Online petition - CBC - STOP the Media Bias against Innocent Pashtun
Background (Preamble):
On Friday April 3rd, 2009, CBC broadcasted a documentary regarding the presence of Pashtun Taliban in Karachi, Pakistan. The claims, comments and conclusions made in this video report lack substance, and factual analysis. The report wholly subscribes to the views and opinions of MQM- an ethnic local political Party. Pashtun Community of Canada was outraged to watch this documentary, unfairly and untruthfully portraying Pashtuns in Karachi as Terrorists.
Karachi is a multi-ethnic and the biggest city of Pakistan. Approximately Two million (2,000,000) Pashtuns are living in Karachi who have gradually settled there since long. These Pashtuns have established businesses and are contributing the much needed workforce for the development of this metropolitan city. Over the past 50 years the Pashtuns have established themselves as successful entrepreneurs, business owners and dignified residents of Karachi. Ever since its economic and political interests started clashing in early 80s due to emergence of middle class Pashtuns, MQM has adopted anti Pashtun policy based on racial discrimination and ethnic killings.
Like the producer of CBC, we too are worried about the increased influence of Taliban across the region, but the CBC made a journalistic error by focusing only one side of the story and ignoring the consequences of this one sided documentary for the two million plus Pashtuns in Karachi; particularly for the newly arrived refugees forced by the Taliban and the military out of their homes and towns in the North.
Petition:
We the undersigned demand CBC to stop this media bias against innocent Pashtuns who are themselves victims of terrorism. We need media support to eliminate Talibinization from our region, however by portraying all Pashtuns as a Taliban will damage the anti Taliban struggle initiated by Pashtuns around the world.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
TO THE Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in regard to recent media bias against innocent Pashtun
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Who Will Save Pakistan? (The Guardian)
The attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore shows the folly of politicians like Imran Khan who placate the Taliban
Guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 March 2009, Simon Tisdall
The audacious attack on Sri Lanka's cricket players as they travelled through Lahore has underscored fears that politically fractured, economically destitute and militarily challenged Pakistan, if not already a failed state, is heading rapidly towards the status of international outcast.
The virtual certainty that Pakistan's days of hosting Test cricket are over for the foreseeable future is the least of the country's problems. The attack in the heartlands of the Punjab, the army's traditional stronghold and the most populous province, looked like a deliberate throwing down of the gauntlet to army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
It is barely six months since the democratically elected civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari succeeded in ousting General Pervez Musharraf, a Kayani predecessor who had ruled the country for nearly a decade following a 1999 coup d'etat. But Zardari and his Pakistan People's party (PPP) are mired in domestic controversy and appear increasingly unable to manage Pakistan's multiplying problems.
Kayani has vowed to keep the military out of politics, a pledge he reportedly renewed during talks in Washington last week on a new, combined military and political strategy for what the Americans call "Afpak" – Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the Obama administration's confidence in Zardari, as with the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, is wearing thin.
If Kayani and his fellow generals felt obliged to step in "for the good of the country", then Washington, more concerned about defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida than preserving a democratic system that daily appears to be more and more of a travesty of itself, might well go along. After all, it wouldn't be the first time.
Like other Pakistani commentators, author and journalist Ahmed Rashid pinned blame for the attack against the Sri Lankan team squarely on Islamist militants with whom Pakistan is fighting a spreading battle along its north-western flank. Involvement of Baluchi separtists or Tamil Tiger renegades from Sri Lanka itself was largely discounted.
There was also broad consensus about the purpose of the attack, which was widely compared, in terms of tactics and aims, to that carried out by the Punjabi group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, in Mumbai last November. "I think this is a deliberate attempt to undermine the government at the time when there is a huge political crisis in the country," Rashid said. "They are trying to create a vacuum of power in which eventually they can take over."
If internal chaos is the aim of the jihadis, they are being ably aided and abetted by Pakistan's mainstream politicians. It is only a year since civilian governance returned to Islamabad, with the principal parties promising to work together.
That was then. The vicious infighting now under way between Zardari's PPP and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League is strongly reminiscent of the epic battles between Sharif and Zardari's murdered wife, Benazir Bhutto, that led directly to Musharraf's coup. If unchecked, it may not only encourage the militants; it may also open up a path to power to Pakistan's religious parties, in alliance with or separate from Sharif.
Last week's supreme court ruling barring Sharif, and his brother, Shahbaz, chief minister of Punjab, from elected office, was widely seen as a political putsch engineered by Zardari. His decision to sack Punjab's government and imposed direct rule recklessly upped the ante even further. Now the Sharifs and their angry supporters are planning to lead a massive protest march on the capital on March 12.
The march will commemorate the dismissal two years ago of the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who Sharif says should be reinstated. It is being organised by a lawyers movement but will also be supported by Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party which wants sharia law adopted throughout Pakistan. This is an unholy alliance, even by Pakistani standards. The potential for a violent confrontation, and for a further, possibly fatal weakening of Zardari's grip on power, is not inconsiderable.
The president's authority is already under fierce fire on several other fronts, not least the impenetrable north-western tribal areas where Pakistani Taliban groups are variously reported to have formed an alliance to fight Nato in Afghanistan, to be in the process of reneging on a recent truce, or to be giving up the fight in agencies such as Bajur.
This confusion is typical in a region where alliances shift as quickly as the winds blowing off the Hindu Kush. But one thing is certain: the government in Islamabad is not in control of events and, more often than not, is a victim of them. For instance, Washington's anger at the peace deal in Swat allowing the introduction of sharia law there is tempered by the expectation that, like previous agreements with the ungovernable Pashtun hill tribes stretching back to the days of the Raj, it will not stick.
The US is offering massive new infusions of economic aid, in addition to conditional military assistance, to help root out the jihadi menace. But at a time of growing febrility, there's little doubt US pressure, increasing under Barack Obama, is also making matters worse, at least in the short term.
The rise in cross-border attacks by US forces using Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles since Zardari took power has further alienated tribal leaders and encouraged radicalisation, Pakistani officials say. Washington argues the policy is necessary in the absence of better answers from Pakistan. Critics say Zardari has secretly sold out the country's sovereignty in return for Obama's support.
