pakistanis don’t see the Taliban as much of a threat and are not eager for a confrontation. On the other hand, oversimplification may lead policymakers toward a one-size-fits-all solution that is ineffective — or even counterproductive.

Continue reading “Confusion over Taliban muddies the issues in Pakistan”

The Politics of Genocide

Mahmood Mamdani is a renowned African scholar (of Indian origin) who was last year ranked by Time as one of the world’s 100 leading intellectuals. He has previously authored the timely and influential book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim where he looks at the history of political Islam in the context of the so-called War on Terror. Here Mamdani appears on GRITtv with Laura Flanders to present the central thesis of his latest book Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror. (via Firedoglake)Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “The Politics of Genocide“, posted with vodpod

In his new book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror, Columbia University Professor Mahmood Mamdani contends that the use of the word genocide is as political as ever and strategic ignorance about the history and current day politics of post-colonial Africa is just as great. Mamdani discusses the crisis in Darfur, the nature of Save Darfur advocacy, and what he sees as a dangerous collusion of colonialism and Anti-Terror rhetoric.

‘I’m here to understand what you mean by Taliban’

Celebrated Indian author and social activist Arundhati Roy addresses a gathering at the Karachi Press Club on Friday.-Photo WhiteStar/Fahim Siddiqui

Salman Siddiqui on Arundhati Roy’s address at the Karachi Press Club. (It looks like a bad transcript.)

Is there a threat of Talibanisation engulfing the entire region?

I think it has already engulfed our region. I think there’s a need for a very clear thinking (on this issue of Talibanisation). In India, there are two kinds of terrorism: one is Islamic terrorism and the other Maoist terrorism. But this term terrorism, we must ask, what do they mean by it.

In Pakistan, I’m here to understand what they mean by this term. When we say we must fight the Taliban or must defeat them, what does it mean? I’m here to understand what you mean when you say Taliban. Do you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology? Exactly what is it that is being fought? That needs to be clarified.

Continue reading “‘I’m here to understand what you mean by Taliban’”

The biggest human flood since 1947

Refugee camp near Mardan
Children line up to receive food in a refugee camp near Mardan. Photograph: Greg Baker/AP

The United States has doubled military aid to Pakistan. Kamal Hyder of Al Jazeera reports that a ‘big catastrophe is unfolding in the Northwest Frontier Province – I have never seen anything on this scale…This is a huge humanitarian crisis; the largest number of internally displaced people in the world, and in the smallest possible time…Anger is growing that the government did not give the citizens adequate warning to escape…Many people are saying their government has abandoned them … what is unfolding here is the tip of the iceberg, the worst is yet to come.’

According to Al Jazeera:

Bodies were reported to be lying in roads, homes reduced to ruins and people left cowering with no means of escape after the military imposed curfews across the region amid the fighting…Hyder reported that those who have fled the fighting are in refugee camps and receiving little government help.

Continue reading “The biggest human flood since 1947”

East Pakistan Redux

Pakistani Refugees flee fighting between Pakistan Army forces and the Taliban
Buner refugees travel by road as they flee fighting between the Pakistan army and the Taliban near Swabi, Pakistan. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Pakistan faces full scale war against the Taliban. ‘The Pakistani army are readying for an urban battle unprecedented in the short history of its battle against the Taliban’, Sana al Haq and Declan Walsh report. And we all know how urban battle’s end. (thanks Domenyk)

(This report curiously reproduces some of the same language and even the same interviewee from an earlier AP report without attribution.)

The skiing season at Malam Jabba, Pakistan‘s only ski resort, is over. Yesterday the pistes echoed with the sound of explosions as fighter jets screamed overhead, part of the Pakistan military’s intensifying campaign to dislodge the Taliban from the Swat Valley.

An hour’s drive away in Mingora, the war-racked valley’s main town, the Taliban and army are readying for an urban battle unprecedented in the short history of Pakistan’s battle against the Taliban.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, today said the army was fighting for “the survival of the country”, speaking after an emergency cabinet meeting.

