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Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry Published August 4, 2024
WITH the targeted assassination of Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on July 30 and a Hezbollah commander in Beirut a day before, the Middle East is once again overcast by the dark clouds of a possible war. Israeli officials are gloating that the head of Hamas, which had carried out the Oct 7, 2023, strike on Israel, has been killed. However, they can never rest in peace because in the past 10 months, their country has killed nearly 40,000 innocent residents of Gaza and erased much of its infrastructure.
Global public opinion has turned against Israel, including in the US, which is by far Israel’s staunchest supporter. During the recent address to the US Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, most TV channels were telecasting the demonstrations taking place inside the Capitol building. Many sober voices in the US, like Senator Bernie Sanders, have openly criticised the welcome accorded to a war criminal.
Tragically, the US and most Western governments continue to support Israel and refuse to condemn its crimes against humanity despite the fact that the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court have both called out Israel for its war crimes in Gaza. Israel has also ignored, with impunity, the calls of the UN for ceasefire. It is striking that the Western countries, which take great pride in championing the cause of universal human rights, and even lecture the rest of the world on these issues, are silent in the face of the genocide unfolding in Gaza.
So, the question arises as to why the US (and the European countries) are standing so firmly behind Israel. There are indications that the US is increasingly concerned about losing its dominance in the Middle East, which it had propelled all these years mainly through Israel and its Arab friends. Iran at the regional level, and Russia and China at the global level, have challenged the American dominance.
Israel is desperately seeking to embroil Iran in a war.
Israel is now desperately seeking to embroil Iran in a war with the objective of taming the country, which has consistently refused to accept US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. However, defeating Iran will not be easy because, notwithstanding its recent intelligence failures, Iran has systematically extended its influence in the region from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon. Despite differences in Yemen, Iran has also sought to normalise ties with Saudi Arabia. All this is a setback for Israel.
An earlier attempt by Israel to provoke Iran — via an attack on the latter’s consulate and Iran’s counter strike — did not lead to a full-scale war partly because the US was not ready to get involved in a wider conflagration. This is Israel’s second attempt to engage Iran in a war that Israel thinks it can win thanks mainly to American support. Much to Israel’s dismay, both Iran and America have opposed such a war so far for their own respective reasons. However, Israel continues to test Iran’s patience, hoping to use the broader war theatre to divert global attention from its atrocities in Gaza, and in the process, create space for a ‘Greater Israel’, which has been its cherished goal.
At the global level, the prevailing world order is in disarray and a new balance of power is yet to emerge. The US is firmly locked in a major power competition with a rising China and resurgent Russia. Since the US has a clear advantage in terms of military capabilities, being the largest military spender, it would prefer to engage China in a kinetic conflict to erode the latter’s recently gained economic and military prowess.
Having effectively embroiled Moscow in Ukraine, Wash-ington would be keen to see Beijing get involved in either of the two theatres of global contestation: the South China Sea and Taiwan, or the Middle East. China has so far prudently avoided a kinetic conflict around the question of Taiwan and the South China Sea, despite provocations by the US.
In the Middle East, too, China is reluctant to get involved in any war, and has focused, instead, on increasing its influence in the Middle East by facilitating unity amongst Palestinian factions, and earlier, by brokering Iran-Saudi reconciliation.
With the killing of the Hamas chief, who was involved in peace talks, the chances of a wider war cannot be ruled out. The provocation is so grave that Iran has no choice but to respond in kind. That said, Iran, the US, and all Arab countries would not want a wider war because of the enormous destruction that it can cause in the region and beyond. As for China’s involvement, its preference all along has been to not enter into any war that impedes its own national development plans.
The writer is a former foreign secretary and author of Diplomatic Footprints.
Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2024
Editorial: 04.08.2024
THE Middle East, and the wider international community, is collectively holding its breath, waiting to see how Iran and its regional allies react to the assassinations by Israel earlier this week of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr. A reaction to the Israeli provocations is almost certain; it is the ‘when’ and ‘how’ of it that are of most consequence. Both Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah have vowed revenge. For the Iranians, the assassination of such a high-profile individual as Haniyeh in Tehran is a major embarrassment and security lapse, and they are unlikely to let Israel get away with it without some punitive action. Likewise, Shukr was very high up in Hezbollah’s military structure, and hitting him in the Lebanese group’s stronghold of Dahiyeh in Beirut is being viewed as crossing a red line. Though Israeli officials say they do not want war, they are certainly doing all they can to spark a major conflagration in the region. For example, on Saturday Israel murdered a Hezbollah operative in southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, the US, Israel’s principal foreign benefactor, is sending mixed signals. On the one hand, the US defence secretary said there are “opportunities for diplomacy”, on the other, Washington has dispatched more fighter aircraft and ships to boost Israel’s defences against the expected Iranian attack.
