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tacit = adjective used for osmeone who does not talk much. خاموش طبع
staggering = shocking or surprising ~ حیران کن
defiance = open resistance; bold disobedience ~ حکم عدولی اور بغاوت
misogyny = dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women ~ عورتوں سے نفرت یا تعصب
redress = repair the loss, set something right, correct ~ ٹھیک کرنا، ازالہ کرنا
vilification = abusively disparaging speech or writing ~ کسی پر شدید تنقید
abhorrent = inspiring disgust and loathing; repugnant~ نفرت انگیز
vulnerable = able to be damaged ~ جسے نقصان پہنچ سکتا ہو
fumble = do or handle something clumsily ~ بے ڈھنگے انداز میں کوئی کام کرنا
forsake = abandon, leave, renounce or give up ~ ترک کر دینا
Muhammad Amir Rana // DAWN: 19 January 2025
WHEN it comes to addressing terrorism, the divide between the military and political leadership is stark — the former favours a coercive approach, and the latter a political settlement. This divergence became evident during a meetingin Peshawar last week between army chief Gen Asim Munir and national political leaders. The discussion centred on the terrorism perpetrated by the banned TTP and the Afghan Taliban’s non-cooperative stance in this regard.
Both sides agreed to keep all channels of communication with the Taliban regime open, but negotiating with the TTP remains a contentious issue. Having differences of opinion on critical issues is not necessarily bad; in fact, it can help shape perspectives for a solution to the problem. In our case, however, such differences often expose a deeper disconnect, for instance, between the establishment and the civilian-political leadership. This disconnect is a result of the limited role that parliament plays in making core policy decisions. Discussions on such issues are rarely held openly in parliament and are often confined to in camera briefings when pressure mounts on the establishment. However, these interactions seldom lead to substantial policy shifts. Political leaders are often sidelined. They tend to be looked upon more as endorsers of the policies set by the establishment than the main stakeholders. This state of affairs impedes the crafting of effective and long-term solutions. The political leadership would to do well to improve its understanding of security- and Afghanistan-related issues, while the establishment must incorporate political insights in its strategy.
When political leaders advocate talks, they should reflect on the outcomes of past negotiations with the TTP and similar factions. They need to evaluate what makes negotiations with violent actors successful. Typically, several key factors are needed for successful negotiations. These include well-defined preconditions (such as a ceasefire), a strong and cohesive leadership on both sides, and the inclusion of neutral mediators or facilitators to build trust, address grievances, and provide political solutions to violence. Both sides can then better align their approach and work towards a resolution to ensure durable peace.
However, several critical factors are missing in the case of the TTP. Despite Noor Wali’s efforts to unify the group, the TTP remains an umbrella organisation, comprising various factions with divergent interests, and lacking a strong and cohesive leadership. Additionally, neither the Afghan Taliban nor the Haqqani Network can serve as neutral mediators since the TTP is ideologically, politically, and militarily entrenched within their ranks.
The Taliban’s inability to provide a neutral platform for dialogue underscores the complexities of this issue. Furthermore, as hinted in discussions between Pakistan’s army chief and the political leadership, neighbouring countries are reportedly being involved in exerting pressure on the Taliban. If China is involved, the situation would be particularly ironic: Pakistan once acted as China’s main channel to the Taliban. Despite the irony, due to obvious limitations, China may not be the ideal facilitator for talks between Pakistan and the TTP. However, Beijing could help establish a communication channel with the Taliban leadership in Kandahar, which Pakistan urgently needs.
Although Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China once developed a trilateral framework to address common concerns, this initiative yielded limited results. Even so, China might assist Pakistan in expanding direct lines of communication with the Taliban’s top leadership — a critical step towards resolving this challenging situation.
Factors leading to negotiation failure include fragmentation within the negotiating parties (for instance, a divided leadership or competing factions), a lack of trust or a history of failed agreements, external interference or insufficient international support, unrealistic goals, or an unwillingness to compromise.
In this context, neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan has a coherent approach to resolving the issue through negotiations. The Afghan Taliban seem to support the TTP’s agenda, whether it involves violence or negotiation. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s military leadership remains committed to a coercive approach, while its political leadership leans on conventional methods of resolving disputes through dialogue.
The TTP has a history of making unrealistic demands during negotiations, and Pakistan, in turn, has a record of broken promises in its dealings with the terrorist group. Moreover, there is a lack of international or broader regional support for resolving terrorism-related issues, particularly concerning the TTP’s presence in Afghanistan.
The factors contributing to both successful and failed negotiations are drawn from the book Negotiating with Evil: When to Talk to Terrorists by Mitchell B. Reiss, a diplomat and scholar with extensive experience in international negotiations. Reiss examines these dynamics through five key case studies: the UK and the IRA; Spain and the Basque separatist group ETA; Sri Lanka and the Tamil Tigers; the US military and the Sunni insurgents in Iraq; and Israel and Hamas.