Pakistan's economic troubles, compounded by a fast expanding population, chronic poverty, high unemployment, and lack of education, have added to a sense that the country is isolated and in danger of imploding. Islamabad was obliged to accept a $7.6bn emergency IMF loan package in November. It may yet need much more to stave off collapse.
Heightened tensions with India following the Mumbai attacks, friction with Afghanistan's government over security, China's rising alarm over its neighbour's predicament, and international worries about the safety of Pakistan's unregulated nuclear weapons stockpile form the wider context to this dramatic, apparently ineluctable descent.
Pakistan's disintegration, if that is what is now being witnessed, is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, a riveting spectacle, and a clear and present danger to international security. But who in the world can stop it?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/03/sri-lanka-cricket-team-attack-pakistan
Guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 March 2009, Simon Tisdall
The audacious attack on Sri Lanka's cricket players as they travelled through Lahore has underscored fears that politically fractured, economically destitute and militarily challenged Pakistan, if not already a failed state, is heading rapidly towards the status of international outcast.
The virtual certainty that Pakistan's days of hosting Test cricket are over for the foreseeable future is the least of the country's problems. The attack in the heartlands of the Punjab, the army's traditional stronghold and the most populous province, looked like a deliberate throwing down of the gauntlet to army chief of staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
It is barely six months since the democratically elected civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari succeeded in ousting General Pervez Musharraf, a Kayani predecessor who had ruled the country for nearly a decade following a 1999 coup d'etat. But Zardari and his Pakistan People's party (PPP) are mired in domestic controversy and appear increasingly unable to manage Pakistan's multiplying problems.
Kayani has vowed to keep the military out of politics, a pledge he reportedly renewed during talks in Washington last week on a new, combined military and political strategy for what the Americans call "Afpak" – Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the Obama administration's confidence in Zardari, as with the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, is wearing thin.
If Kayani and his fellow generals felt obliged to step in "for the good of the country", then Washington, more concerned about defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida than preserving a democratic system that daily appears to be more and more of a travesty of itself, might well go along. After all, it wouldn't be the first time.
Like other Pakistani commentators, author and journalist Ahmed Rashid pinned blame for the attack against the Sri Lankan team squarely on Islamist militants with whom Pakistan is fighting a spreading battle along its north-western flank. Involvement of Baluchi separtists or Tamil Tiger renegades from Sri Lanka itself was largely discounted.
There was also broad consensus about the purpose of the attack, which was widely compared, in terms of tactics and aims, to that carried out by the Punjabi group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, in Mumbai last November. "I think this is a deliberate attempt to undermine the government at the time when there is a huge political crisis in the country," Rashid said. "They are trying to create a vacuum of power in which eventually they can take over."
If internal chaos is the aim of the jihadis, they are being ably aided and abetted by Pakistan's mainstream politicians. It is only a year since civilian governance returned to Islamabad, with the principal parties promising to work together.
That was then. The vicious infighting now under way between Zardari's PPP and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League is strongly reminiscent of the epic battles between Sharif and Zardari's murdered wife, Benazir Bhutto, that led directly to Musharraf's coup. If unchecked, it may not only encourage the militants; it may also open up a path to power to Pakistan's religious parties, in alliance with or separate from Sharif.
Last week's supreme court ruling barring Sharif, and his brother, Shahbaz, chief minister of Punjab, from elected office, was widely seen as a political putsch engineered by Zardari. His decision to sack Punjab's government and imposed direct rule recklessly upped the ante even further. Now the Sharifs and their angry supporters are planning to lead a massive protest march on the capital on March 12.
The march will commemorate the dismissal two years ago of the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who Sharif says should be reinstated. It is being organised by a lawyers movement but will also be supported by Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party which wants sharia law adopted throughout Pakistan. This is an unholy alliance, even by Pakistani standards. The potential for a violent confrontation, and for a further, possibly fatal weakening of Zardari's grip on power, is not inconsiderable.
The president's authority is already under fierce fire on several other fronts, not least the impenetrable north-western tribal areas where Pakistani Taliban groups are variously reported to have formed an alliance to fight Nato in Afghanistan, to be in the process of reneging on a recent truce, or to be giving up the fight in agencies such as Bajur.
This confusion is typical in a region where alliances shift as quickly as the winds blowing off the Hindu Kush. But one thing is certain: the government in Islamabad is not in control of events and, more often than not, is a victim of them. For instance, Washington's anger at the peace deal in Swat allowing the introduction of sharia law there is tempered by the expectation that, like previous agreements with the ungovernable Pashtun hill tribes stretching back to the days of the Raj, it will not stick.
The US is offering massive new infusions of economic aid, in addition to conditional military assistance, to help root out the jihadi menace. But at a time of growing febrility, there's little doubt US pressure, increasing under Barack Obama, is also making matters worse, at least in the short term.
The rise in cross-border attacks by US forces using Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles since Zardari took power has further alienated tribal leaders and encouraged radicalisation, Pakistani officials say. Washington argues the policy is necessary in the absence of better answers from Pakistan. Critics say Zardari has secretly sold out the country's sovereignty in return for Obama's support.
Pakistan's economic troubles, compounded by a fast expanding population, chronic poverty, high unemployment, and lack of education, have added to a sense that the country is isolated and in danger of imploding. Islamabad was obliged to accept a $7.6bn emergency IMF loan package in November. It may yet need much more to stave off collapse.
Heightened tensions with India following the Mumbai attacks, friction with Afghanistan's government over security, China's rising alarm over its neighbour's predicament, and international worries about the safety of Pakistan's unregulated nuclear weapons stockpile form the wider context to this dramatic, apparently ineluctable descent.
Pakistan's disintegration, if that is what is now being witnessed, is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, a riveting spectacle, and a clear and present danger to international security. But who in the world can stop it?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/03/sri-lanka-cricket-team-attack-pakistan
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Learning to Live With Radical Islam
We don't have to accept the stoning of criminals. But it's time to stop treating all Islamists as potential terrorists.
Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Mar 9, 2009
Pakistan's Swat valley is quiet once again. Often compared to Switzerland for its stunning landscape of mountains and meadows, Swat became a war zone over the past two years as Taliban fighters waged fierce battles against Army troops. No longer, but only because the Pakistani government has agreed to some of the militants' key demands, chiefly that Islamic courts be established in the region. Fears abound that this means women's schools will be destroyed, movies will be banned and public beheadings will become a regular occurrence.
The militants are bad people and this is bad news. But the more difficult question is, what should we—the outside world—do about it? That we are utterly opposed to such people, and their ideas and practices, is obvious. But how exactly should we oppose them? In Pakistan and Afghanistan, we have done so in large measure by attacking them—directly with Western troops and Predator strikes, and indirectly in alliance with Pakistani and Afghan forces. Is the answer to pour in more of our troops, train more Afghan soldiers, ask that the Pakistani military deploy more battalions, and expand the Predator program to hit more of the bad guys? Perhaps—in some cases, emphatically yes—but I think it's also worth stepping back and trying to understand the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism.
It is not just in the Swat valley that Islamists are on the rise. In Afghanistan the Taliban have been gaining ground for the past two years as well. In Somalia last week, Al-Shabab, a local group of Islamic militants, captured yet another town from government forces. Reports from Nigeria to Bosnia to Indonesia show that Islamic fundamentalists are finding support within their communities for their agenda, which usually involves the introduction of some form of Sharia—Islamic law—reflecting a puritanical interpretation of Islam. No music, no liquor, no smoking, no female emancipation.
The groups that advocate these policies are ugly, reactionary forces that will stunt their countries and bring dishonor to their religion. But not all these Islamists advocate global jihad, host terrorists or launch operations against the outside world—in fact, most do not. Consider, for example, the most difficult example, the Taliban. The Taliban have done all kinds of terrible things in Afghanistan. But so far, no Afghan Taliban has participated at any significant level in a global terrorist attack over the past 10 years—including 9/11. There are certainly elements of the Taliban that are closely associated with Al Qaeda. But the Taliban is large, and many factions have little connection to Osama bin Laden. Most Taliban want Islamic rule locally, not violent jihad globally.
How would you describe Faisal Ahmad Shinwari, a judge in Afghanistan? He has banned women from singing on television and called for an end to cable television altogether. He has spoken out against women and men being educated in the same schools at any age. He has upheld the death penalty for two journalists who were convicted of blasphemy. (Their crime: writing that Afghanistan's turn toward Islam was "reactionary.") Shinwari sounds like an Islamic militant, right? Actually, he was appointed chief justice of the Afghan Supreme Court after the American invasion, administered Hamid Karzai's oath of office and remained in his position until three years ago.
Were he to hold Western, liberal views, Shinwari would have little credibility within his country. The reality—for the worse, in my view—is that radical Islam has gained a powerful foothold in the Muslim imagination. It has done so for a variety of complex reasons that I have written about before. But the chief reason is the failure of Muslim countries to develop, politically or economically. Look at Pakistan. It cannot provide security, justice or education for many of its citizens. Its elected politicians have spent all of their time in office conspiring to have their opponents thrown in jail and their own corruption charges tossed out of court. As a result, President Asif Ali Zardari's approval rating barely a month into office was around half that enjoyed by President Pervez Musharraf during most of his term. The state is losing legitimacy as well as the capacity to actually govern.
Consider Swat. The valley was historically a peaceful place that had autonomy within Pakistan (under a loose federal arrangement) and practiced a moderate version of Sharia in its courts. In 1969 Pakistan's laws were formally extended to the region. Over the years, the new courts functioned poorly, with long delays, and were plagued by corruption. Dysfunctional rule meant that the government lost credibility. Some people grew nostalgic for the simple, if sometimes brutal, justice of the old Sharia courts. A movement demanding their restitution began in the early 1990s, and Benazir Bhutto's government signed an agreement to reintroduce some aspects of the Sharia court system with Sufi Muhammed, the same cleric with whom the current government has struck a deal. (The Bhutto arrangement never really worked, and the protests started up again in a few years.) Few people in the valley would say that the current truce is their preferred outcome. In the recent election, they voted for a secular party. But if the secularists produce chaos and corruption, people settle for order.
The militants who were battling the Army (led by Sufi Muhammed's son-in-law) have had to go along with the deal. The Pakistani government is hoping that this agreement will isolate the jihadists and win the public back to its side. This may not work, but at least it represents an effort to divide the camps of the Islamists between those who are violent and those who are merely extreme.
Over the past eight years such distinctions have been regarded as naive. In the Bush administration's original view, all Islamist groups were one and the same; any distinctions or nuances were regarded as a form of appeasement. If they weren't terrorists themselves, they were probably harboring terrorists. But how to understand Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the countries "harbor" terrorists but are not themselves terrorist states?
To be clear, where there are Qaeda cells and fighters, force is the only answer. But most estimates of the number of Qaeda fighters in Pakistan range well under a few thousand. Are those the only people we are bombing? Is bombing—by Americans—the best solution? The Predator strikes have convinced much of the local population that it's under attack from America and produced a nationalist backlash. A few Qaeda operatives die, but public support for the battle against extremism drops in the vital Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Is this a good exchange?
We have placed ourselves in armed opposition to Muslim fundamentalists stretching from North Africa to Indonesia, which has made this whole enterprise feel very much like a clash of civilizations, and a violent one at that. Certainly, many local despots would prefer to enlist the American armed forces to defeat their enemies, some of whom may be jihadists but others may not. Across the entire North African region, the United States and other Western powers are supporting secular autocrats who claim to be battling Islamist opposition forces. In return, those rulers have done little to advance genuine reform, state building or political openness. In Algeria, after the Islamists won an election in 1992, the military staged a coup, the Islamists were banned and a long civil war ensued in which 200,000 people died. The opposition has since become more militant, and where once it had no global interests, some elements are now aligned with Al Qaeda.
Events have taken a different course in Nigeria, where the Islamists came to power locally. After the end of military rule in 1999, 12 of Nigeria's 36 states chose to adopt Sharia. Radical clerics arrived from the Middle East to spread their draconian interpretation of Islam. Religious militias such as the Hisbah of Kano state patrolled the streets, attacking those who shirked prayers, disobeyed religious dress codes or drank alcohol. Several women accused of adultery were sentenced to death by stoning. In 2002 The Weekly Standard decried "the Talibanization of West Africa" and worried that Nigeria, a "giant of sub-Saharan Africa," could become "a haven for Islamism, linked to foreign extremists."