It is unlikely that sending in heavy artillery will convince Iran and its allies that the US is interested in ‘diplomacy’, unless it is of the gunboat variety. Moreover, a Pentagon spokesperson has said that the US is ready to deploy at short notice “to meet … national security threats”. It seems the fine line between Israeli security and American security has disappeared, and the US establishment is ready to jump headlong into the Middle Eastern inferno to defend Israel and its vile behaviour. While the US may have the advantage in firepower and technology, this is Iran’s backyard, and it has allied forces across the region. Therefore, any confrontation will be long, and messy. It is still possible to de-escalate, and temperatures will start to come down if Israel stops its genocidal campaign in Gaza. Yet there is little evidence that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is interested in peace. The world should brace itself for the gathering storm over the Middle East.
Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2024
Muhammad Amir Rana Published August 4, 2024
THE state has initiated another crackdown against the leadership of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) after the group incited violence against Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa. The government’s strong response was necessary in this situation. It remains to be seen how effective it will be and whether the government remains firm in its decision.
The TLP’s threats to the judiciary are not new; neither has it spared the top military brass in the past in its hatemongering. One of its founders, Pir Afzal Qadri, had threatened the judges of the Supreme Court and incited soldiers to stand against generals if Aasia Bibi (accused of blasphemy but later acquitted) was not hanged publicly. He made this statement in the presence of Khadim Rizvi, the co-founder of the group, in 2018. Rizvi had used similarly strong language against the judiciary and military leadership, besides igniting religious bigotry.
The state institutions acted swiftly after the TLP leadership’s statements became louder. The group’s top leadership, including Rizvi and Qadri and thousands of its workers, were arrested. Later, Qadri backtracked from his statements and quit the TLP. Hundreds of TLP workers issued disclaimers and disassociated themselves from the group. It looked like the state had decided to crush the TLP completely.
Just a few months later, Rizvi was granted bail by the Lahore High Court and released from jail. He did not take a break and restarted his hate campaign. He secured over two million votes in the 2018 elections. Many political analysts had linked his release with the election, but the biggest challenge was the TLP’s rise and its hate-filled campaigns.
The group’s threats to the judiciary are not new; neither has it spared the top military brass.
Initially, the PTI government took a soft stance on the TLP, but it was becoming a challenge for the state after the death of Rizvi. His son Saad built up further momentum, and marched on Islamabad in April 2021 to demand the expulsion of the French ambassador from the country. TLP zealots killed several policemen, Saad Rizvi was arrested and the party banned.
The situation took another turn when the TLP launched a nationwide protest for the release of its leader. The protests became violent, forcing the government to release all TLP leaders and workers. Later, in November 2021, even the demand to lift the ban on the party was accepted.
The state has yet to adopt a straightforward approach to dealing with the TLP. Since the TLP’s inception, it has accepted all its demands, including controversial ones, to convince its leadership to end their protest. However, the state used such agreements only to find a temporary solution to end the protests; this, eventually, strengthened the group.
Arrests, crackdowns, and criminal charges are not new in the TLP’s case. The question is: why does the state compromise after taking decisive action against the group? Why is it tolerating a group, which is responsible for vandalism, the killing of innocent citizens and security officials, damaging property, blotting the country’s international image, and being a source of extremism? The state’s attitude is making it strong and one of the indications of this has been its growing vote bank.
Successive governments have not shown the will or capacity to deal with the group. At a recent press conference, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif and Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal condemned the TLP leader’s remarks against the chief justice. They showed the same resolve for the rule of law as the PTI government had. The latter eventually surrendered to the group’s demands.
Ahsan Iqbal has himself been a victim of TLP hatemongering and faced an assassination attempt by one of the group’s supporters in 2018, while Khawaja Asif’s hometown Sialkot has been mentioned by the international press because of the tragic incident of mob lynching of Sri Lankan citizen Priyantha Kumara on false allegations of blasphemy in 2021.
The statement issued by both ministers would test the government’s resolve, especially considering that the law-enforcement agencies are afraid of the TLP’s street power and capacity to incite mass violence. The establishment sees each radical group’s potential through a political lens, which prevents it from taking decisive action against such groups. Such radical groups remain an integral part of the political engineering designs of the establishment. Before the TLP, several banned groups, including the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, Jamaatud Dawa, and many other extremist outfits, were used for political purposes.
Internal and external pressures and the changing security dynamic have forced the establishment to find new religious actors for political manoeuvres. The TLP will have utility for the state until a new actor replaces it. It cannot be predicted what the future tool will look like, but this group itself has caused a lot of damage and is considered a major source of extremism in the country.
It knows the establishment’s weakness and exploits it. During its last sit-in at its favourite spot at the juncture of the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi at Faizabad, ostensibly showing solidarity with Palestine though perhaps also to counter the PTI’s jubilance after the Supreme Court’s decision on the reserved seats, it was expected that the TLP would use the opportunity for other ends.
In 2021, when the government banned the outfit, the interior minister at that time, Sheikh Rashid, and the religious affairs minister, Noorul Haq Qadri, said that the group had engaged in terrorism, actions prejudicial to national peace and security, and efforts to create anarchy by intimidating the public. The TLP was accused of causing harm to law-enforcement personnel and civilians, vandalising public property, obstructing essential health supplies, and promoting hatred. The group was seen as a significant threat to national security.
