Pakistan has repeatedly vowed action to stop militants, but analysts say denial and dithering and a seething resentment of the US among the Pakistani people have stymied effective policy.
Escalating violence by militants and the consolidation of their grip in some places, and infiltration into others, have raised fears about the spread of Taliban influence.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan falling under the sway of al-Qaeda-linked militants is a nightmare scenario for the US.
PHOTO: AP
“There’s a great sense of angst, a sense of unraveling,” said Adil Najam, professor of international relations at Boston University. “It seems that everyone has lost control, including the military, of where things are going. I don’t think they’ve given up the fight, it’s just they don’t seem to know what they can do.”
President Asif Ali Zardari secured more than US$5 billion in aid last Friday after telling allies and aid donors in Tokyo he would step up the fight against militants. The pledges pushed up a stock market that has gained 33 percent this year.
But elsewhere the mood is grim.
Audacious attacks by militants in the eastern city of Lahore and blasts elsewhere over recent weeks have sapped confidence. A suicide car-bomber killed 25 soldiers and police and two passers-by in the northwest on Saturday.
As well as across the northwest, the Taliban are infiltrating into Punjab Province and Karachi, analysts say. The release on bail of a cleric who used to run a radical Islamabad mosque has added to a feeling that the militants are on a roll.
Rumours of attacks on schools have spread panic and embassies have warned citizens of the danger of attacks and kidnapping. Members of Pakistan’s moderate Muslim majority say they feel intimidated by a vocal and aggressive minority.
Compounding the unease is a sense that the government has been distracted by political wrangling and is in denial.
“The general impression and perception at this stage is the government lacks the will to assert itself,” analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi told Dawn television.
Policy has been flip-flopping between inconclusive military offensives and peace deals that critics say embolden the militants.
The International Crisis Group think tank says responsibility for counter-insurgency has to be transferred to civilians from a military that continues to have links with some militant groups it sees as tools in its confrontation with India.
“It’s inept in the way it conducts operations, it suffers huge losses and then it signs peace deals, it appeases the militants,” said the group’s Pakistan director Samina Ahmed.
Under the latest peace pact, authorities have virtually handed over the northwestern Swat region to the Taliban to end violence. But the militants have already pushed out and taken over a new area 100km from the capital.
“The implications of appeasement are obvious,” Ahmed said. “Peace deals have been signed from a position of weakness and the militants have gained ground. It is quite frightening.”
Optimists had hoped the end of military rule with a general election last year would see public support coalescing around a strong stand against the militants.
But while the Taliban have been taking advantage of grievances against corrupt courts and greedy landlords to win support, they have also been able to capitalize on widespread resentment of the US exacerbated by its attacks on militants with missiles launched from pilotless drones.
“I’m not sure the drones have actually done anything to reduce militancy, but they have strengthened the Taliban argument more than any other thing,” Najam said. “The Taliban have cornered the anti-American message.”
Victory over the Taliban hinged on public opinion, he said.
“If ordinary Pakistanis can turn against the Taliban then we can win this. If they don’t, if they continue to be lukewarm because the Taliban are supposed to be anti-American and all that, then there’s no way you can win this,” he said. “The battle is in the hearts and minds of Pakistani society and I think we’re losing.”
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS