Conflict Grows on Pakistan's Borders

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript
 
A mountainous area, the restive Pakistani region on the border with Afghanistan formerly called the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) has long been seen as a launching pad into Afghanistan for Islamist insurgents.

Since the 1980s, Pashtuns, who form the majority population, have paid a heavy price for the conflicts tearing their region apart. First, the Cold War rivalry between the former Soviet Union and the United States turned their territory into a war zone, and after 2001 came the battle between the United States and its allies against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Thousands of Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns cross the Durand Line, the 2,430-kilometre long boundary between the two countries established by the British during their colonial rule.

The Afghan government does not recognize the Durand Line as the official border, nor do ethnic Pashtuns who live on both sides of the border and share historical, cultural and family ties.

In May 2018, the districts in the FATA were merged into the northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, ending 150 years of draconian colonial-era governance. Now there is hope that bringing these areas into a new political process will promote stability.

However, the tribal region, home to six million people, has always been ruled by tribal law, with councils of tribal elders holding the real political power. Whether elected representatives can merge democratic governance with traditional social mores remains to be seen.

The Pashtun cultural code of Pashtunwali, with its various tenets and structures, especially the Jirga (Pashtun tribal council) and Lashkar (tribal militia), are where real power continues to reside. 

However, the rise of the secular Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) is presenting a challenge to Pashtun patriarchal values as well as traditional structures in the region. It was formed in 2016 by eight university students from South Waziristan.

The PTM has gained considerable strength in the past two years, drawing tens of thousands of people to its protest rallies. Its supporters are critical of the war on terror, which they say has ravaged Pashtun areas in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Estimates from academics, local authorities and activists put the number of civilians, militants and security forces killed at well over 50,000 since 2002.

Coverage of the movement is censored in Pakistan. Newspapers and TV outlets are not allowed to report on the rallies the movement holds or to air its demands.

On May 26, 2019, an armed confrontation in the North Waziristan region between Pakistani troops and PTM supporters left at least 13 people dead and 25 others wounded, including five soldiers. The protest was led by two PTM members, Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir from North and South Waziristan respectively, elected to Pakistan’s national parliament in the July 25, 2018 general election.

On May 1, Sardar Muhammed Arif Wazir, another PTM activist, was assassinated in a drive-by shooting in South Waziristan.

A cousin of Ali Wazir, he was targeted after his release from a Pakistani prison. He had been arrested on April 17 on charges of delivering an “anti-Pakistan speech” during a visit to Afghanistan.

Dawar claimed that “Arif Wazir was murdered by ‘good terrorists.’ Our struggle against their masters will continue.” The term refers to the pro-government armed groups known as “peace committees” supported by the government.

Major General Asif Ghafoor, a Pakistani military spokesperson, has accused the PTM leadership of working against the country. He alleged that the PTM is receiving money from Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies.

“We are not anti-Pakistan; we are only anti-terrorism,” responded PTM leader Manzoor Pashteen, who was arrested in January. “We are against oppression in all its forms, be it perpetrated by ‘good or bad Taliban’ or by the Pakistani military's intelligence agencies.”

He contends that the movement “is against the human rights violations of the Pashtuns.” He added that “none of our demands conflicts with the Pakistani constitution.”

Still, the idea of an independent Pashtun-majority homeland in the northwest worried Pakistan right from the beginning. The state believes ethnic cleavages threaten Pakistan’s unifying glue of an Islamic identity. 

Some experts contend Pakistani authorities favored Islamization of the region to rein in the “Pashtunistan” movement, led by liberal and secular politicians and activists, and now by the PTM.

Pandemic, Protest and Government Overreach

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

I wouldn’t call myself a libertarian but I worry that governments have used the opportunity of the coronavirus pandemic to grab too much power. And states rarely voluntarily give these up.

Income tax was originally brought in to cover extraordinary expenses during the First World War in Canada. By 1948 income tax was no longer considered temporary and was replaced with the Income Tax Act.

In an article published June 30 in the C2C Journal, Peter Shawn Taylor cautioned us against bureaucratic overreach.

Public health officials are hard-working and well-meaning, beyond a doubt. Still, writes Taylor, “we should be mindful that whatever accolades they deserve for their current performances are not turned into blank cheques for future innovations and interruptions of normal, daily life once the pandemic finally recedes.” 