But when The New York Times sent a reporter to Kano state in late 2007, she found an entirely different picture from the one that had been fretted over by State Department policy analysts. "The Islamic revolution that seemed so destined to transform northern Nigeria in recent years appears to have come and gone," the reporter, Lydia Polgreen, concluded. The Hisbah had become "little more than glorified crossing guards" and were "largely confined to their barracks and assigned anodyne tasks like directing traffic and helping fans to their seats at soccer games." The widely publicized sentences of mutilation and stoning rarely came to pass (although floggings were common). Other news reports have confirmed this basic picture.
Residents hadn't become less religious; mosques still overflowed with the devout during prayer time, and virtually all Muslim women went veiled. But the government had helped push Sharia in a tamer direction by outlawing religious militias; the regular police had no interest in enforcing the law's strictest tenets. In addition, over time some of the loudest proponents of Sharia had been exposed as hypocrites. Some were under investigation for embezzling millions.
We have an instant, violent reaction to anyone who sounds like an Islamic bigot. This is understandable. Many Islamists are bigots, reactionaries and extremists (others are charlatans and opportunists). But this can sometimes blind us to the ways they might prove useful in the broader struggle against Islamic terror. The Bush administration spent its first term engaged in a largely abstract, theoretical conversation about radical Islam and its evils—and conservative intellectuals still spout this kind of unyielding rhetoric. By its second term, though, the administration was grappling with the complexities of Islam on the ground. It is instructive that Bush ended up pursuing a most sophisticated and nuanced policy toward political Islam in the one country where reality was unavoidable—Iraq.
Having invaded Iraq, the Americans searched for local allies, in particular political groups that could become the Iraqi face of the occupation. The administration came to recognize that 30 years of Saddam—a secular, failed tyrant—had left only hard-core Islamists as the opposition. It partnered with these groups, most of which were Shiite parties founded on the model of Iran's ultra-religious organizations, and acquiesced as they took over most of southern Iraq, the Shiite heartland. In this area, the strict version of Islam that they implemented was quite similar to—in some cases more extreme than—what one would find in Iran today. Liquor was banned; women had to cover themselves from head to toe; Christians were persecuted; religious affiliations became the only way to get a government job, including college professorships.
While some of this puritanism is now mellowing, southern Iraq remains a dark place. But it is not a hotbed of jihad. And as the democratic process matures, one might even hope that some version of the Nigerian story will play out there. "It's hard to hand over authority to people who are illiberal," says former CIA analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht. "What you have to realize is that the objective is to defeat bin Ladenism, and you have to start the evolution. Moderate Muslims are not the answer. Shiite clerics and Sunni fundamentalists are our salvation from future 9/11s."
The Bush administration partnered with fundamentalists once more in the Iraq War, in the Sunni belt. When the fighting was at its worst, administration officials began talking to some in the Sunni community who were involved in the insurgency. Many of them were classic Islamic militants, though others were simply former Baathists or tribal chiefs. Gen. David Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy ramped up this process. "We won the war in Iraq chiefly because we separated the local militants from the global jihadists," says Fawaz Gerges, a scholar at Sarah Lawrence College, who has interviewed hundreds of Muslim militants. "Yet around the world we are still unwilling to make the distinction between these two groups."
Would a strategy like this work in Afghanistan? David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert who has advised Petraeus, says, "I've had tribal leaders and Afghan government officials at the province and district level tell me that 90 percent of the people we call the Taliban are actually tribal fighters or Pashtun nationalists or people pursuing their own agendas. Less than 10 percent are ideologically aligned with the Quetta Shura [Mullah Omar's leadership group] or Al Qaeda." These people are, in his view, "almost certainly reconcilable under some circumstances." Kilcullen adds, "That's very much what we did in Iraq. We negotiated with 90 percent of the people we were fighting."
Beyond Afghanistan, too, it is crucial that we adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward radical Islam. This should come naturally to President Obama, who spoke often on the campaign trail of the need for just such a differentiated approach toward Muslim countries. Even the Washington Institute, a think tank often associated with conservatives, appears onboard. It is issuing a report this week that recommends, among other points, that the United States use more "nuanced, noncombative rhetoric" that avoids sweeping declarations like "war on terror," "global insurgency," even "the Muslim world." Anything that emphasizes the variety of groups, movements and motives within that world strengthens the case that this is not a battle between Islam and the West. Bin Laden constantly argues that all these different groups are part of the same global movement. We should not play into his hands, and emphasize instead that many of these forces are local, have specific grievances and don't have much in common.
That does not mean we should accept the burning of girls' schools, or the stoning of criminals. Recognizing the reality of radical Islam is entirely different from accepting its ideas. We should mount a spirited defense of our views and values. We should pursue aggressively policies that will make these values succeed. Such efforts are often difficult and take time—rebuilding state structures, providing secular education, reducing corruption—but we should help societies making these efforts. The mere fact that we are working in these countries on these issues—and not simply bombing, killing and capturing—might change the atmosphere surrounding the U.S. involvement in this struggle.
The veil is not the same as the suicide belt. We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license. In the end, time is on our side. Bin Ladenism has already lost ground in almost every Muslim country. Radical Islam will follow the same path. Wherever it is tried—in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in parts of Nigeria and Pakistan—people weary of its charms very quickly. The truth is that all Islamists, violent or not, lack answers to the problems of the modern world. They do not have a world view that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women. We do. That's the most powerful weapon of all.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093
Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Mar 9, 2009
Pakistan's Swat valley is quiet once again. Often compared to Switzerland for its stunning landscape of mountains and meadows, Swat became a war zone over the past two years as Taliban fighters waged fierce battles against Army troops. No longer, but only because the Pakistani government has agreed to some of the militants' key demands, chiefly that Islamic courts be established in the region. Fears abound that this means women's schools will be destroyed, movies will be banned and public beheadings will become a regular occurrence.
The militants are bad people and this is bad news. But the more difficult question is, what should we—the outside world—do about it? That we are utterly opposed to such people, and their ideas and practices, is obvious. But how exactly should we oppose them? In Pakistan and Afghanistan, we have done so in large measure by attacking them—directly with Western troops and Predator strikes, and indirectly in alliance with Pakistani and Afghan forces. Is the answer to pour in more of our troops, train more Afghan soldiers, ask that the Pakistani military deploy more battalions, and expand the Predator program to hit more of the bad guys? Perhaps—in some cases, emphatically yes—but I think it's also worth stepping back and trying to understand the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism.
It is not just in the Swat valley that Islamists are on the rise. In Afghanistan the Taliban have been gaining ground for the past two years as well. In Somalia last week, Al-Shabab, a local group of Islamic militants, captured yet another town from government forces. Reports from Nigeria to Bosnia to Indonesia show that Islamic fundamentalists are finding support within their communities for their agenda, which usually involves the introduction of some form of Sharia—Islamic law—reflecting a puritanical interpretation of Islam. No music, no liquor, no smoking, no female emancipation.
The groups that advocate these policies are ugly, reactionary forces that will stunt their countries and bring dishonor to their religion. But not all these Islamists advocate global jihad, host terrorists or launch operations against the outside world—in fact, most do not. Consider, for example, the most difficult example, the Taliban. The Taliban have done all kinds of terrible things in Afghanistan. But so far, no Afghan Taliban has participated at any significant level in a global terrorist attack over the past 10 years—including 9/11. There are certainly elements of the Taliban that are closely associated with Al Qaeda. But the Taliban is large, and many factions have little connection to Osama bin Laden. Most Taliban want Islamic rule locally, not violent jihad globally.
How would you describe Faisal Ahmad Shinwari, a judge in Afghanistan? He has banned women from singing on television and called for an end to cable television altogether. He has spoken out against women and men being educated in the same schools at any age. He has upheld the death penalty for two journalists who were convicted of blasphemy. (Their crime: writing that Afghanistan's turn toward Islam was "reactionary.") Shinwari sounds like an Islamic militant, right? Actually, he was appointed chief justice of the Afghan Supreme Court after the American invasion, administered Hamid Karzai's oath of office and remained in his position until three years ago.
Were he to hold Western, liberal views, Shinwari would have little credibility within his country. The reality—for the worse, in my view—is that radical Islam has gained a powerful foothold in the Muslim imagination. It has done so for a variety of complex reasons that I have written about before. But the chief reason is the failure of Muslim countries to develop, politically or economically. Look at Pakistan. It cannot provide security, justice or education for many of its citizens. Its elected politicians have spent all of their time in office conspiring to have their opponents thrown in jail and their own corruption charges tossed out of court. As a result, President Asif Ali Zardari's approval rating barely a month into office was around half that enjoyed by President Pervez Musharraf during most of his term. The state is losing legitimacy as well as the capacity to actually govern.
Consider Swat. The valley was historically a peaceful place that had autonomy within Pakistan (under a loose federal arrangement) and practiced a moderate version of Sharia in its courts. In 1969 Pakistan's laws were formally extended to the region. Over the years, the new courts functioned poorly, with long delays, and were plagued by corruption. Dysfunctional rule meant that the government lost credibility. Some people grew nostalgic for the simple, if sometimes brutal, justice of the old Sharia courts. A movement demanding their restitution began in the early 1990s, and Benazir Bhutto's government signed an agreement to reintroduce some aspects of the Sharia court system with Sufi Muhammed, the same cleric with whom the current government has struck a deal. (The Bhutto arrangement never really worked, and the protests started up again in a few years.) Few people in the valley would say that the current truce is their preferred outcome. In the recent election, they voted for a secular party. But if the secularists produce chaos and corruption, people settle for order.
The militants who were battling the Army (led by Sufi Muhammed's son-in-law) have had to go along with the deal. The Pakistani government is hoping that this agreement will isolate the jihadists and win the public back to its side. This may not work, but at least it represents an effort to divide the camps of the Islamists between those who are violent and those who are merely extreme.
Over the past eight years such distinctions have been regarded as naive. In the Bush administration's original view, all Islamist groups were one and the same; any distinctions or nuances were regarded as a form of appeasement. If they weren't terrorists themselves, they were probably harboring terrorists. But how to understand Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the countries "harbor" terrorists but are not themselves terrorist states?
To be clear, where there are Qaeda cells and fighters, force is the only answer. But most estimates of the number of Qaeda fighters in Pakistan range well under a few thousand. Are those the only people we are bombing? Is bombing—by Americans—the best solution? The Predator strikes have convinced much of the local population that it's under attack from America and produced a nationalist backlash. A few Qaeda operatives die, but public support for the battle against extremism drops in the vital Pashtun areas of Pakistan. Is this a good exchange?
We have placed ourselves in armed opposition to Muslim fundamentalists stretching from North Africa to Indonesia, which has made this whole enterprise feel very much like a clash of civilizations, and a violent one at that. Certainly, many local despots would prefer to enlist the American armed forces to defeat their enemies, some of whom may be jihadists but others may not. Across the entire North African region, the United States and other Western powers are supporting secular autocrats who claim to be battling Islamist opposition forces. In return, those rulers have done little to advance genuine reform, state building or political openness. In Algeria, after the Islamists won an election in 1992, the military staged a coup, the Islamists were banned and a long civil war ensued in which 200,000 people died. The opposition has since become more militant, and where once it had no global interests, some elements are now aligned with Al Qaeda.
Events have taken a different course in Nigeria, where the Islamists came to power locally. After the end of military rule in 1999, 12 of Nigeria's 36 states chose to adopt Sharia. Radical clerics arrived from the Middle East to spread their draconian interpretation of Islam. Religious militias such as the Hisbah of Kano state patrolled the streets, attacking those who shirked prayers, disobeyed religious dress codes or drank alcohol. Several women accused of adultery were sentenced to death by stoning. In 2002 The Weekly Standard decried "the Talibanization of West Africa" and worried that Nigeria, a "giant of sub-Saharan Africa," could become "a haven for Islamism, linked to foreign extremists."
But when The New York Times sent a reporter to Kano state in late 2007, she found an entirely different picture from the one that had been fretted over by State Department policy analysts. "The Islamic revolution that seemed so destined to transform northern Nigeria in recent years appears to have come and gone," the reporter, Lydia Polgreen, concluded. The Hisbah had become "little more than glorified crossing guards" and were "largely confined to their barracks and assigned anodyne tasks like directing traffic and helping fans to their seats at soccer games." The widely publicized sentences of mutilation and stoning rarely came to pass (although floggings were common). Other news reports have confirmed this basic picture.
Residents hadn't become less religious; mosques still overflowed with the devout during prayer time, and virtually all Muslim women went veiled. But the government had helped push Sharia in a tamer direction by outlawing religious militias; the regular police had no interest in enforcing the law's strictest tenets. In addition, over time some of the loudest proponents of Sharia had been exposed as hypocrites. Some were under investigation for embezzling millions.
We have an instant, violent reaction to anyone who sounds like an Islamic bigot. This is understandable. Many Islamists are bigots, reactionaries and extremists (others are charlatans and opportunists). But this can sometimes blind us to the ways they might prove useful in the broader struggle against Islamic terror. The Bush administration spent its first term engaged in a largely abstract, theoretical conversation about radical Islam and its evils—and conservative intellectuals still spout this kind of unyielding rhetoric. By its second term, though, the administration was grappling with the complexities of Islam on the ground. It is instructive that Bush ended up pursuing a most sophisticated and nuanced policy toward political Islam in the one country where reality was unavoidable—Iraq.
Having invaded Iraq, the Americans searched for local allies, in particular political groups that could become the Iraqi face of the occupation. The administration came to recognize that 30 years of Saddam—a secular, failed tyrant—had left only hard-core Islamists as the opposition. It partnered with these groups, most of which were Shiite parties founded on the model of Iran's ultra-religious organizations, and acquiesced as they took over most of southern Iraq, the Shiite heartland. In this area, the strict version of Islam that they implemented was quite similar to—in some cases more extreme than—what one would find in Iran today. Liquor was banned; women had to cover themselves from head to toe; Christians were persecuted; religious affiliations became the only way to get a government job, including college professorships.
While some of this puritanism is now mellowing, southern Iraq remains a dark place. But it is not a hotbed of jihad. And as the democratic process matures, one might even hope that some version of the Nigerian story will play out there. "It's hard to hand over authority to people who are illiberal," says former CIA analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht. "What you have to realize is that the objective is to defeat bin Ladenism, and you have to start the evolution. Moderate Muslims are not the answer. Shiite clerics and Sunni fundamentalists are our salvation from future 9/11s."
The Bush administration partnered with fundamentalists once more in the Iraq War, in the Sunni belt. When the fighting was at its worst, administration officials began talking to some in the Sunni community who were involved in the insurgency. Many of them were classic Islamic militants, though others were simply former Baathists or tribal chiefs. Gen. David Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy ramped up this process. "We won the war in Iraq chiefly because we separated the local militants from the global jihadists," says Fawaz Gerges, a scholar at Sarah Lawrence College, who has interviewed hundreds of Muslim militants. "Yet around the world we are still unwilling to make the distinction between these two groups."
Would a strategy like this work in Afghanistan? David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert who has advised Petraeus, says, "I've had tribal leaders and Afghan government officials at the province and district level tell me that 90 percent of the people we call the Taliban are actually tribal fighters or Pashtun nationalists or people pursuing their own agendas. Less than 10 percent are ideologically aligned with the Quetta Shura [Mullah Omar's leadership group] or Al Qaeda." These people are, in his view, "almost certainly reconcilable under some circumstances." Kilcullen adds, "That's very much what we did in Iraq. We negotiated with 90 percent of the people we were fighting."
Beyond Afghanistan, too, it is crucial that we adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward radical Islam. This should come naturally to President Obama, who spoke often on the campaign trail of the need for just such a differentiated approach toward Muslim countries. Even the Washington Institute, a think tank often associated with conservatives, appears onboard. It is issuing a report this week that recommends, among other points, that the United States use more "nuanced, noncombative rhetoric" that avoids sweeping declarations like "war on terror," "global insurgency," even "the Muslim world." Anything that emphasizes the variety of groups, movements and motives within that world strengthens the case that this is not a battle between Islam and the West. Bin Laden constantly argues that all these different groups are part of the same global movement. We should not play into his hands, and emphasize instead that many of these forces are local, have specific grievances and don't have much in common.
That does not mean we should accept the burning of girls' schools, or the stoning of criminals. Recognizing the reality of radical Islam is entirely different from accepting its ideas. We should mount a spirited defense of our views and values. We should pursue aggressively policies that will make these values succeed. Such efforts are often difficult and take time—rebuilding state structures, providing secular education, reducing corruption—but we should help societies making these efforts. The mere fact that we are working in these countries on these issues—and not simply bombing, killing and capturing—might change the atmosphere surrounding the U.S. involvement in this struggle.
The veil is not the same as the suicide belt. We can better pursue our values if we recognize the local and cultural context, and appreciate that people want to find their own balance between freedom and order, liberty and license. In the end, time is on our side. Bin Ladenism has already lost ground in almost every Muslim country. Radical Islam will follow the same path. Wherever it is tried—in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in parts of Nigeria and Pakistan—people weary of its charms very quickly. The truth is that all Islamists, violent or not, lack answers to the problems of the modern world. They do not have a world view that can satisfy the aspirations of modern men and women. We do. That's the most powerful weapon of all.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/187093
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Pakistan's gamble Making nice with the Taliban
By Natasha Fatah
CBC News
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=601700011&ref=name#/profile.php?id=601700011&ref=name&pub=2915120374
"Nazia" is originally from the Swat valley in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, the place where Pakistan authorities recently offered to allow Islamic law if Taliban militants lay down their arms. She knows the danger of these militants. When she speaks to her family in Swat on the phone every day from her new home in Canada, the sound of gunfire and bombs resonate in the background.