In his analysis, Reiss concentrates on the question of whether states should negotiate with ‘terrorists’ and, if so, how to approach such negotiations. Published in 2010, the book’s discussion of the Taliban is incomplete, given subsequent developments. However, Reiss does give valuable insights that delineate a clear framework for engagement with groups like the Taliban. He also draws interesting parallels in his analysis of the IRA and the PLO, offering lessons from those contexts.
Reiss argues that states must assess whether a terrorist adversary can evolve and abandon violence and whether its leadership has the authority to make binding agreements. Negotiations must often remain secret, and governments should be prepared to walk away if conditions are not met. As illustrated by the Northern Ireland peace process, successful negotiations can span decades, requiring persistent efforts to weaken a militant organisation while seeking the leaders willing to transform it into a legitimate political movement.
Pakistan can adopt a similar framework in its dealings with the TTP, maintaining pressure on the group and its backers within the Afghan Taliban regime. This dual approach — combining sustained coercion with the search for a viable leadership willing to engage politically — may provide a pathway to addressing the ongoing threat posed by the TTP.
The writer is a security analyst.
Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2025
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Abbas Nasir // DAWN: 19 January 2025
FINALLY, a ceasefire in Gaza is in place as of 0800 local time this morning as a result of a peace deal that, Qatari interlocutors say, is the same as the first one agreed to by Hamas last May and from which Israel walked away.
The only major difference between May last year and January this year is Donald Trump. President Joe Biden’s tell-tale CBS interview in his final days in office clearly spelt out how helpless he, a self-declared Zionist, was in the face of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intransigence.
Do watch/ read that interview for useful insights on why the Democratic president continued to support the Gaza genocide by funding, arming and enabling Israel. When the peace deal was finally agreed to, Biden, flanked by Vice-President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, spoke to the media.
The president was visibly irritated and responded with “Is it a joke?” when a journalist asked him if he should get more credit for the peace deal or president-elect Donald Trump. This was not half as severe as what a couple of journalists subjected Blinken to during his farewell briefing at the State Department, calling him out for his support to the Gaza genocide and violations of international law.
It is true that Trump and his transition team with the Middle East point man, the property tycoon Steve Whitkoff, in the lead did some serious ‘arm twisting’ to get Netanyahu to agree. Media reports suggested Whitkoff arrived in Israel on Jan 11 and demanded to meet the prime minister. He was told it was Sabbath and that the prime minister would see him the following day. But he insisted, against protocol and accepted practice, on seeing Netanyahu that very day and forced a meeting, before flying off to Doha where the final sessions of negotiations were underway. Observers say this meeting proved critical to the conclusion of the deal.
Trump’s role needs to be seen in its proper perspective, otherwise it could give rise to misplaced optimism. During his last stint in office, Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognised Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, greenlighted new West Bank settlements and, crucially for Netanyahu, abandoned the nuclear deal with Iran, which was seen as one of his predecessor’s, Barack Obama, major foreign policy wins.
Last but not the least were the so-called Abraham Accords signed — in 2020 and 2021 — between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan for ‘normalisation’ of relations between OIC members and the Zionist state. These accords, some analysts say, may have been the trigger for the Oct 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.
Hamas sources have told journalists more than once that the Abraham Accords were viewed by the group with alarm as they sidestepped the demand for a two-state solution and effectively recognised Israel’s occupation of Palestine as a fait accompli. The four Muslim countries joined Egypt and Jordan that had established relations decades ago.
Saudi Arabia was reluctant to abandon the two-state demand because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is reported to have privately told the Americans that without the two-state solution he’d find it difficult to sell it to his people as there would be great anger.
But, with the Biden administration continuing the ‘normalisation’ push where Trump had left off, the Hamas leadership feared that the issue of Palestine, the occupation, and a homeland for the Palestinian people had fallen off the global agenda, especially if the Saudis too were ready to agree to formal normalisation as that would be a cue for other reluctant nations within and outside the Muslim world.
It decided to force the issue by planning and executing the events of Oct 7, 2023, to bring the forgotten Palestine occupation and statehood issues back on the regional/ global agenda from where Hamas feared it had been forced off by ‘normalisation’ attempts — as in the form of the Abraham Accords.
The Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, may have sanctioned attacks against Israeli civilians, who constituted the bulk of the Oct 7 victims, and hostage-taking but he knew well what thousands of Palestinians under occupation and in Israeli prisons faced every day. He had himself served a 20-year prison term.
Hamas, which was tacitly backed by Israel, which wanted to drive a wedge in resistance unity as it challenged the PLO’s primacy as the only credible representative of the Palestinians, ended up doing what the PLO and its lead member Fatah had not managed in years: putting Palestine and its freedom back on the agenda.
Yes, it has taken the blood sacrifice of thousands of Gaza Palestinians, the bulk of them non-combatants including women and children, to remind freedom-loving people across the world that the Zionist apartheid state is a brutal occupation force whose victimhood claim is now hollowed beyond doubt, while the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause is being acknowledged by millions in the streets of Western nations whose own governments have supported the genocide.