Consequently, under Section 11B(1) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, the federal government listed the TLP as a proscribed organisation, which means that the group was considered a national security threat by the state.
The writer is a security analyst.
Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2024
Abbas Nasir Published August 4, 2024
Comments: Reading this column will help the reader gatherfresh knowledge on crimes against women in Pakistan, especially some data on the crime of honour killings in Pakistan.
HORRIFIED by TV images of a young woman in a hospital in upper Sindh, and whose own father had attacked her with an axe because she wanted to divorce an abusive husband, I googled ‘woman+axe+attack’, and what did I find?
Where a man has been ‘dishonoured’, axes are among the weapons of choice. Others include knives, shotguns, pistols, rocks, machetes and even fuel — mostly kerosene and petrol — to redeem the lost ‘honour’. Kudos to a society where the conviction rate for ‘honour killing’ ranks near zero and often the perpetrator is a member of the victim’s own family.
Most of us assume our family’s support no matter what we do. Imagine the despondency and loneliness that must fill that woman’s life and soul when her own father attacked her so savagely that he almost severed her legs below the knee. All for the crime of wanting to escape from an abusive relationship.
Similarly, a man attacked his granddaughter with an axe in the Karachi suburb of Korangi and killed her a fortnight ago. She had married of her own will, angering her family, and had moved to Jamshoro with her husband. Her grandfather had brought her back on the pretext of a patch-up and then axed her to death.
Where a man has been ‘dishonoured’, axes are among the weapons of choice.
Before you criticise me for acting all shocked at something that routinely happens in our society and has been happening for decades, let me tell you that each time such a crime takes place, it fills me with infinite rage and also despair because I know the following day it will be forgotten.
The man’s honour redeemed, one can be sure that the loss of the murdered woman would also only be mourned by another woman, perhaps the mother or the sister. It seems like an endless cycle. Somewhere religion is invoked, in other instances, tribal laws, not to mention the much-cited/ abused ‘our traditions’.
Whatever the grounds, the murder victim is almost always a woman. To confirm this, you only need to google and, in a moment, dozens of stories from the early 2000s (I suspect because that is when most Pakistani papers were digitised with searchable content) to this day will show up.
Our great, enviable traditions and our faith-based order don’t seem to put a stop to how we perceive women — demonstrably not as equal beings with rights we men take for granted — or to our feelings of horror and rage when they wish to exercise their free will.
The following are just random statistics to make the point, and not to say the issue is confined to one part of Pakistan. In 2019, in Sindh alone 108 women were killed in the name of honour. But our honour went for a walk when last year some 500 women and underage girls were sexually assaulted and over 4,000 physically attacked in Karachi.
From the deep recesses of KP to remote parts of Balochistan crimes against women happen every day, mostly in the name of honour. The perpetrator is almost always a man whose honour remains intact when he is responsible for a woman’s abuse, assault or witnesses it and does nothing.
And before anyone thinks that Punjab is immune to such violence, here is a small window to the size of the problem in the province. In 2022, there were 39 ‘honour killings of women’ in Gujrat district alone and 35 the following year. There are over three dozen districts in the province.
The number of ‘unreported’ crimes would surpass the ones listed here, regardless of the location.
In my search, in recent weeks, I found such a crime in Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur.
In the first case, the woman was shot, and in the second, the husband poured fuel over his wife and set her alight. There is very little left to the imagination in terms of the final moments of the victim.
Whenever journalists including columnists, such as this one, draw attention to the wrongs/ ills in society that have remained unaddressed for as long as one can remember, at least a couple of readers write, decrying the ‘negative stories you report’ without offering any solutions.
So here are some suggestions. The PPP was led by one of the most courageous women I know. Its leadership needs to commit itself to fighting against this evil. Even today, the Bhutto name is revered in large swathes of the province. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and his sibling Aseefa Bhutto-Zardari should personally lead a high-profile campaign, and rush to the places where such incidents are taking place.
As an essential part of this campaign, they should personally ensure that the survivors of such crimes receive state protection including relocation and perhaps an ID change on the lines of witness protection programmes abroad. Equally, prosecution should be no holds-barred. Perhaps special ‘honour crimes’ courts should be set up and cases fast-tracked.
Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz could lead a similar effort in her province. Her high-profile role and personal interest in such cases would do wonders to rehabilitate her party in the province. It needs no reminding that women are at least half the country, even if we treat them as lesser beings.
Another concrete suggestion. A national task force can be set up to address all factors related to this brutal crime. And though I don’t have her consent to mention her, PPP MNA from Khairpur, Dr Nafisa Shah, should be drafted in as her expertise in detailing such cases was evident in magazine and newspaper writings — as well as her doctoral dissertation if I am not wrong.
Last but not least, former prime minister Imran Khan, who has the most effective narrative-building machine, needs to be asked to help with public messaging and throw in his personal weight behind it. Perhaps, if all these things happen, we may have the beginnings of a turnaround.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2024
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