Niaza (who asked that her real name be withheld for fear of reprisal from militants here as well as in Pakistan) has lost many friends in the past months to the Taliban's brutality. That includes an uncle who was murdered when the Taliban accused of him of being a spy for Pakistani intelligence.
She fears for the lives of those trapped in the midst of a bloody ideological war in the Swat.
Two weeks ago, Nazia joined a rally in Toronto organized by the Pakhtunkhwa Peace Forum. It was a gathering of ethnic Pashtoons from Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, pleading for peace in their countries of origin.
Along with their pleas, the protestors were emphatic that they did not want sharia (Islamic) law to be imposed in northern Pakistan, a proposal they knew was on the table to try to end the fighting.
But the very next day the North West Frontier Provincial government, led by Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti, unveiled the controversial peace deal with the Taliban. As part of the agreement, which was negotiated by both the provincial and national governments with the pro-Taliban political figure Sufi Mohammed, Pakistan will allow for the implementation of sharia law in the region, something that the Taliban happily welcomes.
Romantic destination
Swat was once a romantic destination for many Western tourists. The sheer beauty of its lakes, green valleys and mountainous backdrop attracted both backpackers and blue bloods alike. Some even affectionately referred to it as "The Switzerland of Pakistan."
Pakistan's troubled Swat region in the North West Frontier Provinces. (CBC)Pakistan's troubled Swat region in the North West Frontier Provinces. (CBC)
But there are no more tourists in Swat these days because for the past two years, the Taliban has been gaining control of the area. Government accounts claim that over 1,600 Pakistanis have died in this period, mostly in the northwest region, because of Taliban violence.
The Pakistani military has been fighting back, but in January of this year it was obvious that the Taliban had seized pretty much complete control of a province whose southern tip is only a few hundred kilometres from the Pakistan capital Islamabad.
Caught in the crossfire between the military and the militants have been the people of Swat, people like Nazia's family. Millions have fled their homes looking for refuge elsewhere and many have been murdered, often by public beheadings, a measure the Taliban has employed to keep the locals in line.
The military wasn't winning and something had to be done. That something is the controversial peace proposal.
Its central plank is the promise of sharia law to address long-standing local grievances over a justice system that is perceived as too slow and unfair.
But at this point, it is not clear whether the Swat Taliban will really disarm or even allow for girls to receive an education. Up until last week the Taliban was bombing girl schools. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the provincial government has now proposed giving 30,000 rifles to the local citizenry so they can help keep the Taliban in line.
Afrasiab Khattak, the president of the ruling ANP political party in the region — someone who narrowly escaped a Taliban bombing last year — said that the people there are pleased with the compromise between the government and the Taliban.
Nazia is not so sure. She has seen the images of people in Swat rejoicing over this peace proposal but she says that we should not be fooled by these images. "If you give me two options: to be sick or to be killed," she says, "then for sure I will choose not to die."
A foot in the door
While Khattak says this decision will bring some short-term peace in the area, many Pakistanis — not to mention Barack Obama's government in Washington — are worried about the long-term impact on the country.
Asma Jahangir, the head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, says the deal has "given a taste of victory to the militants."
She goes on to argue that the government has made a terrible compromise in which the Taliban not only gain control over territory, through terror, but would now be legitimized through the institution of justice. This will leave the door open for more radicalism to grow, she says. "This is like the United Nations of militants running Swat."
There is a growing fear in some circles in Pakistan now that the Taliban area of control will only spread if this deal goes through.
In fact, many in the Pashtoon community, Nazia among them, believe that the Pakistani military is behind this deal with the Taliban in order to destabilize the provincial government in the northwest and use that instability to reclaim its grip over the national government.
All sorts of wild rumours emanate from Pakistan these days. But Pakistanis in the north and south, and even here in Canada, agree that this is a pivotal time when governments are making deals with the Taliban.
Many fear that this deal will lead to destabilization, if not the end of Pakistan as we know it today.
CBC News
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=601700011&ref=name#/profile.php?id=601700011&ref=name&pub=2915120374
"Nazia" is originally from the Swat valley in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, the place where Pakistan authorities recently offered to allow Islamic law if Taliban militants lay down their arms. She knows the danger of these militants. When she speaks to her family in Swat on the phone every day from her new home in Canada, the sound of gunfire and bombs resonate in the background.
Niaza (who asked that her real name be withheld for fear of reprisal from militants here as well as in Pakistan) has lost many friends in the past months to the Taliban's brutality. That includes an uncle who was murdered when the Taliban accused of him of being a spy for Pakistani intelligence.
She fears for the lives of those trapped in the midst of a bloody ideological war in the Swat.
Two weeks ago, Nazia joined a rally in Toronto organized by the Pakhtunkhwa Peace Forum. It was a gathering of ethnic Pashtoons from Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, pleading for peace in their countries of origin.
Along with their pleas, the protestors were emphatic that they did not want sharia (Islamic) law to be imposed in northern Pakistan, a proposal they knew was on the table to try to end the fighting.
But the very next day the North West Frontier Provincial government, led by Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti, unveiled the controversial peace deal with the Taliban. As part of the agreement, which was negotiated by both the provincial and national governments with the pro-Taliban political figure Sufi Mohammed, Pakistan will allow for the implementation of sharia law in the region, something that the Taliban happily welcomes.
Romantic destination
Swat was once a romantic destination for many Western tourists. The sheer beauty of its lakes, green valleys and mountainous backdrop attracted both backpackers and blue bloods alike. Some even affectionately referred to it as "The Switzerland of Pakistan."
Pakistan's troubled Swat region in the North West Frontier Provinces. (CBC)Pakistan's troubled Swat region in the North West Frontier Provinces. (CBC)
But there are no more tourists in Swat these days because for the past two years, the Taliban has been gaining control of the area. Government accounts claim that over 1,600 Pakistanis have died in this period, mostly in the northwest region, because of Taliban violence.
The Pakistani military has been fighting back, but in January of this year it was obvious that the Taliban had seized pretty much complete control of a province whose southern tip is only a few hundred kilometres from the Pakistan capital Islamabad.