Tomorrow is another day; how regional and international politics is played out is anybody’s guess but today belongs to the Gazans who have sacrificed everything — homes, schools, universities, hospitals, life and limb — to keep alight the torch of freedom.
Their sacrifices, the staggering dedication of their healthcare staff and doctors to the Hippocratic Oath even under direct fire and bombardment, and their defiance of the chokehold applied by the apartheid state, shows what the human spirit is capable of.
One can be sure that with the Greater Israel plan already underway and the so-called Axis of Resistance led by Iran considerably weakened, those who defy the occupation and oppression face uphill challenges.
But the failure of the Israelis to bring the Gazans to their knees despite a 21st-century genocide beamed live on our smartphones thanks to local journalists, 200 of whom were murdered, and bypassing the compromised and biased international Western media, should be cause for hope. No matter how faint.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2025
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Muna Khan // DAWN: 19 January 2025
ELON Musk wants us to believe he cares about women. His concern for vulnerable women in the UK under attack by ‘grooming gangs’ — a term only used for sex crimes by South Asian men — comes off as a cruel joke given how he profits every day from the misogyny on the X platform. This is especially true for women journalists who face harassment, threats, abuse and do not have any access to any reliable redress. Since Musk bought Twitter in 2022, we’ve seen divisive politics move from virtual space into real life with dangerous consequences.
Musk, who will soon be leading a US government efficiency agency, waded into a controversial issue in the UK by tweeting inflammatory rhetoric on Jan 2. He wrote that “a quarter million little girls were — still are — being systematically raped by migrant gangs in Britain.” He then attacked Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for failing to prosecute gangs and demanded a new public inquiry.
The figure of 250,000 is eyewash and there is plenty of evidence to prove Musk is woefully wrong. UK data has shown the majority of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by a family member, friend or acquaintance. In a majority white country, it means the abusers are likely to be white. Data supports this too. Sadly, evidence just doesn’t make for sensational headlines like the ones that portray Muslim men as villains.
To remind, in 2011, the journalist Andrew Norfolk, reported on child sex abuse scandals across the UK which exposed that a network of men had trafficked and raped hundreds of young girls. An inquiry into the issue found that 1,400 children were abused over 16 years. The men in his first reporting in Rotherham were largely of Pakistani descent and I don’t need to tell you how right-wing media and politicians reacted to that. The vilification remains and forms a large part of the conversation even to date.
When the story broke, the media coverage ranged from how Norfolk’s story unfairly targeted a minority community when the majority of sexual assault was committed by white men. People on the right said the story did not address ‘anti-white’ racism. Plenty believed that political correctness prevented a ‘serious’ redressal of the issue.
Musk’s tweet has reopened a lot of wounds but also reminded how a lot of the media framed the issue of ‘grooming gangs’ as a ‘Muslim problem’. And how Pakistani men in particular were framed as a threat to ‘our women’. Child sexual exploitation thus became linked to nationality, ‘their’ culture and religion. The government was slammed for protecting ‘them’.
The coverage of a complicated issue of child sexual exploitation has been grounded in racism, misinformation and political point-scoring.
Several inquiries have demonstrated policy failures on investigating these crimes and then adequately addressing them. The chair of the independent investigation into the child abuse scandal, Alexis Jay, who published recommendations in 2022 said on Jan 3 that there were enough inquiries and consultations on the issue, and urged, instead, that her proposals be implemented.
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Musk was misinformed but also invited him to “roll his sleeves up” and “work with us”. Because Musk “has got a big role to play with his social media platform to help us and other countries tackle these serious issues”.
Therein lies the rub: we’ve not really seen Musk attempt to address “serious issues” like misinformation or misogyny on X. Some journalists have said if he cared about women’s sexual abuse he shouldn’t have accepted a position in Donald Trump’s team given that the president has been held liable for abuse.
Musk only wants to protect women from “Muslim men abuse”. This is problematic on so many levels and conveniently suits the far right, whose influence is growing all over the world. Against this backdrop of racial stereotyping which equates Pakistani men in the UK as sexual predators, I’m thinking of the vulnerable victims who will think twice before stepping forward. Many years ago, I read something about women who feared reporting abuse because they didn’t want to add to the ‘Muslim bashing’ in the media. What a terrible burden to carry. Undoubtedly, innocent Muslim men have been falsely accused, physically attacked, even killed because of these false narratives. That Tory shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick blamed “alien cultures [for] mediaeval attitudes towards women” tells you how harmful the approach is and does not serve the victims.
I’m not defending any ethnicity’s abhorrent behaviour as much as I’m hoping for an end to the racial stereotyping. It does not serve the vulnerable children who need the protection. Musk’s goal is to protect his rich friends and allies, not women.
The writer is an instructor of journalism.
X: LedeingLady
Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2025
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