These people are not infallible, nor should it be considered heresy to question them. Taylor reminds us that COVID-19 represents the first global quarantine of healthy populations in human history, and it was imposed in dozens of democracies almost entirely by decree, without political debate or formal legislation. 

In Canada, provinces shut themselves off as if they were sovereign jurisdictions. In the United States, though no one prevented Americans coming or going to other states, various personal freedoms were also infringed upon by governments. 

Typical were the remarks made in April by New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, who remarked that he “wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights” while implementing social-distancing measures and writing off any constitutional considerations. 

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom said that “science,” not “politics” – that is, voters and their representatives -- would dictate when the state would reopen.

Also that month, New York City’s Hasidic Orthodox Jews ended up at odds with Mayor Bill de Blasio. He personally joined in the dispersal of a crowd that had gathered at the funeral for a revered rabbi, and then tweeted that “my message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed.” His Parks Department shut public parks populated by Orthodox Jews.

When conservative anti-lockdown protesters gathered on state capitol steps in places like Columbus, Ohio, and Lansing, Michigan, in April and May, epidemiologists scolded them and forecast surging infections.

But after months of warnings by health officials about gatherings and social distancing, describing those who chafed at the restrictions as selfish fools, it all went out the window in the mass anti-racism protests that involved tens of thousands of marchers that began in late May after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis.

Suddenly, many public health officials decided social justice mattered more than social distance. “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist, tweeted in early June.

 “The injustice that’s evident to everyone right now needs to be addressed,” Abraar Karan, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, remarked, condoning the marches. 

More than 1,300 public health officials signed a May 30 letter of support, and many joined the protests. They urged Americans to adopt a “consciously anti-racist” stance and framed the difference between the anti-lockdown demonstrators and the protesters in moral, ideological and racial terms.

Others were conflicted. “Instinctively, many of us in public health feel a strong desire to act against accumulated generations of racial injustice,” Dr. Mark Lurie, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University, stated. “But we have to be honest: A few weeks before, we were criticizing protesters for arguing to open up the economy.”

The overnight change in views was indeed disorienting. Why should anyone take public health experts seriously, if it turns out their political convictions, no matter how well-meaning, trump their supposed fealty to science?

Meanwhile, Mayor de Blasio said on July 9 he is permitting Black Lives Matter protesters to continue marching through city streets while canceling all other events through September.  The mayor said the demonstrators' calls for social justice were too important to stop.

Anyhow, the rights of citizens in a liberal democracy are worthless if they can be suspended, or reintroduced, at a moment’s notice, depending on ideological convictions.

Putin Tightens His Grip

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner
 

At the start of the Second World War, Winston Churchill famously said that Russia is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” But, he continued, “perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

And so it remains today. We don’t really know how severely the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Russia. We do know, however, that President Vladimir Putin has won a referendum allowing him to continue governing the country until 2036. 

Russia has become the country with the third-most cases in the world, after the United States and Brazil. According to official figures as of early in July, Russia had more than 715,000 confirmed cases and over 11,000 deaths. But it may be far worse.

When the Financial Times in mid-May reported that the actual death toll, estimated using excess deaths, could be 70 per cent higher than the official tally, a Russian official suggested their press credentials should be revoked. Others immediately spoke of “Russophobia.”

Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, asked Google to block a Russian-language story based on the article from its website.

There is reason to believe some regions of Russia are hiding a much higher number. The ethnic republic of Dagestan, for instance, provided figures more than 20 times higher than Moscow’s official figures for the region. Many COVID-19 deaths were described as “community-acquired pneumonia.”

Meanwhile Russia held a nationwide referendum June 25-July 1 on some 200 amendments to its 1993 constitution. Voters approved the measures by 78.5 per cent on a turnout of almost 68 per cent of the electorate. A far northern district, Nenetsia, was the only place where a majority opposed it.

Putin appealed to what he termed Russians’ core values as he sought to rally support. “We have a common historical code, moral foundations,” he declared at a Moscow rally on June 12. These included respect for parents and family and “love for our soil.”