Continue reading “East Pakistan Redux”

Cynicism among Pakistani refugees

Internal refugees in the camp in Swabi
Displaced families in Swabi are living in tents supplied by the UN

The Pakistani Prime Minister now appears to have borrowed Hillary Clinton’s language as to how much of a threat the ‘Taliban’ pose to the country’s survival. This in my view is very myopic, and could easily turn into a self fufilling prophecy. As is evident from the following BBC report, the people may not like the ‘Taliban’, but they like the military even less. I find it unlikely that state will ever recover from the illwill it has sown.

The tent cities are growing in the district of Swabi, in north-west Pakistan: swelled with the thousands fleeing the fighting in nearby Buner district.

Last month, Taleban from the troubled district of Swat moved south into Buner and overran it, occupying government offices and police stations, and closing down locally popular Sufi shrines which they oppose.

The army moved in a couple of weeks ago to counter them, and is now engaged in heavy fighting in the area.

According to Shahram Khan, the head of Swabi district government, around 150,000 people have fled Buner during the last few days. This is three times the figure of 40,000 previously provided by the federal government.

Continue reading “Cynicism among Pakistani refugees”

Swat fighting threatens Pakistan army unity

The fighting between the Pakistani army and the Taliban in Swat valley can have great ramifications for the country.

If casualty figures rise to unacceptable levels, both from a military and a public point of view, the fear is that it could divide the army as well as the nation.

Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman reports from Islamabad.

A Catastrophe Foretold

Pakistani refugees fleeing fighting in Swat, Buner and Lower Dir queue for rations in a relief camp at Mardan yesterday (DANIEL BEREHULAK/GETTY IMAGES)

There is an exodus of Pakistani civilians as battle against Taleban rages, Zahid Hussain reports. They may yet succeed, but it appears no one seems to have told the Pakistani government the first rule of counterinsurgency: it is not the driving out of opposition that constitutes success, it is the ability to hold on the gains. The militants could have been neutralized through the use of sparing and targeted force in conjunction with a political settlement. This one is guaranteed to backfire.

With jet fighters screeching overhead, tens of thousands of people fled Pakistan’s once-idyllic Swat Valley yesterday, increasing a humanitarian crisis that threatens to undermine public support for the military campaign against the Taleban.

The UN says that more than 200,000 people have left Swat in the past few days, and another 300,000 are on the move or trying to leave after the collapse of a three-month-old peace deal between the Government and the Islamists this week. They will join the estimated 555,000 who have fled other conflict zones in northwestern Pakistan since August, taking the total number of displaced people in the region to more than one million.

As government forces claimed to have killed 143 militants since Thursday, The Times spoke to dozens of refugees arriving — bedraggled, exhausted and crammed into buses, vans and trucks — at a makeshift camp in Jalala, just outside Swat.

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Pakistan has world’s attention now

Veteran journalist Eric Margolis on the overblown hysteria in Washington and the affluent quarters of Islamabad about the Taliban threat. This context is useful for understanding why the present Pakistani military operation in Malakand portends catastrophic consequences. Margolis’s comment about the rebellious Pashtun being seen as heroes may be true of those fighting in Afghanistan but not of the ones across the border. In Pakistan they are led mostly by extreme elements who have little support. Nevertheless, as Anatol Lieven observed after a recent visit to the region, ‘the level of support for them there is such that crushing them completely would take a huge campaign of repression.’

PARIS — The Taliban are coming! The Taliban are coming!

French troops in Afghanistan were just rocketed by Taliban.

Last week, a bunch of lightly-armed Pashtun tribesmen rode down from the Malakand region on motorbikes and in pickup trucks and briefly swaggered around Buner, only 100 km from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

Hysteria erupted in Washington. Hillary Clinton, still struggling through foreign affairs 101, warned that these scruffy tribesmen were a global threat.

Pakistan’s generals dutifully followed Washington’s orders by attacking the tribal miscreants in Buner, who failed to obey the American raj.

Continue reading “Pakistan has world’s attention now”