Caught in the crossfire between the military and the militants have been the people of Swat, people like Nazia's family. Millions have fled their homes looking for refuge elsewhere and many have been murdered, often by public beheadings, a measure the Taliban has employed to keep the locals in line.
The military wasn't winning and something had to be done. That something is the controversial peace proposal.
Its central plank is the promise of sharia law to address long-standing local grievances over a justice system that is perceived as too slow and unfair.
But at this point, it is not clear whether the Swat Taliban will really disarm or even allow for girls to receive an education. Up until last week the Taliban was bombing girl schools. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the provincial government has now proposed giving 30,000 rifles to the local citizenry so they can help keep the Taliban in line.
Afrasiab Khattak, the president of the ruling ANP political party in the region — someone who narrowly escaped a Taliban bombing last year — said that the people there are pleased with the compromise between the government and the Taliban.
Nazia is not so sure. She has seen the images of people in Swat rejoicing over this peace proposal but she says that we should not be fooled by these images. "If you give me two options: to be sick or to be killed," she says, "then for sure I will choose not to die."
A foot in the door
While Khattak says this decision will bring some short-term peace in the area, many Pakistanis — not to mention Barack Obama's government in Washington — are worried about the long-term impact on the country.
Asma Jahangir, the head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, says the deal has "given a taste of victory to the militants."
She goes on to argue that the government has made a terrible compromise in which the Taliban not only gain control over territory, through terror, but would now be legitimized through the institution of justice. This will leave the door open for more radicalism to grow, she says. "This is like the United Nations of militants running Swat."
There is a growing fear in some circles in Pakistan now that the Taliban area of control will only spread if this deal goes through.
In fact, many in the Pashtoon community, Nazia among them, believe that the Pakistani military is behind this deal with the Taliban in order to destabilize the provincial government in the northwest and use that instability to reclaim its grip over the national government.
All sorts of wild rumours emanate from Pakistan these days. But Pakistanis in the north and south, and even here in Canada, agree that this is a pivotal time when governments are making deals with the Taliban.
Many fear that this deal will lead to destabilization, if not the end of Pakistan as we know it today.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
A Letter To The World Citizens
A Heart Broken Girl
Tue, 24-Feb-2009
Shehnaz is an ethnic Pashtun and at present studying in the United States. In this letter she wants to share the pain and sufferings of her people due to the ongoing conflicts between Taliban militants and Pakistan seucrity forces, with the civilized world. Shehnaz can be reached at gwal_pari@yahoo.com
To keep the originalility of the letter intact Pakhtunkhwa Times with permission of Pashtunpost is sharing it with you as it is and without any edits in its contents—Editorial
Dear Citizens of the World!
The people of Swat, Pakistan (in NWFP), and surrounding areas have been dying for over a year now, and the Pakistani government has done nothing to help stop their destruction. It claims it has sent “security forces” to those regions to settle the matter, but it fails to provide evidence. Not just that, but instead of having these “security forces” punish/kill the Taliban, they kill civilians. They claim to be shooting in areas filled with Taliban, but somehow, the Taliban always end up escaping while innocent Pashtuns’ lives are snatched. Taliban destroy our schools while these “security forces” stand and watch quietly. They argue that they cannot differentiate the Taliban from the average Pashtun man, but how does one witness a person committing such horrendous crimes and remain silent, claiming not to know who the criminal is when the criminal is standing right in front of him?
Then there's the media: why is it that hardly a handful of people around the world knows about what the Pashtuns are going through right now? If they knew, there would perhaps be more protests against our genocide; or perhaps, at the very least, our situation would be mentioned in most newspapers, whether local or international, and maybe even make front-page news every now and then. For instance, how many people universally are aware of the fact that the Taliban have now issued a new dictum in which they have decided that all young, unmarried females in Swat must be married to them (i.e., these militants)? How many people know that hundreds of schools in Swat alone have been destroyed in just the past year? hwHow How mddffffffHow many people have read the letters and articles, in BBC, that are written by victims who beg the world to help them (such as in “A Letter from Swat,” by Zobair Torwali, a social activist who lives in Swat)? How many people know that a law was passed no more than a month ago, stating that girls are not to go to school anymore and if they do so, they and their families will have to face severe consequences? How many people know that numerous Pashtun refugees from NWFP have fled to Afghanistan – that, by foot – in order that they may be at peace? Unfortunately, there are far many more who refuse to leave because for them, their current residence is their home; this is where their ancestors lived, survived hardships just like them, and died; it is where all of their relatives and others with whom they have strong bonds have lived for centuries; but also, most of them cannot afford to leave due to financial difficulties. Not to mention, their current regions symbolize for them hope in a state hopeless situation.
Yet, we wonder in pity, why aren’t their screams being heard by the media, by the world? How much more louder do these victims’ screams of this burning pain need to be in order for them to be heard? How long must the suffering continue, and how many more people must die, in order to be labeled genocide by the international community? At the very least, how long must it continue in order for the world to hear the victims’ heartfelt cries? All these questions lead us to ultimately ask: why is the media so silent on the matter regarding these Pashtun victims?
The media’s role is vital because due to the lack of attention that the Pashtun victims are receiving from the media, whether Pakistani or international media, very few people are aware of their suffering. And if the public does not know what is going on around the world, how can they raise a voice against the injustice being done to a people? Indeed, very few news sources have earned the rest of Pashtuns by documenting the miseries that their loved ones back home have been swallowing for the past year. And because we young Pashtuns living abroad have realized that the media is not doing its proper job in revealing the miserable and painful condition of our people, we have decided to accept the heavy burden upon our own shoulders and raise awareness of the situation ourselves. Groups on Online Social Networks (such as Facebook, Orkut, and MySpace) have been created in support of Pashtun victims; in some of these groups, members share and discuss ways through which they can raise awareness of this genocide, and one of the most important ways they have come up with is writing letters to important news sources and explaining this injustice.
I hope that this letter expresses its unheard voice powerfully enough in such a way that the readers are convinced to research the current Pashtun genocide, educate others about it, and help us stand up against our oppressors and with the oppressed.
Thank you for giving me the permission to freely share my thoughts with you, citizens of the world!
Sincerely
Shehnaz,
(A heartbroken Pashtun)
United States
Via Email
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