The passage allows Putin another 12 years in power after his current term ends in 2024, should he win two more presidential elections. The 67-year-old Putin has governed the Russian Federation since 2000, longer than any other ruler in the country since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Other constitutional changes further strengthen the presidency and emphasize the priority of Russian law over international norms. The Constitutional Court can block the implementation of decisions of international organizations.

Another related change makes it easier for the president to replace prime ministers without having to dissolve the cabinet. Cabinet members will also answer directly to the president.

Furthermore, the president will have the power to fire justices from both the Constitutional and Supreme Courts.

The amendments adopted also mean the Constitution will mention marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and faith in God.

This will strengthen what Putin has referred to at times as “sovereign democracy,” the centrepiece of ideological legitimacy and political stability for his regime and his personal power as “national leader.”

The concept was introduced into Russian political discourse in 2006 by Vladislav Surkov, whom many considered Putin’s chief ideologist at the time.

Surkov defined it as the state in which authorities and decisions are controlled by the Russian nation. The implication was that Russia’s previous attempts at democracy were somehow compromised in the 1990s by foreign control under President Boris Yeltsin.

This “weak” Russia was “conquered” or “occupied” by the West through its “agents,” the Russian “liberals,” “reformists,” “Westernizers” and their foreign “consultants.” Under Putin, Russia has regained its great power status.

“Sovereign democracy” conveys two messages: first, that Russia’s regime is democratic and, second, that this claim must be accepted. Any attempt at denial is regarded as unfriendly and meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs.

Putin has demonstrated that politics and the media can be manipulated to guarantee governments a permanent monopoly of power while maintaining a veneer of electoral competition and normal constitutional practice.

He has provided a justification for rejecting established democratic principles by insisting that every country has the right determine its own path. It is really a mix of authoritarianism and assertive nationalism.

What else is new? This is a longstanding feature of Russian political culture, whether under tsars, Bolsheviks, or now, Vladimir Putin.

Tajikistan’s Complicated Foreign Relations

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Authoritarian regimes have endured throughout post-Soviet Central Asia. Perhaps the most fragile of these states, Tajikistan has managed to survive despite its horrific civil war in the 1990s. 

Since the end of the conflict, political stability and foreign aid have allowed the country's economy to grow under the dictatorship of President Emomali Rahmon, whose Social Democratic Party, as expected, won the recent parliamentary election. 

The Tajiks are a Sunni Muslim people whose language and culture, on the other hand, derive from Shia Persia. As such, two major Muslim rivals, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have vied for influence in the state.

Tajikistan is generally considered Iran’s closest partner in Central Asia due to their linguistic, cultural and historical ties. The Tajik language is a dialect of Farsi. Moreover, Iran was the first country to recognize Tajikistan’s independence and to open its embassy in Dushanbe. Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once described the relationship between the two as “one spirit in two bodies.

Iran helped encourage cultural exchanges through conferences, media, and film festivals. Iranian television programs, magazines, and books became increasingly common in Tajikistan.

For a time, though, Riyadh seemed to have the upper hand. Saudi leaders stepped in to help Tajikistan financially in 2015 as the country’s relationship with Iran had soured over Iranian demands that Tajikistan pay off a $62 million debt to Tehran.

Tajikistan was also displeased that Iran invited Tajikistan’s Muhiddin Kabiri, the head of the Islamic Renaissance Party, a banned Tajik organization, to attend 29th Islamic Unity Conference in December 2015. Kabiri, in exile in Turkey, had been accused of allegedly masterminding an unsuccessful armed mutiny in Tajikistan.

Kabiri even met with the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which led to Tajikistan's government summoning the Iranian ambassador to register its strong protest.

Tajik authorities also closed down an Iranian trade and cultural center in Khujand, the country’s second largest city, and helped block Iran’s application to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, started in 2001 by China, Russia and most of the Central Asian nations.

In 2017, India and Pakistan were admitted as members, but Iran was pointedly shut out. Tajikistan accused Tehran of having sent assassins and saboteurs into the former Soviet republic and of involvement in the murder of Tajik social and political figures when the country was embroiled in its civil war.

As relations with Saudi Arabia improved, the kingdom pledged to pump money into infrastructure projects like the new Rogun hydroelectric power plant project on the Vakhsh River; a highway in eastern Tajikistan; and investments in education.

The Saudis also backed a crackdown on Sunni mosques and clerics in Tajikistan. Around 2,000 or so mosques have been liquidated across Tajikistan over the past three years.

The authorities arrested dozens of people accused of being members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that is banned in both Tajikistan and the kingdom, which pleased Saudi leaders.

But the pendulum is swinging back to Iran. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited Tajikistan in June 2019 and helped resolve some of the differences between the two countries. In turn, a month later Tajikistan Foreign Minister Sirodjidin Muhriddin skipped the Organization for Islamic Cooperation summit in Saudi Arabia to visit Tehran.

After all, landlocked Tajikistan needs access to Iranian ports, including the one in Chabahar at the top of the Arabian Sea, which offers the cheapest and shortest transportation option to the outside world.

Turkey Remains a Powerful Mid-East Player

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

Turkey has not fared too badly in combatting COVID-19, and so that hasn’t stopped President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from continuing his foreign policy adventures in the Middle East. 

As in dozens of other countries, Turkey has seen the virus spread throughout the nation. There were slightly more than 5,000 deaths by early July, though some doctors dispute that, claiming the real figure could be twice as high because Turkey only includes those who test positive.

Still, for a nation of 82 million people, Turkey has “clearly averted a much bigger disaster,” according to Dr. Jeremy Rossman, at the School of Biosciences at the University of Kent in England.

You’d think that would be good news. But Erdogan insists that any negative stories about the country’s handling of the crisis are the result of anti-Turkish bias.

During a coronavirus briefing on May 4. he accused the secular opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which governs Istanbul, of having a “fascist mindset” and supporting military coups. He went on to claim it conspires with “terrorists” and “evil powers.”

The CHP’s actions are guided by “a desire to usurp the country’s administration through a coup rather than coming to power through democratic means,” he charged, adding, “This is what the picture tells us when you sum up the statements of CHP leaders.”

Erdogan also warned against the “Armenian and Greek lobbies” that were, he claimed, plotting against Turkey. “We do not allow terrorist leftovers of the sword in our country,” he said.

The government was initially caught off-guard by the intensity and speed of the pandemic, and by mid-March Turkey had experienced one of the steepest infection curves in the world.

In that month Turkey allowed 21,000 pilgrims to travel to Saudi Arabia, and many weren’t quarantined when they returned, spreading the virus to their hometowns.

Turkey suffered from protective equipment shortages in the beginning, and intensive care wards in some hospitals were nearly overrun. A survey by the Turkish Medical Association in March showed that 66 per cent of medical staff experienced shortages of masks, and 40 per cent had not received any training in dealing with infectious diseases.

Not only did the government refuse to acknowledge these problems, but when medical staff or the few remaining critical reporters were brave enough to speak out, they were harassed, fired, investigated or even taken into custody.

Erdogan knows that political adventures outside Turkish borders increases his popularity, especially when economic hardships during the pandemic could impact his approval at home. Hence his increasing involvement in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars.

Long an enemy of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad, last October Erdogan sent Turkish forces into the northwestern province of Idlib, the last rebel-held province of Syria, to stem a Syrian government advance. More than 50 Turkish troops were killed by Syrian government fire there in late February. 

Turkey is also trying to prevent Syria’s Kurdish community, which formed the People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia in 2011 to defend Kurdish-inhabited areas, from establishing control over the border region, fearing this would encourage Kurdish separatism within Turkey itself. 

Further afield, Erdogan is now involved in Libya. Since 2014, it has been split between two rival factions and their governments, based in Tobruk in the east and Tripoli in the west. In April of last year, General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA), with the support of Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), began a major push from his eastern base to take Tripoli, the country’s capital, from Fayez Serraj’s UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

However, Turkey signed a maritime and military deal with the GNA late last year, and since then Turkey’s technological and tactical backing for Serraj has seen Haftar’s advance stopped and even reversed in some strategic areas.

Part of that strategy involved installing new air defense systems, which allowed Turkish drones to start a major campaign of air strikes in January, crippling Haftar’s ability to resupply his forces. It was Turkey’s most forceful intervention in the oil-rich North African nation since the end of the Ottoman Empire over a century ago.

“The balance in Libya changed significantly as a result,” declared Turkey’s Defence Minister Hulusi Akar on May 20.